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Crwillve evoJuHon, by
CREATIVE EVOLUTION
Bt
Henri Bergson
If EMBBB OF THB IN8TITUTV PB0rB880B AT THB COLLBGE DE FBAKOB
Authorized Translation Bt
ARTHUR MrrCHELL, Ph.D.
^:^rz'^^
New York
■it
ComioBT» 1911,
Bt
Henry Holt and Compant
fc^ •
CAMBIOT nmMt S&-M OAK 8TKBBT, NBW Y08K
Translator's Note
I In the writing of this English translation of Professor Ber^on's most important work, I was helped by the friendly interest of Professor William James, to whom I owe the
Iilliunination of much that was dark to me as well as the happy rendering of certain words and phrases for which an English equivalent was difficult to find. His sym- pathetic appreciation of Professor Bergson's thought ia well known, and he has expressed his admiration for it in one of the chapters of A Pluralistic Universe. It was his intention, had he lived to see the completion of this translation, himself to introduce it to English readers f in a prefatory note.
I wish to thank my friend, Dr. George Clarke Cox, for [ many valuable suggestions.
I have endeavored to follow the text as closely as possible, and at the same time to preserve the living union of diction and thought. Professor Bergson has himself carefully revised the whole work. We both of ns wish I to acknowledge the great assistance of Miss Millicent Murby. I She has kindly studied the translation phrase by phrase, weighing each word, and her revision has resulted in many improvements.
But above all we must express our acknowledgment I to Mr. H. Wildon Cair, the Honorary Secretary of the
vi CREATIVE EVOLUTION
Aristotelian Society of London^ and the writer of several
studies of "Evolution Creatrice."* We asked him to be
kind enough to revise the proofs of our work. He has
done much more than revise them: they have come from
his hands with his personal mark in many places. We
cannot express all that the present work owes to him.
Arthur Mitchell
HlBTABD UnITBBBITT
> ProcmdvngM of the AritUMian Society, VOI0. ix. and x., and Hibberi Journal for July, 1910.
Contents
CHAPTER I The Evoldtidn of Ld-e— Mechahibu a
Of duntioD in general — Unorganized bodiea and abstract time — Orgaoizod bodiea and real duration — ^Individuality and the process of growing old ......
Of tranBrormism and the different ways of interpreting it^— Radi- cal mechanism and real duration: the relation of biology to physics and chemistry — Radical fmalism and real dut the reUtioD of biology to philosophy
The quest of a criterion — Examination of the various theortc
with r^ard to a particular example— Darwin and ii
variation^De Vriea and audden varjation — Eimer and or-
thogeneaia — Neo-Lamarckiam and the hereditability of
acquired charactera .......
RMult of the inquiry — The vital impettie ....
General idea ot the evolutionary proceaa— Growth— Divergent
and complementary tendenciea — The meaning of progresa
and of adaptation .......
The relation of the animal to the plant— General tendency of animal life — The development of animal life .
The main directions of the evoluljoa of hfe: torpor, intelligence.
The nature of the intellect .......
The nature of instinct .......
lite and oonscioufnesa — The apparent place of man in nature
CREATIYE EVOLUTION CHAPTER III
Relation of the problem o( life to the problem of knowledge —
The method of philosophy— Apparent vicious circle of the
method proposed — Real vicious circle of the opposite
method 186
Simultaneous geoeeds of matter and intelligence — Geometry ^^^| inherent in matter-— Geometrical tendency of the intellect ^^^| — Geometry and deduction — Geometry and induction — ^^^| Physical kws ...... ^^^^1
Sketch of a theory of knowledge baaed on the BnalysiB of the ^^^| idea of Disorder — Two opposed forms of order: the prob- ^^^| lem of genera and the problem of laws — The idea of "dis- ^^^^ order" an oscillation of tbe intellect between the two kinds of order 220
Creation and evolution — Ideal genesia of matter — The origin and function of life — The essential and the accidental in the vital process and in the evolutionary movement — Man- kind— Tbe Ute of the body and the life of the spirit . . 236
Chapter Iv
Thi Cinematcorapbical IiIechanisu of Thouobt and thb
Mechanistic Iu.vaio.v — A Glance at thb HtsroBr or
Sr STEMS— Real BEcouitfa anu Faiab Evoi-moNiBM
Sketch of a criticism of philosophical systems, based on the analysis of the idea of Immutability and of the idea of "Nothing" — Relation of metaphysical problems to the idea of ' ' Nothing"— Real meaning of this idea
Form and Becoming .......
The phikisophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming- Plato and Aristotle — The yiatural trend of the intellect
Becoming in modem science: two views of Time.
The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz .......
The Criticism of Kant ......
The evolutionism of Spencer
Se history of the evolution of life, incomplete as it yet ' is, already reveals to us how the intellect has been formed, by an uninterrupted progress, along a line which ascends through the vertebrate series up to man. It shows ua in the faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty of acting, a more and more precise, more and more complex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living be- ings 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 perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves — in short, to think matter. Such will indeed be one of the conclusions of the present essay. We shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects, more especially among solids, where our action finds ita fulcrum and our industry its tools; that our concepts have been formed on the model of sohds; that our logic is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids; that, consequently, our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed . the Idnship of logical thought with unorganized matter, 1 where the intellect has only to follow its natural move- ment, after the lightest possible contact with experience
I order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that ex-
rience is following behind it and will ju.stify it invariably.
But from this it must also follow that our thought,
I its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the
ne nature of life, the full meauiag of the evolutionary
movement. Created by life, in definite circumstances, to act on definite things, how can it embrace life, of which it is only an emanation or an aspect? Deposited by the evolutionary movement in the course of its way, how can it be applied to the evolutionary movement itself? As well contend that the part is equal to the whole, that the effect can reabsorb its cause, or that the pebble left on the beach displays the form of the wave that brought it there. In fact, we do indeed feel that not one of the categories of our thought — unity, multiplicity, mechanical causality, intelligent finality, etc. — applies exactly to the things of life: who can say where individuality begins and ends, whether the living being is one or many, whether it is the cells which associate themselves into the organism or the organism which dissociates itself into cells? In vain we force the living into this or that one of our molds. All the molds crack. They are too narrow, above all too rigid, for what we try to put into them. Our reasoning, so sure of itself among things inert, feels ill at ease on this new ground. It would be difficult to cite a biological discovery due to pure reasoning. And most often, when experience has finally shown us how life goes to work to obtain a certain result, we find its way of working is juat that of which we should never have thought.
Yet evolutionist philosophy does not hesitate to extend to the things of life the same methods of explanation which have succeeded in the case of unorganized matter. It begins by showing us in the intellect a local effect of evo- lution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action; and lo! forgetting what it has just told us, it makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world. Boldly it proceeds, with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal