474 



The Review of Reviews. 



continual enrichment of personality by elements wliich it does 

 not draw from outside, but causes to spring forih from itself? 

 POINTING TO A LIFE BEYOND. 



j\l. Bergson advances still farther, and argues that 

 as the whole life of a conscious personality is an 

 indivisible continuity, "are we not led to suppose 

 that the effort continues beyond, and that in this 

 passage of consciousness through matter conscious- 

 ness is tempered like steel, and tests itself by clearly 

 constituting personalities and preparing them, by the 

 very eftbrt which each of them is called upon to 

 make, for a higher form of existence ? We shall have 

 no repugnance in admitting that in man, though per- 

 haps in man alone, consciousness pursue* its path 

 beyond this early life." 



II. — Mr. Balfour. 



Mr. Balfour begins his criticism of " Creative 

 Evolution" by recalling the time of more than forty 

 years ago, when in the English universities the 

 dominating influences were John Mill and Herbert 

 .Spencer — Mill even more than Spencer. The fashion- 

 able creed of advanced thinkers was scientific 

 agnosticism. This was a challenge that Mr. Balfour 

 himself took up in his Defence of Philosophic Doubt. 

 He bears glad witness to the reaction that has 

 followed : — 



In the last twenty years or so of the nineteenth century came 

 (in England) the great idealist revival. For the first time since 

 Locke the general stream of British philosophy rejoined, for 

 good or evil, the main continental river. And I should suppose 

 that now in 1911 the bulk of philosophers belong to the 

 neo-Kantian or neo-Hegelian school, 



FREEDOM V. DETERMINISM. 



Mr. Balfour begins his statement of M. Bergson's 

 position by outlining his own position towards free- 

 dom. Being neither idealist nor naturalist, he 

 accepts freedom as reality. The material sequence 

 is there, self and its states are there, and he does not 

 pretend to have arrived at a satisfactory view of their 

 relations. He keeps them both, conscious of their 

 incompatibilities. M. Bergson takes a bolder line. 

 Freedom is the very corner stone of his system. 

 Life is free, life is spontaneous, life is incalculable. 

 Then follows one of those similes for which Mr. 

 Balfour has become famous : — 



.\s we know it upon this earth, organic life resembles some 

 great river system, pouring in many channels across the plain. 

 One stream dies away sluggishly in the sand, another loses 

 itself in some inland laUe, while a third, more powerful or 

 more fortunate, drives its tortuous and arbitrary windings 

 further and yet further from the snows that gave it birth. 



The metaphor, for which M. Bergson should not be made 

 responsible, may serve to emphasise some leading portions of 

 his theory. What the banks of a stream are to its current, that 

 is matter generally, and the living organism in particular, to 

 terrestrial life. They moilify its course ; they do not make it 

 flow. So life presses on by its own inherent impulse ; not 

 unhampered by the inert mass through which it flows, yet 

 constantly struggling with it, eating patiently into the most 

 recalcitrant rock, breaking through the softer soil in chaniiels 

 the least foreseen, never exactly repealing its past, never running 

 twice the same course. 



The metaphor would suggest that life has some 



end to which its free endeavours are directed, and 

 M. Bergson objects to teleology only less than to 

 mechanical determinism. M. Bergson thinks, with 

 other great masters of speculation, that consciousness, 

 life-spirit, is the priiis of all there is, be it physical or 

 mental. In his view the />riiis is no all-inclusive 

 Absolute. Matter is regarded by M. Eergson as a 

 by-product of the evolutionary process. Time is of 

 the essence of primordial activity, space is but the 

 limiting term of those material elements which are no 

 more than its backwash, 



WHV? WHV ? WHY ? 



Mr. Balfour then proceeds to criticism. He holds 

 that M. Bergson has not given answer to the following 

 questions. Why should free consciousness first pro- 

 duce, and then, as it were, shed, mechanically 

 determined matter ? Why, having done so, should it 

 set to work to permeate the same matter with con- 

 tingency ? Why should it allow itself to be split up 

 by matter into separate individualities ? Why should 

 it ever have engaged in that long and doubtful battle 

 between freedom and necessity which we call organic 

 evolution ? This leads up to the main question, On 

 what grounds are we asked to accept the metaphysic 

 of M. Bergson ? According to his theory of know- 

 ledge, M. Bergson's view is that not reason, but 

 instinct, brings us into the closest touch, the directest 

 relation, with what is most real in the universe. 

 Reason is at home, not with life and freedom, but 

 with matter, mechanism, and space, the waste pro- 

 ducts of the creative impulse. Man is not wholly 

 without instinct, nor does he lack the powers of 

 directly preserving life. But, asks Mr. Balfour, How 

 is it that instinct is greatest where freedom is smallest, 

 and man, the freest animal of them all, should especially 

 delight in the e.xercise of reason ? Again Mr. Balfour 

 asks, if it be granted that life always carries with it 

 a trace of freedom or contingency, and that this 

 grows greater as organisms develop, why should we 

 suppose that life existed before its humble beginnings 

 on this earth ? A\'hy should we call in super-con- 

 sciousness ? 



"surely bktier rcj invoke god." 

 For the super-consciousness does not satisfy Mr. 

 Balfour. It already possesses some quasi-Ksthetic 

 and quasi-moral qualities. Joy in creative effort, and 

 corresponding alienation from those branches of the 

 evolutionary stem which have remained stationary. 

 But why should he banish teleology ; — 



Creation, freedom, will — these doubtless are great things ; 

 but we cannot lastingly admire them unless we know their drift. 

 We cannot, I submit, rest satisfied with what differs so little 

 from the haphazard ; joy is no titling consequent of efforts 

 which are so nearly aimless. If values are to be taken into 

 account, it is surely better to invoke God with a purjxise than 

 supra-consciousness wjth none. 



So again in the interests of religious faith Mr. 

 Balfour concludes liis brilliant analysis, of which the 

 foregoing excerpts 6fler but a slight indication. 



