Life would then be fed and defined by matter, as an artist
is served by the matter he needs to carry on his art.
[Footnote 5: M. Bergson has shown at considerable length that the idea
of non-existence is more complex, psychologically, than the idea of
existence, and posterior to it. He evidently thinks this disposes of
the reality of non-existence also: for it is the reality that he
wishes to exorcise by his words. If, however, non-existence and the
idea of non-existence were identical, it would have been impossible
for me not to exist before I was born: my non-existence then would be
more complex than my existence now, and posterior to it. The initiated
would not recoil from this consequence, but it might open the eyes of
some catechumens. It is a good test of the malicious theory of
knowledge.]
Yet in actual life there is undeniably such a thing as danger and
failure. M. Bergson even thinks that the facing of increased dangers
is one proof that vital force is an absolute thing; for if life were
an equilibrium, it would not displace itself and run new risks of
death, by making itself more complex and ticklish, as it does in the
higher organisms and the finer arts.[6] Yet if life is the only
substance, how is such a risk of death possible at all? I suppose the
special life that arises about a given nucleus of feeling, by
emphasising some of the relations which that feeling has in the
world, might be abolished if a greater emphasis were laid on another
set of its relations, starting from some other nucleus.
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