VITALISM RESTATED
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mr. Joad represents Bergson as holding that matter is an illusion, and that the universe is one indivisible and homogeneous flow of life," with nothing to obstruct its course ; it follows that Bergson fails to account for the apparent multiplicity of life.
This is a curious misrepresentation. The way in which life breaks into individuals and species, explains Bergson, depends " on the resistance life meets from inert matter, and on the explosive force—due to an unstable balance of
tendencies—which life bears within itself " (Creative Evolu- tion, chapter 2). Life is neither pure unity nor pure multi- plicity : it is nothing so abstract—it is many in one, potentially manifold. It is actually divided by matter, though the division is never complete ; in some degree the original complex unity still holds together all living organisms. " The evolution of life in the double direction of individuality and association has nothing accidental about it : it is due to the very nature of life " (Creative Evolution, chapter 3).
The world of solid material objects is not a mere illusion.
" There is an order approximately mathematical immanent in matter, an objective order, which our science approaches in proportion to its progress " (Creative Evolution, chapter 3). The intellect does but sharpen the outlines ; it does not create them and impose them on a void.
Mr. Joad's view of the universe rests upon a dualism of mind and matter : though, somehow, he contrives to regard. this dualism as " fundamental," he thinks it probable that " both mind and matter arc different forms of the arrange- ment of the same fundamental substance." Is he right in imagining that he is parting company with Bergson ? Bergson is continually contrasting life and matter, and readily speaks of " the double form of the real " : yet life is fundamental, and matter only represents an extreme slackening, an inter- ruption, of life—a disintegrating movement opposed to life's creative impulse. I congratulate Mr. Joad on being a closer disciple of Bergson than he knows. Seriously, I hope he will re-read him before his next exposition.
Bergson has not always been happy in his English critics.
He has been ludicrously misunderstood, as I have shown elsewhere, by Mr. Bertrand Russell. It is a pity that a writer like Mr. Joad, with a gift for clear statement such as he possesses, should not use it to better purpose.—I am,
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