THE NATURE OF REALITY 451 



It is in sharp contrast with another position, to be examined 

 immediately, viz., that of Bergson. 



CREATIVE EVOLUTION 1 



In both method and content, the position of Bergson bears 

 closer kinship to that of Eddington than to that of Jeans. All 

 three would agree that the character of the scientific method 

 determines the character of the world which is disclosed there- 

 by; but whereas Jeans insists that the world thus revealed 

 is reality, Eddington and Bergson insist that it cannot be. 

 Science, according to the latter, gives only a partial, and to 

 that extent erroneous, view of reality. Hence whereas Jeans 

 concludes as to the nature of reality from the adequacy of 

 symbols, Eddington and Bergson both conclude as to its 

 character from the inadequacy of symbols. 



The primary data for Bergson are concepts and the con- 

 ceptual method, which constitute, respectively, the tools and 

 techniques of science. Now the characteristic method of 

 science is analysis. 2 "Analysis ... is the operation which 

 reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to 

 elements common both to it and other objects." 3 "The 

 different concepts that we form of the properties of a thing 

 inscribe round it so many circles, each much too large and 

 none of them fitting it exactly." 4 "Simple concepts have 

 . . . the inconvenience of dividing the concrete unity of the 

 object into so many symbolical expressions." 5 "These con- 

 cepts, laid side by side, never actually give us more than an 

 artificial reconstruction of the object, of which they can only 

 symbolize certain general, and, in a way, impersonal aspects; 

 it is therefore useless to believe that with them we can seize 

 a reality of which they present to us the shadow alone." 6 



The real difficulty with the method of analysis is that it 

 substitutes for 'the real and internal organization of the 

 thing" something which is merely 'an external and sche- 



1 The position of Bergson has already been considered briefly in another context. 

 See above, pp. 18-20. 



2 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 8. 



3 Ibid., p. 7. * Ibid., p. 19. 5 Ibid., p. 21. c Ibid., pp. 18-19. 



