Mechanical determinism was characteristic of much nineteenth-century thought in Europe, not only amongst materialists, but also, in certain cases, amongst idealists as well. Against this aspect of contemporary philosophy, the work of James and Bergson has been a revolt. "Indeterminism," i.e. a belief in the reality of freedom and spontaneity, is an essential part of their system. Their indeterminism is indeed the necessary and logical accompaniment of their anti-intellectualism. For determinism is "a fabrication of the _intellect_," a device which makes reality more manageable, more amenable to logic, more easily systematised. Freedom, like life and motion, eludes the categories of the intellect. THE MECHANICAL VIEW ASSAILED.--Such are the lines upon which the new criticism of the mechanical view (the most radical criticism it has had to meet since Kant) proceeds. That view, and the idea of predetermined human action which it involves, is an inevitable product of an intellect naturally incapable of understanding freedom and spontaneity. These, as they destroy its scheme of thought, it casts out as an illusion. "Incorrigibly presumptuous," it insists on interpreting freedom by means of those notions which suit inert matter alone, and therefore always perceives it as necessity. So that all life, far from being subjected to mechanical necessity, as had seemed the inevitable conclusion of naturalistic philosophy, was spontaneity (so to speak) materialised and embodied: "All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity ... is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."[61] We have indeed travelled a long way from the austere abstractions of Mr. Herbert Spencer. The new evolutionism is very different from the old. It substitutes for "mechanism" another conception--that of "dynamism," according to which the process of evolution is something undetermined and impredictable--"creative," in fact. The world of organic life is embodied "creative activity," and what this "creative activity" is, we ourselves experience every time we act freely. PLURALISM.--The philosophy of Bergson is a reaction against the mechanical evolutionism (i.e. naturalism) of the nineteenth century. Closely allied with it is another movement of thought, known as _pluralism_. This, too, is a reaction, not so much against naturalism, as against certain forms of idealism. Idealism, it will be remembered, seeks to interpret reality in terms of mind or spirit. And it does this in certain cases--notably in the case of F. H. Bradley--by regarding all _phenomena_ as forms or aspects of the one absolute mind or spirit.