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A PROPHET OF THE SOUI/' 



ings, the perception, and the spiritual insiglit that 

 go to the making and the appreciating of a creative 

 work are alone equal to the task. 



Resolve all the processes of organic nature into 

 their mechanical and chemical elements, and you 

 have not got the secret of Hving bodies any more 

 than you have got the secret and meaning of a fine 

 painting by resolving it into its original i)igmcnts 

 and oils, or of a poem by cutting up the words into 

 the letters with which it is composed. 



Bergson's attitude of mind in "Creative Evolu- 

 tion" is foreshadowed in a passage in Royce's 

 "Spirit of Modern Philosophy." Royce is speaking 

 of the series of purely physical events which our 

 descriptive science shows us in evolution : — 



Look upon all these things descriptively, and you 

 shall see nothing but matter moving instant after instant, 

 each instant containing in its full description the neces- 

 sity of passing over into the next. Nowhere will there 

 be, for descriptive science, any genuine novelty or any 

 discontinuity admissible. But look at the whole appre- 

 ciatively, historically, synthetically, as a musician listens 

 to a symphony, as a spectator watches a drama. Now 

 you shall seem to have seen, in phenomenal form, a story. 

 Passionate interests will have been realized. 



Bergson reads this story of organic evolution in 

 the creative and sympathetic way. He does not 

 deal with it solely through his equipment as a man 

 of science, but primarily through his equipment as a 



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