Part 25 (1/2)
Such a teleological unity, forever advancing to a consummation never entirely to be attained, demands however some sort of static ”milieu” as well as some sort of static ”material” in the midst of which and out of which it moulds its premeditated future. It is precisely this static ”milieu” or ”medium,” and this static ”material” or formless ”objective mystery,” which Bergson's philosophy, of the _”elan vital” of pure spirit_, spreading out into a totally indetermined future, denies and eliminates.
In order to justify this double elimination--the elimination of an universal ”medium” and the elimination of a formless ”thing-in-itself”--Bergson is compelled to reduce _s.p.a.ce_ to a quite secondary and merely logical conception and to subst.i.tute for our ordinary stream of time, measurable in terms of s.p.a.ce, an altogether new conception of time, measurable in terms of feeling.
When however we come to a.n.a.lyse this new Bergsonian time, or as he prefers to call it ”intuitively-felt duration,” we cannot avoid observing that it is merely a new ”mysterious something”
introduced into the midst of the system of things, in order to enable us to escape from those older traditional ”mysterious somethings” which we have to recognize as the ”immediate data”
of human consciousness.
It might be argued that Bergson's monistic ”spirit,” functioning in a mysterious indefinable ”time,” demands neither more nor less of an irrational act of faith than our mysterious psycho-material ”soul” surrounded by a mysterious hyper-chemical ”medium” and creating its future out of an inexplicable ”objective mystery.”
Where however the philosophy of the complex vision has the advantage over the philosophy of the ”elan vital” is in the fact that even on Bergson's own admission what the human consciousness most intensely _knows_ is not ”pure spirit,” whether shaped like a fan or shaped like a sheaf, but simply its own integral ident.i.ty.
And this integral ident.i.ty of consciousness can only be visualized or felt in the mind itself under the form of a living concrete monad.
It will be seen, however, when it comes to a ”showing up” of what might be called the ”trump cards” of axiomatic mystery, that the complex vision has in reality fewer of these ultimate irrational ”data” than has the philosophy of the elan vital.
s.p.a.ce itself, whether we regard it as objective or subjective, is certainly not an irrational axiom but an entirely rational and indeed an entirely inevitable a.s.sumption. And what the complex vision reveals is that the trinity of ”mysterious somethings” with which we are compelled to start our enquiry, namely the ”something”
which is the substratum of the soul, the ”something” which is the ”medium” binding all souls together, and the ”something” which is the ”objective mystery” out of which all souls create their universe, is, in fact, a genuine trinity in the pure theological sense; in other words is a real ”three-in-one.” And it is a ”three-in-one”
not only because it is unthinkable that three ”incomprehensible substances” should exist in touch with one another without being in organic relation, but also because all three of them are dominated, in so far as we can say anything about them at all, by the same universal s.p.a.ce.
It is true that the unappropriated ma.s.s of ”objective mystery” upon which no shadow of the creative energy of any soul has yet been thrown must be considered as utterly ”formless and void” and thus in a sense beyond s.p.a.ce and time, yet since immediately we try to _imagine_ or _visualize_ this mystery, as well as just logically ”consider” it, we are compelled to extend over it our conception of time and s.p.a.ce, it is in a practical sense, although not in a logical sense, under the real dominion of these.
When therefore the philosophy of the complex vision places its trump-cards of axiomatic mystery over against the similar cards of the philosophy of the ”elan vital” it will be found that in actual number Bergson has one more ”card” than we have. For Bergson has not only his ”pure spirit” and his ”intuitively-felt time,” but has also--for he cannot really escape from that by just a.s.serting that his ”spirit” produces it--the opposing obstinate principle of ”matter” or ”solid bodies” or ”mechanical brains” upon which his pure spirit has to work.
It is indeed out of its difficulties with ”matter,” that is to say with bodies and brains, that Bergson's ”spirit” is forced to forego its natural element of ”intuitive duration” and project itself into the rigid rationalistic conceptualism of ordinary science and metaphysic.
The point of our argument in this place is that since the whole purpose of philosophy is articulation or clarification and since in this process of clarification the fewer ”axiomatic incomprehensibles” we start with the better; it is decidedly to the advantage of any philosophy that it should require at the start nothing more than the mystery of the individual soul confronting the mystery of the world around it. And it is to the disadvantage of Bergson's philosophy that it should require at the start, in addition to ”pure spirit” with its a.s.sumption of memory and will, and ”pure matter” with its a.s.sumption of ordinary s.p.a.ce and ordinary time, a still further axiomatic trump-card, in the theory of intuitive ”durational” time, in which the real process of the life-flow transcends all reason and logic.
Putting aside however the cosmological aspect of our controversy with the ”radical empirical” school of thought, we still have left unconsidered our most serious divergence from their position.
This consists in the fact that both Bergson and James have entirely omitted from their original instrument of research that inalienable aspect of the human soul which we call the aesthetic sense.
With only a few exceptions--notably that of Spinoza--all the great European philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche have begun their philosophizing from a starting-point which implied, as an essential part of their ”organum” of enquiry, the possession by the human soul of some sort of aesthetic vision.
To these thinkers, whether rationalistic or mystic, no interpretation of the world seemed possible that did not start with the aesthetic sense, both as an instrument of research and as a test of what research discovered.
The complete absence of any discussion of the aesthetic sense in Bergson and James is probably an historic confession of the tyranny of commercialism and physical science over the present generation. It may also be a spiritual reflection, in the sphere of philosophy, of the rise to political and social power of that bourgeois cla.s.s which, of all cla.s.ses, is the least interested in aesthetic speculation.
The philosophy of the complex vision may have to wait for its hour of influence until the proletariat comes into its own. And it does indeed seem as if between the triumph of the proletariat and the triumph of the aesthetic sense there were an intimate a.s.sociation. It is precisely because these two philosophers have so completely neglected the aesthetic sense that their speculations seem to have so little hold upon the imagination. When once it is allowed that the true instrument of research into the secret of the universe is the rhythmic activity of man's complete nature, and not merely the activity of his reason or the activity of his intuition working in isolation, it then becomes obvious that the universal revelations of the aesthetic sense, if they can be genuinely disentangled from mere subjective caprices, are an essential part of what we have to work with if we are to approach the truth.
The philosophy of the complex vision bases its entire system upon its faith in the validity of these revelations; and, as we have already shown, it secures an objective weight and force for this ideal vision by its faith in certain unseen companions of humanity, whom it claims the right to name ”the immortals.”
This is really the place where we part company with Bergson and James. We agree with the former in his distrust of the old metaphysic. We agree with the latter in many of his pluralistic speculations. But we feel that any philosophy which refuses to take account, at the very beginning, of those regions of human consciousness which are summed up by the words ”beauty” and ”art,” is a philosophy that in undertaking to explain life has begun by eliminating from life one of its most characteristic products.
In Bergson's interpretation of life the stress is laid upon ”spirit”
and ”intuition.” In James' interpretation of life the stress is laid upon those practical changes in the world and in human nature which any new idea must produce if it is to prove itself true.
In the view of life we are now trying to make clear, philosophy is so closely dependent upon the activity of the aesthetic sense that it might itself be called an art, the most difficult and the most comprehensive of all the arts, the art of retaining the rhythmic balance of all man's contradictory energies. What this rhythmic balance of man's concentrated energies seems to make clear is the primary importance of the process of discrimination and valuation.
From the profoundest depths of the soul rises the consciousness of the power of choice; and this power of choice to which we give, by common consent, the name of ”will,” finds itself confronted at the start by the eternal duality of the impulse to create and the impulse to resist creation. The impulse to create we find, by experience, to be identical with the emotion of love. And the impulse to resist creation we find, by experience, to be identical with the emotion of malice.