Bergson's suggested _via media_ between creationism and evolutionism, his rejection of a theory of chance variations, and his vigorous polemic against mechanism, all seem to prepare the way for a spiritualistic philosophy. It is true that the land of the spirit has not yet been explored, but Bergson, as one writer expresses it, has at least thrown a bridge across the chasm between the material and the spiritual. While his "Creative Evolution" has been placed upon the Index, we must remember that he himself claims that this work and those that preceded it have resulted in the conceptions of liberty, of spirit and of creation. "From all this," as he says, "we derive a clear idea of a free and creating God, producing matter and life at once, whose creative effort is continued, in a vital direction, by the evolution of species and the construction of human personalities."[157] 157: See Edouard Le Roy: "The New Philosophy of Henri Bergson," E. T., pp. 224 f. The point in Bergson's system which seems least in harmony with theistic belief is his criticism and rejection of finalism. Bergson fears that the temporal series will be swallowed up in the "dark backward and abysm of time," or rather of eternity. The finalism of a foreseen end means with him fatalism, fixity, with no play for freedom, and a reality in time only of a secondary order. Again, in opposition to finalism he urges the variety of living forms. Could the end of all the varied history be merely the production of man? This cannot be proved, because everywhere we see in nature contingency and variety, and apparent cross-purposes if purpose at all. There is no single line of evolution leading up to man. Some fossil forms from remote periods show exactly the same structure as living forms to-day. Further, the vital impulse striving towards freedom meets with obstacles, and failure and arrest are manifest in the lethargy of vegetables and the mechanical reflexes of animals, if these are viewed with reference to the assumed end of the creation of man. The only finalism which Bergson will admit is that of a push towards freedom in virtue of an original vital impulse, blindly and often vainly seeking to overcome the movement of matter towards necessity. It is a _vis a tergo_ happening at last to issue, without any foresight of the result, in the appearance of man.