Four

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BERGSONISM

The unconscious is not the main subject of Henri Bergson’s philosophy as it is of Eduard von Hartmann’s. It appears only as a secondary consideration and a ne- cessary conclusion of a scientifically conducted psychological investigation. Bergsonism in its negative aspects is a protest against Kantian idealism, Spence- rian mechanism, and French positivism and materialism. To these systems, Berg- son opposed a spiritualistic concept of the human being, the belief in the existence of an absolute truth not, as Immanuel Kant’s noumenon, beyond the reach of human faculties. He also presupposes, though he does not prove, the necessity of a creation and a personal God. The Essai sur les données immédiates de la con- science (1889) (Essay on the Immediate Input of Consciousness) demonstrates the existence of free will by psychological deductions instead of by metaphysical proofs. Matière et mémoire (1925) (Matter and Memory) tends to establish the spirituality of memory as a faculty and the spirituality of the soul. L’évolution créatrice (1928) (Creative Evolution), probably Bergson’s major and most in- fluential work, studies the process of the formation of the world by the action of a single spiritual force operating through organic and inorganic elements. Les deux sources de la religion et de la morale (1937) (Two Sources of Religion and Mor- als) completes the development of Bergsonism as a philosophical system by en- dowing it with an ethics. Philosophical criticism holds that every system since René Descartes’, no matter how original in its general principles, admits some component parts bor- rowed from other schools. Jean Laporte, in his Le rationalisme de Descartes (Descartes’ Rationalism), writes:

Du cartésianisme est issu Spinoza, mais aussi Leibniz; et pour une bonne part, [Antoine] Arnauld, sans compter [Pierre-Sylvain] Régis; pour une bonne part également, Locke, puis [George] Berkeley, puis [David] Hume et Condillac, et [Julien Offray de] La Mettrie; et encore Kant et Hegel; et [Pierre] Maine de Biran; et Auguste Comte; et [Edmund] Husserl. (1947, p. viii) [Emerging from the Cartesianism school of thought we find Spinoza, and Leibniz, and to a great extent, (Antoine) Arnauld, without mentioning (Pierre-Sylvain) Régis, also in part Locke, then (George) Berkeley, then (David) Hume and Condillac and (Julien Offray de) La Mettrie, in addition to Kant and Hegel and (Pierre) Maine de Biran and Auguste Comte and (Edmund) Husserl.] 82 THE UNCONSCIOUS IN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE

Bergson’s philosophy is no exception to the rule, and he recognized the necessity of considering other systems to explain his:

Mais une philosophie de ce genre [the one elaborated by Bergson] ne se fera pas en un jour. A la différence des systèmes proprement dits, dont cha- cun fut l’œuvre d’un homme de génie et se présente comme un bloc, à prendre ou à laisser, elle ne pourra se constituer que par l’effort collectif de bien des penseurs, de bien des observateurs aussi, se complétant, se cor- rigeant, se redressant les uns les autres. (1928, p. vii) [But, a philosophy of this type . . . will not be created in one day. To the difference of the systems themselves, each one being the work of a genius and presented as a unit, to take or to leave, it could be constituted only by the collective efforts of many thinkers, as well as many observers, being completed, corrected, re- vised by each other.]

Bergson greatly admired Arthur Schopenhauer, whose philosophy closely resembles his. He is, says Bergson, the only German metaphysician who was also a psychologist (1915, p.22). “L’élan vital” (The vital impulse) has many of the qualities of Schopenhauer’s will. It is a “formidable poussée intérieure qui devait les (elementary organisms) hausser jusqu’aux forces supérieures de la vie” (Berg- son, 1928, p. 108) (strong internal push that was to elevate them . . . to the superior forces of life) and “l’élan original de la vie” (ibid., p. 95) (the original impulse of life). Schopenhauer’s will is also the springhead of life and the internal force that urges elementary organisms to ascend to the higher degrees of objectification of the will. One of the most crucial characteristics of that will, which is considered necessary if communications between persons and objects in the universe are to be possible, is its oneness. The same will is everywhere present and active; only its manifestations are different. This is also one of the attributes of life according to Bergson: “La vie depuis ses origines, est la continuation d’un seul et même élan qui s’est partagé entre des lignes d’évolution divergentes” (ibid., p. 57) (Since its origins, life is the continuation of one and the same impulse divided among diverg- ing evolutionary lines). Bergson expresses the same view in poetic form:

Car la vie est tendance et l’essence d’une tendance est de se développer sous forme de gerbe, créant par le seul fait de sa croissance, des directions divergentes entre lesquelles se partagera son élan. (Ibid., p. 108) [Since life is tendency and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating by the sole fact of its growth, a shared instinct that emanates from different directions.]

“Life” in Bergson’s philosophy is not coexisting with the will of Schopen- hauer. Since the will is found even in the physical and inorganic world, the cha- racteristics that Bergson attributes to life also fit Schopenhauer’s will when that will is considered as the principle of every motion and activity from the plant