The first view, as usual, is the one which M. Bergson has prevailingly
in mind, and communicates most plausibly; while he holds to it he is
still talking about the natural world, and so we still know what he is
talking about. On this view, however, personal immortality would be
impossible; it would be, if it were aimed at, a self-contradiction in
the aim of life; for the diversity of persons would be due to
impediments only, and souls would differ simply in so far as they
mutilated the message which they were all alike trying to repeat. They
would necessarily, when the spirit was victorious, be reabsorbed and
identified in the universal spirit. This view also seems most
consonant with M. Bergson's theory of primitive reality, as a flux of
fused images, or a mind lost in matter; to this view, too, is
attributable his hostility to intelligence, in that it arrests the
flux, divides the fused images, and thereby murders and devitalises
reality. Of course the destiny of spirit would not be to revert to
that diffused materiality; for the original mind lost in matter had a
very short memory; it was a sort of cosmic trepidation only, whereas
the ultimate mind would remember all that, in its efforts after
freedom, it had ever super added to that trepidation or made it turn
into. Even the abstract views of things taken by the practical
intellect would, I fear, have to burden the universal memory to the
end. We should be remembered, even if we could no longer exist.

On the other more profound view, however, might not personal
immortality be secured? Suppose the original message said: Translate
me into a thousand tongues! In fulfilling its duty, the universe would
then continue to divide its dream into phantom individuals; as it had
to insulate its parts in the beginning in order to dominate and
transform them freely, so it would always continue to insulate them,