THE LIVING WAVE 



can be any gradations or degrees between being and 

 not being. Can there be any halfway house between 

 something and nothing? 



n 



There is another way out of the difficulty that be- 

 sets our rational faculties in their efforts to solve 

 this question, and that is the audacious way of 

 Henri Bergson in his "Creative Evolution." It is 

 to deny any validity to the conclusion of our logical 

 faculties upon this subject. Our intellect, Bergson 

 says, cannot grasp the true nature of life, nor the 

 meaning of the evolutionary movement. With the 

 emphasis of italics he repeats that "the intellect is 

 characterized by a natural inability to comprehend 

 life." He says this in a good many pages and in a 

 good many different ways; the idea is one of the 

 main conclusions of his book. Our intuitions, our 

 spiritual nature, according to this philosopher, are 

 more en rapport with the secrets of the creative 

 energy than are our intellectual faculties; the key 

 to the problem is to be found here, rather than in 

 the mechanics and chemistry of the latter. Our in- 

 tellectual faculties can grasp the physical order be- 

 cause they are formed by a world of solids and flu- 

 ids and give us the power to deal with them and act 

 upon them. But they cannot grasp the nature and 

 the meaning of the vital order. 



"We treat the living like the lifeless, and think all 



27 



