THE GOSPEL OF INTUITION
Intelligence and Intuition not opposed--Intellectual sympathy--Synthesis
and analysis. "Understanding as one loves"--Concepts--Intellect not
final--Man's spirit and intuitions--Joy, creative power and art--Value
of Intuitive Philosophy.
We now approach the grand climax of Bergson's philosophy, his doctrine
of Intuition, which he preaches with all the vigour of an evangelist.
Our study of his treatment of Change, of Perception, of la duree, and
of Instinct, has prepared us for an investigation of what he means by
Intuition, for in dealing with these subjects he has been laying the
foundations of his doctrine of Intuition. He pointed out to us that Life
is Change, but that our intellect does not really grasp the reality of
Change, for it is adapted to solids and to concepts, it resembles the
cinematograph film. Then he has tried to show us that in Perception
there is really much more than we think, for our intellect carves out
what is of practical interest, while the penumbra or vague fringes
of perceptions which have no bearing on action are neglected. By his
advocacy of a real psychological Time, in opposition to the physical
abstraction which bears the name, he again brought out the inadequacy of
intellect to grasp Life in its flow and has put before us the soul's own
appreciation of Time, which is a valuation rather than a magnitude,
an intuition of our consciousness. Then, in examining the Evolution
of Instinct and Intelligence, we found that Instinct, however blind
intellectually, contained a wonderful and unique element of immediacy or
direct insight. These are just preparatory indications of the direction
of Bergson's thought all the time.
It is admittedly difficult to determine with very great definiteness
what Bergson's view of Intuition really is, for he has made many
statements regarding it which appear at first sight irreconcilable and,
in his earlier writings, has not been sufficiently careful when speaking
of the distinction between Intelligence and Intuition. Some of his early
statements are reactionary and crude and give the impression of a purely
anti-intellectualist position involving the condemnation of Intellect
and all its work. [Footnote: E.g., the statement "To philosophize is to
invert the habitual direction of the work of thought"--Introduction to
Metaphysics p. 59.] In his later work, however, Bergson has made it more
clear that he does not mean to throw Intellect overboard; it has its
place, but is not final, nor is it the supreme human faculty which most
philosophers have thought it to be. It must be lamented, however, that
Bergson's language was ever so ill defined as to encourage the many
varied and conflicting views which are held regarding his doctrine of
Intuition. Around this the greatest controversy has raged. Little is to
be gained by heeding the shouts of either those who acclaim Bergson as
a revolutionary against all use of the Intellect, or of those who regard
him as no purely anti-intellectualist at all. We must turn to Bergson
himself and study carefully what he has said and written, reserving our
judgment until we have examined his own statements.
What is this "Intuition"? In what is now a locus classicus [Footnote:
Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 7.] he says, "By Intuition is meant
the kind of INTELLECTUAL SYMPATHY by which one places oneself within an
object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently
inexpressible. Analysis is the operation which reduces the object to
elements already known, that is, to elements common to it and other
objects. To analyse, therefore, is to express a thing as a function
of something other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, a
development into symbols, a representation taken from successive points
of view from which we note as many resemblances as possible between the
new object which we are studying and others which we believe we know
already. In its eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the object
around which it is compelled to turn, analysis multiplies without
end the number of its points of view in order to complete its always
incomplete representation, and ceaselessly varies its symbols that it
may perfect the always imperfect translation. It goes on therefore to
infinity. But Intuition, if Intuition be possible, is a simple act. It
is an act directly opposed to analysis, for it is a viewing in totality,
as an absolute; it is a synthesis, not an analysis, not an intellectual
act, for it is an immediate, emotional synthesis."
Two illustrations, taken from the same essay, may serve to make this
point clearer. A visitor in Paris, of an artistic temperament, makes
some sketches of the city, writing underneath them, by way of memento,
the word "Paris." As he has actually seen Paris he is able, with the
help of the original Intuition he has had of that unique whole which is
Paris itself, to place his sketches therein, and synthesize them. But
there is no way of performing the inverse operation. It is impossible,
even with thousands of sketches, to achieve the Intuition, to give
oneself the impression of what Paris is like, if one has never been
there. Or again, as a second illustration, "Consider a character whose
adventures are related to me in a novel. The author may multiply the
traits of his hero's character, may make him speak and act as much as
he pleases, but all this can never be equivalent to the simple and
indivisible feeling which I should experience if I were able, for an
instant, to identify myself with the person of the hero himself. Out of
that indivisible feeling, as from a spring, all the words, gestures, and
actions of the man would appear to me to flow naturally. They would no
longer be accidents which, added to the idea I had already formed of the
character, continually enriched that idea without ever completing it.
The character would be given to me all at once, in its entirety, and the
thousand incidents which manifest it, instead of adding themselves to
the idea and so enriching it, would seem to me, on the contrary,
to detach themselves from it, without, however, exhausting it or
impoverishing its essence. All the things I am told about the man
provide me with so many points of view from which I can observe him. All
the traits which describe him and which can make him known to me, only
by so many comparisons with persons or things I know already, are signs
by which he is expressed more or less symbolically. Symbols and points
of view, therefore, place me outside him; they give me only what he has
in common with others, and not what belongs to him, and to him alone.
But that which is properly 'himself,' that which constitutes his
essence, cannot be perceived from without, being internal by definition,
nor be expressed by symbols, being incommensurable with everything
else. Description, history, and analysis leave me here in the relative.
Coincidence with the person himself would alone give me the absolute."
[Footnote: An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 3.] This, as Gaston Rageot
puts it, is "to understand in the fashion in which one loves." This
statement is of suggestive interest in considering the practical problem
of how we may be said to "know" other people, and has vital bearing on
the revelation of one personality to another, urging, as it does, the
value and necessity of some degree of sympathy and indeed of love, for
the full understanding and knowledge of any personality.
In another place Bergson says: "When a poet reads me his verses, I can
interest myself enough in him to enter into his thought, put myself
into his feelings, live over again the simple state he has broken into
phrases and words. I sympathize then with his inspiration, I follow it
with a continuous movement which is, like the inspiration itself, an
undivided act." If this sympathy could extend its object and so reflect
upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations in the same
way as Intelligence, developed and corrected, introduces us into Matter.
Intelligence, by the intermediary of science, which is its work, tells
more and more completely the secret of physical operations; of Life it
gives and pretends only to give an expression in terms of inertia. We
should be led into the very interior of Life by Intuition, that is,
by Instinct become disinterested, conscious of itself, capable of
reflecting on its object and enlarging it indefinitely.
In proclaiming the gospel of Intuition, Bergson's main point is to show
that man is capable of an experience and a knowledge deeper than that
which the Intellect can possibly give. "At intervals a soul arises which
seems to triumph... by dint of simplicity--the soul of an artist or
a poet, which, remaining near its source, reconciles, in a harmony
appreciable by the heart, terms irreconcilable by the intelligence"
[Footnote: From the address on Ravaisson, delivered before the Academie
des Sciences morales et politiques 1904.] His point of view is here akin
to that of an earlier French thinker, Pascal, who said: "The heart hath
reasons that the reason cannot know." The Intellect is, by its nature,
the fabricator of concepts, and concepts are, in Bergson's view,
mischievous. They are static, they leave out the flux of things, they
omit too much of experience, they are framed at an expensive cost, the
expense of vital contact with Life itself. Of course he admits a certain
value in concepts, but he refuses to admit that they help us at all to
grasp reality in its flux. "Metaphysics must transcend concepts in order
to reach Intuition. Certainly concepts are necessary to it, for all the
other sciences work, as a rule, with concepts, and Metaphysics cannot
dispense with the other sciences. But it is only truly itself when it
goes beyond the concept, or at least when it frees itself from rigid and
ready-made concepts, in order to create a kind very different from
those which we habitually use; I mean supple, mobile, and almost fluid
representations, always ready to mould themselves on the fleeting forms
of Intuition." [Footnote: An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 18.]
The true instrument of Metaphysics is intuition. We can only grasp
ourselves, Bergson points out, by a metaphysical Intuition, for the
soul eludes thought; we cannot place it among concepts or in a category.
Intuition, however, reveals to us Real Time (la duree) and our real
selves, changing and living as free personalities in a Time which, as it
advances, creates.
Intuition is in no way mysterious, Bergson claims. Every one of us
has had opportunities to exercise it in some degree, and anyone, for
example, who has been engaged in literary work, knows perfectly well
that after long study has been given to the subject, when all documents
have been collected and necessary drafts worked out, one thing more is
needful--an effort, a travail of soul, a setting of oneself in the
heart of the subject; in short, the getting of inspiration. Metaphysical
Intuition seems to be of this nature, and its relation to the empirical
data contributed by the Intellect is parallel to the relation between
the literary man's inspiration and his collected material. Of course "it
is impossible to have an Intuition of reality, that is, an intellectual
sympathy, with its innermost nature, unless its confidence has been won
by a long comradeship with its external manifestation." In his study of
Lucretius [Footnote: Extraits de Lucrece avec etude sur la poesie,
la philosophie, la physique le texte et la langue de Lucrece (1884).
Preface, p. xx.] he remarks that the chief value of the Latin
poet-philosopher lay in his power of vision, in his insight into the
beauty of nature, in his synthetic view, while at the same time he was
able to exercise his keenly analytic intellect in discovering all he
could about the facts of nature in their scientific aspect. At the
same time, metaphysical Intuition, although only to be obtained through
acquaintance with empirical data, is quite other than the mere summary
of such knowledge. [Footnote: See protest: L'Intuition philosophique in
Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 1911, p. 821.] It is distinct from
these data, as the motor impulse is distinct from the path traversed
by the moving body, as the tension of the spring is distinct from the
visible movements of the pendulum. In this sense Metaphysics has nothing
in common with a generalization of facts. It might, however, be defined
as "integral experience." Nevertheless Intuition, once attained, must
find a mode of expression in well-defined concepts, for in itself it is
incommunicable. Dialectic is necessary to put Intuition to the proof,
necessary also in order that Intuition should break itself up into
concepts and so be propagated to others. But when we use language and
concepts to communicate it, we tend to make these in themselves mean
something, whereas they are but counters or symbols used to express what
is their inspiration--Intuition. Hence we often forget the metaphysical
Intuitions from which science itself has sprung. What is relative in
science is the symbolic knowledge, reached by pre-existing concepts
which proceed from the fixed to the moving. A truly intuitive philosophy
would bring science and metaphysics together. Modern science dates from
the day when mobility was set up as an independent reality and studied
as such by Galileo. But men of science have mainly fixed their attention
on the concepts, the residual products of Intuition, the symbols which
have lent a symbolic character to every kind of science. Metaphysicians,
too, have done the same thing. Hence it was easy for Kant to show that
our science is wholly relative and our metaphysics entirely artificial.
For Kant, science was a universal mathematic and metaphysics a
practically unaltered Platonism. The synthetic Intuition was hidden
by the analysis to which it had given rise. For Kant, Intuition was
infra-intellectual, but for Bergson it is supra-intellectual. Kant's
great error was in concluding that it is necessary for us, in order
to attain Intuition, to leave the domain of the senses and of
consciousness. This was because of his views of Time and Change. If Time
and Change really were what he took them to be, then Metaphysics and
Intuition alike are impossible. For Bergson, however, Time and Change
lead up to Intuition; indeed it is by Intuition that we come to see all
things, as he expresses it, sub specie durationis. This is the primary
vision which an intuitive philosophy supplies. Such a philosophy will
not be merely a unification of the sciences.
In an article contributed to the Revue de metaphysique et de morale
in January of 1908, under the title L'Evolution de l'intelligence
geometrique, we find Bergson remarking: "Nowhere have I claimed that we
should replace intelligence by something else, or prefer instinct to it.
I have tried to show merely that when we leave the region of physical
and mathematical objects for the realm of life and consciousness, we
have to depend on a certain sense of living, which has its origin in
the same vital impulse that is the basis of instinct, although instinct,
strictly speaking, is something quite different."
Intellect and Intuition, Bergson says very emphatically, at the close
of his Huxley Lecture on Life and Consciousness, are not opposed to one
another. "How could there be a disharmony between our Intuitions and
our Science, how, especially, could our Science make us renounce our
Intuition, if these Intuitions are something like Instinct--an Instinct
conscious, refined, spiritualized--and if Instinct is still nearer Life
than Intellect and Science? Intuition and Intellect do not oppose each
other, save where Intuition refuses to become more precise by coming
into touch with facts, scientifically studied, and where Intellect,
instead of confining itself to Science proper (that is, to what can
be inferred from facts, or proved by reasoning), combines with this
an unconscious and inconsistent metaphysic which in vain lays claim to
scientific pretensions. The future seems to belong to a philosophy which
will take into account the whole of what is given." [Footnote: Life and
Consciousness, as reported in The Hibbert Journal, Vol. X, Oct., 1911,
pp. 24-44.] Intuition, to be fruitful, must interact with Intellect.
It has the direct insight of Instinct, but its range is widened in
proportion as it blends with Intellect. To imagine that the acceptance
of the gospel of Intuition means the setting aside of all valuation in
regard to the Intellect and its work would be preposterous. Bergson,
however unguarded his language at times has been, does not mean this.
He does not mean that we must return to the standpoint of the animal
or that we must assume that the animal view, which is instinctive, is
higher than the view which, through Intellect, gives it a meaning and
value to the percipient. That would involve the rejection of all that
our culture has accumulated, all our social heritage from the past, the
overthrow of our civilization, the undoing of all that has developed
in our world, since man's Intelligence came into it. We cannot obtain
Intuition without intellectual labour, for it must have an intellectual
or scientific basis. Yet, however valuable Intellect is, it is not
final. "It is reality itself, in the profoundest meaning of the word,
that we reach by the combined and progressive development of science
and philosophy." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 210 (Fr. p. 217).] We
need, therefore, if we are to get into touch with the deeper aspects
of reality, something more than bare science. We cannot live on its dry
bread alone; we need philosophy--an intuitional philosophy.
In his brilliant paper L'Intuition philosophique Bergson shows us, by
a splendid study of Berkeley and Spinoza, that the great Intuition
underlying the thought of a philosopher is of more worth to the world
than the logic and dialectic through the aid of which it is made
manifest, and elaborated. [Footnote: He makes this clear in a letter to
Dr. Mitchell in the latter's Studies in Bergson's Philosophy, p. 31.]
Then in the Lectures La Perception du Changement and in his little work
on Laughter he sets forth the meaning of Intuition in relation to Art.
From time to time Nature raises up souls more or less detached from
practical life, seers of visions and dreamers of dreams, men of
Intuition, with powers of great poetry, great music, or great painting.
The clearest evidence of Intuition comes to us from the works of these
great artists. What is it that we call the "genius" of great painters,
great musicians, and great poets? It is simply the power they have of
seeing more than we see and of enabling us, by their expressions, to
penetrate further into reality ourselves. What makes the picture is the
artist's vision, his entry into the subject by sympathy or Intuition,
and however imperfectly he expresses this, yet he reveals to us more
than we could otherwise have perceived.
The original form of consciousness, Bergson asserts, was nearer to
Intuition than to Intelligence. But man has found Intellect the more
valuable faculty for practical use and so has used it for the solution
of questions it was never intended to solve, by reason of its nature
and origin. Yet "Intuition is there, but vague and, above all,
discontinuous. It is a lamp almost extinguished which only glimmers now
and then for a few moments at most. But it glimmers whenever a vital
interest is at stake. On our personality, on our liberty, on the place
we occupy in the whole of Nature, on our origin, and perhaps also on our
destiny, it throws a light, feeble and vacillating, but which, none the
less, pierces the darkness of the night in which the Intellect leaves
us." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 282 (Fr. p. 290).]
Science promises us well-being, or, at the most, pleasure, but
philosophy, through the Intuition to which it leads us, is capable
of bestowing upon us Joy. The future belongs to such an intuitive
philosophy, Bergson holds, for he considers that the whole progress of
Evolution is towards the creation of a type of being whose Intuition
will be equal to his Intelligence. Finally, by Intuition we shall find
ourselves in--to invent a word--"intunation" with the elan vital,
with the Evolution of the whole universe, and this absolute feeling of
"at-one-ment" with the universe will result in that emotional synthesis
which is deep Joy, which Wordsworth describes as:
"that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,--
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony and the deep power of joy
We see into the life of things."