A New Philosophy : $b Henri BergsonLe Roy, Edouard
Philosophy
A New Philosophy : $b Henri Bergson
Le Roy, Edouard
Bergson, Henri, 1859-1941
We must avoid drawing false conclusions from the simile of the balloon.
The question here is to know what are the real limits of the atmosphere.
It is certain that the synthetic and critical intelligence, left to
its own strength, remains imprisoned in a circle from which there is no
escape.
But action removes the barrier. If intelligence accepts the risk of
taking the leap into the phosphorescent fluid which bathes it, and to
which it is not altogether foreign, since it has broken off from it and
in it dwell the complementary powers of the understanding, intelligence
will soon become adapted and so will only be lost for a moment to
reappear greater, stronger, and of fuller content. It is action again
under the name of experience which removes the danger of illusion or
giddiness, it is action which verifies; by a practical demonstration,
by an effort of enduring maturation which tests the idea in intimate
contact with reality and judges it by its fruits.
It always falls therefore to intelligence to pronounce the grand verdict
in the sense that only that can be called true which will finally
satisfy it; but we mean an intelligence duly enlarged and transformed
by the very effect of the action it has lived. Thus the objection of
"irrationalism" directed against the new philosophy falls to the ground.
The objection of "non-morality" fares no better. But is has been made,
and people have thought fit to accuse Mr Bergson's work of being the too
calm production of an intelligence too indifferent, too coldly lucid,
too exclusively curious to see and understand, untroubled and unthrilled
by the universal drama of life, by the tragic reality of evil. On the
other hand, not without contradiction, the new philosophy has been
called "romantic," and people have tried to find in it the essential
traits of romanticism: its predilection for feeling and imagination, its
unique anxiety for vital intensity, its recognised right to all which
is to be, whence its radical inability to establish a hierarchy of moral
qualifications. Strange reproach! The system in question is not yet
presented to us as a finished system. Its author manifests a plain
desire to classify his problems. And he is certainly right in proceeding
so: there is a time for everything, and on occasion we must learn to be
just an eye focussed upon being. But that does not at all exclude the
possibility of future works, treating in due order of the problem of
human destiny, and perhaps even in the work so far completed we may
descry some attempts to bring this future within ken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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