Part 9 (1/2)

This variety of knowledge is more original and fundamental than any which the processes of the intellect, vitiated as these are by certain inherent perversions, can give us. Intellect cannot correct itself; we must call in the aid of some other faculty if we would understand reality.

Bergson finds this faculty in what he calls ”instinct.” According to him, consciousness has developed in two divergent directions--instinct and intellect; and the difference between these is not one of intensity or degree, but of _kind_.[58]

They are two divergent developments of the same original consciousness, of which common origin they both retain traces, for they are not entirely dissimilar, nor is either of them ever found in a pure state.

Intellect is characteristic of man. Instinct is most highly developed among certain insects, notably the _hymenopterae_ (i.e., bees and ants).[59]

BLINDNESS OF INTELLECT.--And the difficulty of the philosophical problem for man arises from the anomalies of his own const.i.tution (as interpreted by Bergson in the light of his theory of instinct and intellect). As he puts it:

”There are things that Intelligence (or intellect) alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them.” (_Creative Evolution_, p. 159).

”If the consciousness which slumbers in instinct were to wake up ... if we knew how to question it, and if it knew how to reply, it would deliver to our keeping the most intimate secrets of life.”

Thus Bergson regards it as impossible that intellect should ever supply us with the complete truth about reality; there are things, e.g. life itself--which altogether elude its grasp.

INTUITION.--The situation, however, is not entirely hopeless. Man possesses some measure of instinct, which, when it has ”become disinterested, self-conscious, and capable of reflecting upon its object,” Bergson calls intuition. By means of this faculty, man is able, darkly perhaps but not ineffectually, to grope his way towards an understanding of reality.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEW PHILOSOPHY.--Just as the criticisms of Cusa.n.u.s and others freed thought from an incubus which seemed likely to prevent its further development, so the movement initiated by Mach and culminating (for the present) in Bergson, has done much to discredit ”a certain new scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle.”[60]

Mechanical determinism was characteristic of much nineteenth-century thought in Europe, not only amongst materialists, but also, in certain cases, amongst idealists as well. Against this aspect of contemporary philosophy, the work of James and Bergson has been a revolt.

”Indeterminism,” i.e. a belief in the reality of freedom and spontaneity, is an essential part of their system. Their indeterminism is indeed the necessary and logical accompaniment of their anti-intellectualism. For determinism is ”a fabrication of the _intellect_,” a device which makes reality more manageable, more amenable to logic, more easily systematised. Freedom, like life and motion, eludes the categories of the intellect.

THE MECHANICAL VIEW a.s.sAILED.--Such are the lines upon which the new criticism of the mechanical view (the most radical criticism it has had to meet since Kant) proceeds. That view, and the idea of predetermined human action which it involves, is an inevitable product of an intellect naturally incapable of understanding freedom and spontaneity. These, as they destroy its scheme of thought, it casts out as an illusion.

”Incorrigibly presumptuous,” it insists on interpreting freedom by means of those notions which suit inert matter alone, and therefore always perceives it as necessity. So that all life, far from being subjected to mechanical necessity, as had seemed the inevitable conclusion of naturalistic philosophy, was spontaneity (so to speak) materialised and embodied:

”All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity ... is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.”[61]

We have indeed travelled a long way from the austere abstractions of Mr.

Herbert Spencer. The new evolutionism is very different from the old. It subst.i.tutes for ”mechanism” another conception--that of ”dynamism,”

according to which the process of evolution is something undetermined and impredictable--”creative,” in fact. The world of organic life is embodied ”creative activity,” and what this ”creative activity” is, we ourselves experience every time we act freely.

PLURALISM.--The philosophy of Bergson is a reaction against the mechanical evolutionism (i.e. naturalism) of the nineteenth century.

Closely allied with it is another movement of thought, known as _pluralism_. This, too, is a reaction, not so much against naturalism, as against certain forms of idealism.

Idealism, it will be remembered, seeks to interpret reality in terms of mind or spirit. And it does this in certain cases--notably in the case of F. H. Bradley--by regarding all _phenomena_ as forms or aspects of the one absolute mind or spirit.

This has seemed to many thinkers a philosophy too abstract and too remote from the world of experience. Hence the question arose whether it might not be possible to interpret nature in terms of mind without being compelled to take refuge in the abstractions of ”absolutism.” And pluralism is an attempt to solve the problem.

LEIBNIZ REVIVED.--Leibniz' system of ”monads,” the nature of which will hardly have been forgotten, has been the model to which philosophers have looked in constructing their new system. And the ”Monadology” may be taken as the type to which all modern attempts to construct a ”pluralistic” philosophy more or less conform.

The essence of ”pluralism”--whether Leibnizian or other--lies in the proposition that there exists an indefinite variety of beings, some higher, some lower than ourselves. The pluralist agrees with the idealist in declaring that the essence of reality is _spirit_, but differs from him in declining to allow independent spirits to be absorbed by an ”all-devouring Absolute.”

PLURALISM AND THEISM.--William James himself, in a work _A Pluralistic Universe_ (1909) outlined a philosophy of spirit radically opposed to ”Absolute Idealism,” which he subjects to a good deal of criticism.

Another important work, written from a similar point of view, is Professor James Ward's _Pluralism and Theism_ (1911).[62]

With regard to modern pluralism, the notable features are two. In the first place, it is a philosophy of _personality_, which it regards as the most fundamental form of reality; and also, that it is _theistic_ in a sense peculiar to itself. It believes in a G.o.d who may be termed the supreme monad, i.e. the head of a system of monads; but whose power may be said, in certain respects, to be limited. And indeed some such position seems to be the _logical_ conclusion that follows from the premises with which pluralists start, and also (we may add) from the facts of experience.[63]