[430] We must remember that nowhere in his writings does Bergson claim any great originality for his many illuminative points of view. He is at once far too much of a catholic scholar (in the matter of the history of philosophy, say), and far too much of a scientist (a man in living touch with the realities and the theories of the science of the day) for this. His findings about life and mind are the outcome of a broad study of the considerations of science and of history and of criticism. By way, for example, of a quotation from a scientific work upon biology that seems to me to reveal some apparent basis in fact (as seen by naturalists) for the “creative evolution” upon which Bergson bases his philosophy, I append the following: “We have gone far enough to see that the development of an organism from an egg is a _truly wonderful process_. We need but go back again and look at the marvellous simplicity of the egg to be convinced of it. Not only do cells _differentiate_, but cell-groups _act together like well-drilled battalions_, cleaving apart here, fusing together there, forming protective coverings or communicating channels, _apparently creating out of nothing_, a whole set of nutritive and reproductive organs, all in orderly and progressive sequence, producing in the end that orderly disposed cell aggregate, that individual life unit which we know as an earthworm. Although _the forces involved are beyond our ken_, the grosser processes are evident” (Needham, _General Biology_, p. 175; italics mine). Of course it is evident from his books that Bergson does not take much account of such difficult facts and topics as the mistakes of instinct, etc. And I have just spoken of his optimistic avoidance of some of the deeper problems of the moral and spiritual life of man. [431] “This amounts to saying that the _theory of knowledge_ and _theory of life_ seem to us inseparable [_Creative Evolution_, p. xiii.; italics Bergson’s]. A theory of life that is not accompanied by a criticism of knowledge is obliged to accept, as they stand, the concepts which the understanding puts at its disposal: it can but enclose the facts, willing or not, in pre-existing frames which it regards as ultimate. It thus obtains a symbolism which is convenient, perhaps even necessary to positive science, but not a direct vision of its object.” [432] I more than agree with Bergson that our whole modern philosophy since Descartes has been unduly influenced by physics and mathematics. And I deplore the fact that the “New Realism” which has come upon us by way of a reaction (see p. 53) from the subjectivism of Pragmatism, should be travelling apparently in this backward direction--away, to say the very least, from some of the things clearly seen even by biologists and psychologists. See p. 144.