CONTINUITY OF BERGSON S THOUGHT I49 



encourage, inspire or shame a "yeast-ferment," or an eight-day clock. 

 Loeb should never use words like should or ought or must. 



If the mind or soul or will is really nothing but the slave of the laws 

 of matter, if "the brain thinks," if the mechanism of associative 

 memory is the final word of psychology, then we must look forward 

 to an education without hopes or fears, to a listless culture scarcely 

 worth an effort. But the will is not to be identified with the instru- 

 ment but with the player, not with the telephone wire but with the 

 speaker who makes use of it. 



The discussion depends largely upon the problem, long familiar to 

 philosophy, as to whether sensations can be measured. Bergson says 

 emphatically, No! Spatial ideas apply to matter but not to mind. 

 If we once admit that mind can be treated spatially we put it under 

 the reign of the laws of matter. 



None of his critics have answered his argument. Some have 

 abused the author, some have withdrawn with feeble scorn, some like 

 Mr. Balfour have written able objections to Bergson's view of evolu- 

 tion, but no one has attacked his fundamental position, namely, that 

 the soul "endures" and merely acts upon matter through the brain. 



In the second book he attacks the Association Theory. He admits 

 of course that it offers a plausible and correct account of what has 

 happened in any given case, but insists that it never touches the real 

 problem of why such things happen. The deep free movements of 

 the enduring soul are the real cause of what we think and feel, and 

 when we envisage life with our whole soul, all that we have endured, 

 and been enriched by, we are truly ourselves, and not the slaves of 

 mere sensations and associations. 



A clock does not measure real time (duration), but only time 

 plotted out for utility; because some days are fruitless and unre- 

 membered, while other minutes are crowded with life. The true 

 minutes are measured by stirring action, vivid ideas, unforgettable 

 heart-beats. In the world of duration there is freedom, the memory 

 is the record of this duration; and again, not only is time measured 

 by new creative living acts, but this enduring, flowing, evolving sense 

 of time is life itself. Time and life and creation are one. The life- 



