PHILOSOPHY 2 8 9 



whatever emerges in the course of the process, on a determinist theory, must be already 

 completely contained in its antecedent conditions, and adequate knowledge of those 

 conditions must enable you to say beforehand exactly what will emerge from them. 

 Hence for science, which to be true to its geometrical ideal must be strictly mechanical, 

 the whole process of evolution can be nothing but the rearrangement, according to 

 mechanical law, of self-same and permanent units; Real life, as we know it at first hand 

 in the act of living it, is of a wholly different kind. It is a single continuous process 

 of becoming, in which there is no permanent substratum; it presents us at every moment 

 with the emergence of the qualitatively new, fresh qualities, fresh adaptations to environ- 

 ment, which could never have been anticipated, from any knowledge of what had gone 

 before, until they had actually emerged. You cannot expect to know the direction this 

 elan vital, as Bergson names the impulse which Schopenhauer had called the " will to 

 live," will take until it has been actually taken ; life is thus essentially contingent- (It 

 follows, of course, that determinism is false as regards that special manifestation of the 

 elan vital which we call will, or choice. To speak of our decisions as necessitated or 

 determined by our past is virtually to think of them as already made for us before we 

 make them.) Instinctive or impulsive activity is thus but a manifestation of the 

 forward-going elan vital, the tendency of the process which is life to exhibit itself in ever 

 newer forms. Science is the inevitably unsuccessful attempt of the intellect to recon- 

 struct the process in " geometrical " form by reversing its sense. It looks back at a 

 process which has culminated in the appearance of something new (e.g. a new modi- 

 fication of an animal species), notes what the earlier stages of the process have been, 

 and then assumes that it could have predicted from a knowledge of antecedent conditions 

 the new manifestation of theelanvital with which it had, in fact, to be already acquainted 

 before it could think of the antecedent events as conditions of this result. Hence, if 

 philosophy is to understand life, its method must be the reverse of that of the scientific 

 intellect. It must renounce the intellect and its logic, which latter is indeed merely the 

 abstract schematism of the " geometrical " procedure, and surrender itself without 

 reserve to the intuitions and presages which attend on complete immersion in the 

 stream of the elan vital. 



It may perhaps be suggested that the real test of Bergson ? s ability to construct an 

 irrationalist Philosophy on this basis must -be sought in the success with which it can 

 be applied to the interpretation of the spiritual life of humanity, a task With 

 Criticisms. which Bergson has not as yet grappled. Meanwhile there appear to be 

 some reasons for doubting whether the foundations of his thought are 

 themselves securely laid. The condemnation of the intellect is based upon the assump- 

 tion that because it is a " product of evolution "it can have no function but that of 

 enabling us to find our way about among things; this is why geometry, which deals 

 with the " surfaces of solid things," is declared to be its highest achievement, and why 

 it is denied all value for the interpretation of life. But it might reasonably be contended 

 that from the dawn of time men have had to occupy themselves at least as much with 

 reaching a common understanding of one another as with learning their way about 

 among " solid bodies," and that we should therefore expect an intellect which is a 

 " product of evolution " to be competent to deal with life as well as with the surfaces of 

 solid bodies. Again it is plain that the alleged necessity for science of a spatial schemat- 

 ism which inevitably misrepresents- the facts of " real duration " depends entirely on 

 the results of the one chapter (Donnegs Immediates dela Conscience, C.i) which expounds 

 the author's peculiar theory of measurable magnitudes. Now this chapter bears evident 

 marks of hasty construction. The author seems to have forgotten that even in geometry 

 straight lines are not the only measurable magnitudes. It is indispensable that we 

 should be able to measure angles, a consideration which of itself should have given the 

 author pause. In fact the whole treatment of the distinction between " extensive " 

 and " intensive " magnitudes upon which so much depends for Bergson's development 

 of his theory, is, as it stands, at least perfunctory. Again the very language employed 

 to distinguish " real duration " from the unreal time of science, viz. that the portions 



