Bergson, The Philosophy of Change

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HENRI^BERGSONThiPiilosopliyofClMngeH^ILDON CAR.R.

PEOPLE'S-BOOKS


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THEPEOPLE'SBOOKS

HENRI BERGSON:THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE


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HENRI BERGSON


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mENRI BERGSON:THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEBy H: WILDON CARR

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK67 LONG ACRE, W.C, AND EDINBURGHNEW YORK: DODGE PCBLISHING CO.


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PREFACEMonsieur Henri Bergson, the philosopher whoseteaching I have tried to present in brief in thisUttle manual, is still in the full vigour of his lifeand thought. He is a philosopher who combinesprofound and original thinking with a wonderfultalent for clear exposition. He is a Professor at theCollege of France, and a Member of the Institute.Although his writing and teaching is in the languageof his country, we English may claim a special sharein him so far as there is any nationahty in philo-sophy. It is very largely by the direct study of theclassical English philosophers that the particulardirection of his thought has been determined. Theinfluence of Herbert Spencer and of John StuartMill, and also of the older English philosophers,Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, is clearly manifest inhis writings. It is particularly shown in his attitudetoward physical science. His philosophy is not anattempt to depreciate science or to throw doubt onscientific method, but, on the contrary, its whole aimis to enhance the value of science by showing its trueplace and function in the greater reality of life.The purpose that I have kept in view in the follow-

ing pages is to give the reader not a complete epitomeof the philosophy so much as a general survey of its

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viii PREFACEscope and method. If the reader is interested anddesires to become a student there is only one advicethat I can give him, and that is to read MonsieurBergson's books. If the problems they deal withinterest him, he will find no difficulty in understand-ing them, for the author's style is a model of lucidity.During this present year (1911) Monsieur Bergson

has become personally known to large circles ofphilosophical students in England. In May he de-livered two lectures before the University of Oxfordon " The Perception of Change." (La Perception duChangement. Oxford, The Clarendon Press.) HedeUvered the Huxley Lecture at the University ofBirmingham on "Life and Consciousness," pub-lished in the Hihhert Journal, October 1911. Healso delivered four lectures before the Universityof London on "The Nature of the Soul." Thesehave not yet been published. Quite recently alsohis Essay Le Rire, written in 1901, has been trans-lated into English. (Laughter, an Essay on theMeaning of the Comic, Macmillan & Co.)

I am alone responsible for the plan and methodthat I have chosen in presenting this philosophy,but Monsieur Bergson has very kindly read the proofs,and the title I have given to it, The Philosophy ofChange, was suggested by him. H. WiLDON CaBB.BUKY, SUSSBX,'^

December 1911.


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CONTENTSPORTRAIT OF BERGSONPREFACECHAP.

I. PHILOSOPHY AND LIFEn. INTELLECT AND MATTER .m. INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCErv. INTUITION ....V. FREEDOM ....VI. MIND AND BODY

Vn. CREATIVE EVOLUTION

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ENRI BERGSON:THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE

CHAPTER IPHILOSOPHY AND LIFE

philosophy of Bergson is contained in threeprincipal works, produced at considerable intervalsof time and independently of one another. AU threeare now available for English readers, having beenrecently translated under the supervision of theauthor. The first of these, Time and Freeivill, ap-peared in 1888, the original title being The ImmediateData of Consciousness ; the second, Matter andMemory, appeared in 1896 ; and the last and bestknown, Creative Evolution, in 1907. The distinctiveprinciple of Bergson's philosophy was clearly setforth in the earliest of these books; the later oneshave not modified nor developed it, but rather maybe said to have applied it with increasing confidenceand success. To expound that principle and explainits application to the various problems that havebeen brought to light in the long history of philo-sophy is the aim of this volume. The philosophy ofBergson is not a system. It is not an account of theultimate nature of the universe, which claims to bea complete representation in knowledge of all reahty,u


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12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEand which appeals to us for acceptance on the groundof its consistency and harmony. We shall see thatone of its most important conclusions is that theuniverse is not a completed system of reality, ofwhich it is only our knowledge that is imperfect,but that the imiverse is itself becoming. Conse-quently the value of the philosophy and the con-viction that it will bring to the mind will be seen todepend ultimately not on the irrefutability of itslogic, but on the reality and significance of the simplefacts of consciousness to which it directs ourattention.

Great scientific discoveries are often so simple intheir origin that the greatest wonder about them isthat humanity has had to wait so long for them.They seem to lie in the sudden consciousness of thesignificance of some familiar fact, a significance neversuspected because the fact is so familiar. Newtonand the falhng apple, Watt and the steaming kettle,will occur at once as illustrations of a principle thatseems to apply to many discoveries that have hadfar-reaching results in practice. The same thing isno less remarkable in philosophy; the discoveriesthat have determined its direction have been mostoften due to attention to facts so simple, so commonand of such everyday occurrence, that their verysimphcity and familiarity has screened them fromobservation. No better illustration of this could befound than is offered in the philosophy of Berkeley.The famous theory esse is percipi, to be is to beperceived, rests on an observation so ordinary thatitB very simphcity was the only reason that had


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PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 18made it possible to ignore it. When Berkeley saidthat reality was perception, he was caUing attentionto the fact that we all mean by reahty what weperceive, and not something or other which we neverdo and never can perceive, which is by its definitionunperceivable. Another illustration is the well-known case of the philosopher Kant, to whom itoccmred that the laws of nature might be explainedbs the forms which the mind itself imposes on ourknowledge, a conception which threw a new light onphilosophical problems comparable to the revolutionin astronomy that followed the Copernican theorythat the earth instead of being, as was supposed, thefixed centre of the universe, was itself a planetrevolving round the sun.Now the fact to which Bergson has called ourattention, which forms the foundation of his theoryand has given a new direction to philosophy, is afact of this extremely simple nature. If it besignificant, if it has the significance which Bergsonclaims for it, it is due entirely to its extreme simpHcityand familiarity that it has till now escaped ournotice. It is the observation of the simple fact thatdeeper than any intellectual bond which binds aconscious creature to the reality in which it livesand which it may come to know, there is a vitalbond. Our knowledge rests on an intuition whichis not, at least which is never purely, intellectual.This intuition is of the very essence of life, and theintellect is formed from it by life, or is one of theforms that hfe has given to it in order to directthe activity and serve the purpose of the living


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14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEbeings that are endowed with it. The fundamentalcharacter of Bergson's philosophy is therefore toemphasise the primary importance of the conceptionof Uf as giving the key to the nature of knowledge.To understand knowledge we must first grasp themeaning of life.

It is this that distinguishes the philosophy ofBergson from all the systems ancient and modemthat have preceded it, and also from contempo-raneous theories, intellectualist and pragmatist. Theintellect has been formed to serve the purposes ofthe activity which we call life. Knowledge is forlife, and not life for knowledge. The key to theexplanation of the problem of reality and knowledgedoes not lie within us in the mind, as the ideahstcontends, nor without us in the world of things inspace, as the realist contends, but in life. Bergson'sphilosophy is not a theory of life ; such a descriptionwould be quite inadequate to it. It is founded onthe simple fact, to which he has called our attention,but which is simple and obvious directly it is pointedout, that life is the reality for which knowledge isand for which nature receives the order that know-ledge discovers. The main task of philosophy is todo what science cannot do, comprehend life. Theimpetus of life, the springing forward, pushing, in-sinuating, incessantly changing movement of lifehas evolved the intellect to know the inert world ofmatter, and has given to matter the appearance of asolid, timeless existence spread out in space. Reahtyis not soHd matter, nor thinking mind, but living,creative evolution.


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PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 15It seems as if a great movement were in progress,

sweeping us along in its course. To exist is to bealive, to be borne along in the living stream, as itwere on the breast of a wave. The actual presentnow in which all existence is gathered up is thismovement accomplishing itself. The past is gatheredinto it, exists in it, is carried along in it, as it pressesforward into the future, which is continually and with-out intermission becoming actual. This reaHty islife. It is an unceasing becoming, which preservesthe past and creates the future. The solid thingswhich seem to abide and endure, which seem to resistthis flowing, which seem more real than the flowing,are periods, cuts across the flowing, views that ourmind takes of the Uving reahty of which it is a part,in which it lives and moves, views of the reaHtyprescribed and limited by the needs of its particularactivity. This is the image of reahty that is pre-sented to us in Bergson's philosophy.

There is one difficulty that will at once presentitself in the very attempt to understand an imageof this kind. How can there be a pure movement,a pure change, a pure becoming ? There must besome object, some thing which moves, changes orbecomes, and this thing must be supposed to beresting when it is not moving, to remain the samewhen it is not changing or becoming something else.This thing must be more real than its movement,which is only its change of place, or than its be-coming, which is only its change of form. How is itpossible to imagine that movement and becoming arealone reahty, that they can subsist by themselves.


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16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEand that the things that move and change are notprior to but productions of the movement or change ?It is a difficulty that goes to the very heart of theproblem of philosophy. It is not the ordinarydifficulty of reahsm and idealism, it is not the ques-tion of the nature of real existence whether it isphysical or mental. It applies with equal forcewhatever we conceive the nature of a thing to be,whether thoughts are things or only about things,whether things exist only in the mind, or whetherthey exist independently and impress the mind.Whatever they are, it is things that move andchange and become, and the movement and changeand becoming presuppose that there are things.So natural to us does this view of the reahty ofthings seem, so consistent is it with our ordinary

experience and with the teachings of science, that weare not usually aware that there is any difficulty inthinking of reality in this way. But there is a diffi-culty, which as soon as we understand it is moreformidable and startling even than the seemingparadox that reality is a flowing. This is that ourordinary idea that the reality of things consists intheir being solid objects in space, the idea thatunderlies the whole of physical science, involves theconception of an unreal time. Time as science con-ceives it does not form part of the reality ofmaterial things. When we perceive any ordinaryunorganised material thingwater, air, a crystal, ametalwe do not think that time has anything todo with its reality, because whatever happens to it,it remains substantially the same. If water is


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PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 17separated into its component gases, it takes time todo it, but the reality is not altered, the gases arethere, and can be re-combined into the water. Wecannot, of course, imagine things without time, butthe reason of this seems to be that imaginationrequires time, and not that time is necessary in orderthat things should exist. Time is a mode of exist-ence, and it is only in this mode, that is, as statessucceeding each other, that things are known, butthe things exist independently of the succession oftheir states. A simple consideration will prove this.Suppose the rapidity of time to be double what itis, would it make any difference to the existence ofmaterial things ? Absolutely none. Indeed if weimagine the rapidity of the succession of states in-creased infinitely, even if we imagine the whole ofthe succession displayed simultaneously to aninfinite intelligence, the reality of things willremain exactly what we now think it to be. Thereis no absolute material standard by which wemeasure time flow. Every standard of time measure-ment, such as the rotation of the earth on its axis,the revolution of the earth round the sun, or theswing of a pendulum, is relative. If all time rela-tions remained constant to one another, a change inthe actual rate of flow would make no difference toreal things. Such a change is quite conceivable, butfor the reality that is the subject-matter of scienceit is quite indifferent.When we consider a living being, however, we findthat time is the very essence of its life, the wholemeaning of its reality. In life we meet with a realB


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18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEduration, a duration that is absolute. There is, itis true, for living creatures a time duration that ismeasured by the same relative standards by whichwe measure the succession of the states of materialthings. It is this unreal time that we have in mindwhen we speak of our fleeting existence and thinkof the things that outlast us; it gives meaning tosuch expressions as eternal youth. Life seems madeup of definite statesinfancy, childhood, adolescence,maturity, old agewhich we pass through, and whichwe imagine have a period of stabiUty and thenchange. But the change is continuous throughouteach state, and the states are a merely external viewof life. It is our body which enables us to takethis view. Our body is an object in space, and weconsequently regard it in this external way. Butlife itself, when we view it from within, from theprivileged position that we occupy towards it byreason of our identity with it, is not indifferent totime. Our life as actual experience, as the inmostreality of which we are most sure, which we knowas it exists, is time itself. Life is a flowing, a realbecoming, a change that is a continuous undividedmovement. A thing that Uves is a thing thatendures not by remaining the same, but by changinguncesisingly. All consciousness is time existence, anda conscious state is not a state that endures withoutchanging, it is a change without ceasing; whenchange ceases it ceases, it is itself nothing butchange.

There are therefore two ways in which we maythink of time, one in which it makes no difference


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I PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 19to reality, and the other in which it is the reahty.Just as we think that things he outside one anotherin space, so we think that their states succeed oneanother in time. Time in this meaning takes theform of space ; it can only be represented by us asa hne, and a line is a figure in space. Without theidea of space we should be unable to represent thesuccession of states of things. When we think ofthese successive states we imagine them spread outin a continuous Une, precisely as we imagine realthings to be at any moment all spread out in space.But this is not true duration. Our life is trueduration. It is a time flow that is not measured bysome standard in relation to which it may be fasteror slower. It is itself absolute, a flowing that neverceases, never repeats itself, an always present,changing, becoming, now.The distinction between a time that is a symbol of

space and a time that is a true duration is thereforefundamental. We may mean either of two differentthings when we ask, what is reahty ? We maymean what is it that endures without changing ?Or we may mean, what is it that endures bychanging ? The difference between the two meaningsis the difference between a material thing and aliving thing ; to the one time does nothing and there-fore is nothing, to the other time is everything.And so the question arises, is the reahty that isbehind all appearances like a material thing thatdoes not change ? Or is it hke a hving thing whosewhole existence is time ? The answer that philo-sophy must give is that time is real, the stuff of which


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20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEthings are made. Physical science is a view of thisreality, a limited view, and the positive proof of itis that it cannot comprehend hfe. Life is not athing nor the state of a thing. It is this hmitationof physical science, its inability to imderstand life,that reveals to us the true sphere and the specialtask of philosophy. Physical science deals with thestable and unchanging, philosophy deals with life.


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CHAPTER nINTELLECT AND MATTER

I HAVE said that the philosophy of Bergson rests onthe observation of a very simple fact. This simplefact is that true duration is known to us by a directinner perceiving, an intuition, and not by an intel-lectual act such as that by which we perceive theobjects around us and the laws of their successivestates. And the true duration which we know whenwe have this intuition is hfe. There is thereforepossible to us a direct answer to the question, toanswer which is the problem of philosophy. Whatis reahty ? We can answer, reahty is life. And theanswer is final, because we are not appealing to aconcept of the understanding that demands furtherexplanation. Life is not a thing nor the state of athing. It is true that we can only express it inthe form of a judgment. But what we affirm inthat judgment is not a that of which we are stilldriven to ask what, it is not a content that we dis-tinguish from existence, and therefore does not leadto the endless inquiry that baffles the intellectuahstattempt to solve the problem. Life is not known assomething presented to the mind, but immediatelyin the hving consciousness of Hving.

Lituition in the sense in which this philosophyZL


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22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEafl&rms it has nothing either mystical or evenmysterious about it. It is not the special endow-ment of certain highly-gifted minds, enabling them tosee what is hidden from ordinary inteUigence. It isa power of knowledge that we may imagine to existin eveiything that lives, even in plants, for it issimple consciousness of life. I do not of coursemean that there is any ground to suppose that itexists actually in this wide extension, or indeed thatit necessarily exists anywhere, but I do mean thatit is so identical with life itself, that wherever thereis Ufe there might also be that consciousness of livingthat is intuition. But simple as this principle is,and universal as its potentiaUty may seem to be, itis in fact only at rare moments and by very con-centrated attention that we may become able topossess this knowledge which is in very truth identicalwith being.What then is the intellect ? It is to the mind what

the eye or the ear is to the body. Just as in thecourse of evolution the body has become endowedwith certain special sense organs which enable it toreceive the revelation of the reahty without, and atthe same time Umit the extent and the form of thatrevelation, so the intellect is a special adaptation ofthe mind which enables the being endowed with itto view the reaUty outside it, but which at the sametime limits both the extent and the character of theview the mind takes. When we consider a specialorgan like the eye, we can see that its usefulness tothe creature it serves depends quite as much on what itexcludes as on what it admits. If the eye could take


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INTELLECT AND MATTER 23in the whole of visible reality it would be useless.It is because it limits the amount of light it admits,and naJTows the range of visible things, that itserves the life purpose. The intellect appears tohave been formed by the evolution of life in thesame way and for a like purpose. It has beenformed by a narrowing, a shrinking, a condensationof consciousness. It reveals its origin in the fringewhich stUl surrounds it as a kind of nebulositysurrounding a luminous centre. And what is thepurpose that the intellect serves ? It gives us viewsof reahty. It cuts out in the flow the hnes alongwhich our activity moves. It delimits reahty. Ittraces the hnes of our interest. It selects. Just asthe events which the historian chronicles are markedout by the guiding influence of some special inte-rest, so the intellect follows the lines of interest ofthe activity it serves. Things, sohd inert unchang-ing matter, constant laws by which things act andreact on one another, are views of reahty that theintellect is formed to take, hmitations which bynarrowing knowledge to the form that is usefulserves the hving purpose which has evolved it, andfor which knowledge exists. The intellect views thereahty as sohd things because that view serves ourends. It is a real world that the intellect revealsto us, a reahty that is not relative to our under-standing, nor produced by our understanding ; it isreality itself, but it is hmited. The outHnes ofthings, the grouping and arrangement of phenomena,are the modes of our apprehension, the lines thatour interest traces. There is no formless reahty.


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24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEbut also no form of reality is absolute. With otherinterests we should trace other lines, and we mighthave other modes of apprehension.The intellect is cinematographical. This descrip-tion is perhaps the happiest of any of the imagesthat Bergson has used to illustrate his theory. Thecinematograph takes views of a moving scene ; eachview represents a fixed position, and when the viewsare arranged side by side on the film and passedacross the screen in rapid succession they present tous a moving picture. The views as they lie beforeus on the ribbon, as we look at them in passing fromone to the next, do not give us this picture ; to havethe picture we must restore the movement, and thisthe cinematograph does. The fixed things that seemto us to he side by side of one another at everymoment in space are views that the intellect takes.These views seem to us to form the movement bytheir succession, the replacement of one by anotherseems to be the change, but the reahty is the move-ment ; it is a continuous change, not a succession ofstates, and the fixed things are views of it. Theseviews are the physical objects that science dealswith, and the method of science is cinematographicalchange for it is nothing but the succession of fixedstates. But a movement is indivisible, a change isindivisible, the divisions that we make in it, theimmobiHties that seem to compose it, are notdivisions, but views of it. Nothing is immobile.Immobihty is purely an appearance.

This perception that a movement is indivisible isthe key to the solution of many problems insoluble


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p INTELLECT AND MATTER 25without it. There is, for example, a self-contradic-tion in the ordinary idea which we have of motion,which is well illustrated in the famous paradoxes ofthe Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea. Motion, hedeclared, is impossible, for consider the flying arrowto say that it moves is to say that it is in two placesat the same time, but at every moment everythingis at rest in one place, and if the arrow is motionlessat every moment of its flight, then it is always motion-less. We can now see the solution of this problem.The flight of the arrow is an indivisible movement.We, looking at the course of the flight, represent itas a Hne along which we can make as many divisionsas we choose. We say that the arrow passed overthat course and that it might have stopped at anypoint. And that is so. But the divisions in thecourse are not divisions in the movement. If thearrow had stopped at any point of its course, itsflight, the movement, would have ended ; the subse-quent flight would not have been a continuation ofthe movement, but a new movement. When themovement is effected we look back on the courseand represent it as a Hne in space. A hne is un-movable, space of which it is a figure is the veryidea of immobihty, and a hne is divisible withouthmit, but movement is indivisibihty itself. A linetherefore cannot correspond with a movement ; it isour representation of the movement, our view of it,an appearance only. Another famous argument ofZeno may be solved by the same perception that amovement is indivisible, the problem of Achilles andthe tortoise. Achilles, it is argued, can never over-


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26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEtake the tortoise, because while his first step bringshim to the place where the tortoise is, the tortoisehas moved on, and while he makes the new step toreach the new place, the tortoise has again movedon, so that Achilles for ever finds that he has still astep to take. The problem is quite insoluble if amovement is divisible as a hne is, but the difficultyvanishes with the perception that a movement isindivisible. The steps of Achilles and the steps ofthe tortoise are each indivisible, each a simple con-tinuity from beginning to end, and there is conse-quently no contradiction in supposing that the stepsof Achilles bring him past the tortoise. The contra-diction hes altogether in regarding a step as madeup of parts Uke the separate views on the cine-matograph film, in thinking that the parts existindependently in the step, and that the combinationof the parts produces the step, and in failing to seethat the step is an indivisible movement, that theparts into which we seem able to divide it are onlyviews that we take of it. Another of the paradoxesof Zeno illustrates in an even more striking mannerthe contradiction which follows the attempt to con-ceive movement by representing it as a spatialfigure. It is the argument known as the Stadium.It is not so famihar as the others, because the paradoxis not so immediately self-evident as in the illustra-tion of the arrow and of Achilles and the tortoise.Two processions of figures moving round the stadiumin opposite directions pass in mid course a row ofsimilar figures at rest. The speed of the movingfigures, said Zeno, is twice that which it is, for


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INTELLECT AND MATTER 27when the three rows of figures are in line with oneanother, that is, at the moment when each proces-sion is passitag the other procession and the inter-vening row, the space occupied by each of the threerows is exactly equal, yet the velocity of each movingrow is to one another twice what it is to the inter-vening row. And the two velocities are not relative,they are absolute, because space does not move. Wehave therefore to admit that a body moves at twovelocities at the same time, one of which is twicethat of the other. It may seem that this is a trans-parent and very simple fallacy. It may even bedenied that there is the appearance of contradiction,for if we have two reverse movements at equalvelocities, the velocity of each to the other is thesum of the two and double what each is by itself.Very true, but why ? Because when we make thisanswer, which seems so obvious, we are comparingmovement with movement, treating it as indivisible,just as we found we had to do with the steps ofAchilles and the tortoise. Make the movementcorrespond with the space traversed, and you findthat the same movement measured by two exactlyequal spaces has passed at two different velocities ;you find that you are making the contradictoryassertion that every movement is faster than it is.The solution is plain and self-evident enough whenyou perceive that movement is not divisible, thatyou cannot decompose it into small movementsstrung together, or joined together, as you candecompose a hne into smaller lengths. Divide aline into as many lengths as you will, the sum of


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28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEthose lengths is the line, but to divide a movementis impossible ; its divisions are not points, but stops.We may suppose an infinity of points in a line, butto suppose even one stop in a movement is contra-dictory ; a stop is not part of a movement, but thenegation of movement.We have seen that, like the cinematograph, theintellect takes views across a moving scene, andthese views are the things that present themselvesto us as solid objects spread out in space, space thatis unmovable, the reaUty in which things move.To grasp the reahty, we have said, it is necessary torestore the movement as the cinematograph does.The mo mt is life. What, then, is matter ? Whatis that mert something which is essentially opposedto life, and which seems necessary to the existenceof hfe ? When we say of our own existence that itis essentially our Hfe, we are distinguishing Hfe fromthe material body which appears to serve as itssubstratum or medium. And when we say of theall-inclusive reahty of which our individual Uves arebut a partial manifestation, when we say of theuniverse itself that it lives, it seems that we mustdistinguish within the universe the life of it from theinert, lifeless material, the dead matter in which thatlife is supported and manifested. What is this deadmatter, and how does it come to exist ? Reahty is aflowing. This does not mean that everything moves,changes, and becomes ; science and common experi-ence tell us that. It means that movement, change,becoming is everything that there is, there is nothingelse. There are no things that move and change and


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INTELLECT AND MATTER 29become; everything is movement, is change, is be-coming. You have not grasped the central idea ofthis philosophy, you have not perceived true dura-tion, you have not got the true idea of change andbecoming until you perceive duration, change, move-ment, becoming, to be reahty, the whole and onlyreahty. Inert matter filling space, space that under-Hes matter as a pure immobihty, do not exist. Move-ment exists, immobility does not. Now evenphysical science, bound as it seems to be to theassertion of a fixed material reahty, is being drivento the same conclusion. In the new theory of matterthe old conception of an elemental solid base for theatom has entirely disappeared, and the eiiio* is nowheld to be composed of magnetic forces, ions andcorpuscles, in incessant movement, a balance ofactions and reactions no longer considered inde-structible. In fact, if the movement ceases the atomno longer exists, there is nothing left. Again, themost instantaneous flash of Hght that we can beaware of contains, so science tells us, millions ofmiUions of sether waves. Light is nothing butmovement. In fact for science all things are inmovement. And also there is something that isabsolute in time duration even for physical science,for though time does not enter into the reahty ofthings as science conceives them, yet a certainlength of time duration is a necessary condition ofevery change in the state of things. A lump ofsugar does not instantaneously dissolve in a glasrof water; when aU other actual conditions of dis-solution are present, a certain time must elapse.


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80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEStill for science matter is the reality, time is only acondition. What then for philosophy which per-ceives that time is reality, the stuff out of whichmatter is formed, is this matter ? What is thisinert something that seems to resist the pushing,forward moving hfe, which seems to fall back, toobstruct the Uving movement, which even when itserves life seems essentially opposed to it ? Inertmatter, immobility, is purely an appearance, it iscomposed of two movements. It is the relation ofour movement to other movements. When we arein a train the landscape seems to stream past us,the nearer objects at a greater speed than the moredistant. When we pass another train going in thesame direction but at a slower speed, it seems to usto be moving in the reverse direction. If the speedis the same as ours, it seems not to be moving at all.And if it is travelUng in the reverse direction, it seemsto be moving at twice the speed that it is reallymoving at. Imagine, then, Ufe as a vast movementin being ; if our particular interest draws us to attendto the direction in which part of the movement isadvancing, it may seem to us that the rest of themovement is retarding the advance or even streamingbackwards. So we, aUve in this great hving, bornealong as part of this true life, view the movementaround us and see it as dead matter opposed to thevery movement of which it is itself only an indi-vidual view.


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CHAPTER raINSTINC3T AND INTELUGENCB

If the theory of the intellect sketched in the lastchapter is true, we shall expect to find that theintellect is not the only means by which it is possibleto apprehend reahty. It seems as we look back onthe past from our own human standpoint, and tryto read by the light of biological and geologicalscience the long history of the evolution of hfe, andparticularly of the human race, that this wonderfulintellectual power that we possess, and that gives ussuch command in our world, has been a very slowlyperfected acquisition. Our whole bodily organisa-tion has been moulded to use it, and it has beenmutually adapted to our organism, to serve its needsand to direct its activity. It is the very essence ofour life, all that hfe means or can mean to us, butit is essentially an adaptation of hfe. The intellectis what gives to the world the aspect it bears to us.It gives us views of reality, views that are hmitationsof our apprehension, and that we mistake for hmita-tions of reality. We have said that we have thepower of apprehending reahty without the hmita-tions that the intellect imposes, that in the intuitionof life we see reahty as it is. This intuition is theconsciousness of life that we have in Mving. It is


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32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEnot another and different power, it is not an endow-ment of the mind or a faculty. Intuition is not akind of mental organ as the eye or the ear is a bodilyorgan, something that we possess side by side withthe intellect. It exists for us because consciousnessis wider than intellect, because consciousness isidentical with life. In knowing Hfe we are Hving,and in living we know life. In the widest significa-tion of the terms, life and consciousness are identical.It is this wider consciousness that has become for usnarrowed and speciahsed in the intellect, but theintellect reveals its origin by the wider sense ofconsciousness which surrounds it Uke a penumbra.It is this wider consciousness that enables us tohave the direct vision that we have called the intui-tion of hfe. But it is only hfe that this intuitionreveals, and that because hfe and consciousness areone. We have not therefore two faculties, one in-tellectual and one intuitional, side by side ; there isnot, that is to say, both an intellectual and anintuitional view of reaUty ; all our views of reahtyare intellectual, but the intellect is formed out ofthe consciousness that is identical with hfe, and inUving we do directly know hfe. This is the simplefact that, as I have endeavoured to show, is neithermystical nor mysterious.But if the intellect is a special adaptation of theconsciousness which is life, we shall naturaDy con-clude that it might have been other than it is, andthat it is possible that with other directions of theevolutionary activity other adaptations with otherlimitations would have been produced. And this is


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INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 33what we find. There is one other mode of mentalactivity, instinct, that we find some traces of in ourown consciousness, but that has received strikingand astonishing development along other hnes ofevolution than that which has culminated in man.Along the line of the vertebrates that has ended inourselves it seems as though there must have beenat first a hesitation as to which mode, instinct, orintelligence was to prevail. So much is this so, soshght seem the indications of intelligent, so universalthe indications of instinctive behaviour in the formsof animal life below the human, and so suddenseems the development of perfect intelhgence in man,that the opinion has been generally, and is stillwidely, held that intelligence is a development ofinstinct, and that instinct is nothing but a primitiveform of intelligence. But when we study the be-haviour of insects we find instinct brought to a per-fection that rivals, or even surpasses, the intelhgenceof man. Especially is this so in the ants and thebees. These creatures represent the culminatingpoint of a progressive evolution of instinct. Theirmarvellous actions can only be explained by suppos-ing that instinct is a quite different and, in a certainmanner, opposite mode of mental activity to thatby which we apprehend reality. They are oppositemodes, because though they may exist together, andthough the one may at any time give place to theother, yet so far as the essential nature of each isconcerned the one seems to block the other. Wenever find in any creature the simultaneous perfect-ing of the two modes. In man, where intelhgence is


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84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEsupreme, instinct is practically lost as a guiding anddirecting activity. We find traces of it in thebehaviour of infants and children and in naturaldispositions, but the very word instinctive has cometo denote the opposite of rational action and notthe basis of it. On the other hand, in the insectcommunities of bees and ants instinct is so perfectand so supreme as the guiding principle of theiractivity, that intelligence, if they possess it, mustlie on a lower plane, or be manifested only in emer-gencies where instinct fails.The actions that we call instinctive in man are

those that we seem to carry out by a natural dis-position without reflection, A\dthout interposing theperception of the relations or of the meaning of theactions, without the presentation to the mind of anend to be attained. They are not simple reactionsto a stimulus, such as the vital functions of respira-tion, circulation, and the like; they are actions thatimply awareness and conscious purpose, but they aredirect spontaneous actions evoked by the presence ofphysical objects or of emotions. Such actions asthe raising of the arm to ward off a blow, as flight whenwe feel the emotion of fear, the actions that areprompted by the emotions of love, pity, indignation,and the Hke, we call instincts. Instinct as promptingto these actions is knowledge that we seem to possessnaturally, and without needing to be taught byexperience. Many actions that are in their originintelligent we call instinctive by analogy when theyhave become habitual. It is in the observation ofthe actions of infants and children that we dis-


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rINSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 35tinguish most clearly the knowledge we call in-stinctive from that which we call intelligent. Theinfant's first cry is purely reflex, the vital action ofdrawing the air into the lungs ; sucking, at least inits earliest exercise, probably is so too ; but themovements towards the mother's breast, the attrac-tion to certain objects and repulsion from others wecall instinctive, because these are evidence of anatural knowledge, a knowledge not acquired byexperience, of a distinct and separate object. Thechild's first efforts to stand and walk are instincts,but the almost equally universal struggle of the childthat can walk to get out of the perambulator andpush it is intelligent, it is the result of observationand attention and desire to imitate. From infancyonwards the whole of our mental life is so predomi-nantly intelligent that it is ^\ith the greatest diffi-culty that we are able to distinguish and recogniseinstincts. In man instinct does not develop butgives way to intelligence, as though the two modeswere incompatible and intelUgence to exist mustsupersede instinct.

It is when we observe the actions of insects, par-ticularly the actions of the higher insects, that wesee the most perfect examples of instinct, and be-come aware that it is a mental activity totallydifferent from inteUigence. It is true that the beesand ants among which we find this activity in itsmost marvellous manifestation present to us a typeof bodily organisation so entirely different from ourown, that comparison seems almost fantastic. Thementality of a dog or a horse, or even that of a bird


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36 THE PHlLOSOrilY OF CHANGEor a reptile or a fish, seems possible to understand,because the bodily organisation of these animals andthe anatomical structure of the centraUsed nervoussystem that serves their organism are constructedon an exactly similar plan to our o^\^l. But howwidely different the whole plan of the invertebrateanatomy ! Is there any basis on which we cancompare the mentality of such unhke creatures withour own ? Is it not mere picture thinking to tryto interpret their actions by our knowledge of ourown mental processes ? And it seems to manystudents of animal psychology that to attempt tounderstand instinct as a mental reality by theobservation of insect life is entirely vain. But wideas the difference is between these small creaturesand ourselves, we are in the presence of distinctself-centred individuals as vitally interested in pur-suing their purposes as we are ourselves. They areorganised to apprehend reahty by special senses, andthey have a nervous system of the same type as ourown, the type that biologists call sensori-motor.Clearly they feel, whether or not their feehngs havethe same quaUty as ours, and their feelings lead tomovements.When now we study the life activities of thesecreatures, what do we find ? If we watch a swarm ofbees in an observation hive we may see the perfectinsects emerging from the cells in which they havebeen formed. We may neglect the early stages oftheir life, the egg and the pupa, as we are not nowconcerned with biology but only with psychology.From the very moment of their birth they know


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INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 37perfectly the work they have to do. They do notbegin with vain efforts and with experience gainconfidence and skill. They are not taught by olderbees. They do not seem to be recognised by theirfellows nor to recognise them, but immediately joinin the common work, giving their service just whereit is required, gathering honey and pollen, storing itin cells, tending brood, ventilating the hive or guard-ing the queen. They do this work, and they discernthe special work required of them, as well on theirfirst emergence into the community as when theyare old and worn-out members of it. It may ofcourse be that the actual bonds of unity are notperceived by us, that the true individual is the hiveand not the separate insects that compose it, thatthe relation of the individual bees to the hive is moreof the nature of the relation of the separate cells ofthe body to the organism than that of the relationof persons in a community. But whether that beso or not, we have before us individual creatures wholead individual lives, and who possess a knowledgewhich, unlike ours, is perfect from the first, and not,like ours, dependent on experience. Innumerablecases of instinct will also occur to every one in whicha highly complicated action is performed once andonce only in the insect's life, in which the creaturecannot be aware of the effect or purpose of the actionit performs judged by the result as we know it.The Yucca moth, for example, lays its eggs on theovules of the Yucca flower, and then carefullyfertihses the pistil wdth pollen, the result being thatthe seeds form the food of the larva, but the eggs are


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38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGElaid on fewer ovules than are fertilised, so that pro-vision is thereby made that all the seeds shall notbe destroyed by the larva. The Yucca plant isdependent on this moth for the fertilisation of itsflowers, and the single performance of this act practi-cally accomplishes the Ufe purpose of the moth.The insect acts as though it knew that its larvawould require ripe seed of the Yucca, as though itknew that this could only be obtained by fertihsation,as though it knew that ripe seed is also necessary forthe continuance of the existence of Yucca plants, andtherefore for the activity of Yucca moths ; and yetit is manifestly impossible that it can possess thisknowledge, much less acquire it in any intelhgiblesense of the word knowledge. Wliy, then, do wecall instinct knowledge ? What is there in a caseof this kind more than an unusually interestingexample of a biological fact of mutual adaptation,to be explained by a biological theory such as thatof natural selection ? The moth no more knows allthese things to which its action is directed than theivy knows that it is chnging to a wall, or the hopplant that it must wind round a pole. Do we notmean by instinct a vital force of adaptation that isnot knowledge at all in any usual sense of the term ?Do we not, in fact, speak of the instincts of plants ?Are not instincts the natural affinities of organismsmutually dependent on one another, and the actionsthat mutual dependence involves ? Undoubtedly,but there is also a problem of knowledge, a problemthat is psychological and philosophical, distinct fromevery physical and biological fact. These creatures,


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I INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 391IK

whose structure is so unlike our own, whose lifeactivity is so different in its direction, nevertheless

ssess some kind of mentality. They are consciousof a world in which their activity is exercised. Theyreceive revelations of reahty through special sense-organs just as we do, and they guide their activityby the revelations so received. Sense impressionsmake them aware, awareness produces movements,and we judge of the nature of the awareness by themovements. These actions prove to us that instinctis a psychical activity, different in its mode of workingand in the nature of its mentality from intelligence,and that there is an essential difference in the kindof knowledge that is accessible to it.There is one very marked difference between in-

stinctive and intelligent action in the consciousnessor unconsciousness with which it is performed. Weuse the word consciousness in this connection in avery special sense. In its widest and most generalmeaning consciousness is almost synonymous withlife. Everything that has the vital power of re-sponding to a stimulus we call conscious as distinctfrom inert dead material which has no such power.In this sense consciousness means the possibility ofany awareness whatever. But we also use the wordsconscious and unconscious in a special sense. Wesay that a man is unconscious when he is asleep, orunder an anaesthetic ; a man walking in his sleep maybe carrying out very complicated actions, actionsthat show that he is in some sense aware of thesurroundings in which he is moving, but we say thathe is unconscious of what he is doing. In this sense


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40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEof the word we do not mean by unconsciousness acomplete absence of consciousness, as when we saythat a stone is unconscious ; we mean that the con-sciousness which is present is blocked or hinderedfrom being effective. Rouse a man from his sleep,startle the sleep-walker in what he is doing, removethe ana3sthetic that is being administered to thesuffering patient, and consciousness returns. Manyof our habitual actions, in fact by far the greaternumber of them, are unconsciously performed. Con-sciousness means an active attention to the workthat is being performed, and this active attentionseems to be a necessary condition of intelligence.Now instinct seems to us to be entirely unconscious.Bees constructing their cells seem to us to be follow-ing an impulse that is a natural disposition, and tobe altogether unconscious of the design they arefollowing or of the purpose or plan of the work theyare doing. Men building a house, on the other hand,seem to be necessarily conscious of the plan theyhave to follow and of the purpose that their workhas to fulfil. And this seems to us the main, if notthe only, difference between instinct and intelli-gence. It seems to us that bees are really intelhgent,that their instincts have arisen in an active attentionto an intelligent purpose, but that their actionshave become by long-continued habit and inheritedcharacteristics automatic and unconscious. Whatseems to us extraordinary is that with such per-fected natural knowledge they do not now use theintelligence which we think must have been at theorigin of this knowledge. Perhaps we account for


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INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 41it by imagining that they still do actively use theirint^lhgence, but that it is manifested on a planethat we are, possibly by a natural disabihty, in-capacitated from observing, in hke manner as wemight imagine that higher beings observing us mightthink that our actions were automatic and fail toperceive the practically invisible plane on which ourintellect works. Or we may even hold that thereare instances of individual behaviour, or even ofgeneral behaviour, in insects which prove this activeintelligence. We think then of instinct and intelh-gence as being in their origin and nature identicallythe same, differing only in the consciousness orunconsciousness that characterises the activity. In-stinct is intelligence become automatic, and intelh-gence is always tending to become instinct. Thespecial development and perfection of particularinstincts we attribute to the aid of a special organicevolution. But in this view we fail to take accountof the profound difference in the nature of theknowledge itself that instinct possesses and thatwhich intelligence gives us. It is this difference inthe nature of the knowledge that is the reason whyinstinctive knowledge is mainly unconscious andinteUigence essentially conscious.

Instinctive action is immediate and direct, theapprehension of the object is followed by the appro-priate action without any interval of hesitation,without any time for deliberation and choice. In-telligence, on the other hand, is just this hesitation,deliberation, and choice. Between the apprehensionand the action there intervenes the representation


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42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEof the action as an act carried out. It is the presenceof this picture, the comparison of the various coursesof action represented in idea before the action isstarted, that constitutes inteUigence. The intellectgives us the power to choose, a power dependent onthe ideal representation of the action before it isacted. When, therefore, in nearly all instinctiveaction, and in intelligent action that has becomehabitual, or when for any cause the action takesplace without the intervention of representation, theaction is unconscious. The very expressions we use,such as, to act ^vithout thinking, to act instinctively,imply that the action blocks out or hinders therepresentation. Instinct is immediate knowledge,knowledge such as intuition gives us, and beingcontinued in the action, is therefore unconscious ; in-telhgence represents the action in idea before it acts,hesitates and deliberates, and is therefore conscious.

This brings us to the really essential distinctionbetween instinct and intelligence, the actual dis-tinction in the kind of knowledge that each is fittedto give us. Intelligence is the knowledge of therelations of things. We may know a thing byinstinct more perfectly than we can ever know it byintelligence, but it is intelligence alone that gives usthe knowledge of relations, and it is this knowledgethat gives us command over the wide field of activitythat we possess. InteUigence is the power of askingquestions. The number of things of vital conse-quence to it that a human child actually knows isvery small compared with the knowledge the youngof many of the lower animals have, but the child


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INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 43has a power that no lower animal has in anythinglike the same degree, the power of understandingthe relation of a predicate to a subject, the power ofusing verbs. It can deduce conclusions and makeinferences, and in this its intelhgence Hes. But thatwhich chiefly marks the high intellectual attainmentof man, that which is the most simple and concretemanifestation of his superiority, is the abihty tomake and use tools. It is here that we see the widerange of intelligence and the nature of the knowledgethat it gives, as compared with the narrow range ofinstinct, perfect as its knowledge is. The tool thatan insect uses is part of its bodily structure ; it is farmore perfect for its purpose than any human tool,and with it is always the special instinct that promptsthe animal to use it. It has perfect skill, but re-stricted to a very narrow range. The tool that aman uses is made of any material ; it is very imperfectcompared to the natural tool, but it is capable ofinfinite variation and adaptability. The sharpenedflint, the stone tied to a stick to make a hammer,such are the simple primitive indications of pureintelligence, and the progress of the human race ismarked by the enormous extension of this simplepower of using dead material to fashion more andmore perfect tools. The detachability and adapta-bihty of the material we use is derived from thispower we have to know relations. It is furtherillustrated in our language, which more than any-thing else is recognised as a mark of intelligence andwhich serves the intelligence that it is the sign of.Language is communication by signs, signs that are


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44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEentirely detached from and different from the thingsignified. Lisects and lower animals doubtless com-municate with their fellows, but we cannot imaginethat they use a language consisting of signs arbitrarilyattached to things, unless we also attribute to themour power of discursive thought.

Wlien, then, from this point of view we comparetogether instinct and intelligence, we see that eacliis a mode of psychical activity, and that while theone, instinct, is far more perfect than the other inits accomplishment of its purpose, far more completein its insight, it is nevertheless confined to a verylimited range; the other, far less perfect in accom-pHshing any purpose, far less complete in the insightit gives of reahty, yet opens to our activity a practi-cally unlimited range. Tliey are also distinguishedby their attitude. Instinct is sympathy. It is thefeeling of the intimate bond that binds the individualto the reality. Intelligence is essentially external ; itmakes us regard reality as something other thanour life, as something hostile that we may overcome.


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CHAPTER rVINTUITION

Although the two modes of mental activity, instinctand intelligence, in their perfect manifestation areso sharply distinguished from one another, yet theyexist together in our consciousness in a very closeand intimate union. For instinct is akin to thatpower of direct insight that we have called intuition.It is this power which in our view philosophy mustmake use of to seize again the simplicity of thereahty that is in a manner distorted in the intelligentview of things. Intuition is that sympathetic atti-tude to the reality without us that makes us seem toenter into it, to be one with it, to live it. It is incontrast to the defiant attitude that we seem to assumewhen in science we treat facts and things as outside,external, discrete existences, which we range beforeus, analyse, discriminate, break up and re-combine.Intuition is not a new sense reveahng to us unsus-pected things or quahties of things. It is an aspectof conscious existence recognised in every philosophy.AU that is new in Bergson's theory is the emphasislaid on intuition, and the suggestion that in it liesthe possibility of the solution of the intellectualpuzzle. What is new is not the recognition thatthere is an immediacy of feeling that precedes, forms


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46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEthe basis of or is the substance of discursive thought,and accompanies it. What is new is the exhorta-tion not to turn our backs on this immediacy in orderto follow the method of science in the hope andexpectation of finding a profounder and richer reahtyin the concepts of the understanding, the framesinto which our intellect fits the reality, but to usethe intuition to seize the reality itself, to make ofintuition a philosophical instrument, to find in it aphilosophical method. By so doing, and only by sodoing, can we have a real metaphysic, a knowledgeof things in themselves, a science that is beyond, orrather before, or perhaps we should say both beforeand beyond, the sciences. No one saw this needmore clearly than did the philosopher Kant, towhom the problem of philosophy presented itself ina practically identical form to that in which Bergsonpresents it. Is a metaphysic possible ? Is it pos-sible to know things in themselves, things as theyare, without the space and time form in which oursenses apprehend them, without the concepts inwhich our understanding frames them ? Kantthought it was not possible. There is no knowledge,he said, of things in themselves. The philosophy ofKant became, therefore, a theory of knowledge, buta theory of knowledge that involved the denial ofknowledge. Theory of knowledge cannot standalone. If all knowledge is relative, there is noknowledge. The immediate followers of Kant sawthis, and sought the absoluteFichte in the ego,Hegel in the logical idea itself, Schopenhauer inunconscious will. Bergson has perceived that there


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INTUITION 47^nnot be a theory of knowledge without a theoryof life, that the two are inseparable, because it is forlife that knowledge exists. Life is not known as anexternal thing, apprehended by the senses under aspace form and a time form, fitted into the framesor shaped in the moulds that the intellect uses, butis directly knowTi. The intuition of Ufe is knowledgeof reaUty itself, reality as it is in itself. But, on theother hand, we cannot have a theory of life that isnot accompanied by a criticism of knowledge. Itis theory of knowledge which enables us to see howthe concepts of the understanding have been con-structed, how they serve as a convenient and neces-sary symbolism for our positive science, how we mayenlarge or go beyond them, and what is their trueplace in the evolution of life.When I begin to learn a new language it appearsto me as a vocabulary of words that I must committo memory, with the rules for their use, the declen-sions and conjugations, the genders and cases, theconstruction of sentences, the idioms, the sjmtax,the spelling and the pronunciation. The task seemsappalling. If I had to learn the language by com-mitting to memory every word and every rule, Imight by severe application get perhaps considerableknowledge of it, but it would be of a halting andpractically useless kind. But what happens ? Assoon as I begin to use the language, either by speak-ing or reading it, though I may only have acquireda few words and a sHght knowledge of construction.I seem to enter into it, and it seems to form itselfround me. It ceases to appear to me as arbitrary


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48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEsounds and rules ; it becomes a mode of expressioawhich continually, and as a whole, progresses to moreand more perfect expression, and not by the mereaddition to memory of words and rules. And on theother hand my own language which I learnt in earlychildhood without difficulty, because it formed itselfround me and grew with my growth, this language,which forms so natural a part of my hfe that Icannot even in thought divest myself of it, for itis the vehicle of my thought, I can, when I will,set before myself and see it fall apart into sounds,combinations and rules. It is in the same way thatintuition and intellect are blended in our life.

This applies to everything whatever that we know.There is a difference in the knowledge we have ofanything that consists in the attitude tow^ards it.When you are reading you hardly notice the sentences,words, letters, and the spaces dividing them, thatcompose the page and convey to you the author'smeaning. You certainly do not notice that all youhave before you is black marks on a white ground.Yet if you \vill you can present to yourself these, andthese only, as the things you perceive. This veryphilosophy may appear to you as a set of verydebateable propositions, none of which separatelywould bring conviction, and all of which in theaggregate would seem to lack cohesion, or you mayenter sympathetically into it, find yourself at itspoint of view, find that it becomes the expression ofyour o\vn attitude, and that it throws hght for youon the whole problem of thought and existence. Onething is certain, that if you are convinced by this


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I INTUITION 49or any other philosophy, it is because you haveentered into it by sympathy, and not because youhave weighed its arguments as a set of abstractpropositions.But the clearest evidence of intuition is in the

works of great artists. What is it that we call geniusin great painters and poets and musicians ? It isthe power they have of seeing more than we see,and of enabling us by their expression to penetratefurther into reahty. What they see is there to beseen, but only they see it because they are giftedwith a higher power than we. What is the morethat is revealed to them ? It is not scientific truth,nor is it technical skill, for this is a consequence,not a cause of genius. It is the power to enter bysympathy into their subject. Great art is inspira-tion, it is the power to know whatever subjectengages it by entering within it and living its Mfe.What makes the artist's picture ? Not the colourswlrch he mixes on his palette and transfers to hiscanvasthese are only his means of expression^notthe model which sits to give him direction in hiscomposition, nor the skill with which he portrays thereahty in his representation ; what makes the pictureis the artist's vision, his entry into the very hfe ofhis subject by sympathy, something that he neversucceeds in expressing perfectly, though the imper-fect expression may reveal to us more than we couldsee without it.A symphony does not consist in the vibration ofstrings and reeds and stretched skins and tubeswhich give it expression, nor does its interpretationD


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50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEconsist in the skill with which the performers mani-pulate the instruments that produce the vibrations.The work is an individual, indivisible whole whichthe composer has created and the performers appre-hend, and not the aggregate of discrete sounds intowhich it can at any time be decomposed. It isknown directly in one intuition. Intuition is theentering into it as distinct from the standing overagainst it and watching its successive parts or select-ing points of view of it.What purpose, then, does the intellect serve ?Why do we distort, or at least transform, reahty ?

Orif this seems, as indeed it is, an extreme way ofstating itwhy does the intellect involve us in theillusion that the continuous is discrete, that themoving and changing is at rest ? What is theadvantage that intellectual frames give us ? Bergsonin his answer to these questions has shown us bothwhy and how these things can be. His answer isentirely original. The problems are old enough, butthe solution now offered in this philosophy has notbeen propounded before. It is the theory of lifethat offers the solution of the problem of knowledge.Clearly if the whole end and purpose of our beingwere knowledge, if knowledge were an end and notmerely the means to an end, these frames wouldnot only be useless, but a positive hindrance. If theend of knowledge were the contemplation of eternaltruth, it is intuition alone that would serve thatend, the intellect would be a stumbling-block. Butour theory of life shows us knowing as a means notan end, it is for the sake of acting. How, then,


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INTUITION 51does kno\\'ledge serve action, and in what specialway does intellectual knowledge serve action betterthan intuitional knowledge ? The illustrations wehave already given may indicate the answer. Theintellect gives us the same advantage over intuitionthat the material tool gives to us as compared withthe organical tool that the insect possesses. Itopens a practically unlimited range to our activity.It supplies us with a symbolism, a language, asystem of detached and detachable signs whichenables us to use our experience to guide our presentaction. It gives us the sciences. The sciences arethe organisation of experience into systems of realitythat serve the mind as tools serve the body. Weare continually confronted with the need of actionwhile we live there is this unceasing demand to act.There seem to be only two ways in which we maybe qualified to meet this demand ; one is by a directintuition which drives us to act in one path and oneonly, the other is by the intellect which rangesbefore us our experience and enables us to choosefrom many possible courses the one that offers besthope of success. How could this be unless ouractions, accomplished and contemplated, could bepresented before us as individual unities, and thesphere of our activity as ends and motives ? Thisthe intellect does. It articulates the hving flow,makes the past appear as successive events, thepresent as simultaneous positions or situations ofdefinite things, and so enables us to search in thepast for identical situations to guide us, to recognisesimilarities in the present, and to anticipate in the


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52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEfuture the results of our activity as actions accom-plished. And the articulations that the intellectmakes in the hving flow are natural articulationsbecause they follow the practical needs of our nature,but they are not absolute, for with other needs therewould be other divisions. There is no absolutelyformless reality ; the presence of one form is theabsence of another, but the lines and divisions arethe necessities that human activity demands.Without intellect our life would lack all that orderwhich appears to us in the form of successive events,all the divisions and lines that seem to us the actualarticulations of the inert material world, but lifewould exist. Life, the concrete reality, itself is not aformless chaos, not a manifold without order nor aunity without form, but an absolute that holds inItseK the possibihty of all form. We cannot repre-sent it or imagine it without form, and for the powerto represent and imagine at all we are dependenton the intellect, but we can distinguish the formthat the intellect gives it, and see in the purposethat the intellect serves the reason of that form.And also we can know Ufe without intellectual form,for consciousness of living is the intuition of Hfe.But if reality is life, and if the solid things and

their relations are the order that the intellect dis-cerns in this reality, what is the nothing that standsopposed to this reality, what is the disorder that isthe alternative to this order ? It seems to us thatwhen we think that something exists we can equallythink that it does not exist, and when we think ofany arrangement or order we can equally think of


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INTUITION 53the absence of order. The opposite of reality isnothing, the opposite of order is disorder, and so weseem to have positive ideas of nothing and of dis-order. And so we ask questions that seem to touchthe very depth of the problem of existencCo Why isthere any reality at all ? Why does something existrather than nothing ? Why is there order in reahtyrather than disorder ? Wlien we characterise reahtyas life, the question seems so much more pressing,for the subject of it seems so much fuller of contentthan when we set over against one another bareabstract categories, like the being and the nothingthat Hegel declared to be identical. It seems easyto imagine that life might cease and then nothingwould remain. In this way we come to picture toourselves a nought spread out beneath reahty, areahty that has come to be and that might cease tobe, and then again there would be noughto This ideaof an absolute nothing is a false idea, arising froman illusion of the understanding. Absolute nothingis unthinkable. The problems that arise out of theidea we seem to have of it are immeaning. It isvery important to understand this point if we wouldgrasp the full meaning of the theory of knowledge.Behind the reality which we know there is no non-being that we can think of as actually taking itsplace, and also there is no actual chaos or confusionor disorder which we can think of as taking theplace of the order which we know, and which wouldbe the condition of reality without that order.Bergson is not the first who has discovered that wecannot have an idea of nothing, but no one has


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54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEexposed so forcibly and so clearly the misapprehen-sion that rests on this false idea. It is very easy tosee that it must be a false idea. Every idea is anidea of something, every feehng is a feehng of some-thing, nothing is not something, and therefore tothink of absolute nothing is not to think, to feelnothing is not to feeL But we think we are thinkingof something when we think of an actual nothingwhat is it that we think of ? It is the absence ofsomething. We can think that any particular thingthat exists might not exist ; what we are then tliink-ing of is the general reality A\ith this particularthing absent. We can extend this thought to in-clude the non-existence of all that is, but what then ?We find that we are thinking of all reality as absentand ourself looking on at the void which weimagine. It is not a positive nothing that is in ourthought; the present reality is in our thought, andwithout its presence we could not picture a void.Absolute nought is unimaginable and inconceivable.Now try and realise the importance of this for ourtheory. Reahty is not a thing in itself which exists,we know not why, and which might equally wellnot exist. The living reahty which intuition revealsto us is absolute, its non-existence cannot be imaginedor conceived. So also with the order that we per-ceive in it ; it is the direction of our interest as indi-viduals of the human species, the articulation whichserves our activity ; but the absence of this orderwould be the presence of some other order, there isno positive disorder on which order is imposed.When we see clearly that the idea of the nought and


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INTUITION 55the idea of disorder are false ideas, we can dismissas entirely without meaning problems that havefilled a large place in philosophy and that are per-sistent in ordinary thought. Was creation out ofnothing, or has something existed from eternity ?Was there an original formless matter on whichorder has been imposed ? Such questions arise infalse ideas, and have no answer because they haveno meaning.The perception that reahty is that which we cannot

even in thought imagine non-existent, that the onlyalternative to the order that we recognise in thisreahty is not a positive disorder but some otherorder, alters profoundly the whole problem of philo-sophy as it has hitherto been presented. We haveno longer to explain a duahsm. The intuition ofreality that we have in the consciousness of our ownHfe is not the apprehension of a kind of reaht5altogether different from that other reality which weknow when we perceive external things. Space isnot one reahty and time another. It is one identicalreahty that we know by intuition in life, by under-standing in physical science. The point of view atwhich matter and mind appear to be two realitiesdifferent in their nature, impossible to reduce to anidentity, and yet in some mysterious w^ay in closerelation, this view which has been the starting-pointof philosophy since Descartes, and which has in oneform or another given its problem to philosophyever since, is simply superseded. The philosophy ofBergson is not a reconciliation of this old problemof duahsm ; what it does is to offer us a point of


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56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEview from which the problem does not and cannotarise. Hence its peculiar significance and immenseimportance. It is in very truth a new departure.It is not a new Hght on old problems; it is a newprinciple of interpretation, suggested and made pos-sible by the enormous advance of the biologicalsciences in modem times.


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GHAFFREEDOM

The question of most vital interest to each of us asindividual living beings, that concerns us most inti-mately in its practical as well as its speculativeinterest, is the question of freewill. Are we freeagents, or only creatures of circumstance ? Is thechoice that seems at every moment open to us realor only apparent ? Could an omniscient mind,kno^\dng the present conditions of the universe,foretell the next and every future state ? Or, isthere in free action something entirely undetermined,and therefore unpredictable ? Am I actually free,or is my Hberty of action only ignorance of condi-tions that determine my actions even to the minutestdetails ? The tremendous moral consequences thatseem to be involved in this problem of freewill havemade it one of the most debated controversies inphilosophy. And it is one of those problems thatseem beyond the power of human reason to bringto a satisfactory solution. The terms are simpleenough, and there is no question, so far as the maincontroversy is concerned, of any ambiguity in whatis meant. Yet we may prove, as Jonathan Edwards,the eighteenth-century American theologian, did, bythe most simple and unanswerable logic, and by an57


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58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEargument that appeals with full force to both parties,that freewill is impossibleit is no use, it is likeproving that Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise;there rises up against the argument a feeUng thatclaims all the authority of fact, and seems to turnthe reasoning to foohshness. Is it possible to ex-plain the persistence of this everlasting problem ?May it be that there is a confusion in the meaningof the terms, a contradiction in the very heart ofthe problem ? May it be that there is an illusion inour common way of thinking of tilings, and thatthis illusion once removed, this and other problemswill lose their meaning and disappear ?The problem of freewill or determinism is gener-

ally stated in such a way that the case for free\Wllis made impossible by the very form of the question.We ask, can we choose indifferently between twoalternatives, or must the strongest motive prevail ?But such a question is unreal, for there is no othertest of the strongest motive but the fact that wechoose it. The freewill supposed in a choice that isindifferent to motives is also absurd in its ethicalaspect, for the moral responsibihty of the agentwhich it is supposed to estabhsh is clearly destroyed.What we really mean when we ask, Are we free ?is, whether when we act we really create, or whethercreation is impossible; not whether any action isundetermined, but whether every action can be pre-dicted beforehand as certainly as its conditions aredetermined once it is carried out. The view of thisphilosophy is that life is creation, and that thereaUty of the universe is incessant creation. This


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FREEDOM 59idea is Bergson's central conception towards whichall his arguments converge.The illusion that gives rise to the problem of free-

will is the mental picture that we form of time.The time that we ordinarily think about is not realtime, but a picture of space. In ordinary thoughtand language we represent space and time as each ahomogeneous medium, that is to say, as two reaUtiesin which all the parts are of exactly the same kindas one another, in which there are no actual differ-ences nor divisions between one part and anotherpart. Differences and divisions all belong to theobjects and events that fill them, not to space andtime themselves. In space, material objects lie out-side one another, and in time, conscious states succeedone another. Now the time which we imagine asa medium in which events happen, or, as we say(using a spatial image), take place, is only a symbohcalrepresentation of space. When we think of statessucceeding one another, we are not thinking of timeat all, but of space. Real time, the true duration,is entirely different ; it is not a succession, but, hkelife or consciousness, an existence in which all realityis the actually present, moving, changing, now. Inconsciousness states do not lie outside one anotherbut interpenetrate, and the whole undivided con-sciousness changes without ceasing. Now wheneverwe think of change as the succession of fixed stateswe think of these states as lying beside one another,and change as the passing from one to the other.This is not real change. It is only in space that onething is outside another thing, and when we repre-


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60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEsent states as separate things, whether we imaginethem to exist side by side or to follow one another,we are using a spatial symbol, and the successionof states is only a picture of ourself passing fromone thing to another thing in space. In real changethere are no states at all; everything is a Hving,moving present. Existence in time is life. It isvery important to grasp this point clearly; it is sofundamental, that unless it is understood and accepted,it is httle likely that the subsequent arguments willcarry conviction. And it is not an easy doctrine toexplain or to understand, for the very language inwhich alone we can express it is steeped in spatialsymbolism. Language seems to require us to makethe same sharp distinction between our ideas thatwe make between material objects. It is when wegrasp the true nature of our experience of time, anddistinguish it from the spatial representation of it,that is indeed both useful in practice and necessaryin science, that the real nature of freewill appears.It is this spatial time that makes us think of our-selves as made up of elements that can be measuredand counted Uke material objects, and of our actionsas the play of these elements. When we see thatlife and consciousness are not measurable at all,that it is always something else that we are measuringwhen we think that we are comparing or countingconscious states, that they are not quantities butpure quahties, not outside of and distinct from oneanother, but interpenetrating and permeating theliving individual who progresses and develops, theold problem of determinism disappears, and freewill


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Tfteen to beFREEDOM 61

3een to be the creative power of the individual whois one and indivisible.

Freewill, as this philosophy affirms it, is creativeaction. All the actions that we perform, all theactions that, taken together, make up our individuallives, are not free actions. Our free actions are veryrare, and for the vast mass of mankind may evennot exist at all. And, moreover, it is not possibleto pick out of our lives certain actions and say ofthem, these are, what the rest are not, free. Whenwe regard our individual actions and analyse theminto means and ends and purposes, the deterministargument is inevitable. Whether we regard onlythe physical causation that is involved in everyaction, or whether we think of the psychical causa-tion involved in the motives and ends and purposesthat constitute the alternatives from which we choose,there is no way of resisting the determinist con-clusion that all our actions can only be explainedby their conditions, and these conditions leave noplace for freewill, as determinists and indeterministsalike have defined it. But what is true of the partsviewed as parts is not necessarily true of the whole.And so it may be that when we regard our actionas a chain of complementary parts hnked together,each action so viewed is rigidly conditioned, yetwhen we regard our whole life as one and indivisible,it may be free. Sc also with the Hfe which we holdto be the reality of the universe ; when we view itin its detail as the intellect presents it to us, itappears as an order of real conditioning, each sepa-rate state having its ground in an antecedent state,


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62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEyet as a whole, as the hving impulse, it is free andcreative. We are free when our acts spring fromour whole personahty. when they express thatpersonaUty. These acts are not unconditioned, butthe conditions are not external, but in our character,which is ourself

Freewill, this power of free creative action, is notthe liberty of choice that indeterminists have assertedand determinists have denied. It is not the feelingof Hberty that we have when we are set face to facewith alternative courses from which to choose, noris it the feeling we have when our choice has beenmade and we look back on the action accomplished,the feeling that we need not have acted as we did andcould have acted differently. Freewill is the verynature of our lives as individual wholes, the expres-sion of the individuality of life. Our actions, evenour free creative actions, follow from and dependupon our character, and our character is formed bycircumstances, but it is not external to us, it isourself. But it is only at times that free action iscalled for. Our ordinary hfe is made up of actionsthat are largely automatic, of habits and conven-tions that form a crust around our free expression ; itis only at moments of crisis or when we are touchedwith deep emotion that we seem to burst throughthis crust and our whole self decides our action. Butfurther, as this philosophy shows, there is that inthe nature of life and consciousness which is itselfessentially freewill. Causality is a scientific con-ception, and science is an intellectual view. Physicalscience is the order that the intellect imposes on the


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FREEDOM 63Io^\^ng. The intellect finds resemblances, binds liketo like, organises experience into systems in whichrecognised antecedents have recognised consequents,and so makes prediction possible. And it extendsthis view to the living world and to the consciousworld of thought and will. But life itself, as we knowit in intuition, is not like this intellectual view of itit is a becoming in which there is no repetition, inwhich, therefore, prediction is impossible, for it iscontinual new creation.

Freewill is only possible, therefore, if the intellectualview is not absolute. There is no place for it in theworld as physical science presents it. And conse-quently to prove that the a^iU is free is to provethat we have a spiritual as distinct from a materialnature, that we are not merely mechanical arrange-ments of parts in a block universe, but Hving up-holders of a universe that is open to our creativeactivity.But even so, is this liberty so very important ?

Do we not share it \vith everything that lives ? Ifwe have acquired an advantage which has made uslords of the surface of this planet, it is but a littledifference that parts us from the lower and lesssuccessful forms. If the reahty is the life that hasevolved us, and this hfe imparts to us a portion ofits o\Mi essential freedom, is it not imparted for apurely practical reason, and does not everythingthat lives share it in some degree ? Are not thelimitations so overwhelming that the consciousnessof this rare freedom hardly counts against theobstacles that block its exercise ? Is not the superi-


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64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGEority that seems to raise us above all other livingbeings merely our point of view due to the narrow-ness of our outlook ? It may be so, but there isalso reason to think that our himian Hfe is somethingmore than the success of a species by natural selec-tion in the struggle for existence. Humanity maybe in a special sense the triumph of the Hfe impulseitself. I will give this idea in Bergson's o\^ti words :" From our point of view, life appears in its entiretyas an immense wave which, starting from a centre,spreads outwards, and which on almost the wholeof its circumference is stopped and converted intooscillation ; at one single point the obstacle hasbeen forced, the impulsion has passed freely. It isthis freedom that the human form registers. Every-where but in man consciousness has

Bergson, The Philosophy of Change

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