HENRI BERGSON. CREATIVE EVOLUTION (English translation by Arthur Mitchell.) THE 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 us 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 beings 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....We shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects, more especially among solids, where our action finds its fulcrum and our industry its tools; that our concepts have been formed on the model of solids; that our logic is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids; that, consequently, our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed the kinship of logical thought with unorganized matter, and where the intellect has only to follow its natural movement, after the lightest possible contact with experience, in order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that experience is following behind it and will justify it invariably. But from this it must also follow that our thought, in its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the true nature of life, the full meaning 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 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 thoughtunity, 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 moulds. All the moulds 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 just that of which we should never have thought. Archimedes: was in the line of im- Aristarchus: was in the line of im- substances dissolved in water, 127 Augustine: harmonized Greek evolu- Bacon (Francis): on natural history, 171 Badovere: wrote to Galileo about a Baer, von: on the limbs of verte- Bateson: translation of Mendel's 160 Bergson: extract from Creative Evo- Berthollet: on the combination pro- portions of substances, 101 et seq. 103; friendship with Pasteur, 218 brain in men and monkeys, 240, 242 Bohr: his theory of atomic structure Borelli: a theory of impulse or at- Boyle: used the atomic theory, 93; Bragg (W.H.and W. L.): examination mentioned by Moseley, 150, 153. charge on atomic nuclei, 159, 160 planets from the sun, 37, 38; on Cagniard de Latour: views about yeast, 219 Camerarius: and the classification of Candolle, de: on an inherited peculi- Canestrini: on variations in man, 245 Cassini: on the moons of Saturn, 37 Cesalpinus: and the classification of Chadwick: u-particles, 163, 164 Clausius: on electrolytes, 128, 131 ΙΟ Copernicus: revived the heliocentric Dalton: extract from A New System tion as against special creation, Darwin, C. G.: and X-ray spectra, 150 Davy: discoveries with regard to soda and potash, 97, 117; on the theory, 33; his views about atoms Descartes: theory of vortices, 34 Eddington: extract from Space, seq. Empedocles: on the motion of heaven, Evelyn: translator of Lucretius, 69 Faraday: on electrochemical de- Flamsted: on the distances and Galen: the end of his predominance Gay Lussac: on the Combination of Genesis: extract from, 1 Gesner: used fruits for classification |