Chapter II: Henri Bergson (2)

It is obvious that the adoption of the pragmatic principle, particularly in the extreme Bergsonian form, would radically alter our view of the past, and compel a rewriting or at least a rereading of history. If history never repeats itself, what is its lesson for us? Certainly it is not competent to foretell our future, still less to prescribe our actions. The best expression of what seems to me the legitimate ethical deductions of Bergson's philosophy is to be found in the brilliant essays by L. P. Jacks. According to the editor of the _Hibbert Journal_, the highest morality consists, not in following the established rules, but in a voluntary rise into a higher level. The true moral act is original, creative, unprecedented. What would the author of "Folk-ways", for whom conformity was the only morality, have said to the following:

"Had men all along restricted themselves to the performance of those actions for which the warrant of moral science was then and there available, many crimes perhaps would not have been committed, but it is doubtful if the world would contain the record of a single noble deed. We cannot remind ourselves too often that the most complete scientific knowledge of what has been done up to date will never enable us to answer the question, 'What ought to be done next?'

"The subject matter of science and the subject matter of morality are entirely different and in a sense opposed; the first is the deed-as-done, the second is the doing of a deed-to-be.

"Conscience rightly understood is no faculty of abstract judgment laying down propositions as to what ought and ought not to be done; it is not a 'voice', though we often name it such, bidding us do this or that; it is rather an _élan vital_, an impulse, an active principle, nay, the good _Will_ itself."--"Alchemy of Thought", by L. P. Jacks, pp. 260, 287.

Among the numerous followers of Bergson, none is more enthusiastic or sympathetic than Edouard Le Roy, a modernist Catholic--if that, since the encyclical, is not a contradiction in terms--who has for many years been in close touch with Bergson, and has been especially interested in the religious and ethical applications of his theories. His introduction to Bergson's philosophy is therefore useful, not merely because it gives in brief a competent exposition of Bergson's ideas, for the beginner would probably find it quite as profitable and enjoyable to read the same number of pages of "Creative Evolution", but chiefly because M. Le Roy is in a way an authorized spokesman, and so we can get some notion of Bergson's opinions about questions on which he has not yet expressed himself. For example, Bergson in all his books never deals with religion, although it is obvious that his philosophy has the closest relation with religion in many of its aspects. Le Roy, however, is not so reticent, and he closes the volume with the following noteworthy passage:

"In the depths of ourselves we find liberty; in the depths of universal being we find a demand for creation. Since evolution is creative, each of its moments works for the production of an indeducible and transcendent future. This future must not be regarded as a simple development of the present, a simple expression of germs already given. Consequently we have no authority for saying that there is forever only one order of life, only one plane of action, only one rhythm of duration, only one perspective of existence. And if disconnections and abrupt leaps are visible in the economy of the past--from matter to life, from the animal to man--we have no authority again for claiming that we cannot observe to-day something analogous in the very essence of human life, that the point of view of the flesh, and the point of view of the spirit, the point of view of reason, and the point of view of charity are a homogeneous extension of it. And apart from that, taking life in its first tendency, and in the general direction of its current, it is ascent, growth, upward effort, and a work of spiritualizing and emancipating creation: by that we might define Good, for Good is a path rather than a thing.

"But life may fail, halt, or travel downward.... Each species, each individual, each function tends to take itself as its end; mechanism, habit, body and letter, which are, strictly speaking, pure instruments, actually become principles of death. Thus it comes about that life is exhausted in efforts toward self-preservation, allows itself to be converted by matter into captive eddies, sometimes even abandons itself to the inertia of the weight which it ought to raise, and surrenders to the downward current which constitutes the essence of materiality: it is thus that Evil would be defined, as the direction of travel opposed to Good. Now, with man, thought, reflection, and clear consciousness appear. At the same time also properly moral qualifications appear; good becomes duty, evil becomes sin. At this precise moment, a new problem begins, demanding the soundings of a new intuition, yet connected at clear and visible points with previous problems.

"This is the philosophy which some are pleased to say is closed by nature to all problems of a certain order, problems of reason or problems of morality. There is no doctrine, on the contrary, which is more open, and none which, in actual fact, lends itself better to further extension."

I have quoted this entire, because Professor Bergson has given it his indorsement in the plainest terms. In a letter to M. Le Roy about the book, he says:

Your study could not be more conscientious or true to the
original. Nowhere is this sympathy more in evidence than
where you point the possibilities of further developments of
the doctrine. In this direction I should myself say exactly
what you have said.

The passage quoted above from M. Le Roy's book has, then, almost the significance of a signed statement. It was observed that in his lectures in New York Professor Bergson was much more outspoken than formerly in his views upon religious matters; as, for example, when he replied affirmatively to the question whether he believed in immortality or not. It may be anticipated that his future work will be in the development of his philosophy along the lines indicated by M. Le Roy, although we may expect--judging from his former books--that this will take the form, not of the formulation of a new moral code, but of the discovery of a new way of looking at life and appraising action.

Until recently the triumphal march of Bergson into increasing popularity and influence has met with little systematic opposition. Some have found him obscure. Some have called him absurd. He has his devoted partisans and bitter opponents. But his views have not yet been subjected to the thorough criticism which they must inevitably receive sooner or later. A step in this direction is the study of the pragmatic movement by René Berthelot. The first volume of his "Utilitarian Romanticism" deals with the pragmatism of Nietzsche and Poincaré; the second with the pragmatism of Bergson. The author, after the manner of historians of philosophy, is more concerned to determine what is new in Bergson than what is true. He acts upon the old military rule "divide and conquer" and accordingly splits up Bergsonism into German romanticism and Anglo-Saxon utilitarianism, and then proceeds to dispatch these severally after the orthodox manner. This procedure is in a way begging the question, for it implicitly denies the Bergsonian thesis that there may be something new in the world. Tracing a thing back to its roots is all very well, provided that you do not assume that the roots are all there is of the plant that has grown out of them.

In tracing this genealogy of thought M. Berthelot finds Bergson related to Nietzsche on the romantic side. Both, he says, derive their romanticism from Schelling; Bergson, through his revered teacher, Ravaisson, and Nietzsche through Hoelderlin, Emerson, Schopenhauer, and Wagner. "Like the symbolists, Nietzsche and Bergson have drunk in different cups the water from the same magic fountain; an invisible Vivian has bound them both in the same enchantment."

From the other side of the house--might we say the masculine side?--Bergson derived his utilitarian empiricism; M. Berthelot traces its descent from Berkeley through Hume, Mill, Bain, and Spencer. In the course of this discussion the author introduces the following ingenious formula:

Hobbes : Berkeley :: Nietzsche : Bergson.

Those who are sufficiently expert with the application of the rule of three to metaphysics may work this out at their leisure.

One would suppose, on Mendelian principles, that a hybrid of such diverse and distinguished intellectual ancestry would show more originality than Berthelot is willing to allow to Bergson. At the end of his analysis he comes to the conclusion that Bergson has really made only one important contribution to philosophy; that is, his conception of duration as distinguished from time. As Berkeley in analyzing the idea of space showed how psychological space, that is, the notion of space derived from sensation, differed from mathematical or formal space, so Bergson has shown how concrete duration or psychological time differs from mathematical or formal time. But even this theory according to our author is misapplied by Bergson, for it is not an opposition between space and time, but between two different conceptions of both space and time. This is characteristic of Berthelot's criticism, which is mainly directed toward breaking down all along the line the dichotomy to which Bergson is addicted.

Bergson's literary skill and amazing popularity seem to annoy him as they do other professors of philosophy in various lands. Whenever Berthelot presents Bergson with a bundle of compliments, we may detect a nettle hidden in the bouquet, as when he alludes to Bergson as "the Debussy of contemporary philosophy", and he says that with an increasing floridity of style the number of the _bergsoniennes_ has come to surpass that of the _bergsoniens._ But that a philosophy should become fashionable seems to me rather creditable to the public than discreditable to the originator.

Professor Bergson has on several occasions expressed an interest in the efforts of the Society of Psychical Research to throw light into dark corners, and he has shown his sympathy by accepting the presidency of the English society, a successor in that position to F. W. H. Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, A. J. Balfour, and Andrew Lang. In his presidential address delivered in Æolian Hall, London, May 28, 1913, Professor Bergson made the novel suggestion that if the same amount of effort had been given toward the study of mental phenomena as has been given to physical, we might now know as much about mind as we do about matter. The concluding passage of the address is worth quoting:

What would have happened if all our science, for three
centuries past, had been directed toward the knowledge
of the mind, instead of toward that of matter--if,
for instance, Kepler and Galileo and Newton had been
psychologists? Psychology would have attained developments
of which one could no more form an idea than people had
been able, before Kepler and Galileo and Newton, to form an
idea of our astronomy and of our physics. Probably, instead
of their being disdained _a priori_, all the strange facts
with which psychical research was concerned would have
been sought out minutely. Probably we should have had a
vitalist biology quite different from ours, perhaps also a
different medicine, or therapeutics by way of suggestion
would have been pushed to a point of which we can form no
idea. But when the human mind, having pushed thus far the
science of mind, had turned toward inert matter, it would
have been confused as to its direction, not knowing how to
set to work, not knowing how to apply to this matter the
processes with which it had been successful up till then.
The world of physical, and not that of psychical, phenomena
would then have been the world of mystery. It was, however,
neither possible nor desirable that things should have
happened thus. It was not possible, because at the dawn of
modern times mathematical science already existed, and it
was necessary, consequently, that the mind should pursue
its researches in a direction to which that science was
applicable. Nor was it desirable, even for the science of
mind, for there would always have been wanting to that
science something infinitely precious--the precision, the
anxiety for proof, the habit of distinguishing that which
is certain and that which is simply possible or probable.
The sciences concerned with matter can alone give to the
mind that precision, that rigor, those scruples. Let us
now approach the science of mind with these excellent
habits, renouncing the bad metaphysic which embarrasses our
research, and the science of the mind will attain results
surpassing all our hopes.

But whatever might have been the result if Kepler, Galileo, and Newton had turned their attention to psychology instead of physics, it must be confessed that the Society for Psychical Research has been a disappointment, notwithstanding that it has numbered among its zealous investigators such distinguished scientists as Lodge, Crookes, and Wallace. When the society was organized in 1882, its first president, Professor Sidgwick, called attention to the numerous reports of physical phenomena in the séance room and expressed the hope that such evidence would be forthcoming more abundantly now that competent investigators were prepared to deal with them. But quite the contrary happened. As Mr. Podmore puts it in his book on "The Naturalization of the Supernatural":

"In short, just when an organized and systematic investigation on a scale not inadequate to the importance of the subject was for the first time about to be made, the phenomena to be investigated diminished rapidly in frequency and importance, and the opportunities for investigation were further curtailed by the indifference or reluctance of the mediums to submit their claims to investigation."

It would seem, then, that since mankind, or some small portion of it, has acquired the precision, rigor, and scruples of physical science, it has become difficult, even impossible, to cultivate the occult. Still most of us would agree with M. Bergson that, assuming that there was such an alternative opened to humanity as he supposes, science has chosen the better part in undertaking the conquest of the physical world first.

The religious importance of Bergson's theory of evolution will be apparent from the quotations given. It has occurred to me in reading his later work that in some passages the word "faith" could be substituted for "philosophy", and "_elohim_" for "_élan vital_", without materially altering the sense. Then, too, his emphasis of time restores a conception which has always been a vital factor in religious faith, but which is not found in the scientific conception of the world as a reversible reaction or the metaphysical conception of the world as an illusion of an unchangeable Absolute. The present day is different from any other, and the future depends upon it. We cannot console or excuse ourselves by saying, "It will be all the same a hundred years hence." Now is the accepted time, the day of decision, the unique opportunity, and the election may be irrevocable, a turning point in the history of the creation. The atoms have lost their chance. The animals are hopelessly sidetracked. Upon us depends the future, the salvation of the world.

We must no longer speak of life in general as if it were an
abstraction, or a mere rubric under which all living beings
are enrolled. At a certain time, in certain points of space,
a very visible current originated. This current of life,
traversing the bodies which it has successively organized,
passing from generation to generation, has divided itself
among species and dispersed itself among individuals without
losing anything of its force.--"Creative Evolution"?

Bergson's philosophy would apparently lead to a conception of God more Arminian than Calvinistic, if it is permissible to apply the old theological categories; a God perhaps conscious, personal, and anthropomorphic, but not omnipotent and unchangeable. In fact it has a striking similarity to the conception of the Alexandrian Gnostics, a creative force struggling against the intractability of inert matter and triumphing by subtlety and persistence. The motto of Louis XI, _Divide et impera_, applies here in a different sense:

God, thus defined, has nothing of the already made: He is
unceasing life, action, freedom. Creation, so conceived, is
not a mystery; we experience it in ourselves when we act
freely....

It is as if a vague and formless being whom we may call as
we will, man or superman, had sought to realize himself, and
had succeeded only by abandoning part of himself on the way.
The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world
and even by the vegetable world.--"Creative Evolution", pp.
248, 266.

According to this view, the world is gradually coming to life, acquiring a consciousness. Matter is an Undine in search of a soul. A Rodin statue with human forms emerging from the unhewn stone is Bergson's philosophy in marble. We see again Milton's "tawny lion pawing to get free his hinder parts." We hear again Faust's translation of the Logos: "In the beginning was the Act."

But I must refrain from imposing such analogies upon an author who has taken pains to clothe his thought in fresh language in order to be free from the connotations of the old. Let Bergson summarize his theory of evolution in his own words:

Life as a whole, from the initial impulsion that thrust
it into the world, will appear as a wave that rises, and
which is opposed by the descending movement of matter. On
the greater part of its surface, at different heights, the
current is converted by matter into a vortex. At one point
alone it passes freely, dragging with it the obstacle which
will weigh on its progress but will not stop it. At this
point is humanity; it is our privileged situation. On the
other hand, this rising wave is consciousness, and, like all
consciousness, it includes potentialities without number
which interpenetrate and to which consequently neither the
category of unity nor that of multiplicity is appropriate,
made as they both are for inert matter. The matter that
it bears along with it, and in the interstices of which
it inserts itself, alone can divide it into distinct
individualities. On flows the current, running through
human generations, subdividing itself into individuals.
This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could
not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are
continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain
sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little
rills into which the great river of life divides itself,
flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the
stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must
adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from
the organism it animates, although it must undergo its
vicissitudes. As the possible actions which a state of
consciousness indicates are at every instant beginning to
be carried out in the nervous centers, the brain underlines
at every instant the motor indications of the state of
consciousness; but the interdependency of consciousness and
brain is limited to this; the destiny of consciousness is
not bound up on that account with the destiny of cerebral
matter. Finally, consciousness is essentially free; it
is freedom itself; but it cannot pass through matter
without settling on it, without adapting itself to it;
this adaptation is what we call intellectuality; and the
intellect, turning itself back toward active, that is to
say, free, consciousness, naturally makes it enter into the
conceptual forms into which it is accustomed to see matter
fit. It will, therefore, always perceive freedom in the form
of necessity; it will always neglect the part of novelty or
of creation inherent in free act; it will always substitute
for action itself an imitation, artificial, approximate,
obtained by compounding the old with the old and the
same with the same. Thus, to the eyes of a philosophy
that attempts to reabsorb intellect in intuition, many
difficulties vanish or become light. But such a doctrine
does not only facilitate speculation, it gives us also more
power to act and to live. For, with it, we feel ourselves
no longer isolated in humanity, humanity no longer seems
isolated in the nature that it dominates. As the smallest
grain of dust is bound up with our entire solar system,
drawn along with it in that undivided movement of descent
which, is materiality itself, so all organized beings, from
the humblest to the highest, from the first origins of life
to the time in which we are, and in all places as in all
times, do but evidence a single impulsion, the inverse of
the movement of matter, and in itself indivisible. All the
living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous
push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides
animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time,
is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind
each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every
resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps
even death.--"Creative Evolution", p. 269.

* * * * *

HOW TO READ BERGSON

Read the last first. Begin with "Creative Evolution", for this is the most comprehensive exposition of his philosophy and is written in a less technical style than his earlier works. But the reader must remember that a knowledge of these is presupposed, and Bergson has here taken for granted what he has written two other large volumes to prove; namely, that time cannot be adequately represented in the forms of space, and that mind is not rigidly bound to matter. Bergson is unexcelled by any modern philosopher except William James in brilliancy of style and originality of illustration. "Creative Evolution" treats of such a variety of questions, biological, psychological, and metaphysical, that any intelligent reader will find something in it that will arouse new trains of thought. And if the intelligent reader finds passages which he cannot understand, he may console himself with the reflection that there are others who have been likewise baffled. Count Keyserling, who has the brain of a German metaphysician, says of Bergson that "his philosophy is perhaps the most original achievement since the days of Immanuel Kant", but he adds, "Many thoughts on which Bergson appears to lay great weight arouse in me not the shade of an idea." But he ascribes Bergson's obscurity to the fact that "he does not start from abstract principles; he begins in direct consciousness, in concrete life", so perhaps the ordinary reader may have in this respect an advantage over a Kantian student like Count Keyserling.

The student of philosophy may prefer to trace the development of Bergson's thought in its logical and chronological order. He will in that case begin with the "Essai sur les donnés immédiates de la conscience" (1889), and proceed to "Matière et Mémoire" (1896), and end with "Evolution créatrice" (1907). These are published by Félix Alcan, Paris, in his "Bibliothèque de Philosophie contemporaine." The "Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness" appears under the less cumbrous title of "Time and Free Will" in the translation of F. L. Pogson (Macmillan). "Matter and Memory" is translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (Macmillan). It may not be improper to note that the British edition of the Essay costs nearly four times as much as the French and is twice as heavy. "Creative Evolution", translated by Arthur Mitchell, is printed in this country by Henry Holt & Company. Bergson's lecture on Dreams, translated by E. E. Slosson, is published in book form by B. W. Huebsch, New York.

Those who read French but do not wish to attack one of the larger works will find convenient the summary of his philosophy with illustrative selections made by one of his former pupils, René Gillouin, and published in "Les Grands Philosophes" by Louis Michaud, Paris. The German reader will find in A. Steenbergen's "Bergsons Intuitive Philosophie", Jena, an epitome and critique.

"Time and Free Will" contains an admirable bibliography, including the most important discussions of Bergson's philosophy that have appeared in eight languages up to 1911. The most interesting introduction to Bergson is the article published by Professor James in the _Hibbert Journal_, April, 1909, and reprinted in his _Pluralistic Universe_. This has the advantage of M. Bergson's indorsement, for when Professor Pitkin of Columbia attempted to show that James was wrong in claiming Bergson as an ally ("James and Bergson, or Who is Against Intellect?" in _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Method_, April 28, 1910), Bergson replied that James had not misinterpreted him but had said what he meant in better words than his (same _Journal_, July 7, 1910). Other brief expositions of Bergson's philosophy are the articles by H. Wildon Carr in _Proc. Aristotelian Society_, 1909 and 1910, and _Hibbert Journal_, July, 1910; by J. Solomon in _Mind,_ January, 1911 (both these now in book form also); by Arthur Balfour on "Creative Evolution and Philosophic Doubt" in the decennial number of the _Hibbert Journal_; "Bergson's Philosophy and the Idea of God," by H. C. Corrance, and "Syndicalism in its Relation to Bergson," by T. Rhondda Williams, both in _Hibbert Journal_ of January, 1914. Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins criticizes "The Practical Tendencies of Bergsonianism" in the _International Journal of Ethics_, April and July, 1913. Bergson's London lectures on the soul are summarized in the _Educational Review_, January, 1912. Santayana's "Winds of Doctrine" (Scribner) contains an interesting chapter on Bergson's philosophy.

Of the voluminous controversial literature in France it is only possible to mention a few recent titles: R. Gillouin, "La Philosophie de Bergson" (Grasset); J. Segond, "L'Intuition Bergsonienne" (Alcan); J. Desaymard, "La Pensée d'Henri Bergson" (Mercure de France). The most conspicuous of the opponents of Bergson are: René Berthelot in "Un Romanticisme utilitaire," tome II, "Le Pragmatisme chez Bergson" (Alcan); and Julien Benda in "Le Bergsonisme ou une Philosophie de la Mobilité", and "Réponse aux Défenseurs du Bergsonisme" (Mercure de France).

"Bergson for Beginners", by Darcy B. Kitchin (Macmillan) gives a summary of his works and adds some interesting observations on the relation of Bergson to the English philosophers James Ward and Herbert Spencer. Other recent expositions and criticisms are "The Philosophy of Bergson", by A. D. Lindsay; "A Critical Examination of Bergson's Philosophy", by J. McKellar Stewart; "An Examination of Professor Bergson's Philosophy", by David Balsillie; "Bergson and the Modern Spirit", by G. R. Dodgson (American Unitarian Assoc., Boston). But the best volume to serve as an introduction to Bergson is that previously mentioned, "The New Philosophy of Henri Bergson", by Edouard Le Roy (Holt).

A list of the most important of the books and articles on the subject in all languages up to 1913 comprising more than five hundred titles was published by the Columbia University Press on the occasion of Bergson's visit, "A Contribution to a Bibliography of Henri Bergson."

[1] Reported in the _Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie_, 1908.

[2] For his views on the possibility of scientific metaphysics, see _Le Parallélisme psycho-physique et la métaphysique positive_ in _Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie_, June, 1901; and _Introduction à la métaphysique_ in _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, January, 1903.

[3] Published in the _Revue scientifique_, June 8, 1901, and in English in _The Independent_, October 23-30, 1913, and in book form, 1914.

[4] Articles on pragmatic Catholicism may be found in almost any volume of the _Revue Philosophique_ and the _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_ during the first twelve years of the twentieth century. See especially those by Edouard Le Roy, a disciple of James and Bergson. A brief account of the movement is contained in Lalande's "Philosophy in France, 1907", _Philosophical Review_, May, 1908.

[5] As representatives of the pragmatic syndicalists may be mentioned George Sorel and Edouard Berth. For an account of the philosophical side of the movement, see _Syndicalistes et Bergsoniens_ by C. Bougie in _Revue__du Mois_, April, 1909.