CHAPTER IX CONSEQUENCES OF BERGSON'S THE- Evolution has not been linear; life has not described a single course, but has proceeded along divergent directions. The many tendencies it contains are dissociated as the advance is made, and the species in which they find expression become complementary and sometimes antagonistic. The unity of life is that of the impulse that pushes it along, and harmony is behind us, not before. The life force meets with real obstacles in the refractory nature of the matter which it organizes, and its failures have been many, its successes few. "Progress is accomplished only on the two or three great lines of evolution on which forms ever more and more complex, ever more and more high, appear; between these lines run a crowd of minor paths in which, on the contrary, deviations, arrests, and set-backs are multiplied." The Great Life seems in one fundamental respect to be like its human à la Jung expressions; it can not develop all its possibilities at once. As Bergson says, "Each of us, glancing back over his history, will find that his child-personality, though indivisible, united in itself divers persons, which could remain blended just because they were in their nascent state: this indecision, so charged with promise, is one of the greatest charms of childhood. But these interwoven personalities become incompatible in course of growth, and, as each of us can live but one life, a choice must perforce be made. We can choose in reality without ceasing; without ceasing, also we abandon many things. The route we pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we might have become." The difference is that Nature, having an incalculable number of lives at her command, can preserve these different tendencies by giving them expression in different species which evolve separately. The first great bifurcation resulted in the separation of the organisms that are able to fix the carbon and nitrogen everywhere found from the organisms that are mobile and conscious. The plants store up potential energy while the animals are releasing mechanisms. Now, since mobility and consciousness go together, the vegetable world is sunk in torpor or profound sleep. And of the four main directions in which animal life has evolved, two have led into blind al leys. The molluscs and echinoderms, in order to defend themselves, have shut themselves up in armor, and so have fallen into the lethargy from which the arthropods and vertebrates have escaped. But even in the highest forms reached along these two lines, in the insects and in men, the victory is not won for all time. Eternal vigilance is the price of our liberty. Automatism is a constantly besetting danger. We cannot attain a high development without forming habits, and these tend to become numerous and rigid and so transform us into automata. Thought cannot be communicated unless it is expressed, and the form it takes tends to become a prison. The letter kills the spirit. "The word turns against the idea." Nietzsche, in his lively way, put it thus: "Wherever primitive man put up a word, he believed he had made a discovery. How utterly mistaken he really was! He had touched a problem, and while supposing he had solved it, he had created an obstacle to its solution. Now, with every new knowledge we stumble over flint-like and petrified words, and, in so doing, break a leg sooner than a word." From this point of view, the late Prof. Thomas Davidson was not merely paradoxical but had some reason on his side, when he declared that it was a fixed principle with him to form no habits, and that when he observed them growing up he put an end to them immediately lest he should finally become fettered by them. Bergson is constantly telling us that life has no pre-conceived plan, but he is also constantly saying that life is an effort to realize freedom which has been to some extent attained in man, though even in him it is in constant danger. Life, then, in the Bergsonian world-view, is a current of consciousness which has penetrated matter, and is carrying it along to organization. Mind, in its totality, is composed of the complementary powers of instinct and intelligence. This complete endowment life has not been able to bestow on any of its creatures, so a distribution has been made. The mind of man is mostly intellect with some instinct, while the mind of ants, bees and wasps is mostly instinct with some fringe of intelligence. There have thus been two divergent solutions of the same problem. For the vital impetus in organizing refractory matter had and has a real problem. Mind, in both its varieties, is an instrument for grappling with difficulties. If all adjustments were perfect and life simple and easy, it is probable that consciousness would cease. The intellect is an instrument which we use when we get in trouble. When we face a perplexity, we think. Consciousness seems to be a light that illuminates difficult situations when we are called on to choose, and is apparently proportionate to the power of choice. In deliberation, when we are trying to represent in our minds all the factors that ought to influence our actions, to weigh them and attribute to each its relative importance, consciousness is intense. A complete and final success in solving all difficulties might, therefore, much as we strive for it, be fatal to all that we prize in life, and force us willy-nilly into Nirvana. Nothing that Bergson has written is likely to cause more discussion than his elaborate effort to show that instinct and intellect are not different degrees of the same faculty, but are opposite and complementary tendencies which have become dissociated in the process of growth. 66 The cardinal error which, from Aristotle onwards, has vitiated most of the philosophies of nature, is to see in vegetative, instinctive and rational life, three successive degrees of the development of one and the same tendency, whereas they are three divergent directions of an activity that split up as it grew." He thus insists that the difference is one of kind. If such a view can be established, it will obviously be necessary for biologists and psychologists to revise their ideas on the subject, and profound practical consequences will result for pedagogy, sociology and practical life. Herbert Spencer and others have tried to show that intelligence evolves from instinct, which is itself a compound reflex. The theory |