Bergson's Creative Evolution, his largest and best known work, appeared
in 1907. It has been regarded not only as a magnificent book, but as
a date in the history of thought. Two of the leading students of
evolutionary process in England, Professors Geddes and Thomson, refer to
the book as "one of the most profound and original contributions to the
philosophical consideration of the theory of Evolution." [Footnote: In
the Bibliography in their volume Evolution.]
For some time there had been growing a need for an expression of
evolutionary theory in terms other than those of Spencer, or of
Haeckel--the German monistic philosopher. The advance in the study of
biology and the rise of Neo-Vitalism, occasioned by an appreciation of
the inadequacy of any explanation of life in terms purely physical and
chemical, made the demand for a new statement, in greater harmony with
these views, imperative. To satisfy this demand is the task to which
Bergson has applied himself. He sounds the note of departure from
the older conceptions right at the commencement by his very title,
'Creative' Evolution. For this, his views on Change, on Time, and on
Freedom, have in some degree prepared us. We have seen set forth
the fact of Freedom, the recognition of human beings as centres of
indetermination, not mere units in a machine, "a block universe" where
all is "given," but creatures capable of creative activity. Then by
a consideration of Time, as la duree, we found that the history of an
individual can never repeat itself; "For a conscious being, to exist
is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating
oneself endlessly. Should the same be said," Bergson asks, "of existence
in general?" [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 8 (Fr. p. 8).]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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