Creative EvolutionH. Holt, 1911 - 407 pages |
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absolute action affirmation ancient ancient philosophy animal annihilation Aristotle arthropods becoming body cause cinematographical complete concepts consciousness continuity contrary creates creation definite Descartes direction duration effect elements energy essential everything evolution evolutionism existence experience express external eyes fact faculty finality function geometry homogeneous space human hymenoptera hypothesis idea imagine individual inert matter instinct intellect intelligence intuition inverse Kant kinds of order knowledge laws laws of Kepler Leibniz less living longer material mathematical means mechanism ment metaphysics mind mobility molluscs monads movement nature negation nought object once organism ourselves pass perceive perception philosophy physical Plato Plotinus point of view positive positive science possible precisely present principle protoplasm psychical pure reality regard relation represent sense simple solar system space spatiality speak species Spinoza suppose tendency theory things thought true unity variations vegetable vertebrates vital void whole words
Popular passages
Page 14 - ... the present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.
Page 249 - In reality, life is a movement, materiality is the inverse movement, and each of these two movements is simple, the matter which forms a world being an undivided flux, and undivided also the life that runs through it, cutting out in it living beings all along the track. Of these two currents, the second runs counter to the first, but the first obtains, all the same, something from the second.
Page 4 - Duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. And as the past grows without ceasing, so also there is no limit to its preservation. Memory ... is not a faculty of putting away recollections in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register. There is no register, no drawer; there is not even, properly speaking, a faculty, for a faculty works intermittently, when it will or when it can, whilst...
Page xiii - It thus obtains a symbolism which is convenient, perhaps even necessary to positive science, but not a direct vision of its object. On the other hand, a theory of knowledge which does not replace the intellect in the general evolution of life will teach us neither how the frames of knowledge have been constructed nor how we can enlarge or go beyond them. It is necessary that these two inquiries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, should join each other, and, by a circular process, push each...
Page 38 - If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day .... The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive.
Page 100 - Each of us, glancing back over his history, will find that his childpersonality, though indivisible, united in itself divers persons which could remain blended just because they were in their nascent state: this indecision, so charged with promise, is one of the greatest charms of childhood. But these interwoven personalities become incompatible in course of growth, and, as each of us can live but one life, a choice must perforce be made. We choose in reality without ceasing; without ceasing, also,...
Page 176 - But it is to the very inwardness of life that intuition leads us, - by intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely.
Page 271 - The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, 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.
Page 254 - ... should be reflected in his mind — that he should be a god, too, though a puny one? So far as he knows his own powers, so far as he knows those of the Infinite, so far as he is a creator, his method mirrors that of his Creator. The vital impulse is finite, it cannot overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed, and the evolution of the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict.
Page 30 - Anything that is irreducible and irreversible in the successive moments of a history eludes science. To get a notion of this irreducibility and irreversibility, we must break with scientific habits which are adapted to the fundamental requirements of thought, we must do violence to the mind, go counter to the natural bent of the intellect. But that is just the function of philosophy.