Nevertheless a true mathematician is satisfied with the
hypothetical and ideal cogency of his science, and puts its dignity in
that. Moreover, M. Bergson has the too pragmatic notion that the use
of mathematics is to keep our accounts straight in this business
world; whereas its inherent use is emancipating and Platonic, in that
it shows us the possibility of other worlds, less contingent and
perturbed than this one. If he allows himself any excursus from his
beloved immediacy, it is only in the interests of practice; he little
knows the pleasures of a liberal mind, ranging over the congenial
realm of internal accuracy and ideal truth, where it can possess
itself of what treasures it likes in perfect security and freedom. An
artist in his workmanship, M. Bergson is not an artist in his
allegiance; he has no respect for what is merely ideal.
For this very reason, perhaps, he is more at home in natural history
than in the exact sciences. He has the gift of observation, and can
suggest vividly the actual appearance of natural processes, in
contrast to the verbal paraphrase of these processes which is
sometimes taken to explain them. He is content to stop at habit
without formulating laws; he refuses to assume that the large obvious
cycles of change in things can be reduced to mechanism, that is, to
minute included cycles repeated _ad libitum_.
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