n world.
Intellect and instinct have been developed along divergent lines. The
intellect has merely a practical function. It is related to the needs of
action.[24] It is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects,
especially tools to make tools.[25] It deals with solids and geometrical
figures, and its instrument is logic. But according to Bergson it has an
inherent incapacity to deal with life.[26] When we contrast the rigidity
and superficiality of intellect with the fluidity, sympathy and intimacy
of intuition, we see at once wherein {119} lies the true creative power
of man. Development, when carried too exclusively along the lines of
intellect, means loss of will-power; and we have seen how, not
individuals alone, but entire nations, may be crushed and destroyed by a
too rigid devotion to mechanical and stereotyped methods of thought.
Only life is adequate to deal with life. Let us give free expression to
the intuitive and sympathetic force within us, 'feel the wild pulsation
of life,' if we would conquer the world and come to our own. 'The
spectacle,' says Bergson, 'of life from the very beginning down to man
suggests to us the image of a current of consciousness which flows down
into matter as into a tunnel, most of whose endeavours to advance . . .
are stopped by a rock that is too hard, but which, in one direction at
least, prove successful, and break out into the light once more.'[27]
But there life does not stop.

'All tended to mankind,
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God.'[28]

This creative consciousness still pushes on, giving to matter its own
life, and drawing from matter its nutriment and strength. The effort is
painful, but in making it we feel that it is precious, more precious
perhaps than the particular work it results in, because through it we
have been making ourselves, 'raising ourselves above ourselves.' And in
this there is the true joy of life--the joy which every creator
feels--the joy of achievement and triumph. Thus not only is the self
being created, but the world is being made--original and
incalculable--not according to a preconceived plan or logical sequence,
but by the free spontaneous will of man.

The soul is the creative force--the real productive agent of novelty in
the world. The strange thing is that the soul creates not the world
only, but itself. Whence comes this mystic power? What is the origin of
the soul? Bergson does not say.