Mary Whiton Calkins

“ We seek,” he continues, “the precise sense which our consciousness gives to the word ‘exist’ and we find that for a conscious being to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is indefinitely to create oneself. May we,” he asks, “say the same of existence in general?” [15] Bergson’s affirmative answer to this question will later be discussed; at present it concerns us to notice that duration is defined as self-creation, and that the whole of Bergson’s nature-philosophy is erected on the foundation of this conception of change as personal. ”

“ The essential causes of evolution are psychological. Thus though he teaches, in accord with common biological doctrine, that human consciousness appears late in the evolutionary process, [43] 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. ”

“ The first is the topic of Bergson’s earlier works and includes his discussions of duration and freedom, of mechanism, and of body and mind. His conception of nature is the theme of L’évolution créatrice.
I. (a) It has already appeared that Bergson conceives duration in personal terms. He refers to “our feeling of duration, that is to say, of the coincidence of our ego with itself (de notre moi avec lui-même) ” [10] and says: “To touch the reality of spirit one must place oneself at the point at which an individual consciousness prolongs and preserves the past in a present. ”

“ He is claimed, or criticized, as pragmatist or temporalist when, as a matter of fact he is, first and foremost a personalist, an idealist of the renaissant spiritualistic school. [1] To assert with one of his critics that “the fundamental principle” of his whole philosophy is duration is to take his statements out of their context. For Bergson’s teaching is that the reality, with which we are in immediate contact is—not duration, but the self which endures (le moi qui dure) [2] Nor is this the statement of a single isolated passage. ”

“ 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,” [36] he asserts. ”

“ Bergson supposes a state in which there is ”neither memory nor will ... nothing but the moment which dies and is re-born again and again. ... One may assume,” he concludes, “that physical existence tends to be of this second sort.” This reminds one of Ward’s Leibnizian doctrine of ‘bare monads’ and his description of the bare monad as one “whose organism, so to say, reduces to a point, and its present to a moment.” [55] Clearly, Bergson here suggests that matter consists in momentarily, as contrasted with continuously, conscious being or beings. ”

“ To the claim that Bergson is a personalist two objections will at once be made. It will be urged that he incessantly opposes idealism; and from Matière et Mémoire will be quoted his definite statement: “we do not accept idealism.” [5] Stress will be laid also on the fact that L’évolution créatrice throughout asserts the existence of ‘brute matter’ as an essential factor in evolution. Bergson’s definite disclaimers of idealism need not long detain us. ”

“ Our liberty, in the very movements by which it affirms itself, creates growing habits which will suffocate it unless it renews itself by constant effort. The liveliest thought will freeze in the formula which expresses it.” [52] Here matter is conceived as opposed not to consciousness but to freedom: in Bergson’s words, once more, ”Matter is necessity. ”

“ An absolutist may believe that time and change arc vitally real, but he must conceive them as aspects, and in the end, subordinated aspects, of the eternal purposes, [60] whereas to Bergson, as to every pluralist, reality is forever in the making, “we are forever creating ourselves.” ”

“ But these interpenetrating personalities become incompatible as they grow older and since each of us lives but one life, he is forced to make a choice. In truth we choose unceasingly, and unceasingly we suffer great losses. The way which we take through time is strewn with the débris of all which we began to be. ”

“ It retains the diverse tendencies. ... It creates ... diverging series of species which develop separately.’ [56] The opposition which is essential to the diverging forms of life is, according to this teaching, analogous to the conflicting aspects of a self. That ‘brute matter’ which, colliding with the life current, precipitates and defines single individuals is itself personal in however low a degree.
Thus interpreted, Bergson’s view of nature is allied with Leibniz’s, Fechner’s and Ward’s: he is, in technical terms, a pluralistic personalist. ”