BERGS ON AND THE DDERN SPIRIT ORGE llOWMJ) DODSON, PH.D, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES CMF T OF MRS.MATTIi, H.Mi!.RRILL prr BERGSON AND THE MODERN SPIRIT AN ESSAY IN CONSTRUCTIVE THOUGHT BY GEORGE ROWLAND DODSON, Ph.D. BOSTON AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 1913 CoPTRianT, 1913 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION >: J 3 CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE Philosophy and the Average Thoughtful Man . 1 The experiment of living without philosophy. The sporting theory of philosophy. Popular im- pressions of the history of thought. The lay- man's interest in great questions. Philosophy inevitable when life reaches the reflective stage of development. Looking down the long vistas of evolution. Why religion cannot dispense with the service of the intellect. Great thought and noble feeling go together. Apropos of Bergson. His reserve. Philosophizing in Berg- sonian fashion. CHAPTER II Creative Evolution in Real Tibie 19 The nature of human progress. Its locus the spiritual traditions of the race. How thought climbs through the ages. Bergson a new star in the intellectual firmament. The present thought situation. Materialism and idealism have led us into an impasse. Our hope of an adequate phi- losophy lies in a thorough-going evolutionism. Around Kant to the great highway of human thought. CHAPTER III The Conception of the Life Force 35 Our inheritance from two diflferent civiliza- tions. Hebraic ideas. The Greek conception of creation as the introduction of order into chaos. The Spencerian agnosticism. Kant's position. Schopenhauer and the World Will. Effect of /^O^W c. ' CONTENTS PAGE his mixed temperament on his philosophy. He just misses the highest conception. The phi- losophy of Buddhism, of Christianity. Brown- ing's theme. Bergson's conception of the Life Force. CHAPTER IV OUTLIXE OF THE BeRGSONIAX WoRLD-ViEW ... 50 Why philosophy begins with, or at least in- cludes, a theory of knowledge. Bergson's theory of the intellect as an instrument evolved for practical but not for speculative purposes. It can know the very truth of matter, but not of life. The nature of conceptual thought. The thought-frames molded on the material world do not fit the processes of life. The universe not a mechanism, but a life tliat endures through real time. In the beginning was life. Man the great success in life's adventure. CHAPTER V Ikstinct, Ixteli-ect and the Ideally Compixte Mind 64 Instinct and intellect complementary, not dif- ferent degrees of the same power. Instinct may be developed into intuition. Through it alone we may attain to insiglit into life. Phi- losopliy heljis us to live liy combining into one world-view the scientific knowledge wliich the in- tellect gives with the truth concerning life which comes through intuition. Bergson's unique theory of perception. He is no relativist, ideal- ist or pragmatist. Pragmatism no solution of the great problems: it is rather the pragnjatic habit of mind that has created them. CHAPTER VI Beroson and Physical Science 77 Why a new era in philosopliy may dale from Bcrgson. Descartes aiul Kant cherish the matlicinntical ideal of knowledge. Bergson the first thinker of his class to take into ac- CONTENTS PAGE count the data of biology. Our native tend- ency to Platonism. Thinking as classifying. What happens when we have an insufficient number of classes. Nature of mathematical knowledge. It is not knowledge of nature, but deals with pure ideals. It is a set of con- sistencies with a certain applicability in the concrete world. Physical science deals with artificially isolated systems in a concrete whole which is not a system, a mechanism, but a life. Why metaphysics must be empirical. CHAPTER VII The Answer of the Mechanists 89 Sir Ray Lancaster speaks for the materialists in science. His attitude to philosophy and his criticism of Bergson. The eye of the Pecten. Huxley's theory that we are conscious auto- mata. The average man's interest in the is- sues involved. Evils of unconscious meta- physics. Logical outcome of the automaton theory. The individuality of life. It does not lit into systems. School systems. Injustice of all classifications of living men. Tolstoy's per- ception of this fact. CHAPTER VIII Light From Bergson's Theory of Knowledge Upon Biological Problems 107 The puzzles of evolution. Failure of attempts at mechanical explanation. Darwin's theory of the accumulation of insensible variations. Insuperable difficulties. The eye of the Pec- ten. Heteroblastia. The mutation theory. Bergson points the way to a solution. Our baseless assumption that nature builds organic structures after the manner of a manufac- turer. The difficulty is due to the nature of our minds, or rather to our intellectual bias, and lies in our mistaken conception of what constitutes an explanation in the problems of CONTENTS FAOE life. Why the painter easily accomplishes what is impossible to the worker in mosaic. The life impulse. This does not imply the old vitalism. CHAPTER IX Some Consequences for Practical Life axd the Philosophy of Religiox 123 The great lines of evolution. The many inter- woven personalities. Danger of automatism. T. Davidson on habit. Constant perplexity a condition of consciousness. The intellect a " trouble man." The vegetative, instinctive and rational Ufe three divergent directions of an activity that split up as it grew. Consequences for j)edagogy, for practical life, for religion. Instinct, developed into intuition, knows life because it is life, because instinctive processes are only a prolongation of organic processes. This not mysticism. For Kant all intuition is infra-intellectual. Bergson's contention that there is also a supra-intellectual intuition. CHAPTER X The Pragmatic View of Sciexce and Common Sense and the Synoptic View of Philosophy . 139 The chief difficulty in understanding " Creative Evolution " is that wc are too iiitellcctudl. How our fixed hal)its of thought intiTfcrc even with our ])erceptions. The material world for prac- tical purposes is a collection of oi)jects; really it is a flux. Is matter disintegrating? The phe- nomena of radio-activity. Futility of efforts to think the living in terms of the lifeless. Zeno's arrow. Achilles aiul the tortoise. Natural in- ability of the intellect to comprehend life. This not anti-intellectualism. The synoptic view of philosophy. CHAPTER XI Beroson and Ethics 161 ]"'J('vation and eomjilcteness of Creek ethical thought. Plato's conception of the good life. CONTENTS PAGE For him the moral problem was a problem in organization. Urgent need to-day of a revised conception of goodness. Beauty and defects of the New Testament teaching. The two great fundamental ideas of organization and evolution round out ethical philosophy. Bergsonian ethics. His ideal the freedom, alertness, and adaptability which ever meets new situations with appropriate adjustments. Social function of laughter. No finalities. Keep life growing. Es lebe das Leben. CHAPTER XII Bergsoit and Pragmatism 179 Logical and historical relation of Bergson to his predecessors, especially to Schopenhauer and Schelling. Popular interest in Idealism and Pragmatism. The present situation according to Professors Perry and Pratt. The original prag- matism of C. S. Peirce and its numerous trans- formations. Pragmatism as a method of de- termining significant propositions, as a theory of truth, a theory of knowledge, a theory of reality. Net outcome of the controversy. Berg- son no pragmatist in his theory of knowledge. For him the intellect is an instrument for prac- tical purposes, yet it knows the truth of matter. In another way, we also know the truth of life. In what sense is he an anti-intellectualist? CHAPTER XIII The Religious Significance of Bergson's Concep- tion OF Evolution 225 The enduring supremacy of the moral and religious interests. Religion involves a teleo- logical conception of the world. Tolstoy on the clue to history. Interpreting the evolutionary process by its outcome. Bergson rejects teleology, yet qualifies his view. Finalistic con- ceptions, like the mechanistic, seem to him too rigid to fit the free, flowing, incalculable, adven- turous nature of life. He finds a meaning in CONTENTS PAQE life. Can there be meaning without purpose? Teleology implied in such terms as "Creative Evolution," meaning, progress, eflFort. CHAPTER XIV Behgson and Religion {Coniimied) 246 No help in half-way modes of thought. Nat- uralism consistently carried out is transfigured and becomes a religious philosophy. Man as the outcome of evolution. Views of Professor Henry Jones, F. J. E. Woodbridge and L. P. Jacks. The great difficulty in the way of this interpretation. How Bergson meets it. Sense in which he regards " humanity as the ground of evolution." Development along many lines, yet man has kept " the fundamental direction of life." CHAPTER XV Bergson and Religion {Concluded) 269 Value of such an interpretation of evoluton for religious thought and life. Bergson's critics. The question of purpose in human life and in the cosmical ^*lan. Bergson offers a method, and not the solution of all the great problems. The intuitive method in art and philosophy. Use of it by the great poets. Browning and Words- worth confirm his vision, but they see deeper and go further. Poetry and philosophy come together on the heights. CHAPTER I PHILOSOPHY AND THE AVERAGE THOUGHTFUL MAN After a long period of neglect and even dis- repute, philosophy is beginning to regain the at- 'tention of the average man. It is time. We have unduly simplified our lives, so that they tend to consist almost exclusively of business and amusement. Multitudes have been trying the experiment of living without science and art and philosophy and even religion. The experi- ment was bound to fail, for it meant the pau- perization of life. When great interests that should form part of the content of life are ig- nored, the inevitable result is a sense of dissatis- faction, of futility, and doubt as to whether it is all worth while. Our greatest need is a clear vision of the only life that can satisfy, a life that is informed and disciplined by science and adorned and ennobled by art, that is widened, steadied and strengthened by philosophy, and that comes to flower in the religious spirit of faith, hope, gladness, reverence and love. We must realize that art is not merely for the ar- 2 BERGSON AND THE tist, that science is not for laboratory investi- gators alone, that philosophy is not the exclu- sive business of professional scholars, and that religion is not solely for monks and nuns, but that all of these are for all the people, and that they are indispensable to the average man. According to the seer of Concord, one of the offices of this age is to annul the divorce between the lovers of truth and the lovers of goodness. Let us hope that it will also succeed in annul- ling the divorce between all the higher interests of life, and make us vividly realize that they belong together ; that they are at their best only when they function together; and that we can neither do without them, nor with any one of them alone. An art that is only for art's sake isolates itself, becomes unintelligible, fantastic, irrelevant and repellent. He who is a philoso- pher and nothing else is a mere technical quib- bler. The man of science cannot afford to de- nude liimself of all interests except those of his special investigation, and religion that is de- tached from the life which it ought to sanctify loses all that could give it worth. And he who supposes that none of these things concerns him does not know how poor he is. He is like a tree most of whose branches have withered away. Tlie need of clear, constructive thinking in religion, ethics, politics and social life is be- coming urgent. Yet an aversion to systematic MODERN SPIRIT 3 thought lingers, and philosophy, which is essen- tially a struggle to rise above one-sided ideas and to attain to juster and more comprehen- sive views, is still regarded with distrust. On the other hand, it must be admitted that this situation is not due to mere perversity on the part of the people. There is some reason for their attitude. They see that what might be called the sporting theory of philosophy at present prevails. Philosophy is a game, car- ried on by professionals and their pupils. One of the leading professors of the subject recently remarked that it is their business to teach those who are preparing to teach others, so that a lay philosopher is a rarity. Yet it is the 1^- men, the men and women who are meeting life's problems and carrying on the world's work, who have most need of philosophy. They should find in noble views of reality consola- tion, strength, serenity, and an elevated joy. If, however, they look for help to current dis- cussions, they find the issues minute and subtle and the language so technical that they cannot understand it. And, when they do get some glimpse of the nature of the questions discussed by experts, they fail to see the relation of the discussions to the great interests they have at heart. Now it would, of course, be a mistake to de- preciate the value of these philosophic subtle- 4 BERGSON AND THE ties. They have their importance, and there is great joy in plajnng the game. Moreover, the players are for the most part earnest and sincere. Still, the public has not unnaturally got the impression that the philosophers are a set of critical warriors, who are constantly fighting with one another, who never construct or achieve anything, and whose speculations go round and round without making any real prog- ress. The average man who for any reason takes up a book on philosophy finds frequent reference to other writers, among them the very greatest, coupled with such terms of criticism as fallacy, mistake, confusion, misunderstand- ing, logical failure, loose generalization, an- thropomorphism and provincialism. He has heard, e. g., of idealism and, though he does not understand it, he has supposed it to be something noble and exalted, and it is therefore with some dismay that he reads such a descrip- tion of it as that of I\Ir. Hobhousc : — " Indeed, it is scarcely too nmch to say that the effect of idealism on the world has been mainly to sap in- tellectual and moral sincerity, to excuse men in their consciences for professing beliefs which on the meaning ordinarily attached to them they do not hold, to soften the edges of all hard con- trasts between riglit and wrong, truth and fal- sity, to throw a gloss over stupidity, and preju- dice, and caste, and tradition, to weaken the \ MODERN SPIRIT 5 bases of reason, and disincline men to the search- ing analysis of their habitual ways of think- ing." The recent controversy over pragmatism, for example, is confusing to the public. The move- ment started with an article by Mr. C. S. Peirce, the object of which was to show how to make our ideas clear. The theory was espoused by Prof. James, and by him and others has been preached as a sort of philosophic gospel which promises deliverance from the metaphysical troubles which have long afflicted our race. The result is that in some respects the fog is greater than it was before. The new method has not enabled those who use it to make our ideas clear as to the method itself, and pragmatism is a term of uncertain meaning. It may signify a theory of knowledge, a theory of truth, an em- pirical metaphysics, a pluralistic view of reality, an emphasis on the biological method of ap- proach to philosophical problems, or a mere in- surgent spirit. The layman is, therefore, justified in feeling that if the professionals cannot understand one another, he can spend his leisure hours to better advantage than in seeking enlightenment or help in any way from this quarrelsome crew. He may even rejoice in the thought that they escape much trouble who let phllosoph}' alone. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, natural and ap- 6 BERGSON AND THE parently justified thougli it be, is for the lay- man himself most unfortunate. For philosophy is not a thing which men can take up or let alone, as they please. It lies along the path of development, and can be escaped only by those who remain immature. We live at first by instinct, by habit, by the tradition which as children we receive on authority. As we ma- ture, the period of reflection inevitably comes. The faith by which we live must be examined, criticised, rationalized and purified. We con- tinue to believe by instinct, perhaps, but it is no less an instinct or an imperious desire to un- derstand what we believe. " Experience," saj's Sir Henry Jones, " is a process that changes and grows, and at a certain stage of the evo- lution of man's rational nature, reflexion arises inevitabl3\ It becomes the urgent condition of furtlicr development. The future can be faced only in the light of the past wliich only reflex- ion recovers ; and the individual or a nation can (^ achieve a new triunipli only if it has learnt the lesson of its own deeds. Reflexion nuist succeed action and set free its moaning, if better action is to follow." When a man arrives at this stage, when his experience is becoming reflective and he feels the need of understanding himself, it is a great misfortune fov hini if the unfavorable impres- sion he has formed of philf)sophcrs leads him MODERN SPIRIT 7 to ignore the leading thinkers and the great intellectual constructions of history. It is as if one should despise the achievements of medi- cal science and in all emergencies attempt to be his own physician. We do not think highly of the wisdom of those who without study and ex- perience assume to be physicians, lawyers, engi- neers and financiers. One of the hardest and most necessary lessons we have to learn is that men are highly specialized in their abilities and capacities, and that the greatest of them are apt to be mere children in the matters they have not specially studied. Their judgments are ma- ture and trustworthy in regard to things with which their experience has made them familiar ; but outside of these limits, they have no back- ground for their judgments and are as help- less as schoolboys. I once met an eminent engi- neer, justly esteemed in his profession and with solid achievements to his credit. By these he apparently set little store. His interest was in telepathy and spiritualism, upon which he seemed to feel competent to have an opinion after reading a few popular works on the sub- ject. The case is not different with philosophy. The last twenty-five centuries of thinking on the great problems of life have not been with- out result. And when even a first rate man of science, such as Karl Pearson, affects to despise 8 BERGSON AND THE the metaphysicians, and then proceeds to con- struct a psychology and philosophy of his own, the product is only what might have been ex- pected, — crude and superficial. Haeckel, like- wise, a mighty man in science, scorning the achievements of the constructive thinkers who preceded him, succeeds by his own efforts in reaching a philosophy which he preaches as a gospel, and of which he is very proud, but which the history of thought shows to have been attained more than two thousand years ago. Assuredly, we must do our own thinking, but not in isolation. Unless we are to repeat the mistakes which were made and corrected long ago, we must think in the light of other men's thoughts. For the history of philosophy is by no means so profitless as the average man may with some excuse suppose. It is the story of the long climb of human tliought through the ages, and those who are to think effectively on present day problems must know something of its course and the net result of it all. The great systems of the past arc not obsolete. They are really different views of our many- sided world. Prof. Falckcnbcrg states tin's truth as follows : " The Greek view of the world is as classic as the plastic art of Phidias and the epic of Homer; the Christian, as eternally valid as the architecture of the Middle Ages; the modern, as irrefutable as Goethe's poetry and MODERN SPIRIT 9 the music of Beethoven. The views of the world which proceed from the spirits of different ages, as products of the general development of cul- ture, are not so much thoughts as rhythms in thinking, not theories but modes of intuition saturated with feelings of worth." That is, to understand these great interpreta- tions is not only to know something about the universe ; it is to enter into the minds of the thinkers who formulated them. It is to know the spirit of the ages that produced them, the character and disposition of the Greek, the Ger- man, the French, the English, and other na- tions and peoples. Such studies influence for good the ignorant and opinionated mind, and give it a largeness and humanity that is one of the greatest goods of life. An increasing number of men and women in modem society are reaching this reflective period and are experiencing what might be called the philosophic need. Constant pre-occupation with detail, even when attended by material suc- cess, does not satisfy them ; so they are reach- ing out for they know not what. They have a vague sense that as human beings it is their privilege to live in the light of the whole. They wish to rise above the ordinary provincialism and to see life more in its tioie proportions. This they instinctively feel is necessary to sta- bility and poise of mind. To study philosophy 10 BERGSON AND THE means to ascend to the summits of thought ; it is to look down the long vistas of evolution, to see the tendencies which have brought us to the present and are bearing us on to the future. It is to " be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every doctrine." It is to cease to be lost and bewildered in the detail of life ; it is to get one's bearings in the world and to see the present in its setting in history. Those who are trying the experiment of liv- ing without philosophy may object that they feel no such needs, and that this is but the state- ment of a pliilosoplicr wlio naturally magnifies the interest dear to his heart. But the fact is tliat most civilized men liavc this need and sat- isfy it in one way or anotlicr. Every great reli- gion contains witliin it, either explicit or implicit, a philosopliy, a cliaracteristic world-view. It is not expressed in the language of the schools. Indeed, it is often hidden by the poetic and re- ligious emotions associated witli it, like a trellis covered with vines and flowers. Thus the fa- iiiibar Hebrew-Christian scheme began witli the creation of tlie eartli and the cosmos; it gave an account of tlie creation of plants, animals and men ; it included a philosophy of history begin- ning wifli our first parents and ending with the last judgment, wifh the dissolution of the old heavens jind eartli and the coniiitg of a new. In flic light of modern science, this scheme MODERN SPIRIT 11 has had to be given up. But we must not for- get that it performed a real service, that it gave men a cosmic outlook, and some sense of the great frame in which human life is set, and most of all a profound sense that in this vast scheme our lives are significant. It was ca- pable of dramatic presentation and afforded scope for the imagination, for poetry and re- ligious feeling. As conceived and presented by the noblest minds, it also profoundly influenced the moral life. The outcome of the whole was to be a society from which was to be excluded whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, while even now the stars in their courses fight for righteous- ness and those who stand steadfast in the truth feel that underneath them are the everlasting arms. This religious philosophy was in part true, but it had its defects, and as a cosmology it is gone beyond the possibility of rehabilitation ; yet it was a producer of a consciousness of dignity and strength, and it gave men a sense of sig- nificance which many of their children with a greater knowledge of nature and history seem to have lost, and which they are seeking to re- gain. This generation is to be pitied indeed, if no noble and elevating world-view takes the place of the old. It is vain to suppose that we can live nobly or happily without great thoughts. We may renounce our intellectual 12 BERGSON AND THE birthright only at the peril of call that we hold dear. Those religious leaders who disparage theology and assume that religious feeling is unaffected by the intellectual outlook, are mak- ing a mistake which is more and more appar- ent. To preach a religion without any thoughisC in it is to promote the growth of irrational mys- ticisms, such as have been productive of incal- culable injury to our race. There is no adequate substitute for the clear, comprehensive, thorough-going thinking which is philosophy, just as nothing can take the place of science, or art or religion. It is use- less to try to compound for tlie absence of any of tlie great vital interests by excessive stress on one of the others. Social service, for ex- ample, is a very noble and useful form of activ- ity, but if it is to be efficient it cannot dispense with social pliilosophy. It demands some knowledge of the past of our institutions, of ex- periments that have already been tried, and of the relation of the different pliilanthropies and charities to one another. It must be at once palliative of present evils, and more and more preventive of future evils. Narrowness and con- traction of view are fatal to social effort. Nor can such activities be most fruitful without the religious spirit. It is a real advantage to be conscious that one's beneficent activities are not carried on in opposition to the great tendencies MODERN SPIRIT 13 of the living world, but rather in accord with them. For this means to realize that one is doing nothing arbitrary, but is an instrument of the good spirit which is gradually becom- ing dominant in the hearts of men. This, I think, is what Emerson meant, when he said that our hands must be in the world of action, but our heads above the storm. Above all, religion cannot dispense with the service of the intellect. Great thought and noble feeling go together. Although, as all philosophers of religion to-day well understand, faith, hope and love well up spontaneously from the depths of life and are not created by argu- ment, it is nevertheless also true that religious emotion is profoundly influenced by the concep- tions which the mind forms of the world. Ma- terialistic philosophies, for example, seem to negate our inspirations and longings, while an inspiring world-view, a conception of the uni- verse as congenial to our ideals, one that can be held in the face of all difficulties, is a great desideratum. Religion might even be defined as the sense of being at home in the universe, the conviction that a life directed by the noblest ideals is precisely what the situation demands. Philosophy is therefore not the enemy of a pure and noble religion, but its indispensable ally and friend. It is of vital importance that the churches 14 BERGSON AND THE shall realize this. If the}' are to retain the in- telligence of our time, they must encourage the men who are capable of constructive thinking. The temper to be avoided is well indicated in the following story told by Prof. Fenn : A little girl was playing about the room ; and her fatlicr heard her say, " That square is blue." Dr. Johnson says, " If your child says he looked out of this window when he looked out of that, flog him." It did not seem to be a case requiring such liarsh measures ; and the father said, "No, that is red." The little child thought a moment, and said, " That red square is blue." Dr. Johnson's dictum seemed to be coming dangerously near the application ; and the father said sternly : " What do you mean by that? A thing cannot be both red and blue." The child pondered a moment, and then threw herself at her father, and said, " O father, how I love you ! " That is a parable of a great deal of our re- ligious thinking. We say, " That square is red." " No," somebody says, " that square is l)hie." And then, forthwith, we " rise to our larger unity " and our great, high statements, and inchide a self-contradiction, and then say, " Well, love is the greatest thing in the world." Whether the present neglect of constructive religious thinking is due to conscious incapacity for it or is the result of a reaction from creeds MODERN SPIRIT 15 and dogmas, it can in any event only be tem- porary. Amid all the uncertainties of the groping present two things ought to be self- evident: the men of the future will continue to be religious, and they will experience an ever deeper need of understanding their faith and of adjusting it to their conception of the world and of history. It is strange that any intelli- gent man could suppose that the religious life of men which has been growing with their growth, which has been gradually purified through the centuries, should suddenly come to an end in this generation ; and it is not less strange that any thoughtful person should on religious grounds prefer the world-views of our remote ancestors to those revealed by science and phi- losophy. I think it can be shown, as I shall try to indicate in this book, that we have only to take the truth we know and develop its implica- tions ; that we have only to be courageous and sequent in thinking and thorough-going in our application of the theory of evolution, to find that we have a philosophy adequate for our present religious needs. What I have written might be entitled " Apro- pos of Bergson's Philosophy." I have not sought to give cither a complete exposition or criticism of his work. To do that, it would be necessary to employ a technical apparatus and mode of expression that would defeat my pur- 16 BERGSON AND THE pose. That is, I would have to write just such a book as Mr. J. ^NIcKellar Stewart's " Critical Ex- position of Bergson's Philosophy," or Mr. A. D. Lindsay's lectures on Bergson, and there is no need to duplicate those works. I have rather sought to set forth some of the larger questions on which Bergson's philosophy sheds light. It is quite clear that he can help us over some dif- ficult places, that he has removed some stumbling blocks that have been in our way. The point, therefore, for all to whom the great questions of science, philosophy and religion are in the last analysis questions of life and living, is not where has Bergson failed, where is he unintelli- gible or where does his logic break down, but how can he help us, what suggestions of value has he contributed to the solution of our per- plexities. The logician's business is to be keen and remorseless, though he should never be cap- tious or ungenerous. We are thankful for his necessary services, for it is important not to mistake error for truth. Nevertheless, the method of approach here is different. I have studied this sincere and brilliant thinker in the hope of help. I have tried to keep in mind that he offers us not a system, a complete philosophy, but a method with some illustrations of the way in which it is to l)e used. It is legitimate, there- fore, to try this method in cases which have re- sisted our utmost efforts heretofore, to philoso- MODERN SPIRIT 17 phize in Bergsonian fashion upon problems of supreme importance. Philosophy is a coopera- tive enterprise ; it is the affair of all men ; it is, to modify the definition of T. H. Green, the progressive effort of our race at an understand- ing of life. It therefore grows as does every- thing that lives. If the reader of Bergson finds that in some cases I have drawn inferences which seem to follow from the philosopher's principles, but which he has refrained from drawing, it must be remembered that Bergson explicitly states that he offers a method which is to be used by others, and that he does not pretend to set forth all the implications of his thought. Forced interpretations must, of course, be avoided. Still, without falling into the company of the unhappy beings who wrest the methods and conceptions of great thinkers to their own destruction, we may safely undertake to point out certain rather obvious consequences not stated by a philosopher and writer so re- served as Bergson. Such reserve is admirable at all times, and in France especially necessary. For that is the land of party antagonisms par excellence. The political and religious ani- mosities are there so intense that he who makes an})- important statement on living issues is at once claimed as a partisan friend or enemy. Synoptic minds, or minds that appreciate non- partisan views, are at present rare among that 18 BERGSON gifted people. All the more wonderful, there- fore, is it that the greatest living thinker should be a Frenchman, that in a country torn by the strife of contending parties should arise one who in modern times has most nearly realized Plato's ideal of the philosopher as " the specta- tor of all time and existence." CHAPTER II CREATIVE EVOLUTION IN REAL TIME The appearance of a new comet in the sky or the flaming up of a new star, due possibly to a collision of vast masses of matter in the depths of space, is an interesting phenomenon, but far less significant for our race than the coming of a great poet, prophet, or thinker. Human existence has, of course, its physical conditions ; nevertheless all our higher values and dearest interests are in the realm of thought and love and social life. And because men and women are not purely physical beings, moved solely by physical forces, but in their charac- teristically human actions are influenced chiefly by ideals which they admire and love, it is lit- erally true, however paradoxical it may sound, that human life rests on ideal foundations. Whatever produces, develops, nourishes, or in any way changes the ideals which are the goals of human striving is of the first importance for our life. The great philosophers of Greece, the prophets of Israel, the poets and thinkers and seers of all ages, ai'e significant because they have produced or given the most perfect expres- 19 20 BERGSON AND THE sion to the ideas and ideals that are the bread of our intellectual and spiritual life: they have made us aware of higher motives and nobler standards, and have revealed new visions of beauty and opened up prospects of grander possibilities for the average man. There is more enthusiasm over the fact of progress than clear understanding of its na- ture. In what, precisely, docs it consist.? It is worth while to try to clear away the popular confusion on this subject and make it perfectly plain that the locus of progress is the invisible spiritual tradition of thought and feeling, of sentiments, ideals, and accepted standards, that accumulates and grows purer from age to age. Biologically, in our structure, there is little evi- dence that we have advanced beyond the men of the Homeric period. But we are born into the mental and moral environment of civilization, we absorb its traditions, its ideas and ideals, and so completely assimilate them that they may be said to become our nature, our very selves. It is therefore evident that the greatest of all benefactors are those who purify and ennoble this body of tradition, this spiritual inheritance which is the matrix of human life. And they do this cl)iefly by making tliouglit more true and by raising moral standards and developing so- cial feeling. It is the function of the thinker and the prophet to work over that body of MODERN SPIRIT 21 thought and sentiment which is the legacy of each generation from the total past, to recon- sider the ideals expressed in literature, law, and social life, to purge away the outworn, the anachronisms, the mistakes, and so transmit to the future an inheritance increased and im- proved. A recognition of this truth is of the utmost social importance. We must learn to respect our traditions and also to keep them plastic and growing. Without the inheritance which the centuries have bequeathed to us, we would re- lapse into the spiritual poverty of savages. The higher life of humanity is one life, an age- long process of development. It is therefore necessary to combat that most injurious of the popular errors about the history of philosophy, the notion that it is the record of futile, con- structive efforts, and that each thinker begins by destroying the philosophies that preceded his own. The fact is that this history is the story of the wonderful ascent of thought from primi- tive savage ideas to sublime and beautiful con- ceptions of life, and that the process is still go- ing on. Sometimes, indeed, we seem to get into a blind alley, and for a time depressing views prevail ; but, later, the mistake is perceived and the ascent begins again. INIan's conceptions of the world and of his place therein are continually revised, refined, and enlarged. Recent years, in 22 BERGSON AND THE particular, have witnessed great triumphs. " Brute matter " is no more, for the atom is now conceived as a structure of wonderful com- plexity, its constituent electrons being thought of in tenns of electricity ; that is, of energy. For those who understand the thought situation the old materialism is dead. Belated thinkers in out-of-the-way places may be some time in find- ing this out, but the instructed no longer think of ultimate reality as consisting .of inert, dead particles driven by physical forces. The world's intellectual and moral advances are to a very great extent made through gifted men, whose insight and power of constructive flunking annex whole territories, which after- ward become the possession of the thoughtful section of mankind. Plato and Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, T.cibnitz, Hume, and Kant are among the greatest lights in the firmament of thought, and the appearance of a new star of the first magnitude is an event of the first importance in the life of our race. It is a great thing to be living at such a time, and I l)eHeve that we, in this beginning of the twen- tieth century, enjoy that privilege. Whether Prof. Henri Bergson of the College de France will finally be adjudged worthy of a place in the galaxy named above, I am sure that he is at once one of the most brilliant and profound, as well as one of the most original, suggestive, and MODERN SPIRIT 23 helpful, of the thinkers who are among the glories of our race. About ten years ago the late Prof. William James asked me if I had read Bergson's writ- ings, and, on my confession of ignorance and request for information, he urged me to read "Matiere et Memoire." This proved to be one of the most difficult books I have ever studied, and after repeated readings there are parts of it that I do not understand. And it was only after study of his earlier work, " Essai sur les donnces immediates de la conscience," translated under the title of " Time and Free Will," that I realized the importance of the contribution he has made to human thought.^ The difficulties we meet in understanding Bergson are not due to any faults of exposition, but rather to the fact that we have to acquire some new categories, since he does not fit into any of the old. He is neither an idealist, realist, pragmatist, nor eclectic. No writer is more lucid, and he would be a bold man who should undertake to make Bergson clearer than he is. Yet so novel and original are 1 Beginners should first read Bergson's latest book, " Creative Evolution," as this contains a summary and restatement of his main positions. The more technical and difficult work, " Time and Free Will," should then be mastered, not read in a merely cursory way. After a re- reading of " Creative Evolution," one is perhaps pre- pared to attempt to understand " Matter and Memory." 24 BERGSON AND THE his suggestions, that I know of no philoso- pher who professes to understand him com- pletely. Prof. James, who was so enthusiastic about him, said : " I have to confess that Berg- son's originality is so profuse that many of his ideas baffle me entirely. I doubt whether any one understands him all over, so to speak ; and I am sure that he would himself be the first to see that this must be, and to confess that things which he himself has not yet thought out clearly Jiad yet to be mentioned and have a tentative place in his philosophy. ]\Iany of us are pro- fusely original, in that no man can understand us — violently peculiar ways of looking at things are no great rarit3\ Tlic rarity is when great peculiarity of vision is allied with great lucidity and unusual command of all the classic expository apparatus. Bergson's resources in the way of erudition are remarkable and in the way of expression they are simply phenomenal. Tliis is why in France, wliere Vart de hicn dire counts for so much and is so sure of apprecia- tion, he has immediately taken so eminent a place in public esteem. Old-fashioned profes- sors, whom his ideas quite fail to satisfy, never- theless speak of his talents with bated breath, wliilc the youngsters flock to liim as to a master. If anything can make hard things easy to fol- low, it is a style like Bergson's, a straight- forward style, an American reviewer lately called MODERN SPIRIT 25 it, failing to see that such straightforwardness means a flexibility of verbal resource that fol- lows the thought without a crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movement of one's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of putting things is what all readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in advance to become his disciple. It is a miracle, and he is a real magician." (" A Pluralistic Universe," p. 226.) I have spoken of Bergson as one of the most helpful of thinkers, and to justify this state- ment it is only necessary to consider the rela- tion of his original ideas to the thought situa- tion of our time. Since the spiritual life is, in one of its aspects, an intellectual life, whatever clarifies and advances thought is a help to the spiritual life. Bergson's contributions to phi- losophy are, therefore, by no means merely an intellectual luxury. As he himself has truly said, they help us to live. Nor has he come too soon. Philosophic and religious thought seemed to be getting into an impasse, and the need of some guide to lead men back to the great thoroughfare was urgent. There are many, of course, who do not realize this, for the reason that they are able to hold in an habitual and uncritical way the traditions which they have received. They escape both the happiness and the pain of thought. But there are others, an £6 BERGSON AND THE increasing number, whose minds have been awakened, in whom has arisen the deathless de- sire to know, and for whom the joy and the difficulties of the intellectual life have begun. Realizing that their mental childhood is past, they are making a serious effort to frame some true and worthy conception of the meaning of their lives and of their place in the great whole. Those who in recent times have found them- selves no longer satisfied with the venerable the- ory of a three-story universe, heaven above, hell beneath, and the earth between ; with the phi- losophy of history which started with the fall of man in Eden ; and with the somber outlook for our race, a few being saved and the rest going to perdition Avlien the earth and its con- tents perish in the last catastrophe, — those who have outgrown these ideas and have been under the consequent necessity of trying to work out some theory of life that would content the mind and heart have discovered, on looking around for sometliing better, only two general world-views, botli of wliic-h are profoundlv un- satisfactory. On the one hand, tlicre is materialism, which conceives of reality as consisting of a vast num- ber of material atoms, impelled by j)hysical forces and moving in accord witli mechanical laws. In this view all our human interests, our higher values, are mere by-products, epiphc- MODERN SPIRIT 27 nomcna, with no more real significance than the iridescence of mother-of-pearl or the colors of the rainbow. However satisfying to the intel- lectual part of us, this general view is pro- foundly depressing, and all that is best within us revolts against it and what it seems to imply. It not only does not legitimate but actually ig- nores the aspirations, the hopes, the faith, and the love, which give conscious life its value. The competing philosophy, which has ap- peared to be the only alternative, is called by a noble name, " idealism." It seems at first to promise much, to justify faith in God, freedom, and immortality, and to make central the things we care most for; but we soon find that it has little power to help, partly for the reason that it is almost unintelligible to all but trained philoso- phers, and, secondly, because it starts from as- sumptions that to the unsophisticated intelli- gence seem nonsense. The idealism we know most of is called post-Kantian ; i. e., it is based on certain conceptions of Kant. One of these fundamental notions is that not only do the color, sound, smell, and taste of objects depend upon the peculiar structure of our sense organs, but that time and space also are subjective; that is, they are not properties or relations which belong to things in themselves, but are modes of perception, forms of intuition. This means that reality is not in time and space. As the snow- 28 BERGSON AND THE ball bears the impress of the hand that forms it, so things appear to be in time and space, for these are our constitutional modes of per- ception, the spectacles, as it were, through which we see reality. Although our common sense whispers that this is nonsense, it is possible to juggle with our minds until we actually think we comprehend and accept such ideas. The motive for such self-sophistication is easy to comprehend. We have spiritual needs that are urgent, and this philosophy is apparently our only resource. We have moved out of the structure which was the home of thought in our childhood, and it is uncomfortable being houseless in the open. INIa- terialism being profoundly unsatisfactory, we naturally cling to what seems to be the only al- ternative, especially as it speaks a noble lan- guage and makes fair promises. Eventually, however, we are disillusioned. It is not possible to rest in a world view which seems only partially intelligible even when we are reading the philosophic books in which it is set forth, but which we cannot bring into rela- tion with common sense and science. To reach our spiritual refuge it ought not to be necessary to be an intellectual acrobat, able to walk a tight rope over an intellectual abyss. What we need above all things is an interpretation of life that shall be an expansion, a development, MODERN SPIRIT 29 a purification and transfiguration of the views which, as men and women in a real world, we are compelled to hold in order to live at all. There are some things we know in our immedi- ate experience with a native certainty beyond that which any logical demonstration can pro- duce. One of these is the reality of our tem- poral experience, and our sense that something is being achieved, wrought out, accomplished in time. We believe in a real evolution in real time. But for the idealism of which we speak, evo- lution is as unreal as the time in which it takes place. The Absolute is already at the goal. In fact, it is timeless, and the process of evolu- tion is, therefore, strictly speaking, unmeaning: it is an illusion, for nothing really evolves. We cannot consistently be evolutionists and abso- lute idealists at the same time, and the attempt to be both evolutionists in science and social reform and idealists in philosophy and religion can only result in making philosophy and re- ligion seem unreal. Now as to evolution, we practically have no choice. There is no fruit- ful work done in science and there are no wise efforts in education or the improvement of so- cial life which are not made along evolutionary lines. And no philosophy which, by making reality timeless, takes away all significance from our thought, our aspiration, and our effort, can 30 BERGSON AND THE ever win general acceptance. Men must, and will, look elsewhere for the wide views, the deep insights, the stability and serenity, peace and joy, which a working theory of life ought to give. Absolute idealism, then, though it offers itself as a support for the higher values, starts from assumptions which we cannot grant, is prac- ticall}^ unintelligible to the unsophisticated mind, and is inconsistent with the conception of real evolution in real time which is absolutely essential to effective thinkiner and effective liv- ing. In this last respect Kantian idealism is like the prevailing mechanical view of nature, which is also incompatible with the notion of evolution. For, according to the mathematical, mechanical conception of nature, reality is a fixed quantity. All is given. This all, being matter and motion, nothing more is possible than a change in the configuration of the phys- ical system, than a redistribution of matter and motion. Or, if we prefer to speak in terms of energy, nothing is changed by the form of state- ment. In such a universe evolution is impos- sible. Nothing is possible except ceaseless re- arrangements of the given. Real creation, the appearance of novelties, and human freedom are phrases without meaning. And, since human beings are parts of the given whole, since what is real in them is their physical structure, the MODERN SPIRIT 31 system of atoms composing their bodies, since all future configurations of the universe of atoms are theoretically calculable by mathematics, our sense that our life Is an achievement, that we are really doing something, Is a delusion, and our aspirations and efforts lose their significance. If this inconsistency of a mechanical philosophy, not only with moral and social life, but also with the doctrine of evolution. Is not ordinarily per- ceived, It Is because the average man has small talent for ultimate logical consequences and sel- dom thinks things through. To whom, then, shall we go? It Is Impossible to return to the thoughts of the world's child- hood ; the two views of life and the world which science and philosophy have offered are logic- ally, practically, and morally Inadequate ; and, finally, some working theory of life Is indispen- sable to the thoughtful section of mankind. In this situation it is quite clear that the real solution is neither to go backward nor to do violence to our logical and moral sense by an ar- bitrary acceptance of absolute Idealism or mech- anism, but to develop the naturalism of ordinary/ thinking and make it thorough-going. Since man is a part of nature, any satisfactory or logically tenable theory of that nature must In- clude man, with his science, his philosophy, his prayers and aspiration, his indisputable good- ness as well as the physical side of his life. An 32 BERGSON AND THE evolutionary philosophy which in its formation takes account only of the physical aspects of nature, but which in its application is extended and made to include life and mind, is a logical monstrosity. The only nature we know is the nature which in its early stages and lower ranges appears to be purely physical, but which indis- putably produces and sustains civilization, which blooms into thought and love, moral aspiration, purpose, and effort. These are as truly parts of the great process as the more primitive and apparently purely physical stages. The only rational way to interpret any process is by its outcome, and, if the world process be interpreted in this way, the values which the luiivcrse evolves will be seen to give to the preliminary phases all the meaning they possess. Human life will then be seen in true perspective, and we sliall liave a philosophy that will not ignore or pronounce unreal the aspects of life, the fruits of evolu- tion, which we care most for, but tliat will in- stead legitimate them and set them fortli in their true significance. In a radical, thorough-going evolutlonium lies our hope of an adequate philosophy, of a world view which shall satisfy tlie logical sense and spiritual need of our time. Tentative efforts at such a construction arc being made by the clearest and most sequent thinkers, and the thought prospect is brighter than for many MODERN SPIRIT 33 years. This being the situation, it is easy to see why Bergson has met with such a welcome. He is not only a tremendous reinforcement in constructive thought, he is one of the greatest of leaders. He has helped us past the funda- mental mistake of Kant, which has been so long a great stumbling-block in our intellectual path- way. What Kant called the ideality, but in or- dinary language would be called the unreality, of time, many of us have never accepted, but to dispute the authority of the great German philosopher has until recently been to lose credit. It is therefore not without lively emotion that we read the masterly essay on " Time and Free Will," which disposes of all the specious argu- ments which have been made against the reality of our temporal experience. We will no longer be tempted to deny what we are most certain of, and we can connect philosophy once more with our real life. In his theory of knowledge, Berg- son has also shown that mechanism applies only to certain aspects of reality and not to the whole ; and on this side, too, he has set thought free. Toi read the great pages of " Creative Evolution " is to see proved, in the technical fashion of philosophy, what we knew in our heart of hearts all the time ; namely, that mechanism and determinism as a mctaphysic could not be true, that the time process is real, that evolution is more than a rearrangement of the given, that 34 BERGSON it means achievement, and that life in its higher development is free, that it is, in fact, a great spiritual adventure. The end no man can know, for the reason that our ideals advance as we strive toward them, and we pursue a fleeing goal. New prospects are thus opened up be- fore thought, and our spiritual horizon is in- definitely enlarged. CHAPTER III THE CONCEPTION OF THE LIFE FORCE The thoughts of living men are but the thoughts of their ancestors revised, expanded, corrected. The conceptions of the present gen- eration cannot be understood without taking their hneage into account. The mixed and in- consistent nature of some of our more important ideas is in part explained by the fact that we are trying to combine our intellectual inheritance from two very different civilizations. Our an- swer to the question, What is reality.'' is influ- enced by the stream of Hebrew and Christian tra- dition and by old Greek thinking. The Bible begins with an account of the creation of the world ; in fact, with two accounts, that of Gene- sis i. being several centuries later in date and in stage of development than that of Genesis ii. and iii. The conception of the author of Genesis i. is that the materials of heaven and earth were present in chaotic form and in darkness, and that the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters. Early Greek thought reached an analogous 35 36 BERGSON AND THE view. Anaxagoras said that originally there was chaos, and then came mind and brought or- der. In the Timaeus of Plato, creation is con- ceived of as the introduction of order into the primitive disorder. Greek speculation, how- ever, soon arrived at the view that the world is ultimately composed of atoms which, by their mutual attractions and repulsions and conse- quent groupings, constituted all things. In modern times some thinkers have become frankly agnostic on the subject of the ultimate nature of reality. Herbert Spencer says that the most certain of all things is that we are always in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy whence all things proceed, but he calls this reality the Unknowable. It is true that he professes to know a good deal about it; e. g., that it is one, infinite and eternal; it is the All-Being; it is higher than personality rather than lower; and in referring to it we are nearer the truth in us- ing spiritualistic terms than when we speak the language of the materialist. And, finally, he says that we are compelled to think of the uni- verse as alive, if not in the restricted sense, at least in the general sense. The ultimate reality manifests itself in matter and mind, and these manifestations we know; but what it is in itself he thinks we can never know. It reveals itself in the universe we call material, and it wells up witliin us in the form of consciousness: we know MODERN SPIRIT 37 these expressions of reality, but nothing more. Kant, too, said that we know only phenomena, appearances. We see the world as colored, be- cause our eyes react in that way to the light stimulus. We hear sounds, because the air waves excite in our ears movements which we feel as sound. So we experience reality under the forms of time and space because it is our na- ture to, and we think of the world in scientific terms because we are made that way. We can- not get behind phenomena. What is beyond, it is vain to seek to know. All that we can know is the way reality affects us. Were we dif- ferently constituted, all would appear differ- ent. About a hundred years ago a young German scholar brought forward a new and very bril- liant suggestion. He said, it is possible to get behind the scenes if we pursue the right method. For I am not only a knower: I am also of the very substance and stuff of the world, of what is known. It is what I am, and I am Avhat it is. To know the nature of reality I have only to look within myself and discover what is funda- mental there. This observation is entirely cor- rect, and the method indicated is most fruitful. But Schopenhauer failed in its application. He looked within, and he saw what many others had failed to sec, but his vision was distorted by his unhappy emotional state. Many philosophers 38 BERGSON AND THE have considered that man is essentially a think- ing being, and have concluded that the funda- mental characteristic of human nature is thought. Hegel took this view, and Spinoza and Leibnitz, and, though the statement is not absolutely accurate, we may include Plato and Aristotle. But, according to Schopenhauer's profounder insight, the essence of our nature is will, and, since our nature is one with universal nature, the ultimate reality is Will. This was a great step forward in the his- tory of human thought, and, if it had been made by a man of happy disposition and sunny na- ture, the course of thought in the last hundred years might have been quite different. For in that case this world will would have been con- ceived of as good will, whereas Schopenhauer be- lieved it to be blind and wicked. It is easy to see why he tliouglit so, why his view was, in fact, inevitable. The world was, he considered, iden- tical in essence with liis own nature, and his own nature was discordant and wretched. This phi- losopher was, indeed, very badly born. In his make-up were two radically different and war- ring parts. He had a magnificent tliinking ap- paratus and a morbid emotional nature. Paul- sen, following G. Voight, gives us tlie following striking picture of this original and unhappy genius : — " Schopenhauer is a very transparent charac- MODERN SPIRIT 39 ter; the dualism of human nature in which reason and desire form the two opposite poles becomes unusually, nay, alarmingly discordant, in him. In so far as he is will, he lives an un- happy life. From his father he inherited a melancholy temperament ; he invariably sees things in the wrong light : little things, too, an- noy him too much. He is full of violent desires, impetuous, high-tempered, ambitious, sensuous, and withal very diffident. He is constantly plagued by all kinds of vague fears of trouble, losses, diseases, which his sensuous ego might suffer: he is extremely suspicious of all men without exception, — in truth, a series of quali- ties, any one of which would have been sufficient to make his life unhappy. " That is one side of his life. And now look at the other. He is also an intellect, nay, a genius, endowed with a remarkable power of ob- jective intuition. He has experienced the blessedness of the life of pure knowledge as purely and as deeply as any thinker before him, nay, perhaps more deeply than any other man, on account of the contrast between the intellec- tual side of his being and his restless, unhappy, volitional life. . . . There were times when Schopenhauer enjoyed happy hours, pursuing his thoughts, freed from all desires and cares, without hurry and worry, without fear and ha- tred. But then came other times : the beasts 40 BERGSON AND THE which seemed to have been entirely tamed rose up again, destroyed his peace, and filled his life with trouble and anxiety. And he was helpless against them, he often says so himself. It is a curious but undoubted fact that the clearest knowledge of the pcrverseness of the will can produce no change in it. This enables us to understand his ethical system: it is the confes- sion of his failings and sins, it is the yearning of his better self for deliverance from the com- panion to whom it finds itself yoked." (" Eth- ics," 211. Thilly's translation.) Such was the man who made one of the most important suggestions in the history of thought, who first saw clearly that tlic deepest in man's life is his will, his needs, longings and ideal strivings, and that the heart of human nature is one with cosmic nature. There is truth in this philosophy, but it is colored by the medium through which it came. Schopenhauer, consti- tuted as he was, could not but give a pessimistic cast to any world view he might hold, and in his case the evil was exaggerated by the influence of Buddhism upon his mind. It is interesting to consider what the efpoct Avould have been if Schopenhauer had been a once-born soul, with the elements in his nature more nearly in accord from the beginning, if he had inherited a har- monious constitution like that of Edward Ever- ett Hale or Emerson. It seems certain that he MODERN SPIRIT 41 would then have announced an optimistic phi- losophy, one which would have amounted to a gospel. He would have said that the heart of the world is good will. That will is the best name for the reality, he saw clearly. His ab- normal emotional state led him to think this world will blind and wicked. If it had not been for this unfortunate accident of heredity, if he had been a happily constituted, wholesome na- ture, he would have given the world, not a pes- simistic philosophy, but a religion. For the message of religion, purified and freed from the local and accidental, is that the heart of the universe is good, that is, good will. With every great religion goes a world view, a philosophy of some kind. It matters not how much the feeling element is emphasized and the thought aspect disparaged or ignored, these two parts of life are really inseparable. Religious feeling and action will always be found to involve a the- ory of things. Thus Buddhism, in its original) form, started with the assumption, which seemed * to its followers an axiom, that life is suffering and happiness a futile and foolish dream, po*^^ i Gautama therefore devised a way of escape from ' i/'\>'^M the series of rebirths. There were ethical con- ditions to deliverance, and sympathy and com- passion have been finiits of this vicAV of life. But it is a despairing view nevertheless, a pes- i simistic philosophy. Christianity, on the other 42 BERGSON AND THE hand, at least in its highest forms, involves an optimistic view of reality. We are not accus- tomed to think of it as a philosophy, because it is so much more. Yet, like all other great re- ligions, it has a fairly definite outlook upon the world. If we disregard the lower strata of the New Testament and of the Christian creeds, and consider only the heights reached by the founder and greatest leaders of this religion in their su- preme moments of insight, we find them declar- ing in no uncertain tones that " God is love," that we are the children of the perfect, and that evil is to be overcome, not by evil, but by good. This view has been set forth by Robert Brown- ing ; it is, in fact, his one great theme. " For all the universe seemed to him love-woven, all life is but the treading of the love-way, and no wan- derer can finally lose it." He sought " To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, To know even liate is but a mask of love's, To see a good in evil, and a hope In ill-success." We are so accustomed to consider Hebrew and Christian thouglit as apart from the stream of the world's intellectual life that we hardly realize that this is a philosophy, a theory of the nature of reality, a magnificent world-view, a product of the deepest insight and greatest speculative daring. And because we have from MODERN SPIRIT 43 childhood been familial- with such an inspiring outlook upon life, we do not easily or fully ap- preciate the achievements of constructive thought as it climbs slowly in the same direction. The French thinker, Bergson, evidently does not come up to the world's great problems by way of religion, but through philosophy. He is in the line of succession that dates from Soc- rates and his great predecessors, and comes down through Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schelling and Schopenhauer. And the fact that many of us in our earliest years be- came familiar with conceptions which seem to be the goal of the world's thought, which the re- ligious insight of gifted men attained, so to speak, at a bound, but which could be construc- tively reached only by the intellectual toil of a long line of great thinkers, ought not to make us impatient with the tentative results and re- served statements of the latest of these workers on the structure of the world's thought. Bergson is not only a thinker : he is also a seer. Like Schopenhauer, he gazes intently at reality, but describes what he sees in terms of life. His vision is that of a great life flowinj; through time. This life current is the funda- mental reality, the material universe being the ebb of this great flow. Matter is a flux and not a thing, a process derived from the spiritual 44 BERGSON AND THE process of life by inversion. It is, so to speak, life that has lost, or is losing, its vitalit}^ it is existence almost devoid of duration and de- scending in the direction of space. These con- ceptions are new and difficult, but the important thing is that reality is conceived of in terms of life while matter is regarded as a derived prod- uct. This is one of the most interesting of all the attempts to bridge the chasm between the living and the non-living. Bergson states his thought in many ways. Life, he says, is tend- ency, a tremendous internal push, which may re- lax its tension and so descend to materiality. " The real can pass from tension to extension and from freedom to mechanical necessity by way of inversion. Life is an effort to remount the incline that matter descends." Life is crea- tion, the material is reality unmaking itself. Or, put in another wa}^ " From an immense reservoir of life, jets must be gushing out un- ceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world." Again, " We catch a glimpse of a simple process, an action which is making itself across an action of the same kind which is un- making itself, like the fiery path torn by the last rocket of a fire-works display through the black cinders of the spent rockets that are fall- ing dead." ^ Any effort at general and brief restatement of Bcrgson's novel views must be in some MODERN SPIRIT 45 measure unjust. He must be read and re-read to be comprehended. For instance, a careless critic might infer from what is said above that the French philosopher has simply relapsed into vitalism. But that is very far from the case. He considers the question, and himself shows why the vitalistic theories are untenable. It is easy to misunderstand him, for he cannot state his position without using terms which others have applied in a different way. But when he ^ speaks of the life impulse or force, he is think- ing of a single immense wave which flows over and organizes matter. The latter being some- what refractory, the great movement is " some- times turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed ; and the evolution of the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict." But the philosopher warns us not to attach too much importance to or overwork any of his similes. He speaks of life as an impetus, because no image borrowed from the physical can give a better idea of it. But " in reality," he says, " life is of the psychological order." " Con- 4, sciousness or supra-consciousncss is at the origin of life ; it is the name for the rocket wliose ex- tinguished fragments fall back as matter; con- sciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket itself passing through the fragments and lighting them up into organisms. But this consciousness, which is a need of crea- 46 BERGSON AND THE tion, is made manifest only where creation is possible. It lies dormant where life is con- demned to automatism : it awakens as soon as the possibility of a choice is restored." Such views are novel and may at first seem fantastic, but we should not be too quick to reject them. It has been a long time since a constructive thinker of the first order has appeared in the world, and if, as some believe, we have now to do with a man of this rank, the value and ex- tent of his service to us will depend upon our own attitude. Certainly, a minute, unsympa- thetic, captious criticism that makes the most of minor errors, and that is given to wholesale condemnation of whatever can be shown to have any defect, is unprofitable. Equally mistaken is the attitude of hasty and uncritical accept- ance of what has been onl}' superficially exam- ined and imperfectly comprehended. What is called for is, first, an honest, sustained effort to understand, to appreciate the suggested ideas in the large, and to give the constructive thinker a generous reception. We may even be able to help him detect minor mistakes and clear away obscurities. Surely, we ouglit to do this, especially when we consider that the larger truth and nobler conceptions he attains to are won for humanity and for all time. While tJu' fhcory of the cosmical life must, like MODERN SPIRIT 47 all others, be subjected to critical examination, — our criticism should be large-minded and fair. According to Bergson, then, evolution is the great drama of the life force unfolding through the ages : it is the story of its adventures, its vicissitudes, its successes and its failures. The failures are as evident as the success. For evo- lution is not synonymous with progress. It is sometimes in the direction of our ideals and sometimes away from them. It is radial rather than linear. The molluscs, the fishes, the rep- tiles, are not on their way to become men. They diverged from the trunk of the tree of life ages ago, and can never return. What is peculiar in the Bergsonian view of evolution is the conception that the unity of life is the unity of the original impulse, that this, as a matter of fact, contained within it many tendencies which are differentiated in the course of devel- opment. This original sheaf of tendencies be- comes separated into its constituent elements. Thus, in the line of growth through vertebrates up to man, the life force has developed some of its capacities, quite other tendencies being mani- fested in the ants, bees, and wasps. In the plant world, for the most part unconscious, still other tendencies are expressed. Among the two or three great lines of evolution are many minor paths. There are blind alleys into 48 BERGSON AND THE which life has run, as in the case of the fungi, and many cases of retrogression. The most interesting example of the disso- ciation of the tendencies in the original impetus is that of the vegetative, instinctive, and ra- tional life, which are conceived of, not as three successive degrees or stages of development of one and the same tendency, but as divergent directions of an activity that split up as it grew, the difference being not one of intensity, but of kind. If Bergson is right about this, the view that has prevailed since Aristotle's time is wrong, and there are consequences of great sig- nificance for educational theory, religious cul- ture, and practical life. Deferring till later a discussion of the rela- tions of instinct and reason, it may be pointed out here that Bergson's view of reality as a Great Life is an advance upon the Schopenhauerian conception of the world will. . . . Life is the more inclusive term, to say nothing of the fact that the German philosopher thought the world will blind and wicked only because of the tur- moil, strife, and wretchedness of his own inner life. The French pliilosoplier says that the life force is striving in the direction of freedom and love. The meaning of evolution is the effort of life to develop in matter, which is determined, an Instniment of indetennination, of freedom ; and in the human brain success has been attained. MODERN SPIRIT 49 Automatism is the enemy, and it is our peculiar human privilege, in the moments when we are most conscious, to have conquered, to be really free. We cannot properly speak of a goal, since there is no end to life's vista. Each of us is rather' a progress than a thing. At times we have glimpses of the great movement of which we are part. " We have this sudden illumina- tion before certain forms of maternal love, so striking, and in most animals so touching, ob- servable even in the solicitude of the plant for its seed. This love, in which some have seen the great mystery of life, may possibly deliver us life's secret. It shows us each generation lean- ing over the generation that shall follow. It 1 allows us a glimpse of the fact that the living \ being is above all a thoroughfare, and that the I essence of life is in the movement by which life j is transmitted." CHAPTER IV THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE BERGSONIAN WORLD-VIEW. In the Preface to his " Voyages en Italic," Taine gives a short account of the mental in- strument which produced the judgments re- corded in the book. He did this because he thought his readers would find his impressions more interesting and instructive, if they knew something about the formative influences that helped to shape his mind. So, since philosophy is the reaction of the human mind to the world, to life and its environment, it ma\' well begin with an examination of the mind itself. Every philosophy, therefore, includes or implies, and, in a certain sense, builds upon a tlieory of knowledge. Bcrgson's theory of knowledge is stated with perfect clearness at the very beginning of " Cre- ative Evolution." He regards the intellect as a tool Avhich has been produced for practical I)urp(),scs. In this sense, it is in the same cate- gory witli tootli and claw. The understanding is " an appendage of the faculty of acting, a MODERN SPIRIT 51 more and more precise and more and more com- plex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living beings to the conditions of existence that are made for them. Hence should result this consequence that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the per- fect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves — in short, to think matter. . . . We shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects, more especially among solids, where our action finds its fulcrum and our industry its tools ; that our concepts have been formed on the model of solids ; that our logic is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids ; that, consequently, our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed the kinship of logical thought with unorganized matter, and where the intellect has only to follow its natural movement, after the lightest possible contact with experience, in order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that experience is following be- hind it and will justify it invariably." When, therefore, we are dealing with the world which ph3^sical science studies, our intel- lects are adequate. We can not only know what to do in external situations, but we may attain to some knowledge of the very nature of matter. Bergson is, therefore, no relativist or pragma- tist. He says, " If the intellectual fonn of the 52 BERGSON AND THE living being has been gradually modeled on the reciprocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material environment, how should it not reveal to us something of the very essence of which these bodies are made? Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind born to speculation or to dream, I admit, might remain outside real- ity, might deform or transform the real, per- haps even create it — as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an intellect bent upon r^ the act to be performed and the reaction to fol- low, feeling the object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something of the absolute." And again, " Intellectual knowledge, in so far as it relates to a certain aspect of inert matter, ought to give us a faithful imprint of it, having been stereotyped on this particular object." That is, so long as we look outward and are dealing with the physical world, tlie intellect proves to be a very satisfactory instrument. The trouble comes when we turn our gaze in- ward, and seek to understand our life. Tlic metaphysical incapacity of our thinking appa- ratus at once becomes evident. Human exist- ence in the past has depended on correct tliouglits about things rather than on tliouglits al)()ut life, and it is therefore entirely natural that the in- tellect should be able to furnish the former but MODERN SPIRIT 53 not the latter. If the desire of life to under- stand itself were due to mere perversity or if it were of rare occurrence and could be sup- pressed, our most perplexing problems would not have arisen. But since this desire does ac- tually appear and become imperious, since life in its progress inevitably reaches a reflective stage, these problems must be bravely met and dealt with, and we must utilize in their solution all the resources at our command. Now it is a peculiarity of Bergson's view that the intellect, because of its nature and the pur- pose for which it has been developed, cannot un- derstand life. In its efforts to do so, it applies the thought-forms which fit things but which do not apply to life. It cannot understand any- thing which is not or cannot be regarded as a machine. Lord Kelvin said he was never sure that he understood anything until he could make a working model of it. In saying this, he was the true spokesman of the intellect. But it so happens that life is not a mechanism, even though certain of its products have mechanistic aspects. What shall we do, then.'' Is it neces- sary to give up the problems in which we cannot help being interested.'' Must we confess that our dearest ambitions lie in one direction and our abilities in another.? If there were nothing more in mind than in the powers of conceptual thought, Bergson sa3's that this would be the 64 BERGSON AND THE case. Happily, there is more in life than the instrumental intellect. The latter, in its de- velopment, did not exhaust the resources of con- sciousness, but is a sort of specialization of something more general and aboriginal. Man ^ as conscious is not all intellect. There remain in liim traces of those primitive powers, which, being still unspecialized, retain the function of knowing life itself. These powers are ordina- rily called instinct. So far, then, as we are not merely practical men but philosophers, inter- ested in life and reality, we must think with the whole man, or, ratlier, we must not only think but also use those residual powers, complemen- tary to thought, which can know life because they are life, and which in their rudimentary form we call instinct, but which may be developed and clarified until they become intuition. Although in this exposition Bergson empha- sizes the difference between intellect and intui- tion until the reader may get the impression that they are opposites and have nothing in com- mon, it is very necessary to avoid such a mis- take. They have a common origin, are kindred in nature even if complementary in function, and botli are essential to a normal and complete J' / human life. stion of its solvency being of no small human im{)()rtaiice." (" Pres- ent Philosopliical '^rcndcncics, p. Kvk) "^I'lie present situation cannot be better stated than in the words of Prof. J. B. Pratt : " Some- MODERN SPIRIT 183 how or other pragmatism has got itself pretty generally associated in the public mind with re- ligion. It seems to be the common impression that at this critical moment in the warfare of re- ligion with agnosticism the pragmatists have come to the help of the Lord against the mighty, and that, thanks to their new-forged and new- fashioned Aveapons, victory is secure. It is this belief, I suppose, which more than anything else explains the wide and growing popularity of the new philosophy. For, after all, no other philosophical problems have so great and so permanent a hold upon the interests of the people at large as have those that deal with re- ligion. For this very reason, moreover, no philosophical ideas deserve and require more careful scrutiny than those which affect the re- ligious views of the community. Since, there- fore, there is so considerable a tendency to-day to throw one's cap in air and shout, ' The sword of the Lord and of Pragmatism ! ' it behooves all those who have the interests of religion at heart to look carefully into the question whence prag- matism has gained its religious reputation and how well it deserves it. What is the nature and the temper of this newly patented pragmatic sword, and is it so sure a defense that we may with safety throw aside for it our older weapons.'' Just what is it that pragmatism proves and how does it prove it.^ If we trust our religious be- 184 BERGSON AND THE liefs to its defense, just what surety have we that they will be defended and that when we get them back again they will still be recognizable? When the question is put in this way, the contro- versy over the meaning and validity of pragma- tism ceases to be a merely academic matter, and is seen to be fraught with truly human and liv- ing interest." ("What is Pragmatism?" pp., 175, 176.) The amateur in philosophy, hearing of prag- matism, might suppose it to be something defi- nite, something which, after reading a book or two about it, he could easily understand. Such a supposition is most natural when we consider that the whole movement was started by an arti- cle entitled, " How to IMake Our Ideas Clear," which appeared in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1878. The article attracted no attention until, in an address at the University of California in 1898, Prof. Wm. James " brought it forward and made a special appli- cation of it to religion." Since then, it has been one of the chief subjects of controversy in the philosophical world. Books have been writ- ten and the technical journals have abounded in articles by the exponents and defenders of the new doctrine. This controversy may easily be misinterpreted, and accepted as confirmation of llu' iiiiy)rossion that philosophy is after all noth- \•^^(|■ l)ut a war of words. The fact is that dis- MODERN SriRIT 185 cussion is the philosopher's laboratory, and all this argumentation is a form of co-operation. If the contents of our minds are not to be tangled masses of inconsistencies, there must be acute criticism, and the implications and logical out- come of every system proposed for our accept- ance must be made clear. In this work, it is the consistent and thorough-going thinkers who are the most helpful. Practical life is possible only through the conciliation of many interests and through numerous compromises, but when it is a question of understanding the meaning of ideas, clearness and logical thoroughness are essential. We speak of the irony of history. It was never better illustrated than in the case of pragmatism. Announced as a method of mak- ing our ideas clear, it has made nothing clear, least of all its own nature. The one constant note in nearly all the expositions of pragmatism is the note of complaint of being misunderstood. The trained philosophers of Europe and Amer- ica, men whose business in life is to understand such things, are accused of incapacity and will- ful blindness. One of the leading American philosophers finally closed a discussion with an English pragmatist, saying that the pragmatists have so changed the meaning of words that a mutual understanding is hopeless. Worse still, the defenders of the new method do not always 186 BERGSON AND THE understand one another. The founder of pragmatism, Mr. Charles Peirce, gave a course of lectures on the subject at Harvard Univer- sity, which his auditors evidently failed in large part to comprehend. He also gave a course of lectures on the same theme at the Lowell Insti- tute, which Prof. James himself confesses that he did not understand, saying that in them were " flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cim- merian darkness. None of us, I fancy, under- stood all that he said." In this connection, it is also interesting to note that Mr. Peirce was so dissatisfied with what Prof. James and others made of lu's principle that he finally decided to give up the use of the word pragmatism to them, while he calls his own view pragmaticism. The original idea seemed simple enough. To have a clear thought of an object, said INIr. Peirce, it is necessary and only necessary, to know what to do with or about it, what to ex- pect from it and what response to make to it. If it is a stick of dynamite that is in question, or a tiger, or a persuasive agent of an invest- ment company, your knowledge is adequate if you know wliat effects tlie ol)ject is likely to produce and how to act so as to guard your own interests. Our ideas are tlnis rules of action, and tlieir test is our success. There is some truth in this view, })ut it is fragmentary and partial. We owe a great deal to Prof. Dewey, who has shown what it leads to if con- MODERN SPIRIT 187 sistently and exclusively held. He says that ideas are plans of action. Now of such plans, we may say that they are good or bad accord- ing as they do or do not work. It is irrelevant to speak of them as true or false. Prof. Dewey and those who are equally clear and logical con- tinue to use the word truth, but they refuse to admit that it has any other meaning than that of effective working. The vast majority of thinking men know perfectly well that they have some significant ideas which are not plans of actions, but are judgments of fact and exist- ence. Thus if I think that J is in Berlin and he is really there, my judgment is true. I may not intend to do anything about it, yet the fact may be interesting just as I am interested in knowing that almost half of the moon's surface is invisible from the eartli. One of the great goods of life is in learning truths, not merely that we may act more wisely, but for the pure pleasure of learning and knowing. To the rad- ical pragmatists, this is most perverse. Says Prof. Dewey: " The appropriate subject mat- ter of awareness is not reality at large. . . . Its proper and legitimate object is that rela- tionship of organism and environment in which functioning is most amply and effectively at- tained ; or by which, in case of obstruction and consequent needed experimentation, its later eventual free course is most facilitated. As for the other reality, metaphysical reality at large, 188 BERGSON AND THE it may, so far as awareness is concerned, go to its own place." That is, the great interest of men in all his- tory in such questions as the philosophers and religious people have asked and sought to an- swer is utterly vain. The existence of God, the nature of the world and of human nature, — it is idle to discuss such themes except so far as they conduce to a better functioning of the hu- man organism. This condemnation of the hu- man race for its intellectual and religious pro- clivities is not merely general, but falls hardest on its finest representatives. For the finest men and women who have lived on the planet have shared the spirit of Plato and Aristotle, and have believed with them that the highest of hu- man joys is to ascend to the summits of thought and approximate the ideal of " the spectator of all time and existence." Their attitude is that expressed in Francis Bacon's famous words, " Howsoever these things are in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature." One of the terms by which tlie Germans desig- nate philosopliy is Lchcn.f'ccishcit. The con- troversy over pragmatism illustrates the differ- MODERN SPIRIT 189 ence in value for life of the philosophy which takes a single point of view and keeps to it, and the other type of philosophy which surveys hu- man experience and the world from all avail- able positions. Dewey shows what we come to when we take the biological point of view and resolutely refuse to consider any aspects of real- ity which cannot be seen from that position. It is very useful, e. g., to consider man in his place in nature, affected, like his lowly kindred, by the conditions which we know to have so great an influence on their life. For instance, we are be- ginning to realize the importance of selection to the human race. Is war under modern condi- tions a process of destroying the biologically best, leaving the inferior to breed? Are our charities and philanthropies, our economic and social conditions, producing a differential fer- tility in favor of the weaklings and incompetents .? As society is so extensively interfering with the processes of natural selection, must it not, to prevent organic deterioration, interfere still more? We cannot, to be sure, answer these questions at present, but it means much that we know enough to ask them. It is, therefore, not only important but absolutely necessary that we survey the world from the biological point of view. But, for other purposes, it is equally necessary that we occupy different standpoints. For instance, the orthopedic surgeon is a very 190 BERGSON AND THE useful member of society, and he must consider the human body as a machine. It is, of course, much more ; still, it is that. To understand it as a mechanism, is to be a man of science ; to insist that, because tlie bones are levers moved by muscles stimulated to action by nerve cur- rents which are the result of chemical reactions, we are only conscious automata, is to be an a priori philosopher and a very crude one at that. It is to do what Prof. Dewey and the radical pragmatists do, namely, deny all values which they cannot see from the place where they stand. If we want to understand a doctrine perfectly, we shall follow men like this who hold it with an absolute, if narrow, consistency. But if we wish Lehensiceisheit, the philosophy Avhich is the wisdom of life, we shall survey all objects of all thought from all possible positions. We shall sec how life looks from the materialistic, biological, psychological, moral and religious point of view, and do our best to make a com- posite picture of the whole. We sliall fail of per- fect success, but our effort at least is in the right direction and makes for sanity and against the fanaticism of devotion to partial views. There will bo inconsistencies in our mental construc- tions, but this is because we have not yet learned to liarmonize in thouglit the many tendencies which exist in the concrete world. And the be- ginner ill pliilosnphv would do well to j)ass the MODERN SPIRIT 191 following resolution : — " I will never deny facts on the ground of a theory." Having done so, he will find a delight in reading the books of William James ; for that great man, with a beautiful candor, as absolute as that of John Stuart Mill, frankly admitted the valid criti- cisms offered against his original theory of pragmatism, and made so many concessions that practically nothing was left of it at last except the part of it that argument can never reach, namely, a certain temper of mind, which he de- scribes as " The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, categories, supposed necessities ; and of looking forward towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts." This, which has been called " the laboratory habit of mind," is, of course, old. " By their fruits ye shall know them," is a maxim that comes to us from old time. And Plato has ex- plained at great length that the man who really knows an implement is, not the painter who re- produces its likeness in his picture, nor even the artisan who made it, but the man who knows how to use it. But, besides being a method, pragmatism is for Professor James also (2) a theory of truth and (3) a theory concerning the structure of the universe, the theory that reality is still in the making, that the universe, instead of being complete, is unfinished and growing in all sorts of places, the processes of 192 BERGSON AND THE our human consciousness having a creative part. Pragmatism is first of all a method of dis- tinguishing really significant propositions from those without meaning. Of the value of this method Professor James has the highest opin- ion. " It is astonishing," he says, " to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into in- significance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence." This is a pleasing prospect. If, by a simple and easy method, it can be shown that many ancient and difficult questions are unmeaning for the reason that it makes no difference to us whether they are true or not, we are obviously dispensed from the labor of inquiring into their truth. Unfortunately, however, the proposed method is not only no royal road to a solution or disposal of pliilosophic problems, but it is no road at all, for tlie reason that the method is not one but two, and when these two have been disentangled, it is clear that tlicrc is no help in either. Peirce's use of the pragmatic principle was clear and unanihiguous. The meaning of an object, he says, consists in the effects we may ex- pect from it, in the practical reactions it de- mands, in the responses that arc appropriate wlicn we come into its presence or have to do with it. When, however, this test is used to de- termine the meaning of judgments, the case is MODERN SPIRIT 193 less simple. It is not enough to state that the meaning of a judgment consists in its conse- quences, for, as the logicians have been quick to point out, the cases in which the consequences come whether the judgment be believed or not must be distinguished from those in which the consequences come only when the judgment is believed to be true. Thus, the statement that cyanide of potassium is a poison that causes in- stant death is one that holds good regardless of the opinions of the person who puts it to the proof. Not even a Christian Scientist could avoid the consequences. On the other hand, optimistic and pessimistic views of life are prac- tically resultless when they are regarded in an idle, speculative way. But when they are se- riously believed in they produce the most mo- mentous consequences, profoundly affecting the emotional and practical life. Regard men as merely half-tamed gorillas, moved principally by greed and fear, and you get results, some of which will appear to justify your theory. Be- lieve, on the other hand, that men are the sons of God, that they will respond to the appeal of reason and love, think of the universe as a di- vine order in which the only appropriate life is one that is controlled by the highest human ideals — live by this as a working theory, and you will find it full of significance. It will have a meaning for you which it would not have if 194 BERGSON AND THE you did not believe it. The consequences of a proposition and the consequences of belief in a proposition are, therefore, wholly different things, but Professor James, in his application of the pragmatic test, has not kept them apart. So long as the ambiguity is not noted, the method seems very effective. It is easy for a lively pragmatist writer to ignore the consequences of belief and show that the philosophic and re- ligious theories which he does not like are truly ridiculous. Looked at in an unsj^mpathetic way, the most venerable ideas do indeed appear insignificant. To those who have no affection for them and who do not accept them as true, they seem irrelevant, they make no difference. Since the facts are what they are and these the- ories alter reality not one whit, they arc prag- matically condemned. On the other hand, if belief is taken into consideration, it is obvious that no idea that men have ever cherished or taken seriously to heart is without significance, and the method cannot be used to distinguish propositions tiiat have meaning from those that have not. We shall not know what pragma- tism as a method is until its representatives tell us which of these two theories of meaning they adopt. We may join with Professor Lovejoy in calling for an election between them, and agree with him that probably neither choice will be foimd welcome. " For all the charm and im- MODERN SPIRIT 195 pressiveness of the theory arises out of the con- fusion of its alternative interpretations. It gets its appearance of novelty and of practical serviceableness in the settlement of controver- sies from its one meaning ; and it gets its plausi- bility entirely from the other. But (when the distinction is made) in the sense in which the theory might be logically functional, it seems hardly likely to be plausible ; and in the sense in which it is plausible, it appears destitute of any applicability or function in the distinguishing of real from meaningless issues." That is, if pragmatism chooses the first theory of meaning and ascribes importance and significance only to those propositions which enable us to pre- dict events that will come even if these proposi- tions are not believed, the theory will not be of much use, since nothing can pass this test ex- cept such scientific laws as those through which we can foretell eclipses, practically all the work- ing hypotheses men live by, fight over and die for being reduced to nonsense, for the reason that they have no results at all unless they are believed in. And if the other choice is made, again we are not helped, since all views of life are full of meaning to those who take them se- riously and believe them true. So much, then for the first pragmatism, the method. It may be noted in passing that the way in which it has been disposed of illustrates 196 BERGSON AND THE the value of that criticism which consists in the making of distinctions. Our thought is often (^ a blur because we are trying to think together things which do not belong together, and the greatest service that can be rendered in such cases is to have these confused components of our ideas distinguished and set apart. The task that next confronts us in the consideration of the pragmatic notion of truth is the same in kind, though far more difficult. In Bacon's famous essay we read, — "What is tnith.'^ cried jesting Pilate, and waited not for an answer." One bright woman, who has listened to some of the recent discussions which pragmatism has started about the nature of truth, says she now knows why Pilate did not wait. It should be remembered, however, that it is not the phi- losopher's fault that the problems he deals with are hard to answer. He can be held responsible only for doing his best. Now it is over this question of the nature of truth that the battle rages, for here is the storm center of interest, and it is chiefly in tlie discussion of this sub- ject that tlie pragmatlsts complain of being mis- understood. And, while all men are concerned, the outcome of the debate is of vital importance for those who as students of science and phi- losophy and as ministers of religion conceive that a large part of their business is the learn- iniT and tcachinn; of truth. Such Icarnino- and MODERN SPIRIT 197 teaching is not merely our privilege ; it is our life. It may be frankly admitted that Truth, Truth with a capital T, is an idol of our tribe. The conviction that truth is, that it is discover- able, that to learn, teach and apply it is one of the noblest and most salutary things a human being can do, is one of the assumptions on which our lives rest. This idea fills us with enthusi- asm, inspires our studies and professional work, and whatever threatens it threatens the heart of our higher life. If, as the pragmatists say, truth is no longer a distinct category, but merely a form of the good, if ideas are merely useful or expedient rather than true, it is obvious that much of our enthusiasm has been foolish and we must change our tone. Of course, when the pragmatists attempt to establish a new view of the nature of truth, it does not occur to us that they mean to deny its existence. Nevertheless, they have a way of speaking about it that alarms our instincts. The situation is as follows : The ordinary, intellectualist view is that truth is a matter of agreement of our ideas with an objective order, that this order is something to which our tlioughts must conform, if they are to be true. That is, certain things have happened, and cer- tain processes go on, events have a certain se- quence ; thus, we say, Ca'sar lived, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection, 198 BERGSON AND THE Henry is In Berlin, the date of Deuteronomy is about 620 B. C These things being so, if I think they are so my thought is true. It is hard to see how anything could be simpler. But the pragmatists make difficulties and offer a view they consider to be more concrete, in the exposi- tion of M-hich thej' fill us with uneasiness by seem- ing to give aid and comfort to those who have no intellectual conscience and who play fast and loose with truth. We have observed the prog- ress that has been made by men like Faraday and Darwin, constructing theory after theory, and then ruthlessly crushing in their beautiful promise all these intellectual constructions that do not agree with or reflect the processes they are meant to explain. And we see that the lack of this intellectual piety in many people, their preference for ideas that are merely pleasing or that legitimate their prejudices, and their fail- ure to acknowledge their obligation to find out what has been and is and to accept what is proved to be true regardless of its disturbing ef- fect on tlieir traditional beliefs, has filled the world with war and is still the cause of endless strife and mental confusion. It is, therefore, naturally disconcerting to read in the lectures of Professor James that J " Truth happens to an idea. It hccovica true, is vkkIc true by events. It verily ts in fact an event, a process: the jjrocess namely of veri- MODERN SPIRIT 199 fying itself, its ycv'i-fication.^^ . . . Truth is made, just as health, wealth and strength are made, in the course of experience. . . . This function of agreeable leading is what we mean by an idea's verification. The truth of a state of mind means this function of a leading that is zvorth while. And when much is said about truth being what gives " the maximum possible sum of satisfactions," about the true being " only the expedient in our way of thinking," in spite of the fact that the pragmatist acknowl- edges the coercions of the world of sense and of abstract relations and feels as much as anyone " the immense pressure of objective control un- der which our minds perform their operations," we are not satisfied, since we cannot help feeling not only that it is the incidental features of truth which have been emphasized, but also that all this will tend to strengthen that mere willful- ness in thinking of which there is already too much in the world, and that it will benefit none but those who are ever looking for some justifi- cation of their determination to hold to cher- ished beliefs in the absence of evidence and even in the face of contrary evidence. When, impelled by such interests, we subject the pragmatist theory of truth to close scrutiny in order to determine its meaning and probabil- ity, we find, as in the case of pragmatism re- garded as a method, a radical ambiguity. 200 BERGSON AND THE There are many passages in Professor James' book that, taken by themselves, would indicate that he maintains the view that truth is wholly within human experience, a view which he dis- claims as absurd. Yet these misleading pas- sages are there, and the fact that they stand side by side with other statements which teach a different doctrine has confused the readers of this brilliant and fascinating book. This has come out clearly in recent discussions, and since my purpose is to make plain how pragmatism has gradually been forced practically to give up its case, I propose to give a resume of the course of these discussions touching this main point. Herbert Spencer somewhere complains that he found Plato uninteresting reading, and objects particularly to the dialogue form in which his philosophy is cast. But, as I have said, phi- losophy is essentially a dialogue. It is only through discussion that we become clear as to our own intent or can know the mind of others. The old Greek philosophers wished to clear up the subject as they went along, and not pass over any points that were obscure or that failed to se- cure the assent of botli parties. The method to-day is to write a book and then reply to the critics in the technical journals. And even in the book the views of opponents are discussed, so that the dialogue is preserved in the sub- stance, if not in form. MODERN SPIRIT 201 It was a great day in Athens when Socrates could be pitted against some famous philosopher, and it is a great thing for us that this question has been discussed by able men on both sides. I am sure there is no better way to clarify the situation than to extract from the Journal of PhilosopJiT/, Psychology and Scientific Methods the following passages from a controversy be- tween Professor James and the clearest and most brilliant of his opponents, Prof. J. B. Pratt, of Williams College. To this conversation of Socrates and Protag- oras let us now attend. Professor Pratt first calls attention to the fact that, while pragma- tism identifies the truth of an idea with the process of its verification, it is also spoken of as being verifiability, which is a very different thing ; and he properly insists that the issue be- tween pragmatism and intellectualism cannot be perfectly clear-cut if these two views are con- fused. The latter conception of truth as veri- fiability is not pragmatic, for pragmatism says truth is a process, an event, and " verifiability is not a process, is not included within anyone's experience, but is a general condition or set of conditions which transcends every single finite experience. It is not a ' felt leading,' it is not a ' form of the good,' nor a ' satisfactory work- ing,' nor any other kind of experience or experi- ence-process. It is a totality of relations which 202 BERGSON AND THE are not within any finite experience. It is a present condition of the idea, not something that happens to it. It is not ' made ' ; it is already there. Verification is one thing ; verifiability is another." The pragmatist must choose, for it is as impossible to identify truth with both " as it is to be both a pragmatist and an intellectual- ist at the same time. The pragmatist cannot hold them both ; he cannot say truth is altogether within experience and truth transcends experi- ence." ..." That being the case, there can be no doubt, after all, as to the fundamental prag- matic view of truth. Truth for the pragmatist does not mean verifiability, it means the process of verification. It is wholly within experience." This, of course, turns out to be as foolish as it at first appears. For it is clear that a theory which reduces everything to psychology, though it may properly speak of satisfactory and suc- cessful experiences, cannot consistently use the word verification at all. A simple case is used to illustrate the difference between the pragma- tist and the ordinary view. " John thinks Peter has a toothache; the object of John's tliought is Peter's present experience ; and, as a fact, Peter has a tootliache. Now the intellectualist's no- tion of truth is this : that Jolm's thought is true because its object is as he tliinks it. Now let us apply the pragmatic meaning of truth to the same situation — remembering that truth here MODERN SPIRIT 203 means a ' form of the good,' the ' useful,' ' effi- cient,' ' workable,' ' satisfactory,' the process of verification. The truth of John's idea about Peter's experience, therefore, according to the pragmatist, consists in its satisfactoriness to John, in its successful leading, in its verifying itself. If it works, if it harmonizes with John's later experience of Peter's action, if it leads in a direction that is worth while, it is true (a state- ment to which, indeed, all might assent), and its truth consists in this working, this harmony, this verification process. John's thought, the pragmatist insists, becomes true only when it has worked out successfully, only when his later experience confirms it by being consistent with it — for remember, truth is not verifiability, but the process of verification. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. At the time when John had the thought about Peter, the thought was neither true nor false, for the process of verification had not yet be- gun, nothing had as yet happened to the idea. To be sure, Peter had a toothache, just as John tliought, but, all the same, John's thought was not true. It did not become true till several hours afterward — in fact, we may suppose, not until Peter, having cured his toothache, told John about it. The thought, ' Peter has a toothache,' thus, as it happens, turns out not to have been true while Peter actually had the 204 BERGSON AND THE toothache, and to have become true only after he had ceased to have a toothache. It became true onl}' by being proved true, and its truth consisted in the process of its proof. One might perhaps be tempted to ask what it was that was proved, and to say to the pragmatist, either this satisfactoriness, this successful lead- ing, is a proof of something outside John's im- mediate experience, something by which his idea is to be judged and justified (in which case truth ceases to be mere verification process and becomes at least vcrifiabilit}^) ; or else it is merely John's subjective feeling of satisfaction and of successful leading and consistence, with no refer- ence to anything else to justify it — in which case it may indeed be pleasant and good, but ii; is hard to sec why it should be called true. For, suppose tliat at the same time with John's thought, Tom thinks Peter has not a toothache. Suppose tliat, being a little stupid and perhaps a little hard of hearing, he misinterprets John's actions and expressions, and that later on he is assured by someone equally misinfonned, that Peter certainly had no toothache. His thought thus works out, is successful, harmonizes with his later experience, is to him genuinely verified. Tlie whole matter ends here and he drops the question completely, never investigating farther. AVere tlie thoughts of both John and Tom true.^" MODERN SPIRIT 205 So our Protagoras, and he imagines his op- ponent replying, " No, Tom's thought was not genuinely verified. Only that thought was really verified and therefore true which would have worked out had both been verified suf- ■ficiently" But this reply is unsatisfactory. " For what do you mean by sufficiently? Suf- ficiently, for what.^* To argue thus would be to presuppose a criterion (apart from the leading of the thought) to which the thought must cor- respond if it is to be true. If you distinguish between a genuine verification and one that is only subjectively satisfactory, you appeal to some other criterion than the process of verifi- cation — in other words you go over to the in- tellectualist's point of view. If on the other hand, you stick to your pragmatic criterion and say that the truth of the thought consists in actual satisfactoriness, then the question be- comes pertinent : Were the thoughts of both boys true? Obviously they were, for both worked, both were satisfactory, both were verified. Hence it was true at the same time and in the same sense that Peter had a toothache and that Peter had not a toothache. Nor is there any- thing surprising in this, if truth is nothing hut a particular hind of satisfactory experience. The principle of contradiction has no meaning and can no longer hold if truth be altogether within one's experience." 206 BERGSON AND THE When I read these words, which so perfectly expressed my difficulty, I wondered what the an- swer would be. We did not have to wait long. Professor James promptly replied that he was misunderstood, saying, " Whether such a prag- matist as this exists I know not, never having myself met with the beast." He rejects most emphatically what we thought was the prag- matic theory of truth, and makes this state- ment : " Truth is essentially a relation between two things, an idea, on the one hand, and a reality outside the idea on the other. This rela- tion, like all relations, has its f undamentum ; namely, the matrix of experiential circumstance, psychological as well as physical, in which the correlated terms are found imbedded. . . . What constitutes the relation known as truth, I now say, is just the existence in the empirical world of this fundamentum of circumstance sur- rounding object and idea and ready to be short- circuited or traversed at full length. So long as it exists and a satisfactory passage through it between the object and tlie idea is possible, that idea will both he true, and will have been true of that object, whether fully developed verification has taken place or not." This statement is certainly explicit and clear. It fully recogniy.cs tliat truth is a relation be- tween the idea and the objective order. And in an article in the Philosophical Review for MODERN SPIRIT 207 January, 1908, on " The Pragmatist Account of Truth and Its Misunderstanders," Professor James is even more emphatic. He says the pragmatist is necessarily a realist in his theory of knowledge ; he " calls satisfactions indispensa- ble for truth building, but expressly calls them insufficient unless reality be also incidentally led to. If the reality he assumed were canceled from his universe of discourse, he would straight- way give the name of falsehoods to the beliefs remaining, in spite of all their satisfactoriness. For him, as for his critic, there can be no truth if there is nothing to be true about." This seems to state with perfect clearness that truth is not found within any human experience, but trans- cends, or may transcend, every such experience. What now does the critic say to this complaint of being misunderstood and to the new position? He does not find it difficult to show that his idea of the pragmatist view of truth is not a carica- ture. Not only has Professor James said the things attributed to him, but other representa- tives of the same school have made similar state- ments. Thus, Professor Dewey has said: " Truth is an experienced relation of character- istic quality of things and it has no meaning outside of such a relation." So Professor Moore : " That which is accepted as real, i. e., as logically real, is one factor xcitliin the judg- ing process, not something outside to which the 208 BERGSON AND THE whole judgment conforms." Mr. Schiller says truth is " a function of our intellectual activity, or a manipulation of our objects which turns out to be useful." But, allowing Professor James to repudiate this view, which he says he never held, the critic asks what is the difference be- tween this latest pragmatist theory that truth is a relation between an idea and a reality outside of the idea, and the view he opposes? He asks also if, as the pragmatist now admits, ideas may " be true in advance of and apart from their util- ity," provided their objects are " really there," how can their truth depend upon satisfactions? For if satisfactions are indispensable to the truth of an idea, it would seem that the idea cannot be true till they are experienced, " and the fact that the object of the idea is really there does not make the idea true." " Thus, John's idea that Peter has a toothache would not be true till John is satisfied, even, if as a fact, Peter actually has a toothache, and although it is true at the same time to Paul who is satisfied." ..." If, on the other hand, satisfactions are not indispensable, if truth is merely the condition that makes verifi- cation possible, and if a belief may be genuinely true before it is verified and without anyone's feeling satisfaction, then it is hard to see that pragmatism has contributed anything in the least original or new to the conception of the truth relation. Will the pragmatists tell us MODERN SPIRIT 209 pLainly which of these two contradictory views is orthodox pragmatism? " These long quotations will, I hope, be excused, because they take us to the heart of the subject. The lover of that philosophic diamond, clearness of thought and statement, will find beautiful specimens in Professor Pratt's essays. To ar- guments so cogent what answer is possible? In the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Sci- entific Methods for March 26, 1908, Professor James asks, " Would it satisfy the repudiators of the fuller definition if we agreed to let them keep the word ' true ' for what they stickle for so exclusively, namely, the more preliminary and objective conditions of the cognitive relation. . . . while the word ' truthful ' should be re- served, as having the more concrete sound, for the entire unmutilated notion for which Mr. Schiller and I contend? Mr. Schiller and I would then appear as fighting the battles of truthfulness against truth. The question would be almost purely academic, for in actual life the true and the truthful would usually denote the same body of actual human statements or beliefs. Even now none of the facts which either party emphasizes has even been denied by the other party, and the quarrel might have the bottom knocked out of it altogether, so far as related to truth's definition only, by the invention of this or some other pair of technical terms." 210 BERGSON AND THE Such, then, is what it all comes to, so far as the pla}' of brilliant minds about the subject has been able to show what is really there. About the value of the outcome you can form your own conclusion, after applying either or both of the pragmatic tests, what difference does it make if 3'ou believe it, or what difference does it make anyway ? The critic of pragmatism so extensively quoted in this paper points out, as I think rightly, that " an ambiguity in the word idea ... is responsible for a great deal of the mis- understanding between pragmatists and anti- pragmatists. The former accept Professor Dewey's definition of an idea as a ' plan of ac- tion,' and look upon it as ' an instrument for en- abling us the better to have to do with the ob- ject and to act about it.' " Of course, if ideas are to be defined in this way, they can be spoken of as useful and suc- cessful, but it seems irrelevant to call them true. A good tool is merely good, not truthful or true. And the usefulness of ideas tliat are merely plans of action has no meaning apart from their use. But, ordinarily, when we say that an idea is truo, we are tliinking not of plans or purposes, but of a judgment that a thing is so. And while we may l)e fully justified in speaking of plans and purposes as wise, successful or good, MODERN SPIRIT 211 only judgments can properly be said to be true. The net result, then, is that of the two views which have been confused in the pragmatist theory of truth, one is admitted to be ridiculous even by Professor James himself, while the other is not different from the view he opposes. And the confusion, it is now clear, is largely due to the fact that when the pragmatists are talking about ideas they are thinking about plans of ac- tion, while the rest of us are thinking of state- ments about the sequence of events and matters of fact. It amounts to this, practically, that if the pragmatists are to be allowed to appropriate the word Truth and give it the new meaning upon which they insist, we shall simply have to find another name for that much more important tiling which we have always meant when we used the term. For when we listen to others we are not concerned to hear what they think is expedi- ent or what feels satisfactory to them, but what they consider to be true. It will be long before the pragmatist form of oath, proposed by Pro- fessor Royce, will be accepted in any court of justice : " I promise to tell whatever is expedi- ent and nothing but what is expedient, so help me future experience." A peculiarly instructive feature of this whole episode in philosophy is the way in which the pragmatic theory of knowledge, like every theory rigidly held, demands of its devotees constant 212 BERGSON AND THE sacrifices of fact. One of the most obvious, con- crete and seemingly indisputable characteristics of cognition is its external reference. We actu- ally do, in our thought, refer to what is beyond our experience. On their theory, the pragma- tists find such transcendence a puzzle, and so deny the fact, that is, the more radical among them do. Professor James, it is true, was a realist, and may at first be considered an excep- tion. Still, though his theory of ideas as hav- ing the function of leading, as enabling us to ' ambulate ' from one part of experience to an- other, served him very well when only phases of experience were in question, it broke down when it was used to explain the relation of these ideas to what is wholly outside us. The ' saltatory ' nature of this relation is obvious, and when James admitted it, he practically gave up his case. In fact, the pragmatic theory of truth and knowledge has been logically dead for sev- eral years. Here again, Dewey is the true ex- ponent of the ultimate nature of pragmatism. The many-sided James admitted tluit, if we are to know the true from the false, there must be some reference to a reality outside our experi- ence, while Dewey, with his theory that knowl- edge is a doubt-inquiry-answer experience, rejects all considerations of external reality. For the latter, the only question is as to the satisfactory or unsatisfactory character of the MODERN SPIRIT 213 experiences. Our plans work and it is well with us, or the reverse. If one still wants to know about objective truth and existence, that is a mere pre-pragmatic temper that lingers on from the days of our ignorance. It is to ask about metaphysical reality, which is no proper concern of ours and " may go to its own place." The denial of objective reference in knowl- edge, and of a relation to that which is beyond experience, as necessary if knowledge is to be distinguished from error, is thus entirely com- parable to the denial of the existence of the moons of Jupiter. And it affords us one more illustration of the fact that neither the biolog- ical point of view, nor any other, is absolute. It is unquestionably useful to consider those as- pects of knowledge which for the logical prag- matists are fundamental and all-sufficient. But if we refuse to consider other equally important and indeed aboriginal characteristics, such as external reference, we are landed in solipsism and agnosticism. It is now clear that James' famous doctrine of the " Will to Believe " is strictly incompati- ble with a thorough-going pragmatism, that is, with a theory that knowing involves no reference to anything beyond the experience of the knower. For, apart from caricatures, James really means that when we have done our best to decide about the truth of such a doctrine as that of the ex- 214 BERGSON AND THE istence of God, and have not been able for lact of data ; wlien, furthermore, we are compelled to act, and our action must take for granted that the doctrine either is or is not true ; then, and not till then, we have the right to take the course which seems on the whole wisest. In these cases of compulsory action with insufficient knowledge, we have the right to believe. This is a ver}^ different thing from what is implied in the term, " The Will to Believe," which James laments that he ever used. But it is of value only to men who b}'^ truth mean something more than effective working. Wlien religious men hear tliat the truth of a theory is its satisfactory working, they are apt to be comforted by the statement tliat the doc- trine of the existence of a God is true because it works. But they will not be so happy when they realize the illusory nature of this assist- ance. For this does not, and on strictly prag- matic principles can not, mean that we may be- lieve in the objective existence of God because the belief lielps us to live. The belief is not true in this sense. All that the right to believe can signify, on Dewey's pragmatism, is that the be- lief in God works because it works. To ask about God's real existence is to enquire about metaphysical reality, and that is not a legiti- mate question. Indeed, pragmatism refuses to consider MODERN SPIRIT 215 whether anything is true, in the old, familiar, objective sense. Even of itself, all that it can properly do is to insist that it is a good method, not that it is objectively true. This, then, seems to be the outcome of the whole matter. As a mere attitude of protest, pragmatism is intelligible, but not constructive. It is not to be refuted by argument, since it is partly a matter of temperament and partly a reaction in a particular thought-situation. As a theory of meaning, and a method of determin- ing the significance of propositions, of " making our ideas clear," it has proved to be the reverse of useful. As a theory of truth and a theory of knowledge, it is obviously an overstatement of partial truths and is logically dead. For religion, this outcome is fortunate. Solipsism probably, scepticism certainly, is the necessary result of a philosophy that refuses to even consider questions of ontology, of metaphysical reality. If this is pragmatism, and I think it deserves the right to the name, it is entirely incompatible v\'ith that venture of faith which all of us make, and which Prof. James was trying to describe in his famous and misnamed essay, " The Will to Believe." We cannot, if we are clear and consistent, call these two radically different things by the same name. If, ignoring these technical discussions, we 216 BERGSON AND THE think only of the etymological implications of the term pragmatism, and decide to define it for ourselves, we may do so provided we clearly re- alize the perfectly definite meaning we are giv- ing to it, and do not by its use commit ourselves to precarious and one-sided ideas of life. Be- cause we are, and must continue to be, pragma- tists in one sense, it does not at all follow that the James-Dewey theory of truth and knowledge is correct. The gist of it all, the element of value in pragmatism, as thus redefined, ma}' be stated as follows : In the general situation which confronts us all, we are constantly com- pelled to decide the most important matters in the absence of adequate data. Life is like rid- ing a bicycle ; we have to go ahead before we know we are right. Our knowledge is very lim- ited, and we walk mostly by faith. Only com- paratively simple facts can be calculated, and our most developed sciences deal with restricted fields. Our specialists know many things about chemical reactions, ph3'sical processes, geolog- ical changes and micro-organisms. Upon ap- plied science our civilization largely rests, and in the growth of science is a great part of our hope for the future. But the larger the scope of a science the more inadequate and undevel- oped it is. The sciences that deal with life, such as psychology, ethics, sociology, arc not much more than programmes, which it is hoped future MODERN SPIRIT 217 investigations may fill up. Meanwhile, we have to live now, and it is well to realize that neither science, which is so useful in its way, nor phi- losophy, which synthesizes the results of scien- tific investigations, is a complete guide to life. They cannot yet demonstrate to us the nature of reality and the appropriate human reaction. Is the evolving cosmos, this mighty engine of mud and fire, all ? Or is there in and through it a God, a life, a spirit, that is at least as great as our ideals of the noble, the good, the divine.? Is the universe congenial to our ideals? Is the heart of reality akin to what we instinctively love and reverence.'' Arc courage and faith and hope appropriate, or is the pessimist right.'' Are we the sole inhabitants of an otherwise life- less universe.'' Are we orphans, marooned on this planet.'' Or is our life in touch with a great life with whom we may have fellowship.'' Are we mistaken in the sense we have that when we think truly, when we love, when we are lo3-al to the highest we know, we are living on lines that do not end where our lives end but that in some sense they are the lines of God's life.'' ^ Whichever view we take must be taken at our risk. In these matters life is necessarily a ven- ture. It is, as someone has said, a speculation on a grand scale. And it is worth while to re- alize that certain, absolute knowledge is not to be had ; that neither philosophers nor men of 218 BERGSON AND THE science can tell us ; that even the founders of the world's great rcHffions themselves knew no more than we, but that the}^ too, had to make the great venture. There are many people who do not under- stand this. They run here and there, go to this church and that, read the new books and investi- gate the new religions and philosophic fads, in the hope of getting definite knowledge concern- ing the great themes. But a little reflection ought to show that this is vain. There is ab- solutely nothing for us but to select a working theory of life, live by it, and take the risk. The Socrates of the " Phaedo " long ago told us this. " I know," he said, " how hard or rather impos- sible is the attainment of certainty about ques- tions such as these in our present life. And yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about them to the iittennost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined them on every side. For he should persevere until he has achieved one of two things : either he should discover or be taught the truth about them ; or, if this be impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the raft on which he sails through life — not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry liim." (Phaedo 85.) MODERN SPIRIT 219 To be sure, in choosing a working theory of life, we use the pragmatic method and take the one which promises best results. Experience affords some help. In the long past some the- ories have been found to be livable, to be, when believed and acted upon, biologically serviceable. INIore important yet, for we are interested not merely in existence but in noble living, certain ways of reacting toward the world have been found to produce grand and beautiful lives. The results we care most for have been achieved when men and women have assumed that this world is a place for a manly and womanly life, when they have taken and kept the way of cour- age, hope and love, when they have lived in the conviction that loyalty to the highest, even on the part of the humblest, is the supreme good and has more than temporal significance. Our theodicies, we may as well frankly admit it, are all failures. We cannot explain away all the cruelties and brutalities in the universe. Yet in spite of the facts that depress us and the argu- ments that threaten to reduce us to despair, it is significant that those men have lived most nobly and beautifully, most satisfactorily to them- selves and helpfully to others, who have lived as if they were citizens of a moral universe, of God's world. In this spiritual situation we are necessarily pragmatists. Not only is it legiti- mate to decide which way we shall adventure our 220 BERGSON AND THE lives, but we must do so. And if we are religious men, it is because we have resolved to trust our moral sentiments, because we are following, far- off it may be, but still following, and counseling others to follow those heroic souls who, in the darkest hours and most desperate situations, have said of the God who is a name for our moral ideals, " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him." [ " But what has Bergson's philosophy to do with all this? " The question is natural and the answer easy. It would be very nearly cor- rect to reply, " Nothing at all." The meta- physician of the life force, the strenuous up- holder of the view that the primal reality is " The Life that maketh all things new, The blooming earth, tlic thoughts of men," is not a man of the pragmatist temper, nor does he hold the theory of truth or the theory of knowledge announced and defended by James, Schiller and Dewey. He has a very definite theory of knowledge, according to which the mind is composed of two complementary powers. The intellectual element knows the outside of things. It gives us the truth of the material world and ultimately helps us to an intuition of the very nature of matter. It is true that it is constitutionally incapal)le of knowing life, but we are able to get at the I ruth of this through MODERN SPIRIT 221 intuition, sympathy, insight. We thus have ideas that are more than plans of action. By combining into a synoptic view what sight and insight reveal, we arrive at the very truth of metaphysical reality. Bergson is therefore no pragmatist, agnostic or sceptic. Faith in hu- man knowledge never went further, and has never been better defended. Why, then, has he ever been classed with the pragmatists .'' Chiefly, it seems, because it is so common to reason after this fashion : I am a pragmatist and I hold a particular view. B defends the same or a similar view. Therefore B is a pragmatist. As we have seen, it is very difficult to know which of the many things that have been called pragmatism deserves the name. I think that what is characteristic in it is its theory of knowledge and its theory of truth, and that these theories, at least as the prag- matists hold them, are false. But there are other definitions. We are told that, in its broad- est sense, pragmatism means " the acceptance of the categories of life as fundamental. It is the bio-centric philosophy." This is peculiar, vague and, on the whole, most unsatisfactor}'. For there are many of us who have come up to phi- losophy and to the problems of the moral and social life, and even of history, by Ava^' of biology and psychology, who are yet unable to accept pragmatism as a spirit, a method, or a theory 222 BERGSON AND THE of truth. The fact is that exponents of con- tested views are always looking for support, especially when hard pressed, and in this case Bergson has been claimed as an ally because of his theory of the instrumental nature of the intellect and of the concepts it uses. It ^ is perfectly true that he does regard the intel- lect as an instrument developed by the mind to enable it to deal with matter, but the prag- matists who emphasize this usually neglect to state the further fact that this instrument has been molded on the material environment and reveals to us something of its truth, of its na- ture, that is, of that part of reality. It is metaphysically incompetent only when it deals with life, the truth of which we may also know, although in another way. But different as James and Bergson are, they agree in two fundamental points. The Amer- ican philosopher follows tlie Frenchman in his theory, we may even say his demonstration, of tlie impossibility of knowing the fullness and richness of life through conceptual tliought, of expressing wliat is essentially movement in static terms. Both contend against the rationalistic notion that all is given, and tliink of tlie universe not as a median ism, but in terms of growth. Says James: " 'i'ho essential contrast is that for rationalism reality is ready-made and complete MODERN SPIRIT 223 from all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its com- plexion from the future. On the one side the universe is secure, on the other it is still pursu- ing its adventures." (Pragmatism, p. 257.) Their common a^cw is perhaps best expressed in James' essay on " Bergson and His Critique of Intellectualism," which the author of " Crea- tive Evolution " says faithfully expresses his thought. As a preparation for philosophic study, it would be hard to find anything better than this wonderful chapter, for it contains a sun-clear statement of the nature of concepts and their relations to perceptual experience, without which no one can get far. It is not a denial, but an explicit admission of the value of a stable scheme of concepts as a means of order- ing life and of enabling us to find our way about in the world. What it does deny is the notion that " logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be." Giving, as it does, " primarily the relations between concepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only secondarily or so far as the facts have already been identified with concepts and defined by them, logic must of course stand or fall with the conceptual method." In conceptual thought, we substitute " tracings for realities," " brain diagrams or physical metaphors for moral facts," and treat human interests as mechanical forces. These 224 BERGSON theoretic constructions are extremely useful, since they are " maps of the distribution of other percepts in space and time." Still, they are only schematic arrangements, while " the inner movements of our spirit are known only perceptually." I submit, then, neither James nor Bergson is an anti-intellectualist except in a limited and perfectl}^ definite sense. The latter has taken great pains to explain that " concepts are indis- pensable to intuition," and is declared by James to be " accurately right wlicn he limits concep- tual thought to arrangement, and when he in- sists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of wliat we ought to know." Of course, it is possible to go through the books of these writers " like a myopic ant over a build- ing," and after the manner of a partisan de- bater judge them b}^ statements taken apart from tlieir context. But whoever interprets them sympathetically and in thcMr total inten- tion, will not make the mistake of supposing that they can be quoted in favor of the view that " knowledge is merely experienced transition, that truth is merely satisfactory consequences and transcendence nothing but nonsense," and he will not identify their philosophy with any of those marvelous caricatures, the pragmatisms of popular imagination. CHAPTER XIII RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BERGSONIAN CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION Although the content of human life has been growing richer at a rapid rate during the last few centuries, religious and moral interests are still supreme. So far from dying out, they are to most people the very heart of life. What threatens, even remotely, these precious inter- ests, instantly arouses alarm. Religious feeling is so strong that discussion of religious subjects, except among the like-minded, is instinctively avoided. A man who introduces such themes in th.e conversation of mixed companies is regarded as more or less of a fool, who does not hesitate to play with dynamite in a crowd. Arguments on religious subjects are usually more heated than judicial, and tend to degenerate into social com- bats. Men and women who converse rationally and agreeably on all other subjects, very often appear at their worst when their faith is in ques- tion. This is perfectly intelligible, when full ac- count is taken of what their faith means to them. 226 BERGSON AND THE Their religion is their working theory of life on which they are staking their happiness and their destiny, and it includes the ideals which they worship and strive to follow. To strike at this is to threaten their lives, and the^' can no more be unconcerned and judicial than can a mother when her children are in danger. Substantially the same thing is time of the moral interest. This also is instinctively felt to be what it really is, not merely one interest among many of about equal importance, but a supreme concern of life. The question whether we shall be good or bad takes, as Plato said, precedence of all else. Moral ruin means total ruin, the disorganization of life. This instinc- tive moral feeling manifests itself sometimes in unlovely and absurd ways, as when fanatics drape the most beautiful of statues and suppress innocent and wholesome anmsements ; but it is nevertheless on the whole justified. There are people who cannot enjoy Goethe's poetry be- cause they object to his private life, and Wag- ner's music is spoiled for them because they be- lieve that the famous composer was disloyal to his friends. It is, of course, regrettable when ethics thus obtinjdes itself unnecessarily in aes- thetics, but such facts serve to keep us vividly aware that the religious and moral interests are still supreme. When, therefore, we read that religion is dying, and tliat it is to be replaced MODERN SPIRIT 227 by science, or social service, or socialism, we know at once that we have the opinion of a super- ficial observer of human life, of one who confuses the decline of certain dogmas and institutions with that of the religious life of which they are historic expressions, or it is perhaps the theory of someone who is generalizing from his own experience or that of certain sections of society which are now in an attitude of revolt but which will inevitably come in time to a more positive and constructive spirit. The question of ques- tions, then, for wholesome, normal people, is and doubtless will continue to be that of morality and religion. What they want to know about Bergson, as about every other great thinker, is, first of all, the bearing of his thought on their working theory of life, upon their ideals, upon the courage, faith and hope which enable them to live and feel that life is worth while. It is only putting the same question in a dif- ferent form to ask, — What does Bergson think about teleology.? For religion seems bound up with a teleological view of the world. If the whole is a machine, a mechanical scheme, if there is no meaning or purpose in it, our lives seem to lose their significance, and we are like children realizing for the first time that they are or- phans. The very essence of religious faith has perhaps received its concise and classic expres- sion in Browning's lines, — 22£ BERGSON AND THE " This world's no blot for us Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink." All great religions, therefore, whatever their differences, are found to involve or imply, even when they do not consciously uphold, a philoso- phy of history. And Tolstoy was substantially right when, in his work on the nature of art, he said that to be unreligious is to have lost the clew to history, to be without any noble concep- tion of its meaning. Moreover, all the philoso- phies of history which are inspiring rather than depressing agree in assigning to man a signifi- cant place in the cosmos, and so give to him a sense of dignity and worth. The philosophy of evolution, in particular, gives a new and immense sweep to human thought. It literally puts a meaning into his- tory, into time, past, present and future. What intelligible conception of the past could our an- cestors form in the old, pre-evolutionary days.'' We are so accustomed to the idea that something has really been accomplished, achieved, in the long ages of which we arc the heirs, that we cannot understand how the world must have looked to those who thought of it as simply ex- isting. Evolution has widened our hori/on and<, given us an organic conception of the world- process in time, so that it is now not merely a MODERN SPIRIT 229 question of the place of our people in history, but of humanity in the biological realm, and of life in the cosmos. We dare to think that the whole past had a meaning, that we are the heirs of the ages to whom the ends of the world have come, that in our part of the universe we are the highest product of the creative power at work through all past time. As the whole proc- ess flowers in humanity, so humanity flowers in lives of goodness, intelligence and love, in the saints, the saviors, the inspirers and helpers of our race. And since we can form no rational notion of how a process is to be interpreted ex- cept by its outcome, we seem logically compelled to regard the meaning of the universe as indi- cated in its finest and noblest lives, and in the qualities to which those lives aspire. When we consider what the best men and women are, and what they are striving to be, we may legitimately though modestly claim that we have some true, even if inadequate notion, of what the universe is doing, of the inci'easing purpose of the ages. For, as Schopenhauer truly saw, we are of the stuff of which the world is made, the ultimate reality is what we are, and there is nothing in us, even our highest aspiration, whicli is not an expression of that life of our life. There is more than one form of the philosophy of evolution. The Spencerian conception, which is the most familiar, has the defect of not being 230 BERGSON AND THE thorough-going. In this view there is no real evolution of the power behind evolution, of that reality which he sometimes spoke of as the Un- knowable, sometimes as the All-Being, and some- times as the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. Evolution, as he un- derstood it, is not of this reality, but takes place in the realm of the phenomenal, and consists in a redistribution of matter and motion according to certain laws. Of this process, there is no permanent result. The complex system of atoms changes its configuration, and energy is cease- lessly transfonned, — that is all. After the in- tegration of matter comes its disintegration, and evolutions and dissolutions succeed each other without end. Nothing is being built up that is to last, nothing is really achieved in time. Bcrgson, on the other hand, belongs among the romantic evolutionists in the sense that for him it is real being, or, if you will, the absolute, that evolves. Time is, therefore, not rcsultless. The ultimate reality is a creative, evolving life. Now, since life as we know it in ourselves is a thing of purpose, Bcrgson seems to be moving straight toward a telcological philosophy, es- pecially since he says explicitly that " life is of the psychological order," and that consciousness in general nmst be " co-extensive with universal life." When, in addition, he has shown the utter inadequacy of the mechanistic world-view, there 1 MODERN SPIRIT 231 seems to be no alternative remaining but a tele- ological, i. e., religious philosophy. This ap- parently logical consequence of his premises, hoAvever, he refuses to accept. He rejects tele- ology and is at great pains to explain why, al- though his rejection of this way of regarding life is qualified, and not so absolute as some of his interpreters claim. Some time ago I had a conversation on this point with a cultivated gen- tleman who had himself given a series of lec- tures on Bergson's philosophy, and who would not listen to the suggestion that teleology had not been completely and finally banished from the theory of Creative Evolution. Having re- jected all such elements from his own thought- scheme, he was a trifle impatient on being told that he could not claim the French thinker as a defender of his extreme position. As this is a matter of the greatest importance, it deserves to be examined with some care. No good can come of arbitrary interpretations of this or any other philosopher, or of attempts to force an unintended meaning into his utterances, in the interests of any views, whether religious or un- religious, which we ourselves hold. It is neces- sary, first of all, to be perfectly clear as to what Bergson thinks about the subject, and why he takes precisely that position and no other. It will then be in order to criticise the view and to show, if, as I think, it can be shown, that Berg- 232 BERGSON AND THE son's premises will take the consistent thinker much further than the philosopher himself has gone. -V . Recall, in the first place, the theory of knowl- edge upon which this whole construction rests. Life is the primary reality. As it has organ- ized plants and animals, as it has produced sense- organs, hands and feet, wings and fins, so it has developed that other instrument of adaptation which we call the intellect. This implement, wliich life uses for perfecting adjustments to the material world, itself makes use of certain in- struments which we call ideas or concepts, chief of which are two, those of mechanism and tele- ology, or, to use Bcrgson's terms, mechanism and finalisni. In dealing with unorganized mat- ter, with the world of objects and things, these thought-frames are quite adequate and satisfac- tory. But when we seek to apply them to life, for wliicli tlicy were not made, we find that both are inapplical)le, though not in the sani? degree. Bergson's words are, — " we try on the evolu- tionary progress the ready-made garments that our understanding puts at our disposal, mecha- nism and finality ; we show that they do not fit, neither the one nor the other, l)ut that one of them might he recut and resercn, and in this new form fit less badly than the other.'" (Italics mine.) We have here an intimation that though MODERN SPIRIT 233 neither the machine view nor the purposive view of the world is true, the latter is at least nearer the truth than the former, and, moreover, is susceptible of being put in a less objectionable than its oi'dinary form. In fact, the reader must be careful not to overlook the qualifying statements which this thinker, who is careful as well as bold, is constantly making. For in- stance, he rejects the theory of mechanism be- cause it is a rigid scheme which forces those who hold it to deny or ignore the obvious facts of life. There is no place in it for the constant upspringing of the new, for the maturing and ripening characteristic of what really lives, for the effect of time, for individuality and freedom. There is a difference between the living and the lifeless, and mechanism ignores this difference. For this theory, all is given, and the new is in- conceivable and therefore inadmissible. Reality actually is creative, but in a universe which is a mechanism, nothing more is possible than rear- rangements of the parts. Life is a larger thing than either mechanism or finalism, which are, at bottom, " only standpoints to which the human mind has been led by considering the work of man." The intellect is an instrument created by life, and concepts, such as those of mechanism and finality, are instruments of the intellect ; consequently to try to conceive of life in such terms is to try to put the whole into a part of < 234 BERGSON AND THE a part. Now the physicists and chemists who are investigating organic structures would be wrong; to take such statements as an indication that Bergson regards their researches as ille- gitimate or futile. If they read further, they will come upon such qualifications as this : " I recognize that positive science can and should proceed as if organization was like making a machine. Only so will it have any hold on or- ganized bodies. For its object is not to show ' us the essence of things, but to furnish us with ; the best means of acting on them. Physics and ' chemistry are well advanced sciences, and living matter lends itself to our action only so far as we can treat it by the processes of our physics and chemistry. Organization can therefore only be studied scientifically if the organized body has first been likened to a machine. The cells will be the pieces of the machine, the organ- ism their assemblage, and the elementary labors which have organized the parts will be regarded as the real elements of the labor which has or- ganized the whole. That is the standpoint of science. Quite different, in our opinion, is the stand])oint of philosophy." C K., 93. This means that for the practical purposes of life, e.g., for medicine and for the industries and manufactures winch use organic products, the methods used in the physical and chemical laboratories are the best. It is only necessary MODERN SPIRIT 235 to remember that in such cases life is viewed in a special and partial way, and that we must not make a metaphysics of our practically useful concepts. " If science is to extend our action on things, and if we can act only with inert mat- ter for instrument, science can and must continue to treat the living; as it has treated the inert. But, in doing so, it must be understood that the further it penetrates the depths of life, the more sjaiibolic, the more relative to the contingencies of action, the knowledge it supplies us be- comes." ^ C. E., 198. 1 The reader who desires to know something of the astonishing number of processes which biochemistry has already discovered in protoplasm may study the lucid little summary, entitled " Chemical Phenomena in Life " by Ferdinand Czapek, published by Harper and Broth- ers, New York, 1911. He will there learn that protoplasm has a peculiar chemical constitution and a mechanical structure, and upon these, according as one or the other seems the more important, are based the Stuff Theories and the Engine Theories of life. Protoplasm is a col- loid, an albumin sol, or rather a group of colloids, which has many of the physical and chemical characteristics of true solutions but also properties which are found only in suspensions. Besides the nucleus of the cell, there is the protoplasmatic membrane which has peculiar func- tions more or less well understood, and in the narrow space it encloses go on a great number of chemical processes. Some of these are due to soluble ferments called enzymes, such as diastase, which are divided into groups, the hydrolases, esterases, carbohydrases, lip- ases, amidases, proteases, coagulases, oxidases, reductases, carboxylases, etc. We read also of pro-enzymes or zymogens, of a group of peculiar compounds called hor- 2SG BERGSON AND THE ^^ There are some minds which seem determined by their constitution to exaggerate all differ- ences. They habitually use superlatives, never having realized the value of the positive degree. What seems good to them, they call di^^ne, the inferior being condemned as diabolical. He who criticises them, they regard as an enem3\ Es- sentially partisans, they denounce the saner men who see the various sides of vexed questions and the complexity of nearly all concrete situations. There is no gradation of light and shadow in their mental pictures. " Let darkness keep her raven gloss " ; " he wlio offends in but one point is guilty of the whole law," — such are their fa- vorite maxims. Natures of this character arc incompetent in philosophy, although they are precisely the ones that need it most. When they meet with an original construction such as that of Bergson, they seem unable to take notice mones, which exert stimulating or regulating effects on the organism. Then tliere are numerous toxins and anti- toxins with which Iinmunocheniistrj^ deals. There are substances such as ojisonines, bactcrolysins which sen'e for the jirotcction of the organism, and others such as aggressines wliich " assist parasites against their hosts." One does not need to be a chemist and know a great deal about these matters at first hand to miderstand that the chemical investigation of living matter promises results of great practical value, even if one sides with Bergson rather than with this ])rofessor of plant physiology, who regards life as "on the wliole nothing else but a com- plex of innumerable chemical reactions in tiie living sub- stance which wc call protoplasm." JNIODERN SPIRIT 237 of the qualifications which the philosopher makes of his own doctrines. We have just seen that he justifies and makes place for mechanistic con- ceptions in science, and in the case of finalism he goes even further, saying that " one accepts something of it as soon as one rejects pure mechanism. The theory we shall put forward in this book will therefore necessarily partake of finalism to a certain extent." P. 40. " The philosophy of life to which we are leading up claims to transcend both mechanism and final- ism ; but it is nearer the second doctrine than the first." P. 50, It is easy to see why Bergson rejects final- istic conceptions. To him they imply a rigid scheme, " a programme previously arranged." The universe, on that theory, would be like a phonograph, and our lives like the " records." When the machine works, the songs or speeches represented on gutta percha disks would come out. But this is mechanism again, only it is an inverted mechanism, in which " the attrac- tion of the future is substituted for the impul- sion of the past." All is given, all is rigid and mechanical, and there is no room for the inven- tion, the creation, the incalculable, which are characteristics of our human experience. In short, it is not life. We cannot therefore re- gard life as the realization of a plan, for a plan is an idea, and life creates ideas as it moves on- 238 BERGSON AND THE ward. " Evolution does not mark out a solitary route ; it takes directions without aiming at ends, and it remains inventive even in its adapta- tions." If life were nothing more than the re- alization of a plan, what would the final comple- tion of its activity mean.^ Suppose there is a goal and that it is finally reached: what then.'' For Bcrgson the question is its own answer : there is no finality. " Nature is more and better than a plan in course of realization. A plan is a term assigned to labor : it closes the future whose form it indicates. Before the evolution of life, ^ on the contrary, the portals of the future re- main wide open. It is a creation that goes on forever in virtue of an initial movement. This movement constitutes the unity of the organized world — a prolific unity, of an infinite richness, superior to any that the intellect could dream of, for the intellect is only one of its aspects or products." C. E. 105. This sense of the inadequacy of conceptual thought to express life's fullness is what was in Tennyson's mind wlien he wrote the lines : " Our little systems h,ave their day; They have their day and cease to be; They arc but broken lights of Thee, And Thou^ () Lord, art more than they." Anotlier reason for rejecting the tcleological view of reality Bergson finds in the fact that evo- MODERN SPIRIT 239 lution is not along one line only. Finalistic thinkers usually slip over this difficulty too easily ; they tend to forget that there are many ^ divergent tendencies in the living world; that nature is like a tree whose branches grow more numerous and separate more and more widely from each other and from the common trunk. Such unity as there is in life Bergson thinks is due rather to an original impetus, a vis a tergo, than to an ideal harmony, " a far off, divine event toward which the whole creation moves." " So the discord between species will go on in- creasing. Indeed, we have as yet only indicated the essential cause of it. We have supposed, for the sake of simplicity, that each species re- ceived the impulsion in order to pass it on to others, and that, in every direction in which life evolves, the propagation is in a straight line. But, as a matter of fact, there are species which are arrested; there are some that retrogress. Evolution is not only a movement forward ; in many cases we observe a marking-time, and still more often a deviation or turning back. It must be so, as we shall show further on, and the same causes that divide the evolution movement often cause life to be diverted from itself, hypno- tized by the form it has just brought forth. Thence results an increasing disorder. No doubt there is progress, if progress means a con- tinual advance in the general direction deter- MO BERGSON AND THE mined by a first impulsion ; but this progress is accomplished only on the two or three great lines of evolution on which forms ever more and more complex, ever more and more high, appear ; between these lines run a crowd of minor paths in which, on the contrary, deviations, arrests, and set-backs, are multiplied." Apropos of this passage, and there are many others of the same character in the pages of " Creative Evolution," it may be remarked that men of science, especially zoologists and biolo- gists, ought to find a delight in reading Bcrgson, that is, if they care for philosophy at all. For he is the most empirical of the world's great thinkers. The difficulties he cites in the way of teleological views are not those which would be fully appreciated or deeply felt by mathemati- cians, physicists or literary men. He has con- templated long and earnestly the panorama of the living world, the complex relations of the in- numerable species of plants and animals. That is, he has gazed at the spectacle of life and not merely read about it in a book. I do not know of any other pliilosopher of his class who has faced these difficulties with such knowledge and sucli frankness. Tlie theodicies of most of them arc too easy, and those wlio, as a result of long study of nature, liave an adequate sense of her disharmonies and incoherences, have been wait- ing for a thinker who could give us a comprelien- MODERN SPIRIT 241 sivc intci-pretation of nature with a place in it for the concrete facts of life. ^ Bergson offers as a help in understanding the great process the conception of an elan vital, a poussee interieure, an enduring impulse or life force, an original impetus, which is at first undif- y ferentiated but which splits up as it grows. As an hypothesis, it fits a multitude of the facts of life of evolutionary history fairly well. But I venture to suggest that there is a certain ambig- uity about the term, a vagueness that becomes troublesome when the discussion turns upon the purposive aspects of life. Although Bergson warns us against the physical connotations of the term, and says explicitly that this life force is psychological in its nature, is consciousness or superconsciousness, the reader gets the impres- sion that in his biological discussions Bergson himself does not always sufficiently remember this. For instance, he has a chapter on " the meaning of life." But how can there be mean- ing without purpose? He says that evolution " takes directions without aiming at ends." A physical force might do that, but not a conscious life. If the cosmical elan keeps a direction through whole geological ages, and is " inventive in its adaptations," if through millions of years and in spite of countless defeats and failures, it " strives " in the direction of the freedom it at- tains in man, it is impossible not to attribute 242 BERGSON AND THE to it some knowledge of its end. We can not use such language and deny the purposive character of the movement. Indeed, purpose is implied in the very term " creative evolution." Bergson, rightly, as it seems to me, insists that the facts of orthogene- sis are unintelligible except on the assumption of some impulse " which passes from germ to germ across the individuals," so that the con- stant variation in a certain direction which builds up a new species is not an accident. He even admits that in the orthogcnetic development of the eye, " a psychological cause intervenes." " A hereditary change in a definite direction, which continues to accumulate and add to itself so as to build up a more and more complex ma- chine, must certainl}^ be related to some sort of effort, but an effort of far greater depth than the individual effort, far more independent of circumstances, an effort connnon to most repre- sentatives of the same species, inherent in the germs they bear rather tlian in their substance alone, an effort thereby assured of being passed on to their descendants." If, however, this ef- fort which bridges tlie interval between the gen- erations and unites tliem in a process of develop- ment is not a physical force, but is psychological in its nature, how can it fail to be aware of what it is doing.? How can tJwre be effort main- MODERN SPIRIT 243 tained for ages hy a psychological cause without purpose? Of course, this has not escaped Bergson. He realizes that teleology is implicit in all such terms as development and progi-ess. " In speak- ing of a progress toward vision,^'' he asks, " are we not coming back to the old notion of final- ity ? It would be so, undoubtedly, if this prog- ress required the conscious or unconscious idea of an end to be attained. But it is really ef- fected in virtue of the original impetus of life," etc. To me, progress does require such an idea of an end, for without it the process would seem of necessity to be purely physical. Bergson's reserve is the more puzzling in that he expressly says that the life tendency in its action on mat- ter " implies at least a rudiment of choice, and a choice involves the anticipatory idea of several possible actions. Possibilities of action must therefore be marked out for the living being before the action itself. Visual perception is nothing else." C.E.P. 96. (Italics mine.) The dramatic story of the age-long effort of the cosmical life force to insert some indeter- mination into matter, to build up organisms whose action should be really free, cannot be told except in language which implies the teleology which Bergson rejects. If this primitive im- petus were purely physical, this would not be 244 BERGSON AND THE true. But it is not pressing a metaphor too far to say that we have a real drama in the story of the successes and failures of the life that is in the universe " to create with matter, which is necessity itself, an instrument of free- dom, to make a machine which should triumph over mechanism, and to use the determinism of nature to pass through the meshes of the net which this very determinism has spread." In the human brain and nervous system, which is a complicated switchboard that makes possible a variety of responses to stimuli and so affords a way of escape from the determinism of simple reflex action, Bergson sees the chief triumph of organic evolution. " That the main energy of the vital impulse has been spent in creating ap- paratus of this kind is, we believe, what a glance over the organized world as a whole easily shows." The life of the human body is there- fore " on the road that leads to the life of the spirit." The history of life " manifests a search < for individuality." It is tlie story of a con- scious or supcrconscious reality, "which is essen- tially invention and freedom, pursuing its course through all tlic ages of evolution, ovcrwlielmed by automatism in the vegetable, sunk in torpor in the echinodcniis jiiid mollusca, and finally at- taining to an expression of its instinctive na- ture in the higliest of the artliropods and of its i-;il ional powers ;iin()i)g the vertebrates, i. c., in MODERN SPIRIT 245 man. Wliat is this which keeps its course, which faces obstacles with inventiveness, which is thwarted often but after millions of years at- tains a partial success? Can we say all this of it and deny it purpose? It is true, as Bergson says, that the more we fix our attention on the continuity of life, and we may say on its achieve- ments, " the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness." The effort to avoid finalism therefore proves futile after all. If the clan vital is lifeless, if it is a physical force, we can think of it in terms of mechanism ; but if it is a life, then we have no other alternative than that of attempting to recut and resew that other ready-made and badly fitting garment which the understanding has put at our disposal, namely, finalism or tele- ology. Let us see what we can do in this line. CHAPTER XIV RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BERGSONTAN CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION (Continued) In the Platonic dialogues and in the Homeric poetry, the characters who are starting on an adventure or beginning a difficult argument often preface their undertakings with an invoca- tion to the gods. It will be enough for us sim- ply to remark that consti-uctive thinking, to be helpful, must be thorough-going. Whoso lacks ^ logical courage or, having put his hand to the plow, looks back, is not fit for the kingdom of thouglit. Nulla vestigia retrorsum! The half- way modes of thought, the evolutionary theories with reservations, with large areas of reality marked off and posted with signs of " No Tres- pass," are but the pitiful makeshifts of timid thinkers, and the only service they can render is to case for those who make them the path to a logically untenable position. Bergson is pe- culiarly satisfying as a constructive thinker be- cause of the clear and consistent way in which his thinking is carried out^, and because of 240 MODERN SPIRIT 247 the frankness with which he faces the real difficulties. Moreover, the evolution he de- scribes is a real process, not an illusion, a mere appearance in the phenomenal. Time is real, and there is " a progressive growth of the absolute." The universe, regarded as a whole, evolves. All that we know anything about is part of the great process, the latest, finest, highest intellectual, moral and spiritual aspects of life as well as those which are more material, crude, sensual and gross. What is necessary, first of all, is to fully realize that as " there is unbroken continuity between the evolution of the embryo and that of the complete organism," as " life docs but prolong this prena- tal evolution," so there is the same organic con- nection between the lowest forms of aboriginal life and the highest reaches of spiritual activity of the finest specimens of the human race. To comprehend the significance of the truth that the highest and the lowest, the earliest and the latest, the natural and the spiritual, are bound together in the unity of a process of develop- ment, is to attain to conceptions of the greatest value. For, rightly viewed, the relation be- tween the humble beginnings of life on the earth and the spiritual elevation of its manifestations in the most highly evolved men, takes nothing from the latter but rather transforms our con- ception of the former. Man, even as he is, be- 248 BERGSON AND THE ing the outcome of the world-process, gives to that process its, meaning, — a meaning that will itself appear more profound as human life ad- vances toward the ideal and achieves what trans- cends the present powers of the constructive imagination. .^ It is now clear why religious thinkers make a mistake when they are half-hearted in their ac- ceptance of the philosophy of evolution, and when they try to prove that the spiritual life of humanity is an exception, a miraculous addition to the world-process rather than its outgrowth. Such a disjointed theory is unsatisfactory from every point of view, tlie religious and moral as well as the purely intellectual. Vain is the ef- fort to find some nook or cranny in the cosmic process for the supernatural. Precarious is the faith of those who are looking for some place outside tlie realm of tlic natural for God and the higher naturi' of man. Tluis, Alfred Russel Wallace agrees witli Darwin that man's body was developed h}' natural process, hut he makes an exception of the intelligence of tlio liiglu-r moral qualities. ]\Ian's spiritual nature, he tliinks, is superadded, not evolved. " The love of trutli, the delight in beauty, the passion for justice, and tlie thrill of exaltation when we hear of any act of courageous self-sacrifice, are the workings in us of a higher nature which has not MODERN SPIRIT 249 been developed by means of the struggle for material existence." "V That Wallace has failed to make out his case, that the consensus of opinion is against him, will cause no regret to those who understand the real situation. Indeed, I can hardly imag- ine anything more disastrous to philosophy and religious faith than for Wallace's idea to have proved true. For, as I have elsewhere tried to show, all our hope lies, not in disproving nat- uralism, but in making it thorough-going. It is precisely because man is inside the natural realm, Avholly inside and all of him inside, body, soul, and spirit, that we are not only justified in liolding, but logically driven toward, a spir- itual interpretation of the universe. For see, what is it that depressed us but our conception of nature as merely physical, as a material, mechanical process? But a process that in- cludes man cannot be so conceived. That which is dead could not originate life, that which is material could not produce and sustain civiliza- tion. When we arc forming our conception of nature, we cannot leave man out. A nature that produces life, that blossoms out into conscious- ness, tlie love of truth, the passion for justice, tlie thirst for righteousness, and the longing for ideal perfection, is the only nature we know any- thing about. The trouble with our agnostics 250 BERGSON AND THE is that their thought halts when it ought to be thorough-going. It is clearly unjustifiable to foiTn a conception of nature from a study of her lower, more inorganic processes, leaving out her higher product, man, and then to suppose that nature so conceived explains man. The fact is that human nature in its very highest development, in the visions of its poets and prophets, of its philosophers and men of science, is simply nature in its upper ranges. For man is no alien. He has not been injected into the realm of the natural from the outside. He is an outcome of the world-process, and no beauti- ful qualities that he has manifested have ever been drawn from an extraneous source. All is natural, then? Yes. Including Jesus? Yes, including his life, his love, and his influ- ence in the world. No rose on its stalk, no bird building its nest, no creature fulfilling the law of its being, is more natural than was Socrates drinking the hemlock or Jesus on the rood. From this conclusion there is absolutely no es- cape. It is only necessary to be clear-headed and see the significance of the truths and princi- ples that we accept without hesitation, in order to have a religion once more. And what a mag- nificent view it is that now opens before us, and rewards us for refusing timidly to halt or com- promise or attempt to go back ! The vision is thaf of a great process, seemingly material, MODERN SPIRIT 251 physical, and mechanical in its lower ranges, but evolving at last into a world of conscious, as- piring beings, into faith, hope, and love, into philosophy, science, and art, into a vast society of social beings, v,ith imperfections no doubt, yet with dreams of perfection and earnest ef- forts to find out and fulfill the law of their be- ing. If, as is but fair, this great process be interpreted by its achievements and aspirations, rather than by its obscure beginnings, what must we say of it when we see that it has pro- duced saints, sages, and saviors, and the still higher ideals which they worshiped, but did not attain? Yet the implication of ordinary nat- uralism is that in the laws and forces of the physical part of the universe we have the real, essential nature. A more enlightened natural- ism will say that the great process is to be judged by its outcome rather than by its earlier phases, and that the noblest fruits of its long development are the best expressions of its real nature. Below the living realm natural processes may be unconscious. The mote in the air current and the sun in its course may be moved by forces as purely physical as they seem. And, though animals exhibit evidences of consciousness, there is nothing that leads us to suppose that any one of them has an ideal to which it strives to conform its life. In man, however, the great ^ 252 BERGSON AND THE process becomes self-conscious. He strives to find and fulfill the law of his being: he co-oper- ates in his own evolution. His worship is as natural a function as digestion, and for his further progress as necessary. When he ceases to adore and strive to realize ideals, he ceases to grow. His prayer, his longing for an unat- tained perfection, is the impulse of growth be- come conscious. To dispense with religion, then, is to forego all further development, for the moral aspirations are merely anticipations of coming reality, the promise and potency of a nobler future. To some this view will at first appear too re- ligious, too inspiring, too beautiful to be true. Yet it is one wliicli it is not merely permissible to hold. Rather is it a view to which we are driven wlicn we acknowledge that man is no for- eigner wlio has effected an entrance into tlie uni- verse, but an outcome of its life. When we are consistent in our naturalism and draw the ulti- mate consequences of our scientific principles, the position I have been trying to state seems uncscapablc. A realization of the profound significance of this truth will bring again joy- ous faith and buoyant hope. Estimating na- ture by the spiritual values she has produced, we see that she must be as divine as our divinest dreams. Furtlurninre, this interpretation is no private MODERN SPIRIT 253 fancy. Toward it the clearest and best thought of our time is converging. Thus, Prof. F. J. E. Woodbridge of Columbia University, New York, declares that we must draw the necessary conclusions from the accepted view of the natural origin of our race. He says that " Narrow and straightened naturalism has erred in its estimate of Nature. . . . Having learned that Nature works by machinery, it neglected the obvious fact that the machinery exists to sup- port and maintain its product. The future his- torian will note the neglect and characterize our age as one strikingly lacking in intelligence. He will note our vast industry, and comment on the fact that, while we made great machines to support and sustain the products of that in- dustry, we could none the less regard Nature as purely mechanical, with no product to exalt and sustain. We have been so afraid of the doc- trine of final causes and of assigning deliberate intentions to Nature, that we have forgotten that she has produced, supported, and sustained human civilization. For man is a part of Na- ture, carried on by her forces to work the works of intelligence. In him she bursts forth into sustained consciousness of her own evolution, producing in him knowledge of her processes, estimation of her goods, and suspicions of her ultimate significance." Well may the professor continue, " This is a 254 BERGSON AND THE truth of Nature and not a product of human fanc}' ; and it is a truth fraught with the pro- foundest emotional import." He who perceives this import has found the way out of " darkest " into an enhghtened naturalism ; for it is ever- more indisputable that man, not in his body only, but in his higher nature, in his religion and spiritual life, is an outgrowth of Nature her- self. It is simply a fact, as this thinker says, that man " has grown out of Nature's own stuff and been wrought in her workshop. He is, then, no mere commentator on the world or spec- tator of it : he is one of its integrations, so to speak, a supreme instance Avherc Nature has measurably evaluated herself. His comments are Nature's self-estimate." An admirably clear statement of this inter- pretation is given by Sir Henry Jones in liis series of lectures entitled " Idealism as a Prac- tical Creed." It is as follows : " A little while ago the realm of nature was hardly recognized as a coherent whole. The physical sciences were feeble, they worked apart, their provinces did not intersect. Physical life stood, apparently, unrelated to its material sub- strate: it was taken as a clear addition to it. Within the domain of pliysical life itself there were fixed species, each of them describable by itself: the problem of their connection was not raised. Man as a rational and responsible be- MODERN SPIRIT 255 ing stood aloof from all — an exception and addendum to the natural scheme. Even his own nature was riven in two : his body Avas merely the temporary tenement of his soul. On all sides there were interstices, and rifts, oppor- tunities for miraculous interventions — which came. For, beyond the natural world and around it, ready to flow in upon it at any moment, there was another. It was the object of faith rather than of knowledge, of spiritual rather than natural vision. . . . God dwelt in that remote region of moveless mystery, in sov- ereign majesty inscrutable. . . . But of intrin- sic or rational continuity between that world and this there was none. . . . Now all is changed. . . . Belief in the unity of the nat- ural universe, including man, is now practically universal in civilized communities. There are neither interstices nor rifts ; there are no causes without natural consequences, and no effects without natural and necessary antecedents — no mere accidents anywhere. The whole scheme is compact, and man is a part of it. His phys- ical nature is inextricably intertwined with his bodily frame ; he is not spirit plu^s soul, plus body; but spirit, soul and body interfused; a sensuous-rational being, continuous with the world in which he lives. All being is of one tis- sue." What is the consequence.? What, indeed. 256 BERGSON AND THE can it possibly be but that, seen in this light, " Nature ceases to be merely natural," and nat- uralism is transformed into a religious idealism? In tliis magnificent conception, we are finding " deliverance from the cramping dualisms of the previous age." We now see that " Natural science corroborates the truth which the poets and philosophers divine. Man, it tells us. Is not an exception to the scheme of things, or a divine after-thought and addendum to a dead world. He is part of nature's tissue. He is brother and blood-relation to the brute ; nay, he was present in promise at the dawn of being, waiting to be evolved. The potencies of his spirit slumbered among the molten masses and the fiery vapors. For all is one scheme. Evo- lution tolerates no break, brings forth nothing altogether new, permits nothing to become alto- gether old. It builds the living present from the dying past, forgetting nothing, abandoning nothing in its course, least of all the dormant promise of the emerging ideal. That is immor- tal, present from first to last and maintaining itself in every change. Every step in the cos- mic process is its self-emancipation, until at length it stands declared in a form worthy of itself; and it shows itself as spirit." " In the light of this, the last achievement, the meaning of the whole process becomes visi- ble, and Nature, bereft of life by the abstract MODERN SPIRIT 257 dualisms of the previous age, comes to her own again. Presenting her as instinct with purpose and order and beauty, the poetry and philoso- phy of the present day, present her in truth. For she is their treasury. She possesses what they find, reveals what they discover, bounte- ously yields all that they gain. Their thoughts are her communications : she fills their mind." " Enlightened by his world, guided and re- strained by its mute laws, man achieves some knowledge, and acquires some wisdom and strength. Left to himself he were utterly without resource, a blind soul groping in an empty void. Man becomes strong only in the strength of nature ; for he is sustained by her verities. She is his coadjutor and part- ner in the enterprise of life. On the other hand, nature has meaning and highest worth only in relation to the man she evolves. She blooms into full significance only in his spirit. For spirit holds together what else were scattered, overcoming the discreteness of time and space and circumstance. Only where there is mind is there order, or beauty, or purpose, or signifi- cance." Pp. 236f., 145 f. (Italics mine.) One of the most brilliant and compelling state- ments of this truth has been made by Prof. L. P. Jacks. He points out the significance of the fact that a pliilosophy of tlie universe must in- clude itself as one of the things to be explained. S58 BERGSON AND THE " The t3'pe of thinker too commonly met with to-da}" is one who violently seizes a point of view outside the problem he is seeking to an- swer, and builds for himself a crow's nest of ob- servation on territory and out of material se- cretly filched from the object of liis inquiry." This omission of the philosopher himself, this suppression of an important factor in the situa- tion, is not simply pardonable modesty ; it " turns out on nearer view to be mere defective logic." " We ask the philosopher, who explains how all things come in, not to forget to explain how he happens to come in himself, and what in the total production is the significance of his part. The secret of the Universe being, for in- stance, matter and force, is it a fact of no sig- nificance that the Universe has somehow man- aged to find out and publish its own secret, and to grow hilarious, contented, pessimistic, or he- roically defiant, as the case may be, over the dis- covery.'' . . . What kind of a Universe is that which contains, as this Universe undoubtedly docs contain, Mr. Herbert Spencer's ' Synthetic Philosophy'? How is our conception of Na- ture affected if we are to admit tiiat Hacckcl, T. H. Green, James Martincau, witli all their speculations, are natural products? Or when Huxley discovers that Nature is indifferent to the moral needs of man, what is that in Huxley which makes the discovery, and what is the dis- MODERN SPIRIT 259 covery itself? Do these fall outside of Nature or inside? If inside, what shall we think of a Nature which in the fullness of time is able to produce a brilliant essay on her own shortcom- ings, and advise men how best to bear themselves in consequence? If, on the other hand, Huxley and his works fall outside of Nature and have nothing to do with her, then to what or to whom do they belong? Were Huxley to admit, as probably he would have done, that, after all, the ' Romanes Lecture ' is Nature's doing, then, we must ask, is she also responsible for the very different view of herself put forward in Mar- tineau's ' Study of Religion,' and, in addition to that, for the attempt to reconcile these con- tradictions which we call Hegelian? " ^ Either these men view the world ab extra, like the God of Deism, and are mere spectators of a cosmos in which they have no lot or part, or they are themselves organic elements in the whole. In the latter case, our conception of Nature is necessarily transformed. A logical Monism can escape facing the fact that Nature actually does " confess her moral indifference by Huxley, proclaim her moral concern by Martineau, and strive to reconcile the discord by Hegel." If Haeckcl explains the Universe and leaves out himself and his philosophy, he is only a dualist after all. But if we see clearly that such a pro- 1 The Alchemy of Thought. P. 83 f . 260 BERGSON AND THE cedure is logically impossible, then " there is no escaping the conclusion that it is the Universe itself by means of Haeckel, and not Haeckel apart from the Universe, which answers its own riddles in the systematic and intelligent manner of the German biologist. And that discovery will send you further than Haeckel in search of light." That is, if the Universe is really one, it thinks through the philosophers and through them produces a variety of self-expressions, and it follows absolutely that " every form of jNIon- ism implies that the Universe is self-conscious." Thought is thus rewarded when it is comprehen- sive and thorough-going. The conclusions it reaches prove to be in accord with what the best of our race have felt to be true. In the admira- ble words of Prof. Jacks, this " doctrine, far from being novel, can claim a witness wherever Religion and reflective Conscience have found a voice. ' Thus saitli the Lord ' is ever the word of the Prophet : ' Thus thinks the Wliole ' is but the deeper implication of the Prophet's cry. ' Our wills are ours to make them Thine ' ; and Thought is ours for no other end. Were the second false, the first could not be true. Thouglit, like morality, must lose in order to find; and in surrendering her Insight to the All-of-Things, she achieves on lighter terms a victory won in other s|)ht'res at the cost of agony and })loody sweat. We are not here MODERN SPIRIT 261 stralnino: after far-fetched and unheard-of things ; we are repeating our daily confessions and moving among our most familiar thoughts. With impeded utterance and a slightly foreign accent, philosophy is here speaking the lan- guage which ever flows from the lips of Re- ligion with the easy music of a mother-tongue." To some such view, a consistent and thorough- going philosophy of evolution must eventually come. It seems to me that logic not only per- mits it, but compels it. If we have no life that is not natural, then the divinest prayer of the divinest man in history is but the world-life be- come conscious and articulate. Naturalism, when consistently carried out, is transfigured and becomes a religious philosophy. For we now see that it does not mean that man is swal- lowed up in a process that goes mechanically on, but rather that he must change his concep- tion of that process, since he is its outcome. Put together the two things that belong to- gether, man and the universe, and then con- sider what kind of a universe it is that is flow^- ering out into a human world of thought and love and righteousness, of peace, hope and joy. IMatcrialism is forever dead, for all that ever made it possible was the fact that in construct- ing it only that part of nature which lies be- low the realm of life and conscious purpose, of aspiration and creative genius, was taken into 2C2 BERGSON AND THE account. But a philosophy that does not take human life among its data, that in its formation ignores all but the physical aspects of existence and when formed is applied to the explanation of the higher values, is b}' that very fact con- demned and henceforth ridiculous. Nevertheless, there is a very serious difficulty in the way of this view, one which I have not believed insuperable, but is very difficult to re- solve. It is this : Evolution is not along a single line. We may be the terminal twigs on a certain branch of the great tree of life, but there are other branches. Nature has pro- duced not onl}^ the splendid men and women wo know, but she has made the tiger and the microbes of diphtheria and tuberculosis. Fur- thermore, we cannot explain other species as imperfect stages of development. Microbes and tigers are not on the way to become men. As Bergson remarks, " it is abundantly evident that the rest of nature is not for the sake of man : we struggle like the other species, we have struggled against the other species. Moreover, if the evolution of life had encountered other accidents in its course, if, thereby, the current of life had been otherwise divided, we should have been, physically and morally, far different from what we are. For these reasons it would be wrong to regard humanity, such as we have it before our eyes, as prefigured in the cvolu- MODERN SPIRIT 263 tionary movement. It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole of evolution, for evolution has been accomplished on several di- vergent lines, and while the human species is at the end of one of them, other lines have been followed with other species at their end." C. E. 265. Now it is extremely curious that Bergson should in this paragraph so clearly state the difficulty with which many of us have long wrestled in vain and so decisively reject our interpretation of evolution, and yet on the very same page show how that difficulty is to be re- solved and give, in a more adequate form, a re- statement of that interpretation. To my mind, this page is one of the most interesting and valuable in the whole history of philosophy, as it indicates a way of escape from one of the most disquieting of antinomies. It is as fol- lows: " It is in a quite different sense that we hold humanity to be the ground of evolution. From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from a cen- ter, spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its circumference is stopped and con- verted into oscillation : at one single point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed freely. It is this freedom that the hu- man form registers. Everywhere but in man, 264. BERGSON AND THE consciousness has had to come to a stand ; In man alone it has kept on its way. ]\Ian, then, continues the vital movement indefinitely, al- though he does not draw along with him all that life carries in itself. On other lines of evolu- tion there have traveled other tendencies which life implied, and of which, since everything in- terpenetrates, man has, doubtless, kept some- thing, but of which he has kept only very lit- tle. It is as if a vague and formless being, K'hom we may call, as we rcill, man or supennan, had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is posi- tive and above the accidents of evolution. " From this point of view, the discordances of which nature offers us the spectacle are singu- larly weakened. The organized world as a whole becomes as the soil on which was to grow either man himself or a being who morally must resemble him. The animals, however distant they may be from our species, however hostile to it, have none the less been useful traveling com- panions, on whom consciousness has unloaded whatever cncvnnbrances it was dragging along, and who have enabled it to rise, in man, to heights from which it sees an unlimited horizon open again before it. It is true that it has not MODERN SPIRIT 265 only abandoned cumbersome baggage on the way ; it has also had to give up valuable goods. Consciousness, in man, is pre-eminently intel- lect. It might have been, it ought, so it seems, to have been also intuition. Intuition and in- tellect represent two opposite directions in the work of consciousness : intuition goes in the very direction of life, intellect goes in the inverse di- rection, and thus finds itself naturally in ac- cordance with the movement of matter. A com- plete and perfect humanity would be that in which these two forms of conscious activity should attain their full development." C. E. 266-7. The italics in this passage are Bergson's own, but most of the other sentences are deserving of equal emphasis. For we are here told that hu- manity is after all " the ground of evolution," that it is as if the great life had sought to realize itself, but its content was so rich that it was found impracticable to express the whole in our species. Just as no one of us can develop all of the latent potentialities of our child- hood, as no man can hope to be a successful prize fighter and a great scholar, an Arctic or African explorer, a statesman, poet, financier, social leader, expert in scientific research and administrator of great estates all together, as personal development cannot proceed in all di- rections at once, so is it with the great life ^66 BERGSON AND THE of which we are partial manifestations. As chlorophyl-bearing organisms could not be de- veloped into good animals, a division of labor was necessarj^ which resulted in the vegetable and animal worlds. The two tendencies not be- ing able to evolve together, each has gone its way. Evolution is thenceforth in two directions. Still Bergson himself admits that one of these is fundamental. He says : " But if, from the very first, in making the explosive, nature had for object the explosion, it is the evolution of the animal, rather than that of the vegetable, that indicates, on the whole, the fundamental direction of life." (Italics mine). C. E., 116, As the storing of solar energy by separating atoms of carbon and oxygen was a function which could not well be performed by animals wliich were to keep " the fundamental direction of life," the plants were specialized for that work, and the animals continued in the upward path. But tlic remaining possil)ilities were still so numerous, that it was impracticable to realize them in one species. One can no more be all kinds of an animal at once tlian one can at tlie same time be a highly developed animal and plant. The case is not different with the mind. Our intellectual development has l)cen possible only at the partial sacrifice of our instinctive and intuitional possibilities. Still, humanity is actually the highest product that in the nature MODERN SPIRIT 267 of the case was possible. Although we are far from the ideal of " a complete and perfect hu- manity in which the two forms of conscious ac- tivity should attain their full development," the situation is not hopeless. For, says Bergson, man has kept something of everything he has lost, even if he has in some cases kept only very little. And there are in us still the rudiments of the intuitional powers which are what we need to round out and complete our mental life. In- deed, to show us what we have lost and how we may recover it, is precisely the Bergsonian con- ception of the function of philosophy. What is now the result? We have scrupu- lously avoided forcing upon Bergson an arbi- trary interpretation, and have aimed simply at getting at his meaning and the necessary im- plications of his doctrine, only to find that he merely qualifies, but does not really reject, what we have shown to be the meaning of evolution. He himself says that " the organized world as a whole becomes as the soil upon which was to grow either man himself or a being who morally must resemble him." In spite of our necessary losses by the way, and our incomplete and frag- mentary nature now, we }iax>e yet kept " the fundamental direction of life," and in us this great life has risen " to heights from which it sees an unlimited horizon open again before it." We have escaped the dangers that have over- 268 BERGSON whelmed all our companions on the great march ; we have attained to the freedom toward which life has moved from the beginning ; and we are still the thoroughfare through which life advances to unknown and unknowable possibil- ities. The great adventure is not over, there is hope of beating down all remaining resist- ances and clearing the most formidable obsta- cles, " perhaps even death." As we look off into the blue, we may face the future with cour- age and hope. " Now are we the children of God, and it doth not ^^et appear what we shall be." And when we survey the past, the long ages when lower types contended with each other for the master}-, when we try to picture to ourselves the struggle and tlie suffering, we get some feeble sense of tlic " cost of the hu- man." Biological reflection thus fills with new meaning the words of Paul, — " The earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the re- vealinir of the sons of God." CHAPTER XV RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BERGSONIAN CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION (Concluded) If this teleologlcal interpretation of evolution proves to be the most natural and rational we can think of, it is a very great matter. For there can hardly be any question that the think- ing of educated people is to be more and more along evolutionary lines, and this for the simple reason that such thinking is the most effective. All fruitful work in science, in so- ciology, history and philosophy, is performed by those who view the subjects studied as phases of development. On the other hand, the religious needs of most people are deep and in many cases imperious, and a religious view of the world seems to involve teleology. That is, the aspiring life of men flourishes most when they are able to believe that, in some sense, the good is the cause of things, that reality is not a rigid mechanism but a life, the nature of which is akin to what we reverence and love. When 269 270 BERGSON AND THE science, which is to-day regarded as an au- thority, is supposed to negative such a view, there is a painful schism in our lives. In such a case, men feel that they must give up either science or religion or keep them far apart in their minds. The first of these alternatives is often impossible, while the latter is always dif- ficult and dangerous. A life so divided is de- prived of its peace, its natural joyousness and its normal strength. The ideal unification of life takes place when the thoughts that seem to us the most true are seen to have religious significance. It is for this reason that a final- istic or teleological interpretation of evolution is so important. This is the dominant thought scheme, and it is therefore a great event in the history of thought when a thinker, a seer who looks at the vast process with fresh eyes, tells us that there is a meaning in evolution, that our lives are not mere cpiphcnomena, mean and transitory by-products, but that they give the whole process its significance. It is perfectly true, however, tliat some of the clearest minds find Bcrgson's statement un- satisfactory. He is so reserved, so untheologi- cal in his mode of expression, and some of his statements denying ordinary teleology are so sweeping, that religious minds feel uncertain whether he is an enemy or a friend. Their at- titude is well expressed by tlie English states- MODERN SPIRIT 271 man Balfour: "This free consciousness pur- sues no final end, it follows no predetermined design. ... It is ignorant not only of its course, but of its goal; and for the sufficient reason that, in M. Bergson's view, these things are not only unknown but unknowable. . . . Creation, freedom, will, — these doubtless are great things ; but we can not lastingly admire them unless we know their drift." Mr. Balfour is also like many other readers of the French philosopher in the obvious reluctance with which he makes the criticism, while confessing his gratitude to the eminent thinker, and frankly acknowledging his admiration for " this brilliant experiment in philosophic con- struction." The Rev. Charles F. Dole doubt- less expresses the very natural perplexity of many, and their dissatisfaction with the the- ological vagueness of Bergson's thought, when he wi'ites, — " Bergson does not even try to tell us who God is, nor does he appear to have any use for the word. But he affirms his conviction of a mystery, more or less purposeful, but indescrib- able, and somewhat blind, which lies behind, and acts through, all the tortuous processes of evolv- ing life. Has this mystery (or God) any moral character, that we may reverence it, or love it, or trust in its wisdom or goodness.'* Can it be truly said to love man, or care for man.'' Be- S72 BERGSON AND THE fore such questions we stand as agnostics, so far as Bergson throws any hght." To this one might reply that the objection as to the absence of purpose in the life impulse is put too strongly. The critics might be re- minded that Bergson, in one of his frequent summaries, says, " I see in the whole evolution of life on our planet an effort of this essentially creative force to arrive, by traversing matter, at something which is only realized in man, and which, moreover, even in man, is realized only imperfectly." If the full meaning of this state- ment, which is by no means an isolated one, but is truly representative of his thought, is com- prehended, it is clear that Bergson has himself answered these critics. If the great life is striving towards something which is but imper- fectly realized in humanity's highest types, it cannot be purposeless after all. Still, this an- swer does not satisfy, for the philosopher has been so emphatic in rejecting finalism as ordi- narily understood tliat, despite his qualifications, he is naturally regarded as tlie opponent of all finalism. It would, I think, be more to the point to say that what he rejects is the idea that life is the realization of a pxcd plan, the mechanical ad- herence to a fixed order. The motto of those who would live in his spirit might be " Room for life!" He will not admit the mechanistic MODERN SPIRIT £73 theory with its assumption that " all is given," for he sees that spirit and life are not limited to what has been. For a similar reason, the thought is intolerable to him that in its onward march life must arrive at a predetermined goal, there being no chance of failure and nothing un- certain along the route. But, may we not say to him, this is not what we mean by having a purpose and striving toward a goal. No real purpose is so mechanical as that. At the age of sixteen, for example, we have certain ideals that serve as guides of our personal develop- ment ; but at twenty-six we find that these ideals have changed, they have expanded and grown with our growth. Life in its progress not only realizes ideals, but it also produces and changes them. We know our direction, but our life pur- pose grows clearer to us as we advance. We are always finding out what we mean. This is the nature of life as we know it, of the only life we know anything about. Now I understand Bergson to say that something like this is true of the Great Life that lives in us, that it is not condemned to repeat forever what it knows, that it really evolves, creates, achieves, that is to say, that it really lives. Thus, when we con- sider the matter well, we have to admit that we have no experience of a purposive life which is nothing more than that realization of a fixed and detailed plan, that necessary following out 274 BERGSON AND THE of a cut-and-dried programme, which is the ob- ject of Bergson's strictures. We have ends at which we hope to arrive, and general plans of action which are always modified in the course of their working out. I once undertook a piece of research work, in which it was necessary to invent apparatus and devise methods as I went along. The investigation corrected itself as it proceeded. Artists, painters and writers have similar experiences. In fact neai'ly all our pur- posive undertakings are more or less like that. We never foresee all the situations we actually have to meet in pursuing our goals. There is usually abundant need for all the ingenuity and inventiveness we can command. In short, our human lives can be controlled hy purpose, and still retain the adventurous nature by which Bergson sets such store. Why may not the life of all our lives have a purpose in this sense, an "increasing purpose," as Tennyson says.'' And if it has, is it necessary for us to be- lieve that it foresees every event along its future course? The Fourth Gospel represents Christ as saying to his disciples on the eve of his final departure, " And wliither I go, ye know the way." That is all any of us knows, — the xvay. T understand Bergson to suggest that a similar thing may be true of the life from which we derive our own, and which we may naturally MODERN SPIRIT 275 and legitimately regard as not wholly different from our own, " since we are its offspring." But even with these explanations and after generously giving Bergsonism credit for all that seems to be involved in it and that might be made out of it, the religious heart will still be troubled at the thought of so much change, even though that change be a process of creative evolution ; for it worships " the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," and its constant prayer is, " O Thou who changest not, abide with me," This is a disquieting antinomy, with which we would have to deal, even if Bergson had written noth- ing. I offer no subtle explanation. Ingenious subtleties are usually evasions of gi'eat prob- lems, not solutions. Nevertheless, there is one consideration that throws some light on our per- plexity. We may fearlessly admit that the uni- verse is unfinished, provided we remember that it cannot be finished in just any way. There is no caprice about the creative process, and the incomplete must be completed along the lines of growth. Life as we know it, our individual and social life, is in the making, and our ideals light the way. But the relation of the ideal to the im- perfect actual is not that of the unreal to the real. Our ideals are not alien, impertinent and 216 BERGSON AND THE irrelevant, but spring out of our constitution. They are simply present tendencies carried further in the imagination ; they are advanced, foreseen, desired, but yet unrealized stages of the present good. The actual world thus i-eveals its idealit}^ in the aspirations of man. A human life retains its identity through all stages of its development. There is nothing capricious about nonnal gro\\'th or time freedom ; but, ac- cording to Bergson, creative evolution means just the achievement of freedom, and is there- fore a realization of ideals which are themselves the projection of actual tendencies and thus manifest the very nature of the real. Finally, all those whose criticism practically amounts to a disappointment that Bergson has not told us more, and that he has left some of the great problems unsolved, ought to be re- minded that he has himself pointed out that an adequate philosophy will be itself an evolution. All flunking men must work at it. No phi- losopher can perform the service for the race once for all. " A })liilosophy of this kind will not be made in a day. Unlike the ]:)hih)s()])hicnl systems properly so called, each of which was the work of a man of genius and sprang up as a whole, to be taken or left, it will only be built up by the collective and progressive effort of many thinkers, of many observers also, com- pleting, correcting and improving one another. MODERN SPIRIT 277 So the present essay docs not aim at resolving at once the greatest problems. It simply de- sires to define the method and to permit a glimpse, on some essential points, of the pos- sibility of its application." C.E. XIV. More important, then, than the question, what results has Bergson reached through his method, is the question, what can we do with it.^* And in seek- ing an answer, it is natural to enquire into its history. Has it ever been used to good pur- pose? Bergson himself replies that it is through intuition that the great advances in philosophy have been made and the great works of art produced. " Philosophizing," he tells us, " just consists in placing one's self, by an effort of intuition, in the interior of concrete reality." Here and there in history have been men who have been splendidly endowed not only with that fragment of mind which we call intellect, in the narrow sense, but who have also had the power of vision, who have been able to install themselves within the great current of cosmic life and, so to speak, coincide with it for a few moments and get a glimpse of its flow. For an instant, the rhythm of their lives has been one with that of the cosmic spirit, of the creative activity, and they have felt the life of the whole, and known the heart of reality. In such rare experiences, the artist sees his ideal, and the philosopher gets that vision of the truth which is his con- P.78 BERGSON AND THE tribution to the world. There is no durable •'- s^'Stem that is not, at least in some of its parts, vivified by intuition. To be sure, what comes in this way must be put to the proof, it must be criticised, tested by logic, made intelligible to others, and finally incorporated into the great body of constructive thought. The intuitive method is not easy to use. It is difficult to " put our being back into our will, and our will itself into the impulsion it pro- longs, to feel that reality is a perpetual growth, a creation pursued without end." The experi- ence never lasts long, but its value has no rela- tion to its duration. " We cannot kindle wlien we will The fire tliat in tlie heart resides, The spirit blowetli and is still, In mystery our soul abides: But tasks in liours of insiglit will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd." " Intuition, if it could be prolonged beyond a few instants, would not only make the philos- oj)her agree with his own thought, but also all philosophers with each other. Such as it is, fugitive and incomplete, it is, in each system, what is wortli more than the system and sur- vives it." The same thing is true of art, which Bcrgson says " is certainly only a more direct vision of MODERN SPIRIT 279 reality." What the philosopher has said on this subject, in the third chapter of his book on " Laughter," is one of the most interesting and suggestive things he has written. He there shows that we might all be transcendent artists, were it not for our utilitarian bias and practical habit of mind. Indeed, if we could enter into intimate communion with things and with our- selves, art would be useless, for then " our soul would continually vibrate in perfect accord with nature. Our eyes, aided by memory, would carve out in space and fix in time the most in- imitable of pictures. Hewn in the living mar- ble of the human form, fragments of statues, beautiful as the relics of antique statuary, would strike the passing glance. Deep in our souls we should hear the strains of our inner life's un- broken melody, — a music that is ofttimes gay, but more frequently plaintive and always origi- nal. All this is around and within us, and yet no whit of it do we distinctly perceive. Be- tween nature and ourselves, nay, between our- selves and our own consciousness a veil is interposed : a veil that is dense and opaque for the common herd, — thin, almost transparent, for the artist and the poet." The trouble with the most of us is not that we are not practical enough, but that we are such pragmatists, such hardened utilitarians, and are so completely conventionalized, that in- 280 BERGSOX AND THE stead of seeing actual things we usually " con- fine ourselves to reading the labels affixed to them." We have our system of classification into which everything must go, the individuality of things escapes us, and we are offended at new thoughts and original people. We even try to be conventional and socially proper even in our griefs. The spontaneous life is not allowed to well up within, but we are always asking our- selves what Avc think that other people think that we ought to think. The artist obeys his inner prompting. He dares to live, to see things as they arc and not as they must be to conform to the traditional notion of the socially useful. " Poetic imagination is but a fuller view of real- it}'." " Art is a breaking from society and a return to a pure nature," Shakespeare, e. g., was a master in tlic use of the intuitive method. He succeeded in placing himself b}^ sympathy back in the great tide that bears us on, he felt and lived in imagination the many tendencies implicit witliin it. The same man could not be Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and the rest, but tlie great dramatist was able to identify himself with the life that might have been any of these characters. The true artist thus retraces the stream of hfc till he reaches and " lays hold of the potential in the real, and takes up what nature has left as a MODERN SriRIT 281 mere outline or sketch in his soul, in order to make of it a finished work of art." The great moral leaders of the race, I do not mean the ethical theorists, have also been men of vision. And so sure have they been that they saw truly that, in describing what they have seen, they have assumed to be spokesmen of reality itself. " Thus sayeth the Lord," the way the prophets begin their messages, is a per- fectly natural mode of expression for men who feel that their life in its depths is one with the cosmic spirit, who understand that to speak the truth is not merely to utter a private opinion but to say what the universe is saying. This does not mean that they are not often mistaken. In fact, the greatest prophets of Israel were sometimes mistaken, but usually when they as- sumed to speak of world politics and other mat- ters beyond the scope of their moral vision. The ideal prophet, the great spokesman of the moral consciousness and rcvealer of the truths that come through insight, is Emerson. The young people who come under his influence do not ask him for his credentials when he speaks to them of truth, sincerity, self-reliance, com- pensation, character and spiritual laws. For when he has pointed out great principles, others see them for themselves. His incomparable service is that he deepens and develops moral 282 BERGSON AND THE insight ; he helps us to see. As we read him, we are conscious of learaing much, and yet we realize that we have learned nothing absolutely new. For all that he enables us to see with such beautiful clearness, we are conscious of hav- ing known in some dumb or inarticulate way before. The life was there, but it had not reached the stage of self-consciousness. But when Emerson holds up the moral ideal, we in- stantly know that that is what we have implicitly loved. Of every great seer we may truly and reverently say what is said of the master of the spiritual life, — " In him was life, and the life was the light of men." As Martineau says, " Am I admitted to the company of greater and purer men, who move among the upper springs of life ; who aim at what has scarcely visited my dreams ; wlio hold themselves, with freest sacri- fice, at the disposal of affections known to me only by momentary flash ; who rise above the fears that darken me, and do the duties that shame me, and bear the sorrows that break mc down.? The whole secret and sanctity of life seem to burst upon me at once ; and I find how near the ground is the highest I have touched, and how the steps of possibility ascend, and pass away, and lose themselves in heaven. This is the discipline, the divine school, for the un- folding of our moral nature, — the appeal of character without to character within. The MODERN SPIRIT 283 sacred poem of our own hearts, with its passion- ate hymns, its quiet prayers, is writ in invis- ible ink ; and only when the lamp of other lives brings its warm light near do the lines steal out, and give their music to the voice, their solemn meaning to the soul." From all this, it is clear that the higher life of humanity, all that in us which makes us admirable and dear to one another, is awakened, stimulated, inspired and sustained by those masters of the intuitive meth- ods, the prophets of the race. Wliat Bergson himself would say to this, I do not know. But it seems to me a legitimate application of his philosophy. If his ideas are true, men will not only read his books but, in the light of them, they will also re-read human history. This is true of all the books of the first order. But we have his explicit statement that the poets are among those who penetrate most deeply into the nature of reality. If, then, we turn to the great poets, we ought to be able to learn from them what we would see if, like them, we were more able to use the intuitive method which Bergson recommends. In other words, in their musical speech we ought to find a confirmation of the vision of life which the philosopher has strained the resources of the most wonderful prose speech to express. And in them, we shall see most clearly the religious significance of his philosophy. Opening a 284 BERGSON AND THE volume of Wordsworth and turning to " Lines on Tintem Abbe}^" we seem to be reading Berg- son translated in English poetry: " Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood. In which the burden of the mystery. In which the heavy and weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened : — that serene and blessed mood. In which the affections gently lead us on, — Until the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things." The last three lines almost startle one who is familiar with Bcrgson's pages ; with his in- sistence that instinct, which becomes intuition when it is developed, is sympathy ; and with his admonition to place ourselves back in the primitive impulsion so that we can feel our- selves one with it and see its nature. What is it, then, tliat Wordsworth sees in such inspired moments? In the same poem, he tells us that the j)assionate joy in the colors and forms of beautiful natural scenes which he had felt as a boy had subsided. The time MODERN SPIRIT 285 had passed for his youthful feehng and love of nature. " That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye." Still he does not mourn the loss for which there was abundant recompense. " For I have learned To look on Nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused. Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things." What is this but the intuition of the cosmic spirit or life.'' What is this experience but the perennial source of religion.'' If Bergson ever seriously takes up the study of religion, I venture to believe that he will be surprised and delighted at the many noble passages such as this which may be found in English 286 BERGSON AND THE poetry. If Samuel Johnson, for instance, had been the philosopher's disciple, how could he have better expressed both his spirit and his general world-view than in the noble lines : " Life of ages, richly poured, Love of God, unspent and free. Flowing in the prophet's word And the people's liberty ! Never was to chosen race That unstinted tide confined ; Thine is every time and place. Fountain sweet of heart and mind. Breathing in the thinker's creed, Pulsing in the hero's blood, Nerving simplest thought and deed. Freshening t'me with truth and good. Consecrating art and song. Holy book and pilgrim track. Hurling floods of tyrant wrong From the sacred limits back, — Life of Ages, richly poured, Love of God, unsjKnt and free. Flow still in tlie prophet's word And the people's liberty ! " Wordsworth makes repeated efforts to de- scribe his experiences in the moments, which MODERN SPIRIT 287 were rare even for hiin, when he partially suc- ceeded in using that part of the mind which is not intellect, but its complement. Thus, in " The Prelude " he writes : " Gently did my soul Put off her veil, and self-transmuted, stood Naked, as in the presence of her God. While on .1 walked, a comfort seemed to touch A heart that had not been disconsolate: Strength came where weakness was not known to be, At least not felt ; and restoration came Like an intruder knocking at the door Of unacknowledged weariness." Now this was not simply the enjoyment of a quiet evening, for he continues : " Of that external scene that round me lay. Little, in this abstraction, did I see. Remembered less ; but I had inward hopes And swellings of the spirit, was rapt and soothed. Conversed with promises, had glimmering views How life pervades the undecaying mind; How the immortal soul with Godlike power Informs, creates, thaws the deepest sleep That time can lay upon her; how on earth, Man, if he do but live the light Of high endeavors, daily spreads abroad His being armed with strength that cannot fail." The reader of Bergson's first work, " Time and Free Will," a master-work in psycholog- ical analysis, will remember descriptions of in- 288 BERGSON AND THE trospective experiences which differ from this chiefly in that they are expressed in the tech- nical language of science. Take these words from " Creative Evolution," p. 199, " Let us then concentrate attention on that which we have that is at the same time the most removed from externality and the least penetrated with intellectuality. Let us seek, in the depths of our experience, the point where we feel ourselves most intimately within our own life. It is into pure duration that we then plunge back, a duration in which the past, always moving on, is swelling unceasingly with a present that is absolutely new." Read further what he has to say about the interpcnetration of our experi- ences, the undifferentiated nature of our life as we draw nearer the source whence it un- ceasingly shoots forth, the vagueness of the tendencies that will become clear in the life of action. Now turn to the " Ode on Intimations of Immortality " and read the same thing. Wordswortli there speaks of ..." those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, I-'alliugs from us, vanishings; lilnnk misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts beforo wliich our mortal nature Did trcnibl*' like a guilty thing surprised; But (or those first affections. MODERN SPIRIT 289 Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing." There are probably few with the power of appreciation of what is great in literature who would say that there is any prose in any language more excellent than Bergson's ; but, though poetry and prose are incommensurable, those who care both for philosophy and noble speech must admit that the poet has equaled the philosopher in the beauty of the expression which he has given of their common vision. In a former chapter, I was speaking of the way our conceptual thought interferes with our perceptions, so that we call the grass green because we think it is and must always be so. Bergson and Wordsworth both make a great deal of the kindred fact that custom and habit and intellectual bias hinder our native power of insight. The poet thus addresses the child, " Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage; thou eye among the blind. On whom those truths do rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find." This beautiful phase of life will swiftly pass, and the child become conventionalized and in- tellectualizcd like the rest of us. 290 BERGSON AND THE " Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! " It thus appears that into art and philosophy, as into the Kingdom of Heaven, we can enter only by becoming as little children. Robert Browning, because of his anti-In- tellectualism, was heavily handicapped in his work as a poet. His was the idealism, not of thought, but of love. Still, like everybody else, he happily failed of perfect consistency, and so occasionally reached the heights where poetry and philosophy are seen to be but prose and poetic versions of the same world. He tells us that God " Dwells in all From life's minute beginnings, up at last To man — the consummation of this sclieme Of being, the completion of this sphere of life." He has used his intuitive powers, and thus reports the experience: " I knew. I felt . . . What God is, what we are, What life is — how God tastes an infinite joy In infinite ways — one everlasting bliss. From whom all being emanates, all power Proceeds; in whom is life for evermore, Yet whom existence in its lowest form Includes." MODERN SPIRIT 291 When he looks within, he finds what the author of " Time and Free Will " declares that he has found. The nearer we get to the springs of life, the deeper our sense of vague, undif- ferentiated and undeveloped tendencies or po- tentialities, " instincts immature, all purposes unsure," together with " August anticipations, symbols, types. Of a dim splendor ever on before In that eternal circle life pursues." But there is one more respect in which the spirit of Browning is like that of Bergson. For both life is first of all an adventure. The philoso- pher has a deep sense of the " infinite richness " of life. He cannot bear the suggestion of a mechanical scheme. He rejects the suggestion of finality, even that of a plan, saying that " the portals of the future remain wide open." Life is movement, creation, adventure. " Onward, onward, follow the gleam." For the poet, life has been an enterprise, a series of conflicts and triumphs. Even his faith has been won, achieved. And when he leaves us, it is as a happy warrior setting forth in search of new adventures : " Life's struggle having so far reached its term. Thence shall I pass, approved 292 BERGSON AND THE A man, for aye removed From the developed brute : a god though in the germ. And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure, brave and new: Fearless and unperplexed When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armor to endue." David A. Wasson's magnificent poems, " All's Well," and " Seen and Unseen," voice the exul- tation of a life that feels itself one with an all- conquering life. The following lines are from the latter poem. The poet is on a sailing ves- sel, facing head winds, and though the voyage lengthens out from days to weeks, he feels that his life is not like the baffled ship, but keeps its course as it sails another sea. " Tlie winds that o'er my ocean run Reacli tlirough all worlds beyond the sun; Througli life and death, tlirough fate, through time. Grand breaths of God tliey sweep sublime. Eternal trades, they cannot veer, And, blowing, teach us how to steer; And well for him whose joy, whose care, Is but to keep before them fair. O thou God's mariner, heart of mine ! Spread canvas to tlie airs divine! Spread sail ! and let thy Fortune be Forgotten in thy Destiny. MODERN SPIRIT 293 Life loveth life and good ; then trust What most the spirit would, it must; Deep wishes, in the heart that be. Are blossoms of Necessity. A thread of Law runs through thy prayer Stronger than iron cables are; And Love and Longing toward her goal Are pilots sweet to guide the soul. So life must live, and Soul must sail. And Unseen over Seen prevail ; And all God's argosies come to shore. Let ocean smile, or rage or roar. And so, 'mid storm or calm, my bark With snowy wake still nears her mark; Cheerily the trades of being blow. And sweeping down the wind I go." In making these quotations from this beauti- ful poem, I do not, of course, mean to suggest that anything so triumphant in tone can be found in Bergson's Avriting. The point is that this is the tone of those masters of the intuitive method, the nobler poets. It is significant that they and the prophets and religious leaders of the race have had the intuition of a great life with which they have felt their essential oneness, and through this conscious unity have attained to a victorious, even exultant spirit, to strength and courage, gladness and peace. This is 29i BERGSON AND THE generally the tone of healthy life, even when it is not thoughtful. The pessimists among philosophers and religious teachers have nearly all been either sick, or embittered by unhappy personal experiences, or they have been sur- rounded by wretched social conditions. They have generalized too widely from the exceptional and abnormal. The fact is that even con- ceptual thought, when it reaches a certain elevation, like healthy life begins to sing. \ Aristotle, usually so sober and judicious, the very type of the thinker, becomes dithyrambic when, in a famous passage in his " Metaphysics," and also in his " Ethics," he considers the blessed life of God, which is altogether such as the thinker's life is in his moments of rapt vision. So Kant, the critical philosopher par excellence, the unemotional analyzer of the mental 'ap- paratus, utters exclamations of enthusiasm when he considers the starry heavens and the moral law. The greatest height human life can reach lies at the point where the intuitions of the cosmic life are blended with the conceptual view of the universe worked out by science, when each is interpreted in the light of the other and both arc united in that philosophic view of reality xchich is the very truth, and which, because the truth Is a vision of the good, naturally and in- evitably expresses itself in noble and musical MODERN SPIRIT S95 speech, and in strong, beautiful and courageous lives. The songs which will be sung by those who are at once the poets of spiritual insight and of evolution are just beginning to be written. I select one which may serve as an example and a type. The results of science, of conceptual thought, the world-process as it appears to the intellect, are here set forth to- gether with the meaning of it all as perceived by religious intuition, as known to the under- standing heart. The philosophy of Bergson has not reached this point, but it is in this direction that it and all the clearest and best in modern thinking* moves. " He hides within the lily A strong and tender care. That wins the earth-born atoms To glory of the air; He weaves the shining garments Unceasingly and still, Along the quiet waters, In niches of the hill. We linger at the vigil With him who bent the knee To watch the old-time lilies In distant Galilee ; And still the worship deepens, And quickens into new, As brightening down the ages God's secret thrilleth through. 296 BERGSON O Toiler of the lily, Thy touch is in the man ! No leaf that dawns to petal But hints the angel plan. The flower horizons open ! The blossom vaster shows ! We hear thy wide worlds echo, — See how the lily grows ! Shy yearnings of the savage, Unfolding thought by thought, To holy lives are lifted, To visions fair are wrought; The races rise and cluster, And evils fade and fall. Till chaos blooms to beautj', Thy purpose crowning all ! " William C. Gannett. ^ University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hiigard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 3 1158 00055 1563 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY lllll AA 000 939 484 2 "ARY