Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Henri Bergson - Personalist (The Philosophical Review, 1912-11-01).pdf/6

№ &#93; simply an image among other images, and a bodily or brain change is a link in that chain of continuous processes which either begins with inorganic phenomenon and ends in perception or, contrariwise, begins with perception and ends in the mechanical. From this demonstrable continuity between inorganic, organic, and psychic phenomena Bergson concludes that “things participate in the nature of our perception.” The idealistic character of this teaching is perfectly obvious.

II. When from this summary of Bergson’s teaching about the changing self, in its environment, we turn to his conception of the universe we find him describing nature in the terms which he has so far applied to the single person. In truth, as has already been noted, he expounds the meaning and argues the reality of the ever changing vital life-impulse by appeal to my immediate assurance of myself as in constant change, in unceasing process of self-creation. “We create ourselves continuously,” he asserts. “In willing,” he declares, “… we feel that reality is a perpetual growth, a creation which pursues itself unendingly.”

In truth, Bergson explicitly uses the terms ‘life’ and ‘vital impulse,’ in which, most often, he describes the universe, as synonyms for consciousness. Of “life,” he definitely says that it “is consciousness.” “To compare life to an impulse (élan) is,” he says, “but a figure of speech. In reality, life belongs to the psychic order.” “”The whole of life (la vie entière),” he elsewhere declares, “is a rising tide (un flot qui monte)…, and this tide is consciousness.” The essential causes of