emphasis upon this part of our mental endowment, it is because it is as important as it is neglected and undeveloped. It throws a light, feeble indeed, but the only light we have, upon subjects of the greatest interest to us and about which the intellect can not tell us all that we need to know, upon "our personality, our freedom, the place which we occupy in the whole of nature, our origin and perhaps also our destiny." His thought has been expressed by Wordsworth in the famous "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood":

“Hence, in a season of calm weather,

Though inland far we be,

Cur souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."

CHAPTER X

THE PRAGMATIC VIEW OF SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE AND THE SYNOPTIC VIEW OF PHILOSOPHY

The main difficulty in understanding "Creative Evolution" lies not merely in the novelty and originality of its ideas, but in the poverty of our categories and the fixity of our mental habits. We find it hard to grasp the writer's meaning, and, having grasped it, to hold it, because we are too intellectual. Life is a much larger thing than intellect in the narrow sense, the latter being merely an implement which life has formed to enable it to deal successfully with what is not living. That is, we tend to conceive of reality in practically useful ways and to neglect every aspect of it which does not seem to concern our welfare. As soon, however, as men attain a certain measure of success in dealing with the practical problem of existence, when security and social order are established, the philosophic interest awakens, and the desire to know the truth of things becomes ur

gent. When this reflective period arrives, it becomes necessary to criticise views of the world previously held, to examine their foundations and their adequacy, and to seek for rationality, consistency and completeness of thought. x Now, according to Bergson, the intellect, the concept-making and using part of the mind, is an admirable instrument for practical purposes, but it is incompetent in speculation. At least, the views it takes of reality must be deepened and supplemented by insight into life. He regards life as a current which flows through time, and which has developed the mathematical, mechanical, tool-making, and tool-using understanding as an implement in dealing with that inverse current which we call matter. When applied to the material world, the intellect is marvelously successful, but it is constitutionally incapable of understanding life. We have many experiences that the geometrical, artisan mind can not understand. But, since philosophy has so largely to do with life, it is a hopeless undertaking unless there is more in mind than the intellect, unless we have other powers complementary to that of logical and conceptual thought. We cannot understand life with an instrument all of whose categories are material, whose thought-frames have been constructed to enclose the facts of that flux which is matter, and are therefore inapplicable to the events and

experiences of that inverse flux which is life; but we have, most fortunately, a power which may be so developed as to give us a vision into the very heart of life itself. This is instinct, which, when it has evolved and become self-conscious, is intuition.

This view of the nature of the mind as composed of an intellect that is a useful instrument for dealing with the physical world, and that even knows the very truth of matter, and of an instinct that knows life and the things of life, and of philosophy as the combination of the contributions of both into a synoptic view, is very interesting and plausible, and if it is true, enables us to understand much that is otherwise obscure. We see at once, for instance, why the majority of men are such poor philosophers. They have to make their way in a material world, their very existence depending upon their ability to understand and control the forces of nature. In the performance of their necessary task, they become one-sided, that is, too intellectual to philosophize well. Their intuitive faculty is weak, although it is strong enough to enable them to realize that through it they know some things not to be known in any other way. Furthermore, since the human environment is a very important part of every man's environment, since his success or failure depends largely upon the attitude of his

fellow men, instinctive understanding of the feelings, intentions and reactions of others has always had a certain practical value. It is a matter of common knowledge that teachers who have no organic sympathy with young life, no intuitive understanding, cannot be made good teachers by courses in pedagogy. Success in the ministry, in business, political and social life, depends largely on the same factor.

Still, it remains true that our intellectual bias is so great that we tend to regard everything we try to understand as a mechanism, and this almost incapacitates us for philosophizing about life.

Our fixed habits of thought interfere even with our perceptions. Thus, in talking with a painter and watching him at his work, I was much surprised to find that in his nature sketches he sometimes used purples and browns in representing the meadows and fields. I had supposed that all grass was green, and, even when he pointed to a portion of the lawn outside in deep shadow, it was difficult to see what he saw. The idea that grass must be green was so fixed that simple perceptions were difficult. Most of us have lost that innocence of the eye which is a condition of success for the artist. And, when we try to draw or paint, we seek to express what we suppose that we know instead of what we actually see. A