which life has run, as in the case of the fungi, and many cases of retrogression.

The most interesting example of the dissociation of the tendencies in the original impetus is that of the vegetative, instinctive, and rational life, which are conceived of, not as three successive degrees or stages of development of one and the same tendency, but as divergent directions of an activity that split up as it grew, the difference being not one of intensity, but of kind. If Bergson is right about this, the view that has prevailed since Aristotle's time is wrong, and there are consequences of great significance for educational theory, religious culture, and practical life.

Deferring till later a discussion of the relations of instinct and reason, it may be pointed out here that Bergson's view of reality as a Great Life is an advance upon the Schopenhauerian conception of the world will. . . . Life is the more inclusive term, to say nothing of the fact that the German philosopher thought the world will blind and wicked only because of the turmoil, strife, and wretchedness of his own inner life. The French philosopher says that the life force is striving in the direction of freedom and love. The meaning of evolution is the effort of life to develop in matter, which is determined, an instrument of indetermination, of freedom; and in the human brain success has been attained.

Automatism is the enemy, and it is our peculiar human privilege, in the moments when we are most conscious, to have conquered, to be really free.

We cannot properly speak of a goal, since there is no end to life's vista. Each of us is rather a progress than a thing. At times we have glimpses of the great movement of which we are part. "We have this sudden illumination before certain forms of maternal love, so striking, and in most animals so touching, observable even in the solicitude of the plant for its seed. This love, in which some have seen the great mystery of life, may possibly deliver us life's secret. It shows us each generation leaning over the generation that shall follow. It allows us a glimpse of the fact that the living being is above all a thoroughfare, and that the essence of life is in the movement by which life is transmitted."

CHAPTER IV

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE BERGSONIAN WORLD-VIEW.

In the Preface to his "Voyages en Italie," Taine gives a short account of the mental instrument which produced the judgments recorded in the book. He did this because he thought his readers would find his impressions more interesting and instructive, if they knew something about the formative influences that helped to shape his mind. So, since philosophy is the reaction of the human mind to the world, to life and its environment, it may well begin with an examination of the mind itself. Every philosophy, therefore, includes or implies, and, in a certain sense, builds upon a theory of knowledge.

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Bergson's theory of knowledge is stated with perfect clearness at the very beginning of “ Creative Evolution." He regards the intellect as a tool which has been produced for practical purposes. In this sense, it is in the same category with tooth and claw. The understanding is "an appendage of the faculty of acting, a

more and more precise and 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 intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves in short, to think matter. We shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects, more especially among solids, where our action finds its fulcrum and our industry its tools; that our concepts have been formed on the model of solids; that our logic is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids; that, consequently, our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed the kinship of logical thought with unorganized matter, and where the intellect has only to follow its natural movement, after the lightest possible contact with experience, in order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that experience is following behind it and will justify it invariably."

When, therefore, we are dealing with the world which physical science studies, our intellects are adequate. We can not only know what to do in external situations, but we may attain to some knowledge of the very nature of matter. Bergson is, therefore, no relativist or pragmatist.

He says, "If the intellectual form of the

living being has been gradually modeled on the reciprocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material environment, how should it not reveal to us something of the very essence of which these bodies are made? Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind born to speculation or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, might deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an intellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling the object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something of the absolute." And again, "Intellectual knowledge, in so far as it relates to a certain aspect of inert matter, ought to give us a faithful imprint of it, having been stereotyped on this particular object."

That is, so long as we look outward and are dealing with the physical world, the intellect proves to be a very satisfactory instrument. The trouble comes when we turn our gaze inward, and seek to understand our life. The metaphysical incapacity of our thinking apparatus at once becomes evident. Human existence in the past has depended on correct thoughts about things rather than on thoughts about life, and it is therefore entirely natural that the intellect should be able to furnish the former but