Penetrating this illusion, dispassionate observers in
all ages have received the general impression that nature is one and
mechanical. This was, and still remains, a general impression only;
but I suspect no one who walks the earth with his eyes open would be
concerned to resist it, were it not for certain fond human conceits
which such a view would rebuke and, if accepted, would tend to
obliterate. The psychological illusion that our ideas and purposes are
original facts and forces (instead of expressions in consciousness of
facts and forces which are material) and the practical and optical
illusion that everything wheels about us in this world--these are the
primitive persuasions which the enemies of naturalism have always been
concerned to protect.
One might indeed be a vitalist in biology, out of pure caution and
conscientiousness, without sharing those prejudices; and many a
speculative philosopher has been free from them who has been a
vitalist in metaphysics. Schopenhauer, for instance, observed that the
cannon-ball which, if self-conscious, would think it moved freely,
would be quite right in thinking so. The "Will" was as evident to him
in mechanism as in animal life. M. Bergson, in the more hidden reaches
of his thought, seems to be a universal vitalist; apparently an _elan
vital_ must have existed once to deposit in inorganic matter the
energy stored there, and to set mechanism going.
Pages:
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98