CONTINUITY OF BERGSON'S THOUGHT 185 



But Spencer equally assumes that natural objects are already "given." 

 Now a real evolution must show how matter evolves, just as mind 

 evolves. There are no "things" in any absolute sense, but the 

 growing mind acts on the flux by selecting as much as it is able to 

 use, to act upon, and just so much it converts gradually into things. 

 The more consciousness is intellectualized, the more matter is spatial- 

 ized. Really matter is a flux and completely interpenetrative. Every 

 part of matter is active everywhere; but in order to act upon matter 

 we have to select and localize, and just as we assume that matter 

 can be broken in parts and given lines and edges and limits, just so 

 far can we get matter to act upon matter, and thus conquer and sub- 

 due it to our own ends. 



Metaphysicians like to think that there are a lot of a priori cate- 

 gories of thought, such as cause and effect, in the very original make- 

 up of our experience; but in reality they put these into experience by 

 their intellectualizing of matter, and naturally they find with great 

 exactness what they have themselves unconsciously hidden there. 



"Human intelligence is not at all what Plato taught in the allegory 

 of the cave. Its function is not to gaze at passing shadows, nor yet 

 to turn round and contemplate the burning sun." The task of living, 

 acting, working, this is the business of the mind primarily, and its so- 

 called higher activities have arisen out of this need and must be constantly 

 explained in terms thereof. But we draw the power to live and act 

 and grow and evolve from the beneficent sea of life itself, in which we 

 are always immersed whether we think of it or not, and mind conse- 

 quently is always more than thought and overflows it and makes intellect 

 seem only the center or nucleus of something vaster but less definite. 

 Philosophy cannot like science rest in this definite center, but must 

 attempt to flow out into the whole and explain science by a real genetic 

 evolution of intelligence. 



It will be objected that this is impossible on the face of it, because 

 such an investigation can be accomplished only by means of the very 

 intellect which it suggested we should abandon in the said investi- 

 gation. But progress is always made by doing what has been declared 

 impossible. The only way to learn to swim is to plunge in and try, not 



