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Creative Evolution Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson Member of the Institute Professor at the College De France Authorized Translation by Arthur Mitchell, Ph.d. Ne !or" #enry #olt and Com$any %&%% Copyright, %&%%, by #enry #olt and Com$any Camelot Press, %'()* +ak ,treet, Ne !or" This e(boo" had been $re$ared by Auro e-Books, an international website dedicated to e(boo"s on -ell-.eing and ,$irituality. Discover more e(boo"s and other activities on our website0 www.auro(eboo"s.com 1boo" 1dition )*%2 Table of Contents Translator’s Note........................................................1 Introduction...............................................................2 Chapter I. The Evolution of Life - Mechanism nd Teleolo!"....................................................................# Chapter II. The $iver!ent $irections of The Evolution of Life. Torpor% Intelligence% Instinct....## Chapter III. On The Meanin! of Life - The Order of Nature and The 'orm of Intelligence...................1(1 Chapter I). The Cinemato!raphical Mechanism of Thought and The Mechanistic Illusion - *lance at The +istor" of ,"stems - -eal .ecomin! and 'alse Evolutionism..........................................................2/2 bout the uthor.................................................../10 Translator’s Note In the riting of this 1nglish translation of Professor Bergson’s most im$ortant or", I as hel$ed by the friendly interest of Professor -illiam 4ames, to hom I owe the illumination of much that as dar" to me as ell as the hap$y rendering of certain ords and $hrases for hich an 1nglish e5ui/alent as difficult to find. #is sym$athetic ap$reciation of Professor Bergson’s thought is ell "nown, and he has e6$ressed his admiration for it in one of the chapters of A Pluralistic Universe. It as his intention, had he li/ed to see the com$letion of this translation, himself to introduce it to English readers in a $refatory note. I ish to than" my friend, Dr. 7eorge Clar"e Cox, for many /aluable suggestions. I have endeavored to follow the te6t as closely as $ossible, and at the same time to $reser/e the li/ing union of diction and thought. Professor Bergson has himself carefully re/ised the hole or". -e both of us ish to ac"nowledge the great assistance of Miss Millicent Murby. ,he has "indly studied the translation $hrase by $hrase, eighing each ord, and her re/ision has resulted in many im$rovements. But abo/e all e must e6$ress our ac"nowledgment to Mr. #. -ildon Carr, the #onorary ,ecretary of the Aristotelian ,ociety of 8ondon, and the riter of se/eral studies of 91/olution Creatrice.”% -e as"ed him to be "ind enough to re/ise the $roofs of our or". #e has done much more than re/ise them0 they have come from his hands ith his $ersonal mar" in many $laces. -e cannot e6$ress all that the $resent or" owes to him. Arthur Mitchell Harvard University % Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, /ols. i6. and 6., and Hibbert Journal for July, %&%*. 1 Introduction The history of the e/olution of life, incom$lete as it yet is, already re/eals to us how the intellect has been formed, by an uninterru$ted $rogress, along a line hich ascends through the /ertebrate series u$ to man. It shows us in the faculty of understanding an ap$endage of the faculty of acting, a more and more $recise, more and more com$le6 and su$$le adaptation of the consciousness of li/ing beings to the conditions of e6istence that are made for them. #ence should result this conse5uence that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the ord, is intended to secure the $erfect fitting of our body to its en/ironment, to re$resent the relations of e6ternal things among themsel/es ; in short, to thin" matter. ,uch ill indeed be one of the conclusions of the $resent essay. -e shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate ob<ects, more es$ecially among solids, here our action finds its fulcrum and our industry its tools= that our conce$ts have been formed on the model of solids= that our logic is, $re-eminently, the logic of solids= that, conse5uently, our intellect trium$hs in geometry, herein is re/ealed the "inshi$ of logical thought ith unorganized matter, and here the intellect has only to follow its natural movement, after the lightest $ossible contact ith e6$erience, in order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that e6$erience is following behind it and ill <ustify it in/ariably. But from this it must also follow that our thought, in its $urely logical form, is incapable of $resenting the true nature of life, the full meaning of the e/olutionary movement. Created by life, in definite circumstances, to act on definite things, how can it embrace life, of hich it is only an emanation or an as$ect> De$osited by the e/olutionary movement in the course of its ay, how can it be ap$lied to the e/olutionary mo/ement itself? As ell contend that the $art is e5ual to the hole, that the effect can reabsorb its cause, or that the $ebble left on the beach dis$lays the form of the ave that brought it there. In fact, e do indeed feel that not one of the categories of our 2 thought ; unity, multi$licity, mechanical causality, intelligent finality, etc. ; ap$lies e6actly to the things of life0 ho can say here indi/iduality begins and ends, hether the li/ing being is one or many, hether it is the cells hich associate themsel/es into the organism or the organism hich dissociates itself into cells> In /ain e force the li/ing into this or that one of our molds. All the molds crac". They are too narrow, abo/e all too rigid, for hat e try to $ut into them. +ur reasoning, so sure of itself among things inert, feels ill at ease on this ne ground. It ould be difficult to cite a biological discovery due to $ure reasoning. And most often, hen e6$erience has finally shown us how life goes to or" to obtain a certain result, e find its ay of or"ing is <ust that of hich e should ne/er ha/e thought. Yet e/olutionist $hilosophy does not hesitate to e6tend to the things of life the same methods of e6$lanation hich have succeeded in the case of unorganized matter. It begins by showing us in the intellect a local effect of e/olution, a flame, $erhaps accidental, hich lights u$ the coming and going of li/ing beings in the narrow $assage open to their action= and lo! forgetting hat it has <ust told us, it makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a ,un hich can illuminate the orld. Boldly it $roceeds, ith the $owers of conce$tual thought alone, to the ideal reconstruction of all things, e/en of life. True, it hurtles in its course against such formidable difficulties, it sees its logic end in such strange contradictions, that it /ery s$eedily renounces its first ambition. 9It is no longer reality itself,” it says, 9that it ill reconstruct, but only an imitation of the real, or rather a symbolical image= the essence of things escapes us, and ill escape us al ays= e move among relations= the absolute is not in our $rovince= e are brought to a stand before the @n"nowable.” ; But for the human intellect, after too much $ride, this is really an e6cess of humility. If the intellectual form of the li/ing being has been gradually modeled on the reci$rocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material en/ironment, how should it not re/eal to us something of the /ery essence of hich these bodies are made> Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind born to s$eculate or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, might deform or transform the real, 3 $erhaps e/en create it ; as e create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the $assing cloud. But an intellect bent u$on the act to be $erformed and the reaction to follow, feeling its ob<ect so as to get its mobile im$ression at e/ery instant, is an intellect that touches something of the absolute. -ould the idea e/er have occurred to us to doubt this absolute /alue of our "nowledge if $hilosophy had not shown us hat contradictions our s$eculation meets, hat dead-loc"s it ends in> But these difficulties and contradictions all arise from trying to ap$ly the usual forms of our thought to ob<ects ith hich our industry has nothing to do, and for hich, therefore, our molds are not made. Intellectual "nowledge, in so far as it relates to a certain as$ect of inert matter, ought, on the contrary, to gi/e us a faithful im$rint of it, ha/ing been stereoty$ed on this $articular ob<ect. It becomes relati/e only if it claims, such as it is, to $resent to us life – that is to say, the maker of the stereoty$e($late. A A A A A Must e then gi/e u$ fathoming the de$ths of life> Must e "ee$ to that mechanistic idea of it hich the understanding ill al ays gi/e us ; an idea necessarily artificial and symbolical, since it makes the total acti/ity of life shrin" to the form of a certain human acti/ity hich is only a $artial and local manifestation of life, a result or by($roduct of the /ital $rocess> -e should have to do so, indeed, if life had em$loyed all the $sychical $otentialities it $ossesses in $roducing $ure understandings ; that is to say, in making geometricians.
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