Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Henri Bergson - Personalist (The Philosophical Review, 1912-11-01).pdf/7

Rh are psychological. Thus though he teaches, in accord with common biological doctrine, that human consciousness appears late in the evolutionary process, we must attribute to him the conception of life as personal, not as impersonal.

There remains, however, a serious objection to a purely idealistic reading of Bergson’s view of the universe. Unquestionably, the critic will admit, Bergson assigns to developing consciousness the title rôle in the life-drama. But matter also plays a necessary though subordinate part in this drama of the universe. Throughout L’évolution créatrice Bergson explains evolution by the opposition of brute, inert matter to the on-rushing current of life. To this opposition which is ‘never,’ Bergson declares, ”surmounted,” are due the many failures of nature, the choked channels and the culs de sac of the life-current. The diverse manifestations and forms of life, the concrete living beings, represent the successful strivings of life, or nature, with opposing matter. Superficially regarded, we certainly have here a dualism of life (that is, of consciousness) with matter. Three facts, however, prevent our conceiving this apparent dualism as the final expression of Bergson’s conviction. In the first place, his references to matter in L’évolution créatrice are, many of them, introduced by qualifying phrases, such as ‘in our view’ and ‘as if.’ When Bergson says, for example, ”the breaking up of life into individuals and species proceeds, we believe (croyons nous) from the resistance which life experiences from brute matter,” it is not unlikely that this ”croyons nous” has the force of ”we are wont to think,” and that he is here seeking to state simply the conventional view of the relation of matter to spirit. The probability of this explanation is strengthened by such statements as the following: “Life manifested by an organism is (à nos yeux) a certain effort to obtain certain things from brute matter,’ and, ”Everything happens as  a great current of consciousness had penetrated matter.”