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

I necessary to a certain machine, because the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken away, we do not say that the screw is the equivalent of the machine. For correspondence to be equivalence, it would be necessary that to any part of the machine a definite part of the screw should correspond — as in a hteral translation in which each chapter renders a chapter, each sentence a sentence, each word a word. Now, the re- lation of the brain to consciousness seems to be entirely different. Not only docs the hypothesis of an equivalence between the psychical state and the cerebral state imply a downright absurdity, as we have tried to prove in a former essay,' but the facts, examined without prejudice, cer- tainly seem to indicate that the relation of the psychical to the physical is just that of the machine to the screw. To speak of an equivalence between the two is simply to curtail, and make almost unintelligible, the Spinozis- tic or Leiboizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philos- ophy, such as it is, on the side of Extension, but to mutilata it on the side of Thought, With Spinoza, with Leibniz, we suppose the unifying synthesis of the phenomena of matter achieved, and everything in matter explained mechanically. But, for the conaciouB facts, we no longer push the synthesis to the end. We atop half-way. We suppose consciousness to be coextensive with a certain part of nature and not with all of it. We are thus led, sometimes to an " epiphenomenalism" that associates consciousness with certain particular vibrations and puts it here and there in the world in a sporadic state, and some- times to a "monism" that scatters consciousness into as many tiny grains as there are atoms; but, in either case, it is to an incomplete Spinozism or to an incomplete Leib-

'"Le Pftfalogisme psycho-physio logique" (Rrvue de mtlaphysique tt dt mortdt, Kov. 1904, pp. S95-908). Cf. Matiere et memmre, Paris, 1809,

nizianism that we come back. Between this conception of nature and Cartesianism we find, moreover, intermediate historical stages. The medical philosophers of the eight- eenth century, with their cramped Cartesianism, have had a great part in the genesis of the " epiphenomenalism" and "monism" of the present day.

These doctrines are thus foimd to fall short of the ICantian criticism. Certainly, the philosophy of Kant is also im- bued with the belief in a science single and complete, em- bracing the whole of the real. Indeed, looked at from one aspect, it is only a continuation of the metaphysics of the modems and a transposition of the ancient metaphysics. Spinoza and Leibniz had, following Aristotle, hypoetatized in God the unity of knowledge. The Kantian criticism, on one side at least, consists in asking whether the whole of this hypothesis is necessary to modern science as it was to ancient science, or if part of the hypothesis is not suf- ficient. For the ancients, science applied to concepts, that is to say, to kinds of things. In compressing all con- cepts into one, they therefore necessarily arrived at a being, which we may call Thought, but which was rather thought^object than thought-subject. When Aristotle defined God the mijoscus i^otjaca, it is probably on t»5'<wa«. and not on v6jjais that he put the emphasis. God was the synthesis of all concepts, the idea of ideas. But modem science turns on laws, that is, on relations. Now, a relation is a bond established by a mind between two or more terms. A relation is nothing outside of the in- tellect that relates. The universe, therefore, can only be a system of laws if phenomena have passed beforehand through the filter of an intellect. Of course, this intellect might be that of a being infinitely superior to man, who would found the materiality of things at the same time that

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The Kantun Criticibm

i them t

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; and of Spinoza. But it is not necessary to go so far, and, for the effect we have here to obtain, the human intellect is enough: such is precisely the Kantian solution. Between the dogmatism of a Spinoza or a Leibniz and the criticism of Kant there is just the same distance as between "it may be maintained that — " and "it suffices that — ." Kant stops this dogmatism on the inchne that was making it shp too far toward the Greek metaphysics; he reduces to the strict minimum the hypothesis which is necessary in order to suppose the physics of Galileo indefinitely ex- tensible, Trae, when he speaks of the human intellect, he means neither yours nor mine: the unity of nature comes indeed from the human understanding that unifies, but the unifying function that operates here is impersonal. It imparts itself to our individual consciousnesses, but it transcends them. It is much less than a substantial God; it is, however, a little more than the isolated work of a man or even than the collective work of humanity. It does not exactly he within man ; rather, man lies within it, as in an atmosphere of intellectuality which his consciousness breathes. It Is, if we will, a formal God, something that in Kant is not yet divine, but which tends to become so. It became so, indeed, with Fichte. With Kant, however, its principal r61e was to give to the whole of our science a relative and human character, although of a humanity already somewhat deified. From this point of view, the criticism of Kant consisted chiefly in limiting the dog- matism of his predecessors, accepting their conception of science and reducing to a minimum the metaphysic it implied.

But it is otherwise with the Kantian distinction between
the matter of knowledge and its form. By regarding in-
telligence as preeminently a faculty of establishing r&<

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358 Creative Evolution

lations, Kant attributed an extra-intellectual origin to the terms between which the relations are established. He aCBrmed, against his immediate predecessore, that know- ledge is not entirely resolvable into terms of intelligence. He brought back into philosophy — while modifying it and carrying it on to another plane — that essential element of the philosophy of Descartes which had been abandoned by the Cartesians.

Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, which might have established itself in the extra-intellectual matter of knowledge by a higher effort of intuition. Co- inciding with this matter, adopting the same rhythm and the same movement, might not consciousness, by two efforts of opposite direction, raising itself and lowering itself by turns, become able to grasp from within, and no longer perceive only from without, the two forms of reality, body and mind? Would not this twofold effort make us, as far as that is possible, re-live the absolute? Moreover, as, in the course of this operation, we should see intellect spring up of itself, cut itself out in the whole of mind, in- tellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited, but not relative.

Such was the direction that Kantianism might have
pointed out to a revivified Cartesianism. But in this
direction Kant himself did not go.

He would not, because, while assigning to knowledge an extra-intellectual matter, he believed this matter to be either co-extensive with intellect or less extensive than intellect. Therefore he could not dream of cutting out inteUect in it, nor, consequently, of tracing the genesis of the understanding and its categories. The molds of the understanding and the understanding itself had to be accepted as they are, already made. Between the matter presented to our intellect and this intellect itself there was

Criticism

no relationship. The agreement between the two was due to the fact that inteilect imposed it8 fonn on matter. So that not only was it necessary to posit the intellectual form of knowledge as a kind of absolute and give up the quest of its genesis, but the very matter of this knowledge seemed too ground down by the intellect for us to be able to hope to get it back in its original purity. It was not the " thing-in-itself," it was only the refraction of it through our atmosphere,

If now we inquire why Kant did not believe that the matter of our knowledge extends beyond its form, this is what we find. The criticism of our knowledge of nature that was instituted by Kant consisted in ascertaining what our mind must be and what Nature must be if the claims of our science are justified; but of these claims themselves Kant has not made the criticism. I mean that he took for granted the idea of a science that is one, capable of bind- ing with the same force all the parts of what is given, and of co-ordinating them into a system presenting on all sides an equal solidity. He did not consider, in his CrUiqve of Pure Reason, that science became less and less objective, more and more symbolical, to the extent that it went from the physical to the vital , from the vital to the psychical. Experience does not move, to his view, in two different and perhaps opposite ways, the one conformable to the direction of the intellect, the other contrary to it. There is, for him, ordy one experience, and the intellect covers its whole ground. Tliis is what Kant expresses by saying that all our intuitions are sensuous, or, in other words,

I infra-intellectual. And this would have to be admitted, indeed, if our science presented in all its parts an equal objectivity. But suppose, on the contrarj-, that science is less and less objective, more and more symbolical, as it goes from the physical to the psychical, passing through

the vita!: then, as it is indeed necessary to perceive a thing somehow in order to symbolize it, there would be an intuition of the psychical, and more generally of the vital, which the intellect would transpose and translate, no doubt, but which would none the less transcend the in- tellect. There would be, in other words, a supra-intel- lectual intuition. If this intuition exist, a taking possession of the spirit by itself is possible, and no longer only a know- ledge that is external and phenomenal. WTiat is more, if we have an intuition of this kind (I mean an ultra-in- tellectual intuition) then sensuous intuition is likely to be in continuity with it through certain intenncdiaries, as the infra-red is continuous with the ultra-violet. Sen- suous intuition itself, therefore, is promoted. It will no longer attain only the |)hantom of an unattainable thing-in-itself. It ia (provided we bring to it certain indispensable corrections) into the absolute itself that it will introduce us. So long as it was regarded as the only material of our science, it reflected back on all science something of the relativity which strikes a scientific know- ledge of spirit; and thus the perception of bodies, which is the beginning of the science of bodies, seemed itself to be relative. Relative, therefore, seemed to be sensuous intuition. But this is not the case if distinctions are made between the different sciences, and if the scientific knowledge of the spiritual (and also, consequently, of the vital) be regarded as the more or less artificial extension of a certain manner of knowing which, applied to bodies, is not at all symbolical. Let us go further: if there are thm two in- tuitions of different order (the second being obtained by a reversal of the direction of the first), and if it is toward the second that the intellect naturally inclines, there is no essential difference between the intellect and this intuition itself. The barriers between the matter of sensible know-

The Kantian Criticism

V ledge and its form are lowered, as also between the "pure forms" of sensibility and the categories of the understand- ing. The matter and form of intellectual knowledge (restricted to its own object) are seen to be engendering

I each other by a reciprocal adaptation, intellect modeling itself on corporeity, and corporeity on intellect. But this duality of intuition Kant neither would nor could admit. It would have been necessary, in order to ad- mit it, to regard duration as the very stuff of reality, and consequently to distinguish between the substantial du- ration of things and time spread out in space. It would have been necessary to regard space itself, and the geometry which is immanent in space, as an ideal limit in the direction of which material things develop, but which they do not actually attain. Nothing could be more contrary to the