BERGSON S PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM. 5 



energy ; or they have been regarded as the working out 

 of a plan or design immanent in nature. The difference 

 at first sight seems to he profound, but it disappears on 

 close analysis, for in either scheme everything is given. 

 The conception of mechanism is simple and clear for we 

 start with matter and energy, and natural law, and from 

 this everything in evolution works out by itself, so to 

 speak. Finalism involves an anthropomorphic idea — 

 that of a purpose to be worked out, of the assembling 

 together of elements or parts which already exist so as to 

 form a construction which is that of the plan or design. 

 In the one case we look backwards, in the other forwards. 

 In either scheme we project outwards into nature the 

 structure of the human mind, availing ourselves of the 

 " categories of the understanding," substance, causality, 

 unity, multiplicity, individuality, spatiality, and so on. 

 If knowledge were attainable only by the working of the 

 intellect we should be restricted to a mechanistic theory 

 of the universe, but psychological analysis shows that 

 this is not the case. Intelligence is only one of the 

 results of the evolution of consciousness ; side by side 

 with it we have an intuitive knowledge of things; and 

 intellect or reasoning alone, since its object is not 

 primarily speculative, but practical, brings us to 

 philosophical deadlocks. Intelligence operates by sub- 

 stituting concepts for the perceptions which we base upon 

 sense-impressions, and then by subjecting these concepts 

 to the operations of the categories of thought. But we 

 have distinct intuitions for which we are unable to form 

 clear intellectual notions. We can see and feel motion 

 but we cannot conceptualise it. We can see and 

 experience continuity or curvature or duration, but of 

 these things the mind can form no clear concepts. If we 

 think of the motion of a material particle over the space 



