r own hand after all?' 'Yes,' said
Rodin, 'as the tool.'

The same idea is at the base of what is most stimulating in Bergson,
the idea of what he calls Creative Evolution, an undefined splendour not
yet fully existing, but, as it were, crying out to be born, and only to
be born through the struggle of man's spirit with matter. This is one
function of matter, perhaps the supreme function, to be the material
through which alone man's vague ideal can become definite and actual,
just as an artist can only get close to his own conception through the
effort to embody it in visible form or audible sound.

From this point of view, the world is conceived as anything but
ready-made, rather it is in the process of making, and we ourselves are
among the makers. Or, to take a metaphor that perhaps appeals more to
the modern world, it is a fight, and an unfinished fight. To quote
William James, 'It _feels_ like a real fight--as if there were something
really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and
faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem; and first of all to redeem our own
hearts from atheisms and fears.' He goes on to confess that he himself
does not know, and certainly cannot prove scientifically, that the
redemption will surely be accomplished. Such proof, he admits, 'may not
be clear before the day of judgement (or some stage of being which that
expression may serve to symbolize)'. 'But the faithful fighters of this
hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may turn to
the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with
which Henry IV greeted the tardy Crillon after a great battle had been
gained:

"Hang yourself, brave Crillon! We fought at Arques,
and you were not there!"'[75]

Thus, if the idea of the splendour and perfection of the universe has
sunk into the background, if the sense of worship and the feeling of
ecstasy have been dimmed (and I think they have), at least the reverence
for heroism and for tenderness has not been impaired, and there after
all lies the root of human majesty. There is deep pathos in the change,
but maybe, paradoxical as it sounds, deep hope as well. The world may
grow the stronger for having to live now by what Carlyle called
'desperate hope' as distinct from 'hoping hope'. The triumphant harmony
that seemed attained a century ago by certain poets and thinkers may
have been, after all, too cheap and easy, if not for their own la