The Nature of Society 6l 



That this assumption results from a narrow 

 perspective has, however, become more and 

 more evident. The publication of Bergson's 

 Creative Evolution marks the complete re- 

 action of modern thought from the older 

 position, though Bergson was by no means 

 the first one to state the new doctrine. The 

 basic fact of evolution is not competition, but 

 creation. At the source of every advance, life 

 taps the creative energies of the universe, and 

 new forms bud into being. Beneath all life, 

 beneath the external fact of the natural strug- 

 gle, is the primal urge of creation to push out 

 into greater complexity of form. Because this 

 evident fact could not be explained on me- 

 chanical grounds, because it implied an element 

 that could not be subjected to intellectual anal- 

 ysis, it was avoided by the science that came 

 with the machine age. While appreciating 

 today the growing importance of the intellect 

 as the means life uses for shaping its higher 

 expression, we realize now what a mere tool 

 it is in the grip of the elemental forces that 

 lie beyond its vision, and we no longer are 

 ashamed to confess our ignorance of how 

 chemical and physical properties can correlate 

 and become one with self-conscious mind. 



