Creative EvolutionH. Holt, 1911 - 407 pages Creative Evolution, originally published in 1911 by Henry Holt and Company, is the work which catapulted Bergson from obscurity into world-wide fame. A study of the philosophical implications of biological evolutionary theory, the impact of this book reached far beyond biology and seemed to many to herald a new age in philosophy and the sciences. |
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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 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 105 - Before the evolution of life, on the contrary, the portals of the future remain wide open. It is a creation that goes on forever in virtue of an initial movement. This movement constitutes the unity of the organized world — a prolific unity, of an infinite richness, superior to any that the intellect could dream of, for the intellect is only one of its aspects or products.
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 5 - In reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically. In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside.
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."* 1 Creative Evolution, p.
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, selfconscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely.
Page 103 - If, on the contrary, evolution is a creation unceasingly renewed, it creates, as it goes on, not only the forms of life, but the ideas that will enable the intellect to understand it, the terms which will serve to express it.
Page 165 - We may easily find their origin in the natural obstinacy with which we treat the living like the lifeless and think all reality, however fluid, under the form of the sharply defined solid. We are at ease only in the discontinuous, in the immobile, in the dead. The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life.