DISCOVERY 



2S[t 



invent aids in the physical world for the satisfaction 

 of his needs. And that has been the story of intelli- 

 gence, and the stor}- is marvellous. To it we owe the 

 knowledge, the civilisation, the society, the moralitj^ 

 and the religions of the world. No one will deny that 

 on the whole this was a real advance in the life of the 

 world. But, as Bergson points out, although man 

 gained much in this way, he also lost something of 

 enormous value and significance when his instincts 

 disappeared more and more into the dark background 

 of his life. He can invent aeroplanes, but he cannot 

 fly himself ; he can construct machines which will 

 carry him at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, but 

 without these aids he is no match for the horse or the 

 greyhound in a race. Bergson shows how helpless 

 man is in other ways as well. 



What is to be done ? Evidentlj' it is too late to 

 rediscover many of the instincts, but it is not too late 

 to discover something like them — something which 

 pertains to the enrichment of our life and to the 

 enhancement of our ability. Intelligence, being what 

 it is, a tool-making instrument for the preservation 

 and advancement of life, cannot grasp reality from 

 the inside, but only from the outside — in other words, 

 it can only obtain snapshots of reality. Bergson's 

 great point here is to show that intelligence of itself 

 can give us no more than concepts of reality. Through 

 it we can know about the thing, but by means of it 

 alone we cannot be present at the very heart of the 

 thing and actually be the thing we know about. It is 

 at once evident that to know about things on the one 

 hand, and to find, on the other hand, that we do not 

 really participate in the very enjojTnent of the things 

 we know about is a sign of something lacking in man. 



Intuition 



Man's inward life has not become, on the whole, 

 more joyous and more able than it was 2,000 or 10,000 

 years ago, and, if emphasis is not laid on something 

 besides intelligence, his life wUl never become richer, 

 fuller, and more joj'ous. Bergson shows that life can 

 transform itself and find a richness and a depth of 

 which the ordinary individual has no inkling. How ? 

 By intuition. Intuition does not mean with Bergson 

 any ready-made experience, but it does mean the 

 potentiality for an experience which in the mental 

 realm may mean what instinct has meant in the 

 physical realm. This point of Bergson, from the 

 psychological point of view, is an important discovery. 

 We knew of something like it before in the realm of 

 religious experience, but unfortunately we could not 

 prove whether it was a truth or an illusion. Bergson 

 shows that by " ruminating " or " chewing the intel- 

 lectual cud " over an idea sufficiently deeply and 

 sufficiently long, the idea gets saturated in the in- 



stinctive possibilities of our nature, and thus the 

 idea becomes intuition. The idea is no longer an 

 object of contemplation with an interval between us 

 and it ; it has now become a real part of ourselves. 

 We thus see the dift'erence between a relative know- 

 ledge of a thing and an absolute knowledge of it. " A 

 comparison of the definitions of metaphysics and the 

 various conceptions of the absolute leads to the dis- 

 covery that philosophers, in spite of their apparent 

 divergencies, agree in distinguishing two profoundly 

 different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies 

 that we move round the object ; the second that we 

 enter into it. The first depends on the point of view 

 at which we are placed and on the symbols by which 

 we express ourselves. The second neither depends on 

 a point of view nor relies on an}' symbol. The first 

 kind of knowledge may be said to stop at the relative " 

 the second, in those cases where it is possible, to attain 

 the absolute." (An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. i.) 

 There is no doubt that the author means that life 

 cannot develop on its deepest level without periodical 

 withdrawals from objects of sense. A great part of 

 human life has to be spent in close connection with 

 objects of sense. This is the portion of man : through 

 the sweat of his brow or the pain of his hand he shall 

 eat his bread. We cannot live without the constant 

 use of the tool-making capacity. But Bergson would 

 insist that " man doth not live by bread alone." He 

 is meant not only for work, but also for enjoyment and 

 the realisation of his own personality. He now sees 

 that a stirring of the deeper nature, physical and 

 mental, is requisite ; that the external world has to be 

 shut out at times and the world within us explored ; 

 that contemplation on what seems to be of value must 

 play a part in life if we are to pass from relative to 

 absolute knowledge. 



This seems to me to be one of the main messages 

 for the present generation. Ideas are necessary — 

 ideas of objects in the external world. There ought 

 to be a constant desire to know, especially to know 

 the meaning and value of the objects which pertain 

 to our particular vocation. And such knowledge can 

 be taken into the mind when we are not actually at 

 work in the world ; it can be pondered over, and its 

 value for the vocation and for the world can be seen. 

 When this happens there will be no need to call any- 

 body to do his work properly. A farm-labourer, for 

 instance, will come to see that his driving the milk- 

 cart to the station is not just to make money for his 

 employer or to earn his own income, but is one of the 

 countless necessary daily events in the vast scheme 

 of the world's life ; the milk he drives to the station 

 will be conveyed by train to London, and will be 

 consumed by a worker in the Metropolis the next 

 morning. A postman will come to look on his job 



