Creative Evolution — Henri Bergson (trans. Arthur Mitchell, 1911)

This conception, which more and more shows through the reasonings of the Greek philosophers as we go from Plato to Plotinus, we may formulate thus: Ths affirmation of a realily implies the simultaneoxis affirmaiion of all the defaces of reality intermediate between it and nothing. The principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot affirm the number 10 without thereby affirming the exis- tence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, . . ., etc. — in short, of the whole interval between 10 and zero. But here our mind passes

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naturally from the sphere of quantity to that of quality. It seemB to us that, a certain perfection being given, the whole continuity of degradations is given also between this perfection, on the one hand, and the nought, on the other hand, that we think we conceive. Let us then posit the God of Aristotle, thought of thought — that is, thought making a circle, transforming itself from subject to object and from object to subject by an instantaneous, or rather an eternal, circular process; as, on the other hand, the nought appears to posit itself, and as, the two extremities being given, the interval between them is equally given, it follows that all the descending degrees of being, from the divine perfection down to the "absolute nothing," are realized automatically, so to speak, when we have posited God.

Let us then run through this mterval from top to bottom- First of all, the slightest diminution of the first principle will be enough to precipitate Being into space and time; but duration and extension, which represent this first diminution, will be as near as possible to the divine inex- tension and eternity. We must therefore picture to our- selves this first degradation of the divine principle as a sphere turning on itself, imitating, by the perpetuity of its circular movement, the eternity of the circle of the divine thought; creating, moreover, its own place, and thereby place in general,' since it includes without being included and moves without stirring from the spot; creating also its own duration, and thereby duration in general, since its movement is the measure of all motion." Then, by de-

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grees, we shall see the perfection decrease, more and more, down to our sublunary world, in which the cycle of birth, growth and decay imitates and mars the original circle for the last time. So understood, the causal relation between God and the world is seen as an attraction when regarded from below, as an impulsion or a contact when regarded from above, since the first heaven, with its circular move- ment, is an imitation of God and all imitation is the re- ception of a form. Therefore, we perceive God as efficient cause or as final cause, according to the point of view. And yet neither of these two relations is the ultimate caiisal relation. The true relation is that which is found between the two members of an equation, when the first member is a single term and the second a sum of an end' lees number of terms. It is, we may say, the relation of ihe gold-piece to the small change, if we suppose the change to offer itself automatically as soon as the gold piece is presented. Only thus can we understand why Aristotle has demonstrated the necessity of a first motionless mover, not by founding it on the assertion that the movement of things must have had a beginning, but, on the contrary, by affirming that this movement could not have begun and can never come to an end. If movement exists, or, in other words, if the small change is being counted, the gold- piece is to be found somewhere. And if the counting goes on for ever, having never begun, the single term that is eminently equivalent to it must be eternal. A perpetuity of mobility is possible only if it is backed by an eternity of immutability, which it unwinds in a chain without be- ginning or end,

Such is the last word of the Greek philosophy. We have
not attempted to reconstruct it a priori. It has manifold
origina. It is connected by many invisible threads to
the soul of ancient Greece. Vain, therefore, the effort

to deduce it from a simple principle.' But if everything that has come from poetry, religion, social life and a still rudimentary physics and biology be removed from it, if we take away all the light material that may have been used in the constructiou of the stately building, a solid framework remains, and this framework marks out the main lines of a metaphysic which is, we believe, the natural metaphysic of the human intellect. We come to a philoso- phy of this kind, indeed, whenever we follow to the end, the cinematographical tendency of perception and thought. Our perception and thought begin by substituting for the continuity of evolutionary change a series of unchangeable forms which are turn by turn, "caught on the wing," Uke the rings at a merry-go-round, which the children unhook with their httle stick as they are passing. Now, how can the forms be passing, and on what " stick" are they strung? As the stable forms have been obtained by extracting from change everything that is definite, there is nothing left, to characterize the instability on which the forms are laid, but a negative attribute, which must be indetermination itself. Such is the first proceeding of our thought: it dissociates each change into two elements — the one stable, definable for each particular case, to wit, the Form ; the other indefinable and always the same. Change in general. And such, also, is the essential operation of language. Forms are ail that it is capable of expressing. It is reduced to taking as understood or is limited to suggesting a mo- biUty which, just because it is always unexpressed, is thought to remain in all cases the same. — Then comes in a philosophy that holds the dissociation thus effected by thought and language to be legitimate. What can it do,

Espedally have we left almoat entirely on one aide those admirable but aomewhat fugitive intuitions that Plottuus was later to seise, lo study and to fix.

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except objectify the distinction with more force, push it to its extreme consequences, reduce it into a system? It will therefore construct the real, on the one hand, with definite Forms or immutable elements, and, on the other, with a principle of mobihty which, being the negation of the form, will, by the hypothesis, escape all definition and be the purely indeterminate. The more it directs its attention to the forms delineated by thought and expressed by language, the more it will see them rise above the sensible and become subtilized into pure concepts, capable of enter- ing one within the other, and even of being at last massed together into a single concept, the synthesis of all reality, the achievement of all perfection. The more, on the con- trary, it descends towai-d the invisible source of the uni- versal mobility, the more it will feel this mobility sink beneath it and at the same time become void, vanish into what it will call the "non-being." Finally, it will have on the one hand the system of ideas, logically coordinated together or concentrated into one only, on the other a quasi-nought. the Platonic "non-being" or the Aristotelian " matter." — But, having cut your cloth, you must sew it. With supra-sensible Ideas and an infra-sensible non-being, you now have to reconstruct the sensible world. You can do so only if you postulate a kind of metaphysical necessity in virtue of which the confronting of this All with this Zero is eqidvderd to the affirmation of all the degrees of reality that measure the interval between them — just as an undivided number, when regarded as a difference between itself and zero, is revealed as a certain sum of units, and with its own affirmation affirms all the lower numbers. That is the natural postulate. It is that also that we per- ceive as the base of the Greek philosophy. In order then to explain the specific characters of each of these degrees of intermediate reality, nothing more is necessary than

328 Creatito Evolution

to measure the distance that separates it from the integral reality. Each lower degree consists in a diminution of the higher, and the sensible newness that we perceive in it is resolved, from the point of view of the intelliffible, into a new quantity of negation which ia superadded to it. The smallest possible quantity of negation, that which is found already in the highest fonns of sensible reality, and con- sequently a fortiori in the lower forms, is that which is expressed by the most general attributes of sensible reaUty, extension and duration. By increasing degradations we will obtain attributes more and more special. Here the philosopher's fancy will have free scope, for it is by an arbitrary decree, or at least a debatable one, that a particu- lar aspect of the sensible world will be equated with a particular diminution of being. We shall not necessarily end, as Aristotle did, in a world consisting of concentric spheres turning on themselves. But we shall be led to an analogous cosmology — I mean, to a construction whose pieces, though all different, will have none the less the same relations between them. And this cosmology will be ruled by the same principle. The physical will be defined by the logical. Beneath the changing phenomena will appear to us, by transparence, a closed system of concepts Bubordinated to and coordinated with each other. Science, understood as the system of concepts, will be more real than the sensible reality. It will be prior to human know- ledge, which is only able to spell it letter by letter; prior also to things, which awkwardly try to imitate it. It would only have to be diverted an instant from itself in order to step out of its eternity and thereby coincide with all this knowledge and all these things. Its immu- tability is therefore, indeed, the cause of the universal becoming. Such was the point of view of ancient philosophy in

regard to change and duration. That modem philosophy

has repeatedly, but especially in its beginnings, had the wish to depart from it, seems to us unquestionable. But an irresistible attraction brings the intellect back to its natural movement, and the metaphysic of the modems to the general conclusions of the Greek metaphysic. We must try to make this point clear, in order to show by what invisible threads our mechanistic philosophy remains bound to the ancient philosophy of Ideas, and how also it responds to the requirements, above all practical, of our understanding.

Modem, like ancient, science proceeds according to the cinematographical method. It cannot do otherwise; all science is subject to this law. For it is of the essence of science to handle signs, which it substitutes for the objects themselves. These signs undoubtedly differ from those of language by their greater precision and their higher efficacy; they are none the less tied down to the general condition of the sign, which is to denote a fixed aspect of the reality under an arrested form. In order to think movement, a constantly renewed effort of the mind ia necessary. Signs are made to dispense us with this effort by substituting, for the moving continuity of things, an artificial reconstmction which is its equivalent in practice and has the advantage of being easily handled. But let ua leave aside the means and consider only the end. What is the essential object of science? It is to enlarge our influence over things. Science may be speculative in its form, disinterested in its immediate ends; in other words we may give it as long a credit as it wants. But, however long the day of reckoning may be put off, some time or other the payment must be made. It is always then, In short, practical utility that science has in view. Even