theses of M. Bergson are in any way damaging to rationalism, or in
any way rationally ancillary to supernaturalism. The anti-rationalists
have clutched eagerly at his dictum that reason, considered as a light
upon the universe, is a poor thing; and that there is something in us
higher than intelligence. Apart from the disparaging form given
(gratuitously) to the content of these propositions, there is nothing in
them that has not been rationalistically put. That is to say, it is a
rationalistic proposition that new truths are reached neither by
deduction nor by induction, but by a leap of the judgment, by
spontaneous guess or hypothesis. What then?

To say or imply that the guessing faculty is something incomparably
higher than intelligence is one of the inconsequences of M. Bergson,
whose very acute analysis is apt to play upon special problems without
controlling his own dialectic procedure. The sobering fact is that the
false hypotheses are reached in the same way as the true, the wrong
guesses in the same way as the right, the delusions in the same way as
the discoveries. The very theses in science which M. Bergson contemns
were reached by the way which he arbitrarily pronounces 'superior' to
the way of reason. And the court of appeal that determines which is
which, is after all just that intelligence or reason which M. Bergson,
imitating one of the old methods he has ably helped to discredit, had
verbally belittled in merely discriminating its function. No prerogative
whatever can thereby be conferred upon either the guessing faculty or
the guesser as such. The 'divining' faculty is not more divine than
another: it is not really more wonderful to catch fish than to cook
them; and the gift of establishing hypotheses is as rare as the gift of
framing them. When all is said, the self-confidence of the
transcendentalist avails for none but himself: as his own craving for
countenance shows, his hypothesis must pass muster before reason if it
is to persuade.

And for this among other reasons, M. Bergson's attack upon Spencer and
other generalisers in science for their 'mechanical' way of conceiving
evolution is no blow to 'science,' as M. Bergson would probably avow,
though he is lax enough to delimit science at times in his dialectic.
His own way of stating evolution is only another mode of science. To
call 'science' superficial is to be so; for the demonstration that any
scientific doctrine is inadequate must itself b