evolution. I cannot think what assured Spencer of this homogeneity in
the egg, except the fact that perhaps it all tasted alike, which might
seem good proof to a pure empiricist. Leibnitz, on the contrary,
maintained that the organisation of nature was infinitely deep, every
part consisting of an endless number of discrete elements. Here we
may observe the difference between good philosophy and bad. The idea
of Leibnitz is speculative and far outruns the evidence, but it is
speculative in a well-advised, penetrating, humble, and noble fashion;
while the idea of Spencer is foolishly dogmatic, it is a piece of
ignorant self-sufficiency, like that insular empiricism that would
deny that Chinamen were real until it had actually seen them. Nature
is richer than experience and wider than divination; and it is far
rasher and more arrogant to declare that any part of nature is simple
than to suggest the sort of complexity that perhaps it might have. M.
Bergson, however, is on the side of Spencer. After studiously
examining the egg on every side--for he would do more than taste
it--and considering the source and destiny of it, he would summon his
intuition to penetrate to the very heart of it, to its spirit, and
then he would declare that this spirit was a vital momentum without
parts and without ideas, and was simplicity itself. He would add that
it was the free and original creator of the bird, because it is of the
essence of spirit to bestow more than it possesses and to build better
than it knows. Undoubtedly actual spirit is simple and does not know
how it builds; but for that very reason actual spirit does not really
create or build anything, but merely watches, now with sympathetic,
now with shocked attention, what is being created and built for it.
Doubtless new things are always arising, new islands, new persons, new
philosophies; but that the real cause of them should be simpler than
they, that their Creator, if I may use this language, should be
ignorant and give more than he has, who can stomach that?