^Beeonstniction of all things, even of life. True, it hurtles ^ in its course against such formidable difficulties, it sees its logic end in such strange contradictions, that it very speedily renounces its first ambition. "It is no longer reality itself," it says, "that it will reconstruct, but only an imitation of the real, or rather a symbolical image; the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; we move among relations; the absolute is not in our prov- ince; we are brought to a stand before the Unknowable." — But for the human intellect, after too much pride, this la really an excess of humihty. If the intellectual form of the living being has been gradually modeled on the recip- rocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their I toatcrial environment, how should it not reveal to us some- I thing of the very essence of which these bodies are made? ition cannot move in the unreal. A mind bom to specu- ? or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, night deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it — as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an in- tellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something " of the absolute. Would the idea ever have occurred to ■OB to doubt this absolute value of our knowledge if philoso- phy had not shown us what contradictions our speculation meets, what dead-locks it ends in? But these difhculties and contradictions all arise from trying to apply the usual forms of our thought to objects with which our industry has nothing to do, and for which, therefore, our molds are not made. Intellectual knowledge, in so far as it relates to a certain aspect of inert matter, ought, on the contrary, to give us a faithful imprint of it, having been stereotyped on this particular object. It becomes relativti
only if it claims, such as it is, to present to us life — that is to say, the maker of the stereotype-plate.
Must we then give up fathoming the depths of life? Must we keep to that mechanistic idea of it which the understanding will always give us— an idea necessarily artificial and symbohcal, since it makes the total activity of life shrink to the form of a certain human activity which is only a partial and local manifestation of life, a result or by-product of the vital process? We should have to do so, indeed, if life had employed all the psychical potential- ities it possesses in producing pure understandings — that is to say, in making geometricians. But the line of evo- lution that ends in man is not the only one. On other paths, divergent from it, other forms of consciousness have been developed, which have not been able to free themselvefl from external constraint;? or to regain control over them- selves, as the human intellect has done, but which, none the less, also express something that is immanent and essential in the evolutionary movement, Suppose these other forms of consciousness brought together and amalga- mated with intellect: would not the result be a conscious- ness as wide as life? And such a consciousness, turning around suddenly against the push of life which it feela behind, would have a vision of life complete — would it not? — even though the vision were fleeting.
It will be said that, even so, we do not transcend our intellect, for it is still with our intellect, and through our intellect, that we see the other forms of consciousness. And this would be right if we were pure intellects, if there did not remain, around our conceptual and logical thought, a vague nebulosity, made of the very substance out of which has been formed the luminous nucleus that we call the intellect. Therein reside certain powers that are
P complementary to the understanding, powers of which we have only an indistinct feeling when we remain shut up in ourselves, but which will become clear and distinct when they perceive themselves at work, so to speak, in the evolution of nature. They will thus leam what sort of effort they must make to be intensified and expanded in the very direction of life.
H TbJB amounts to saying that jj^tfary^o^ knowledge and ' theory of life seem to us inseparable. A theory of life that 13 not accompanied by a criticism of knowledge is obliged to accept, as they stand, the concepts which the under- standing puts at its disposal: it can but enclose the facts, willing or not, in pre-existing frames which it regards as ultimate. It thus obtains a symbolism which is convenient, perhaps even necessary to positive science, but not a direct vision of its object. On the other hand, a theoiy of knowl- edge which does not replace the intellect in the general evolution of life will teach us neither how the frames of knowledge have been constructed nor how we can enlarge or go beyond them. It is necessary that these two in- quiries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, should join each other, and, by a circular process, push each other on unceasingly.
Together, they may solve by a method more sure, brought nearer to experience, the great problems that philosophy poses. For, if they should succeed in their common en- terprise, they would show us the formation of the intellect, and thereby the genesis of that matter of which our in- tellect traces the general configuration. They would dig to the very root of nature and of mind. They would substitute for the false evolutionism of Spencer — which consists in cutting up present reality, already evolved, into little bits no leas evolved, and then recompoeing it
with these fragments, thu3 positing in advance everything that is to be explained — a true evolutionism, in which reality would be followed in its generation and its growth.
But a philosophy of this kind will not be made in a day. Unlike the philosophical systems properly so called, each of which was the individual work of a man of genius and sprang up as a whole, to be taken or left, it will only be built up by the collective and progressive effort of many thinkers, of many observers also, completing, correcting and improving one another. So the present essay does not aim at resolving at once the greatest problems. It simply desires to define the method and to permit a glimpse, on some essential points, of the possibility of its application.
Its plan is traced by the subject itself. In the first chapter, we try on the evolutionary progress the two ready-made gannents that our understanding puts at our disposal, mechanism and finality;' we show that they do not fit, neither the one nor the other, but that one of them might be recut and resewn, and in this new form fit less badly than the other. In order to transcend the point of view 01 ihe understaDding, we try, in our second chapter, to reconstruct the main lines of evolution along which life
' Tbe idect of regarding life as transcending teleology as well aa mechanism is far from being a new idea. Notably in three artictea by Ch. Donan on "Le problime de la vie" (Remte phUotophiqTtt, 1892) it is profoundly treated. In the development of this idea, we agree with Ch. Dunan on troro than one point. But the views we are prebenting OD this matter, as on the questions attaching (o it, are those that we ezpreaaed long ago in our Eeiai mr les donrUes imnUdialei de la eon- acienee (Paris, 1889). One of the principal objects of that essay was, in fact, ta show that the psychical life ie neither unity nor multiplicity, Uiat it transcends both the mtchanital and the inUlUrliuit, mechanism and finaLBmhavingmeaniagonly where there is"diBtinct multiplicity," "spatiftlity," and consequently assemblage of pre-ejasting parta: "real duration" signifies both undivided continuity and creation. In the present work we apply these same ideaa to life in general, regarded, mofBo^-er, itself from the psychological point o£ view.
INTRODUCTION xv
has traveled by the side of that which has led to the human inteUect. The intellect is thus brought back to its generat- ing cause, which we then have to grasp in itself and follow in its movement. It is an effort of this kind that we at- tempt — ^incompletely indeed — in our third chapter. A fourth and last part is meant to show how our understand- ing itself, by submitting to a certain discipline, might prepare a philosophy which transcends it. For that, a glance over the history of systems became necessary, together with an analsrsis of the two great illusions to which, as soon as it speculates on reality in general, the human understanding is exposed.
THE BVOWJTION OP LIFE — MECHANISM AND TBLEOLOOX"'.
The existetice of which we are most assured and which '
we know best is unquestionably our own, for of every
other object we have notions which may be considered
external and superficial, whereas, of ourselves, our per-
ception is internal and profound. What, then, do we
find? In this privileged case, what is the precise mean-
ing of the word "exist"? Let ua recall here briefly the
conclusions of an earlier work.
I find, first of all, that I pass from state to state. I
am warm or cold, I am merry or sad, I work or I do noth-
ing, I look at what is around me or I think of something
else. Sensations, feelings, volitions, ideas— such are the
changes into which my existence is divided and which
color it in turns. I change, then, without ceasing. But
this is not saying enough. Change is far more radical
than we are at first inclined to suppose.
For I speak of each of my states as if it formed a block
I and were a separate whole. I say indeed that I change,
I but the change seems to me to reside in the passage from
lone state to the next; of each state, taken separately,
' I am apt to think that it remains the same during all the
time that it prevails. Nevertheless, a slight effort of
attention would reveal to me that there is no feeling, no
idea, no volition which is not undergoing change every
moment: if a mental state ceased to vary, its duratloQ
...Creative Evolution
would cease- .^ flow. Let us take the most stable of in- ternal states; -the visual perception of a motionless external object... '-Xhe object may remain the same, I may look at it froqr\^e same side, at the same angle, in the same light; nev^rtlieless the vision I now have of it differs from that which I have just had, even if only because the one is an .-.'^nfitant older than the other. My memory is there, which .■■«5nveys something of the past into the present. My men- '. tal state, as it advances on the road of time, is continually swelling with the duration which it accumulates: it goes on increasing — rolling upon itself, as a snowball on the snow. Still more is this the case with states more deeply internal, such as sensations, feelings, desires, etc., which do not correspond, like a simple visual perception, to an unvarying external object. But it is expedient to dis- regard this uninterrupted change, and to notice it only when it becomes sufficient to impress a new attitude on the body, a new direction on the attention. Then, and then only, we find that our state has changed. The truth is that we change without ceasing, and that the state itself is nothing but change.
This amounts to saying that there is no essential dilTer- ence between passing from one state to another and per- sisting in the same state. If the state which "remains the same" is more varied than we think, on the other hand the passing from one state to another resembles, more than we imagine, a single state being prolonged; the transition is continuous. But, just because we close our eyes to the unceasing variation of every psychical state, we are obliged, when the change has become so considerable ae to force itself on our attention, to speak as if a new state were placed alongside the previous one. Of this new state we assume that it remains unvarj-ing in its turn, and so on endlessly. The apparent discontinuity of the psychical
fl
Duration
3 then due to our attention being fixed on it by a
I of separate acts: actually there is only a gentle
; but in following the broken line of our acts of at-
' tention, we think we perceive separate steps. True,
our psychic life is full of the unforeseen, A thousand
incidents arise, which seem to hs cut off from those which