Creative Evolution — Henri Bergson
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Creative Evolution Author : Henri Bergson Translator : Arthur Mitchell Release date : August 1, 2008 [eBook #26163] Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26163 Credits : Produced by Rick Niles, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF .The greek contained herein has been transcribed as faithfully as browser limitations allow. CREATIVE EVOLUTION BY HENRI BERGSON MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY ARTHUR MITCHELL, Ph.D. NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1911 Copyright , 1911, by HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY CAMELOT PRESS, 18-20 OAK STREET, NEW YORK TRANSLATOR'S NOTE In the writing of this English translation of Professor Bergson's most important work, I was helped by the friendly interest of Professor William James, to whom I owe the illumination of much that was dark to me as well as the happy rendering of certain words and phrases for which an English equivalent was difficult to find. His sympathetic appreciation of Professor Bergson's thought is well known, and he has expressed his admiration for it in one of the chapters of A Pluralistic Universe . It was his intention, had he lived to see the completion of this translation, himself to introduce it to English readers in a prefatory note. I wish to thank my friend, Dr. George Clarke Cox, for many valuable suggestions. I have endeavored to follow the text as closely as possible, and at the same time to preserve the living union of diction and thought. Professor Bergson has himself carefully revised the whole work. We both of us wish to acknowledge the great assistance of Miss Millicent Murby. She has kindly studied the translation phrase by phrase, weighing each word, and her revision has resulted in many improvements. But above all we must express our acknowledgment to Mr. H. Wildon Carr, the Honorary Secretary of the Aristotelian Society of London, and the writer of several studies of "Evolution Creatrice." [1] We asked him to be kind enough to revise the proofs of our work. He has done much more than revise them: they have come from his hands with his personal mark in many places. We cannot express all that the present work owes to him. ARTHUR MITCHELL Harvard University CONTENTS Introduction CHAPTER I PAGE The Evolution of Life—Mechanism and Teleology Of duration in general—Unorganized bodies and abstract time—Organized bodies and real duration—Individuality and the process of growing old 1 Of transformism and the different ways of interpreting it—Radical mechanism and real duration: the relation of biology to physics and chemistry—Radical finalism and real duration: the relation of biology to philosophy 23 The quest of a criterion—Examination of the various theories with regard to a particular example—Darwin and insensible variation—De Vries and sudden variation—Eimer and orthogenesis—Neo-Lamarckism and the hereditability of acquired characters 59 Result of the inquiry—The vital impetus 87 CHAPTER II The Divergent Directions of the Evolution of Life—Torpor, Intelligence, Instinct General idea of the evolutionary process—Growth—Divergent and complementary tendencies—The meaning of progress and of adaptation 98 The relation of the animal to the plant—General tendency of animal life—The development of animal life 105 The main directions of the evolution of life: torpor, intelligence, instinct 135 The nature of the intellect 151 The nature of instinct 165 Life and consciousness—The apparent place of man in nature 176 CHAPTER III On the Meaning of Life—The Order of Nature and the Form of Intelligence Relation of the problem of life to the problem of knowledge—The method of philosophy—Apparent vicious circle of the method proposed—Real vicious circle of the opposite method 186 Simultaneous genesis of matter and intelligence—Geometry inherent in matter—Geometrical tendency of the intellect—Geometry and deduction—Geometry and induction—Physical laws 199 Sketch of a theory of knowledge based on the analysis of the idea of Disorder—Two opposed forms of order: the problem of genera and the problem of laws —The idea of "disorder" an oscillation of the intellect between the two kinds of order 220 Creation and evolution—Ideal genesis of matter—The origin and function of life—The essential and the accidental in the vital process and in the evolutionary movement—Mankind—The life of the body and the life of the spirit 236 CHAPTER IV The Cinematographical Mechanism of Thought and the Mechanistic Illusion—A Glance at the History of Systems—Real Becoming and False Evolutionism Sketch of a criticism of philosophical systems, based on the analysis of the idea of Immutability and of the idea of "Nothing"—Relation of metaphysical problems to the idea of "Nothing"—Real meaning of this idea 272 Form and Becoming 298 The philosophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming—Plato and Aristotle—The natural trend of the intellect 304 Becoming in modern science: two views of Time 329 The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz 345 The Criticism of Kant 356 The evolutionism of Spencer 363 INDEX INTRODUCTION 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