of non-existence is more complex, psychologically, than the idea of
existence, and posterior to it. He evidently thinks this disposes of
the reality of non-existence also: for it is the reality that he
wishes to exorcise by his words. If, however, non-existence and the
idea of non-existence were identical, it would have been impossible
for me not to exist before I was born: my non-existence then would be
more complex than my existence now, and posterior to it. The initiated
would not recoil from this consequence, but it might open the eyes of
some catechumens. It is a good test of the malicious theory of
knowledge.]
Yet in actual life there is undeniably such a thing as danger and
failure. M. Bergson even thinks that the facing of increased dangers
is one proof that vital force is an absolute thing; for if life were
an equilibrium, it would not displace itself and run new risks of
death, by making itself more complex and ticklish, as it does in the
higher organisms and the finer arts.[6] Yet if life is the only
substance, how is such a risk of death possible at all? I suppose the
special life that arises about a given nucleus of feeling, by
emphasising some of the relations which that feeling has in the
world, might be abolished if a greater emphasis were laid on another
set of its relations, starting from some other nucleus. We must
remember that these selections, according to M. Bergson, are not
apperceptions merely. They are creative efforts. The future
constitution of the flux will vary in response to them. Each mind
sucks the world, so far as it can, into its own vortex. A cross
apperception will then amount to a contrary force. Two souls will not
be able to dominate the same matter in peace and friendship. Being
forces, they will pull that matter in different ways. Each soul will
tend to devour and to direct exclusively the movement influenced by
the other soul. The one that succeeds in ruling that movement will
live on; the other, I suppose, will die, although M. Bergson may not
like that painful word. He says the lower organisms store energy for
the higher organisms to use; but when a sheep appropriates the energy
stored up in grass, or a man that stored up in mutton, it looks as if
the grass and the sheep had perished. Their _élan vital_ is no longer
theirs, for in this rough world to live is to kill. Nothing arises in
nature, Lucretius says, save helped by the death of some other thing.
Of course, this is no defeat for the _élan vital_ in general; for
according to our philosopher the whole universe from the beginning has
been making for just that supreme sort of consciousness which man, who
eats the mutton, now possesses. The sheep and the grass were only
things by the way and scaffolding for our precious humanity. But would
it not be better if some being should arise nobler than man, not
requiring abstract intellect nor artificial weapons, but endowed with
instinct and intuition and, let us say, the power of killing by
radiating electricity? And might not men then turn out to have been
mere explosives, in which energy was stored for convenient digestion
by that superior creature? A shocking thought, no doubt, like the
thought of death, and more distressing to our vital feelings than is
the pleasing assimilation of grass and mutton in our bellies. Yet I
can see no ground, except a desire to flatter oneself, for not
crediting the _élan vital_ with some such digestive intention. M.
Bergson's system would hardly be more speculative if it entertained
this possibility, and it would seem more honest.
[Footnote 6: This argument against mechanism is a good instance of the
difficulties which mythological habits of mind import unnecessarily
into science. An equilibrium would not displace itself! But an
equilibrium is a natural result, not a magical entity. It is
continually displaced, as its constituents are modified by internal
movements or external agencies; and while many a time the equilibrium
is thereby destroyed altogether, sometimes it is replaced by a more
elaborate and perilous equilibrium; as glaciers carry many rocks down,
but leave some, here and there, piled in the most unlikely pinnacles
and pagodas.]
The vital impulse is certainly immortal; for if we take it in the
naturalistic exoteric sense, for a force discovered in biology, it is
an independent agent coming down into matter, organising it against
its will, and stirring it like the angel the pool of Bethesda. Though
the ripples die down, the angel is not affected. He has merely flown
away. And if we take the vital impulse mystically and esoterically, as
the _only_ primal force, creating matter in order to play with it, the
immortality of life is even more obvious; for there is then nothing
else in being that could possibly abolish it. But when we come to
immortality for the individual, all grows obscure and ambiguous. The
original tendency of life was certainly cosmic and not distinguished
into persons: we are told it was like a wireless message sent at the
creation which is being read off at last by the humanity of to-day. In
the naturalistic view, the diversity of persons would seem to be due
to the different material conditions under which one and the same
spiritual purpose must fight its way towards realisation in different
times and places. It is quite conceivable, however, that in the
mystical view the very sense of the original message should comport
this variety of interpretations, and that the purpose should always
have been to produce diverse individuals.
The first view, as usual, is the one which M. Bergson has prevailingly
in mind, and communicates most plausibly; while he holds to it he is
still talking about the natural world, and so we still know what he is
talking about. On this view, however, personal immortality would be
impossible; it would be, if it were aimed at, a self-contradiction in
the aim of life; for the diversity of persons would be due to
impediments only, and souls would differ simply in so far as they
mutilated the message which they were all alike trying to repeat. They
would necessarily, when the spirit was victorious, be reabsorbed and
identified in the universal spirit. This view also seems most
consonant with M. Bergson's theory of primitive reality, as a flux of
fused images, or a mind lost in matter; to this view, too, is
attributable his hostility to intelligence, in that it arrests the
flux, divides the fused images, and thereby murders and devitalises
reality. Of course the destiny of spirit would not be to revert to
that diffused materiality; for the original mind lost in matter had a
very short memory; it was a sort of cosmic trepidation only, whereas
the ultimate mind would remember all that, in its efforts after
freedom, it had ever super added to that trepidation or made it turn
into. Even the abstract views of things taken by the practical
intellect would, I fear, have to burden the universal memory to the
end. We should be remembered, even if we could no longer exist.
On the other more profound view, however, might not personal
immortality be secured? Suppose the original message said: Translate
me into a thousand tongues! In fulfilling its duty, the universe would
then continue to divide its dream into phantom individuals; as it had
to insulate its parts in the beginning in order to dominate and
transform them freely, so it would always continue to insulate them,
so as not to lose its cross-vistas and its mobility. There is no
reason, then, why individuals should not live for ever. But a
condition seems to be involved which may well make belief stagger. It
would be impossible for the universe to divide its images into
particular minds unless it preserved the images of their particular
bodies also. Particular minds arise, according to this philosophy, in
the interests of practice: which means, biologically, to secure a
better adjustment of the body to its environment, so that it may
survive. Mystically, too, the fundamental force is a half-conscious
purpose that practice, or freedom, should come to be; or rather, that
an apparition or experience of practice and freedom should arise; for
in this philosophy appearance is all. To secure this desirable
apparition of practice special tasks are set to various nuclei in felt
space (such, for instance, as the task to see), and the image of a
body (in this case that of an eye) is gradually formed, in order to
execute that task; for evidently the Absolute can see only if it
looks, and to look it must first choose a point of view and an optical
method. This point of view and this method posit the individual; they
fix him in time and space, and determine the quality and range of his
passive experience: they are his body. If the Absolute, then, wishes
to retain the individual not merely as one of its memories but as one
of its organs of practical life, it must begin by retaining the image
of his body. His body must continue to figure in that landscape of
nature which the absolute life, as it pulses, keeps always composing
and recomposing. Otherwise a personal mind, a sketch of things made
from the point of view and in the interests of that body, cannot be
preserved.
M. Bergson, accordingly, should either tell us that our bodies are
going to rise again, or he should not tell us, or give us to
understand, that our minds are going to endure. I suppose he cannot
venture to preach the resurrection of the body to this weak-kneed
generation; he is too modern and plausible for that. Yet he is too
amiable to deny to our dilated nostrils some voluptuous whiffs of
immortality. He asks if we are not "led to suppose" that consciousness
passes through matter to be tempered like steel, to constitute
distinct personalities, and prepare them for a higher existence. Other
animal minds are but human minds arrested; men at last (what men, I
wonder?) are "capable of remembering all and willing all and
controlling their past and their future," so that "we shall have no
repugnance in admitting that in man, though perhaps in man alone,
consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life." Elsewhere he
says, in a phrase already much quoted and perhaps destined to be
famous, that in man the spirit can "spurn every kind of resistance and
break through many an obstacle, perhaps even death." Here the tenor
has ended on the inevitable high note, and the gallery is delighted.
But was that the note set down for him in the music? And has he not
sung it in falsetto?
The immediate knows nothing about death; it takes intelligence to
conceive it; and that perhaps is why M. Bergson says so little about
it, and that little so far from serious. But he talks a great deal
about life, he feels he has penetrated deeply into its nature; and yet
death, together with birth, is the natural analysis of what life is.
What is this creative purpose, that must wait for sun and rain to set
it in motion? What is this life, that in any individual can be
suddenly extinguished by a bullet? What is this _elan-vital_, that a
little fall in temperature would banish altogether from the universe?
The study of death may be out of fashion, but it is never out of
season. The omission of this, which is almost the omission of wisdom
from philosophy, warns us that in M. Bergson's thought we have
something occasional and partial, the work of an astute apologist, a
party man, driven to desperate speculation by a timid attachment to
prejudice. Like other terrified idealisms, the system of M. Bergson
has neither good sense, nor rigour, nor candour, nor solidity. It is a
brilliant attempt to confuse the lessons of experience by refining
upon its texture, an attempt to make us halt, for the love of
primitive illusions, in the path of discipline and reason. It is
likely to prove a successful attempt, because it flatters the
weaknesses of the moment, expresses them with emotion, and covers
them with a feint at scientific speculation. It is not, however, a
powerful system, like that of Hegel, capable of bewildering and
obsessing many who have no natural love for shams. M. Bergson will
hardly bewilder; his style is too clear, the field where his just
observations lie--the immediate--is too well defined, and the
mythology which results from projecting the terms of the immediate
into the absolute, and turning them into powers, is too obviously
verbal. He will not long impose on any save those who enjoy being
imposed upon; but for a long time he may increase their number. His
doctrine is indeed alluring. Instead of telling us, as a stern and
contrite philosophy would, that the truth is remote, difficult, and
almost undiscoverable by human efforts, that the universe is vast and
unfathomable, yet that the knowledge of its ways is precious to our
better selves, if we would not live befooled, this philosophy rather
tells us that nothing is truer or more precious than our rudimentary
consciousness, with its vague instincts and premonitions, that
everything ideal is fictitious, and that the universe, at heart, is as
palpitating and irrational as ourselves. Why then strain the inquiry?
Why seek to dominate passion by understanding it? Rather live on;
work, it matters little at what, and grow, it matters nothing in what
direction. Exert your instinctive powers of vegetation and emotion;
let your philosophy itself be a frank expression of this flux, the
roar of the ocean in your little sea-shell, a momentary posture of
your living soul, not a stark adoration of things reputed eternal.
So the intellectual faithlessness and the material servility of the
age are flattered together and taught to justify themselves
theoretically. They cry joyfully, _non peccavi_, which is the modern
formula for confession. M. Bergson's philosophy itself is a confession
of a certain mystical rebellion and atavism in the contemporary mind.
It will remain a beautiful monument to the passing moment, a capital
film for the cinematography of history, full of psychological truth
and of a kind of restrained sentimental piety. His thought has all the
charm that can go without strength and all the competence that can go
without mastery. This is not an age of mastery; it is confused with
too much business; it has no brave simplicity. The mind has forgotten
its proper function, which is to crown life by quickening it into
intelligence, and thinks if it could only prove that it accelerated
life, that might perhaps justify its existence; like a philosopher at
sea who, to make himself useful, should blow into the sail.
IV
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL
I. A NEW SCHOLASTICISM
In its chase after idols this age has not wholly forgotten the gods,
and reason and faith in reason are not left without advocates. Some
years ago, at Trinity College, Cambridge, Mr. G.E. Moore began to
produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his
powerful and luminous dialectic. Like Socrates, he used all the sharp
arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost
archaic dogmatism. Those who heard him felt how superior his position
was, both in rigour and in force, to the prevailing inversions and
idealisms. The abuse of psychology, rampant for two hundred years,
seemed at last to be detected and challenged; and the impressionistic
rhetoric that philosophy was saturated with began to be squeezed out
by clear questions, and by a disconcerting demand for literal
sincerity. German idealism, when we study it as a product of its own
age and country, is a most engaging phenomenon; it is full of
afflatus, sweep, and deep searchings of heart; but it is essentially
romantic and egotistical, and all in it that is not soliloquy is mere
system-making and sophistry. Therefore when it is taught by unromantic
people _ex cathedra,_ in stentorian tones, and represented as the
rational foundation of science and religion, with neither of which it
has any honest sympathy, it becomes positively odious--one of the
worst imposture and blights to which a youthful imagination could be
subjected. It is chiefly against the incubus of this celestial monster
that Mr. Moore dared to lift up his eyes; and many a less courageous
or less clear-sighted person was thankful to him for it. But a man
with such a mission requires a certain narrowness and concentration of
mind; he has to be intolerant and to pound a good deal on the same
notes. We need not wonder if Mr. Moore has written rather meagerly,
and with a certain vehemence and want of imagination.
All this, however, was more than made up by the powerful ally who soon
came to his aid. Mr. Bertrand Russell began by adopting Mr. Moore's
metaphysics, but he has given as much as he has received. Apart from
his well-known mathematical attainments, he possesses by inheritance
the political and historical mind, and an intrepid determination to
pierce convention and look to ultimate things. He has written
abundantly and, where the subject permits, with a singular lucidity,
candour, and charm. Especially his _Philosophical Essays_ and his
little book on _The Problems of Philosophy_ can be read with pleasure
by any intelligent person, and give a tolerably rounded picture of the
tenets of the school. Yet it must be remembered that Mr. Russell, like
Mr. Moore, is still young and his thoughts have not assumed their
ultimate form. Moreover, he lives in an atmosphere of academic
disputation which makes one technical point after another acquire a
preponderating influence in his thoughts. His book on _The Problems
of Philosophy_ is admirable in style, temper, and insight, but it
hardly deserves its title; it treats principally, in a somewhat
personal and partial way, of the relation of knowledge to its objects,
and it might rather have been called "The problems which Moore and I
have been agitating lately." Indeed, his philosophy is so little
settled as yet that every new article and every fresh conversation
revokes some of his former opinions, and places the crux of
philosophical controversy at a new point. We are soon made aware that
exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous, but that one
exact thought, in the same mind, may be the exact opposite of the
next. This inconstancy, which after all does not go very deep, is a
sign of sincerity and pure love of truth; it marks the freshness, the
vivacity, the self-forgetfulness, the logical ardour belonging to this
delightful reformer. It may seem a paradox, but at bottom it is not,
that the vitalists should be oppressed, womanish, and mystical, and
only the intellectualists keen, argumentative, fearless, and full of
life. I mention this casualness and inconstancy in Mr. Russell's
utterances not to deride them, but to show the reader how impossible
it is, at this juncture, to give a comprehensive account of his
philosophy, much less a final judgment upon it.
The principles most fundamental and dominant in his thought are
perhaps the following: That the objects the mind deals with, whether
material or ideal, are what and where the mind says they are, and
independent of it; that some general principles and ideas have to be
assumed to be valid not merely for thought but for things; that
relations may subsist, arise, and disappear between things without at
all affecting these things internally; and that the nature of
everything is just what it is, and not to be confused either with its
origin or with any opinion about it. These principles, joined with an
obvious predilection for Plato and Leibnitz among philosophers, lead
to the following doctrines, among others: that the mind or soul is an
entity separate from its thoughts and pre-existent; that a material
world exists in space and time; that its substantial elements may be
infinite in number, having position and quality, but no extension, so
that each mind or soul might well be one of them; that both the
existent and the ideal worlds may be infinite, while the ideal world
contains an infinity of things not realised in the actual world; and
that this ideal world is knowable by a separate mental consideration,
a consideration which is, however, empirical in spirit, since the
ideal world of ethics, logic, and mathematics has a special and
surprising constitution, which we do not make but must attentively
discover.
The reader will perceive, perhaps, that if the function of philosophy
is really, as the saying goes, to give us assurance of God, freedom,
and immortality, Mr. Russell's philosophy is a dire failure. In fact,
its author sometimes gives vent to a rather emphatic pessimism about
this world; he has a keen sense for the manifold absurdities of
existence. But the sense for absurdities is not without its delights,
and Mr. Russell's satirical wit is more constant and better grounded
than his despair. I should be inclined to say of his philosophy what
he himself has said of that of Leibnitz, that it is at its best in
those subjects which are most remote from human life. It needs to be
very largely supplemented and much ripened and humanised before it can
be called satisfactory or wise; but time may bring these fulfilments,
and meantime I cannot help thinking it auspicious in the highest
degree that, in a time of such impressionistic haste and plebeian
looseness of thought, scholastic rigour should suddenly raise its head
again, aspiring to seriousness, solidity, and perfection of doctrine:
and this not in the interests of religious orthodoxy, but precisely in
the most emancipated and unflinchingly radical quarter. It is
refreshing and reassuring, after the confused, melodramatic ways of
philosophising to which the idealists and the pragmatists have
accustomed us, to breathe again the crisp air of scholastic common
sense. It is good for us to be held down, as the Platonic Socrates
would have held us, to saying what we really believe, and sticking to
what we say. We seem to regain our intellectual birthright when we are
allowed to declare our genuine intent, even in philosophy, instead of
begging some kind psychologist to investigate our "meaning" for us, or
even waiting for the flux of events to endow us with what "meaning" it
will. It is also instructive to have the ethical attitude purified of
all that is not ethical and turned explicitly into what, in its moral
capacity, it essentially is: a groundless pronouncement upon the
better and the worse.