CURRENT TENDENCIES 13 



Ever since the seventeenth century, those whom 

 William James described as the " tender-minded ' have 

 been engaged in a desperate struggle with the mechanical 

 view of the course of nature which physical science seems 

 to impose. A great part of the attractiveness of the 

 classical tradition was due to the partial escape from 

 mechanism which it provided. But now, with the influ- 

 ence of biology, the " tender-minded ' believe that a 

 more radical escape is possible, sweeping aside not merely 

 the laws of physics, but the whole apparently immutable 

 apparatus of logic, with its fixed concepts, its general 

 principles, and its reasonings which seem able to compel 

 even the most unwilling assent. The older kind of 

 teleology, therefore, which regarded the End as a fixed 

 goal, already partially visible, towards which we were 

 gradually approaching, is rejected by M. Bergson as not 

 allowing enough for the absolute dominion of change. 

 After explaining why he does not accept mechanism, he 

 proceeds i 1 



" But radical finalism is quite as unacceptable, and for 

 the same reason. The doctrine of teleology, in its 

 extreme form, as we find it in Leibniz for example, 

 implies that things and beings merely realise a programme 

 previously arranged. But if there is nothing unforeseen, 

 no invention or creation in the universe, time is useless 

 again. As in the mechanistic hypothesis, here again it is 

 supposed that all is given. Finalism thus understood is 

 only inverted mechanism. It springs from the same 

 postulate, with this sole difference, that in the movement 

 of our finite intellects along successive things, whose 

 successiveness is reduced to a mere appearance, it holds 

 in front of us the light with which it claims to guide us, 

 instead of putting it behind. It substitutes the attraction 



1 Creative Evolutio?i, English translation, p. 41. 



