Modern science and the illusions of Professor Bergson

Front matter

THE ILLUSIONS OF PROFESSOR BERGSON

MODERN SCIENCE

AND THE ILLUSIONS OF PROFESSOR BERGSON

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ' Physics beware of metaphysics.'

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

IT is not the purpose of the present work to furnish a detailed refutation of the philosophy of Professor Bergson. It is my purpose to investigate only those portions of it which profess to be founded on facts, and therefore to come within the province of science. Metaphysical systems generally, however we may admire their wonderful ingenuity and subtlety, can have no interest for science unless they are founded on gross material facts, which can be examined and verified. As a rule their beautifully interwoven gossamer threads are of far too fine a texture to bear contact with the brutal hardness and reality of a fact. They can float gaily in the air without any solid support : while

A I thus floating, they have no practical interest for us, who are compelled to crawl painfully along the earth. But when one of these ethereal systems attempts to take root on solid ground, it is apt to get mangled and torn, wherever it touches earth ; and the best chance of safety for the superstructure is to float off again into the rarified atmosphere whence it came.

The metaphysic of Bergson has ventured here and there to come to earth. Wherever it has thus done so it has exposed itself to damage from scientific criticism ; and my purpose here is to indicate some of the rocks and points which have made large rents in its delicate substance. But the superstructure itself will be left intact. And why ? Not indeed because it has the slightest claim on our credulity, but because it is only theories that profess to be founded on facts, that can be refuted by facts. Take, for instance, one of the great questions fought over by the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, Utrum Deus intelligent omnia alia a se per ideas eorum, an aliter. The process by which God conceives ideas is so utterly futile a discussion, so infinitely removed from all contact with human experience or facts, that a hypothesis on the subject is as little susceptible of disproof as it is of proof; and any one attacking the hypothesis falls into as many absurdities as one defending it. If some one were to rise up and announce that, right away in the depths of space, beyond the reach of our most powerful telescopes, there existed another Earth identical with ours, inhabited by our doubles, who were doing always the same things that we were doing and at the same moment, no sort of scientific refutation would be possible. All that science could say would be : Where is your evidence ? To that our metaphysician gives answer that he knows it by direct intuition, and triumphantly invites the man of science to disprove it. Not improbably he will add some complimentary expressions about people who have no faith : and believe only in the things they can touch and see. Now the man of science cannot disprove it : the matter is entirely outside the region of experience, and is as little susceptible of disproof as it is of proof. All that he can say is that, once you pass beyond experience, there is no limit to what you may believe : de non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. Any statement, however ridiculous, may be supported by such methods ; and the opposite of that statement may be similarly supported. And so the metaphysician goes on his way rejoicing, while the man of science turns contemptuously from what he can only regard as foolish puerilities.

When thus crudely stated, the futile nature of all metaphysical discussion will be patent to almost every one. How is it, then, that for thousands of years back these ghostly systems have continued to be spun by able men, and have continued to find disciples, in spite of the regularly recurring overthrow which inevitably overtakes each after a short time ? The answer is that their stronghold lies in their obscurity, in the maze of words through which they are invariably propounded. One thing all metaphysical systems have in common — and that is, incomprehensibility, of a more or less pronounced character. An intellect stretched and strained to the uttermost in the attempt to grasp the leading points in a new philosophy is by that very fact disabled from judging it as though it were a simple proposition. Every juggler knows how easy it is to divert attention from something he does not want his public to see. By arranging a number of people round a table, and compelling them to fix their attention in a certain way, we can make them honestly believe that the table is turning round of its own accord. In short, any excessive tax upon the attention disables the judgment proportionally : the more the mind is concentrated on one point, the less is it capable of detecting fallacies outside. In simple matters we can easily see through a difficulty : the ditch is promptly jumped. But when we come to precisely the same difficulty in the misty obscurity of metaphysics, we cannot see the other side. The ditch is no wider than before, but we have on our backs all the vast load of metaphysical verbiage, and it is so heavy we cannot jump the ditch : we can barely stagger along under it as it is. Consequently we find that metaphysical systems in general have a vogue directly proportional to their unintelligibility. That is their only safeguard : to put them into plain language would be to bring them tumbling to the ground. Roger Bacon, the illustrious forerunner of modern science, must surely have been thinking of contemporary philosophy, when he mentioned as a great stumbling-block to truth propriae ignorantiae occultatio cum ostentatione sapientiae apparentis, the concealment of ignorance by ostentation of seeming wisdom. The elaboration of wonderful schemes, without a particle of evidence,can onlypass muster in these days, provided that they are so inscrutable as barely to be comprehensible at all. Kant denned 'self as an ' original transcendental synthetic unity of apperception.' Now there are many propositions which we might accept about the original transcendental synthetic unity of apperception, which we should decline to accept about our 'self.' In these days philosophy, developed from Hegel, has maintained itself by adopting a standard of incomprehensibility never before paralleled. And the public, supposing that there must be something behind these fine words, gasp with admiration, and blindly worship the putative wisdom of the latest Delphic oracle.

The attitude maintained throughout this book is that metaphysics is a maze of sesquipedalian verbiage, beyond the reach of Science to defend or to refute. A metaphysician is like the man who wishes to teach us the geography of the other side of the moon. Since neither he nor we have ever seen it, we are not in a position to confute him. But, however loudly he invokes his direct intuition, we are not going to believe it, until we are offered some evidence on the subject. Nor are we going to believe the metaphysics of Bergson, or of any other philosopher, until we are presented with facts that we can understand, in place of words that represent no actual ideas.

The metaphysic of Bergson has all the qualities of incomprehensibility that are essential to the most respectable philosophy. His theory of time and the vital impetus is indeed so obscure that it was only after close study that I was able to represent mentally the author's point of view. Having mastered his doctrine, I am now chiefly concerned to mention that a thorough search through his works has failed to disclose one single fact, one particle of positive evidence, offered in support of it ; such facts as are named are all directed only against antagonistic doctrines. Words, metaphors, fine writing we have in abundance ; but what we want is facts, and that is just what we have failed to find. Doubtless Bergson has felt something of this little deficiency ; for he depreciates the intelligence, saying that it cannot understand life ; but that only instinct can understand life. By instinct the Professor means direct intuition. And of what use to us is the direct intuition of Professor Bergson?

I do not propose, therefore, to enter into any discussion of Bergson's metaphysics, except in so far as they touch upon material facts. I would as soon start wrangling with him about the other side of the moon. But since he does attempt to overthrow certain conclusions rested by science on facts, I am concerned to meet him on these particular points.

Before his arrival upon the scene, philosophy in England was in a stagnating condition. The orthodox metaphysics of the time was of so esoteric a character as to be almost completely devoid of influence outside the circle of its special votaries. It was opposed by the Pragmatism of William James. But this system, though receiving wide support, confines itself mainly to a discussion of the nature of Truth, and could not satisfy the everlasting craving for knowledge about the essential phenomena of Life. Although, therefore, no specific philosophy was before the public, there were two opposite streams of opinion, which vaguely represented the philosophy of the general run of humanity. On the one hand, there was the teleological view of the Universe — the idea that all things are trending towards some pre-arranged goal, that every fact and every event has some definite purpose in the fulfilment of a plan which is to bring humanity and the universe to the consummation marked out for it. On the other hand, there was the so-called mechanistic view of the Universe — the idea that the laws of mechanics, physics, and chemistry, are adequate to account for the evolution of the Universe, including the objective phenomena of Life. According to this view, the nebula which preceded the solar system developed, — under the ordinary laws ol matter and motion — to the state in which we now see it; in such wise that a physicist, who was supplied with exact data concerning the original distribution of matter and energy in the nebula, and armed with an all-powerful mathematic, could have deduced the exact condition of the universe in any required subsequent era.

The teleological view was that which most appealed to people's sentiments ; it was the view that the public at large desired, and strongly desired, to see triumphant. The mechanistic view, on the other hand, seemed to have the authority of Science : it was supported and strengthened by every successive scientific discovery that had any philosophical bearing whatever : it was thoroughly popularised by the Darwinian theory of Evolution, in which mechanistic methods were exclusively employed. In short, the position was that the public nourished a deep desire for the truth of the teleological view, accompanied by a strong feeling of its inadequacy, and a deep dread of the mechanistic view.

Into this unsettled state of affairs has now been shot the thunderbolt of Bergson's philosophy, in which a third alternative is presented. Bergson repudiates teleology ; and he also repudiates the universal dominion of physical law. He postulates a Vital Impetus or push which drives forward the development of life, but not to any specific end or with any specific purpose. The impetus is not physical, but psychical, and therefore not controlled by the laws of Physics, or any other science. Can we wonder that this attempted compromise has attracted wide support? The teleological position had long been felt to be untenable, and men warmly welcomed a new theory which seemed to offer a possible escape from the rigid determinism of science. A cynic might smile at the way in which many of those, to whom teleology was dearest, have rushed to the refuge which they thought they saw in Bergson's metaphysics. They abandon their theology and its appropriate metaphysics, with an alacrity which eloquently tells of their small confidence in it, as soon as they hear of any other hypothesis that will keep them outside physical law. Various men of science, who have sentiments much like other people, have in a guarded way encouraged the new belief; while admitting the absence of evidence, they see no reason against it, or they think there is a * loophole ' for believing in it.

The attitude of this book is purely mechanistic. I am not concerned to defend the tele-

ii ological theories, which Bergson so ably condemns, and which are so readily abandoned by their proper defenders. Let them enter peaceably into the crowded metaphysical lumber-room of lost causes. I am, on the other hand, concerned to defend the mechanistic theory, and to examine what foundation in facts is presented by the new hypothesis now ranged against it. In the inorganic world, the dominion of physical law is now rarely questioned ; the controversy burns only round the organic world, and to that department, therefore, I shall give special attention.

At the outset, I may be asked the question, what are your metaphysics ? I answer — we have no metaphysics. We do not believe in metaphysics. We do not believe in any theory, unless it is supported by facts ; and any investigation of facts belongs not to metaphysics, but to some special branch of science. Still we may be asked to define our position on certain definite questions : are we idealist, or materialist, or realist ? We are none of them. Idealism, indeed, offers some attraction to the intellect. Our whole subjective life consists of consciousness, mental images, etc., of a non-material order. They are awakened by purely physical activity occurring in the cells of a certain part of the brain. How, then, can these mental images resemble the external objects they represent when called up only through the intermediation of a nervous current ? Absolute nature must be altogether different from our mental representations, and we appear to be landed in Berkeleyan idealism.

On the other hand, if we look at the universe through materialist spectacles, we find no necessity therein for postulating any consciousness whatever. Things and events would be just the same without it. So that there is an element of truth both in idealism and materialism, but — as we believe — a much larger element of metaphysical fancy in both of them. Let me endeavour to elucidate this position.

It has long been a platitude of Psychology that the modus operandi of the intellect is by bringing two ideas into relation with one another. The relations are given names such as association by contiguity, by similarity, etc.; but it suffices for my purpose that in the last

'3 analysis the function of intellect is to bring two disconnected ideas into relation. Newton saw an apple fall upon the ground : he had previously studied the orbits of the planets : and one of the most profound intellectual operations ever performed was that in which one of these events called up by similarity the other, the two being brought into relation as aspects of a single fact. Every intellectual operation thus requires two terms. Now when we are trying to explain the universe ; when, that is to say, the whole of our universe is one of the terms, there is nothing left to constitute the other ; nothing remains outside, into relation with which it may be brought. Consequently the intellect gropes in the dark. It feels in all directions for a second term, but nowhere finds it. Why then assume a second term ? We are compelled by the constitution of our minds to assume it. Invariably our cognitions have two terms ; we are unable to conceive of any cognition with only one term. The intellect must therefore break down when the entire product of experience constitutes one of the terms. It is like a man who tries to run with only one leg. The mind of man can never solve the problem of metaphysics : it cannot even say whether there is a problem to be solved. All it can do is to examine the limitations under which the intellect works, to note that those limitations must for ever give rise to the sensation of an unsolved problem, and to perceive that all attempts to solve it are but the helpless writhing of the soul under the inexorable conditions of its own existence.

Chapter II The Philosophy Of Professor Bergson

' Man usually believes, if only words he hears, That also with them goes material for thinking.'

GOETHE.

A DESCRIPTION of Professor Bergson's views must be a matter of very great difficulty to an opponent. Holding, as I do, that Bergson's metaphysics are a cloud of words, carrying with them no real meaning, it will be necessary that an impartial exposition should likewise be verbose and cloudy. Too clear a lucidity, too close a search after meanings instead of words, would precipitate the cloud and bring the theory to ground with a drenching rainfall of verbiage on the reader's head. In justice to the reader, we have to be lucid : in justice to Professor Bergson, we have to be obscure, and that, too, although I am deeply imbued with the spirit in which Byron criticised Coleridge :

' Explaining metaphysics to the nation ; I wish he would explain his explanation.'

I repudiate, therefore, all responsibility for the views and reasoning of this chapter, and for any obscurity in the mode of statement. My effort will be directed solely towards reproducing Bergson's principles as accurately as possible. All criticism upon them is reserved for Chapter in.

The basis of Professor Bergson's system is a new mode of regarding time. According to Kant, time and space are forms of thought ; but science, and the mechanistic philosophy based upon science, has given all its attention to space, and has to a great extent neglected time. True, says Bergson.time is assumed during which events take place : evolution takes long stretches of time : time enters largely into the problems of physics : but it is abstract time. No real importance is attached to it. It is simply a condition of events happening, and no further attention is given to it. Moreover, even here, time is commonly expressed and conceived in terms of space. A clock indicates time by hands moving in space : a physicist compares times by lines of various lengths on paper. In short, our science is a science of space and not of time.

Now consciousness and life differ from material B 17 objects in their non-occupancy of space. To them, only time is applicable : one conscious state gives rise to another with never-ceasing change and succession : they exist in time, and not in space. And the time is concrete, or real, totally different from the abstract time postulated by science in its study of objective phenomena. ' My mental state as it advances on the road of time, is continually swelling with the duration which it accumulates : it goes on increasing — rolling upon itself, as a snowball on the snow.' * So constant is transition that ' there is no essential difference between passing from one state to another and persisting in the same state.'2 It is a mistake to tie together our conscious states as manifestations of some 'ego.' Time is all that connects them : indeed they are time : ' As regards the psychical life unfolding beneath the symbols which conceal it, we readily perceive that time is just the stuff it is made of.'

' There is, moreover, no stuff more resistant nor more substantial.'3 This concrete time contains within itself at any moment its whole past, though of course the whole does not appear

1 Creative Evolution, p. 2. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 4.

in every idea. ' We think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act.'1 Since consciousness contains the entire past within itself, and each moment adds something new, no state of consciousness can ever be repeated. 'Thus our personality shoots, grows and ripens without ceasing. Each of its moments is something new added to what was before. We may go further : it is not only something new, but something unforeseeable.'2 'For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating one's self endlessly.'3 The organism, says Bergson, is distinguished from inorganic matter, by its tendency to individuation. It is, therefore, incomparable with any inorganic cut-out portion of the universe. The only analogy is with the universe as a whole. 1 We must no longer speak of life in generates, an abstraction, or as a mere heading under which all living beings are inscribed. At a certain moment, in certain points of space, a visible current has taken rise ; this current of life, traversing the

1 Creative Evolution, pp. 5, 6. 2 Ibid., p. 6. 3 Ibid., p. 8.

bodies it has organised one after another, passing from generation to generation, has become divided amongst species and distributed amongst individuals without losing anything of its force, rather intensifying in proportion to its advance.'1 1 Life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism.'2 ' Now, the more we fix our attention on this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, in which the past presses against the present and causes the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents.' 3 Since each moment adds something totally new, the future could not even with infinite knowledge be prophesied, as alleged by the mechanistic hypothesis of science. Physics and chemistry will never give the key to life : chemical synthesis has never yet succeeded in reconstructing anything but the waste products of vital activity. The only refutation of the physico-chemical theory that is possible is drawn 1 from the consideration of real time.' 4 A mathe-

matical and final refutation is, in the opinion of Professor Bergson, impossible. Huxley's defence fails, he says, through neglect to recognise the concreteness of time. In Huxley's argument ' time is still spoken of : one pronounces the word, but one does not think of the thing. For time is here deprived of efficacy, and if it does nothing, it is nothing. Radical mechanism implies a metaphysic in which the totality of the real is postulated complete in eternity, and in which the apparent duration of things expresses merely the infirmity of a mind that cannot know everything at once. But duration is something very different from this for our consciousness, that is to say, for that which is most indisputable in our experience. We perceive duration as a stream against which we cannot go. It is the foundation of our being, and, as we feel, the very substance of the world in which we live. It is of no use to hold up before our eyes the dazzling prospect of a universal mathematic ; we cannot sacrifice experience to the requirements of a system. That is why we reject radical mechanism.' l

The Professor then goes on to attack ' radical finalism ' or the teleological view, with which we are not concerned in this work. He affirms, however, that his own philosophy is closer to the teleological than to the mechanistic standpoint. He then proceeds to a proof of the insufficiency of the mechanistic theory to account for the evolution of life. ' Pure mechanism would be refutable, and finality, in the special sense in which we understand it, would be demonstrable in a certain aspect, if it could be proved that life may manufacture the like apparatus, by unlike means, on divergent lines of evolution ; and the strength of the proof would be proportional both to the divergency between the lines of evolution thus chosen and to the complexity of the similar structures found in them.'1 That is to say, if we find the same highly complex structure on two divergent lines of evolution, that fact will constitute proof that these structures cannot have been evolved by the mere haphazard operation of physical forces, but must be due to some primitive impulse of life, which works the same effect under entirely different conditions. Such

1 Creative Evolution, pp. 57, 58. 22 a structure we have in the eye of vertebrates and molluscs, such as Pecten. ' We find the same essential parts in each, composed of analogous elements. The eye of the Pecten presents a retina, a cornea, a lens of cellular structure like our own. There is even that peculiar inversion of retinal elements which is not met with, in general, in the retina of the invertebrates. Now, the origin of molluscs may be a debated question, but, whatever opinion we hold, all are agreed that molluscs and vertebrates separated from their common parent stem long before the appearance of an eye so complex as that of Pecten. Whence, then, the structural analogy ? ' l The accumulation of insensible variations, according to Bergson, is far too remote a probability to justify our credence. The mutation theory of de Vries is at least as inadequate. For any improvement in vision demands a simultaneous alteration in an exceedingly large number of different elements : and a simultaneous set of mutations defies probability far more than a simultaneous set of small variations. Correlation cannot be invoked : it is a practical abandonment of the theory of accidental variation. The only hypothesis in the field, competent to give an explanation, is that which affirms the inheritance of characters acquired by direct action of the environment upon the organism, or by reaction of the organism on the environment — neo-Lamarckism. The dogmatic denial of this possibility bymodern biologists is quite unjustified; nevertheless ' neo-Lamarckism is no more able than any other form of evolutionism to solve the problem.' l

Each of these views, however, ' being supported by a considerable number of facts, must be true in its way.'2 The error is in regarding the origin of variations as accidental. ' We cannot help believing that these differences are the development of an impulsion which passes from germ to germ across the individuals, that they are therefore not pure accidents, and that they might well appear at the same time, in the same form, in all the representatives of the same species, or at least in a certain number of them.'3 Such is the only hypothesis that provides escape from the impossible assumption of chance variations : the example of the eye shows that ' a

1 Creative Evolution^ p. 89. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 90. 24 psychological cause intervenes ; ' l and the most solid ground of the neo-Lamarckians is where they postulate as the cause of variation an effort of psychical character on the part of the varying organism. Thus, says our philosopher, we come back to an original impetus of life which is the 'fundamental cause of variations.'2 Life is an original psychical impetus, running through inert matter like a stream: wherever it flows, the matter becomes organised into what we call living individuals. The impetus is of the nature of conscious effort : wherever that effort has been great, the resulting organisation of matter will be advanced : wherever it has been small, the resulting organisation will be backward. Thus, to return to vision, the explanation lies in one branch of the stream of life taking the form of vision. Wherever this branch flows it organises matter into the form of an eye. If the effort has been great, a complex and perfect eye results, like that of a bird. If, on the other hand, it has been small, it will have wrought a structure less perfect, but on a similar plan. Hence in the most diverse species, the resemblance between these most complicated structures is explained.

From this explanation of what Life ts, Bergson turns to consider what are the main channels into which it has divided. Matter offers many impediments and obstacles to the free flow of Life, and this resistance had to be overcome. ' Life seems to have succeeded in this by dint of humility, by making itself very small and very insinuating, bending to physical and chemical forces, consenting even to go a part of the way with them.' l The number of channels into which Life divided is represented by the number of species, or of individuals, into which organisms are grouped : and the true causes of differentiation are ' those which life bore within its bosom.' 2 Life began with the tiny specks of protoplasm ' possessed of the tremendous internal push that was to raise them even to the highest forms of life.'3 'The bifurcations on the way have been numerous, but there have been many blind alleys beside the two or three highways ; and of these highways themselves, only one, that which leads

1 Creative Evolution, pp. 103, 104. 2 Ibid.) p. 104.

through the vertebrates up to man, has been wide enough to allow free passage to the full breath of life.' l In so far as there is an impetus towards social life, the brunt of it ' was borne along the line of evolution ending at man, and the rest of it was collected on the road leading to the hymenoptera.'2 The vital impetus, being of psychical character, has power of choice, and might, if it had chosen, have saved itself the effort of so great a progress, and rested after reaching the rank of the extinct fossil forms. But it has not done so : it has run into three main divisions : torpor, intelligence and instinct : which therefore are complementary to one another. In plants, torpor is paramount. Among animals, the main directions are, as already stated, towards men and hymenoptera, with intelligence and instinct respectively. Yet each group carries with it subordinate elements from the other groups. ' When a tendency splits up in the course of its development, each of the special tendencies which thus arise tries to preserve and develop everything in the primitive tendency that is not incompatible with the work in which it is