Work

Creative Evolution

L'Évolution créatrice

Henri Bergson·1907·French

About this text

Bergson's account of life as a single impetus, the élan vital, pushing through matter in multiple directions at once. Against Darwinian mechanism and Neo-Lamarckian teleology alike, he argues that life cannot be explained from outside: it can only be lived, and understood by intuition rather than analysis.

The evolution of life, since it occurs in time and space, provides a kind of fourth dimension to the material universe, through which it tries to discover the path of creation. This path could not be foreseen by any intelligence or predicted by any calculation, because it is the work of a free act. Life itself is this freedom.

Full text not yet available.