Note 409 — Chapter IX · PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON386

The idea of this necessity is confirmed in Bergson’s whole philosophy of man’s life as a life of action, as a constant surmounting of obstacles, as a life that reacts in its own way upon the life of nature, upon the life of the human species as such, upon the infinite life and energy and “love” of God—if we may soar to this great thought. See, for example, what he writes in explanation of the “discordance” of which he speaks thus: “Our freedom, in the very movements by which it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that will stifle it if it fails to renew itself by a constant effort: it is dogged by automatism. The letter kills the spirit. And our most ardent enthusiasm, as soon as it is externalised into action, is so naturally congealed into the cold calculation of interest or vanity, the one takes so easily the shape of the other, that we might confuse them together, doubt our sincerity, deny goodness and love.” The explanatory words are the following. [They are quite typical of the kind of philosophy of life that Bergson thinks of as alone worthy of the name of a philosophy of the living. And the reference to “love,” as the highest “dynamic” force in this world of ours, occurs at their close.] “The profound cause of this discordance lies in an irremediable difference of rhythm. Life is general, is mobility itself; particular manifestations of life accept this mobility reluctantly, and constantly lag behind. It is always going ahead; they want to mark time. Evolution in general would fain go on in a straight line; each special evolution is a kind of circle. Like eddies of dust raised by the wind as it passes, the living turn on themselves, borne up by the great blast of life. They are therefore relatively stable, and counterfeit immobility so well that we treat each of them as a thing rather than as a progress, forgetting that the very permanence of their form is only the outline of a movement. At times, however, in a fleeting vision, the invisible breath that bears them is materialised before our eyes. 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” (Creative Evolution, pp. 134–5; italics mine). It is surely needless to point out how much truer to human nature, truer therefore to an important part of reality, this life-philosophy is than the abstractionism of Professor Bosanquet in the preceding chapter.