onquers and creates. The authors of
this latest movement are the Frenchman, Henri Bergson, and the German,
Rudolf Eucken. Differing widely in their methods and even in their
conclusions, they agree in making a direct attack both upon the realism
and the intellectualism of the past, and in their conviction that the
world is not a 'strung along universe,' as the late Professor James puts
it, but a world that is being made by the creative power and personal
freedom of man. While Eucken has for many years occupied a position of
commanding influence in the realm of thought, Bergson has only recently
come into notice. The publication of his striking work, _Creative
Evolution_, marks an epoch in speculation, and is awakening the interest
of the philosophical world.[22]

4. With his passion for symmetry and completeness Bergson has evolved a
whole theory of the universe, {118} resorting, strange to say, to a form
of reasoning that implies the validity of logic, the instrument of the
intellect which he never wearies of impugning. Without entering upon his
merely metaphysical speculations, we fix upon his theory of
consciousness--the relation of life to the material world--as involving
certain ethical consequences bearing upon our subject. The idea of
freedom is the corner-stone of Bergson's system, and his whole philosophy
is a powerful vindication of the independence and self-determination of
the human will. Life is free, spontaneous, creative and incalculable;
determined neither by natural law nor logical sequence. It can break
through all causation and assert its own right. It is not, indeed,
unrelated to matter, since it has to find its exercise in a material
world. Matter plays at once, as he himself says, the role of obstacle
and stimulus.[23] But it is not the world of things which legislates for
man; it is man who legislates for it. Bergson's object is to vindicate
the autonomy of consciousness, and his entire philosophy is a protest
against every claim of determinism to dominate life. By introducing the
creative will before all development, he displaces mechanical force, and
makes the whole evolution of life dependent upon the 'vital impulse'
which pushes forward against all obstacles to ever higher and higher
efficiency. Similarly, by drawing a distinction between intellect and
intuition, he shows that the latter is the truly creative power in man
which penetrates to the heart of reality and shapes its ow