For a more explicit vindication of the notion of activity, see Appendix B, where I try to defend its recognition as a definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic critics.
I subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible critics of Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement that concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. Understood in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we certainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in its train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of his own mouth. His philosophy pretends, if anything, to give a better insight into truth than rationalistic philosophies give: yet what is it in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its author not reason by concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no insight?
To this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply. In using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of concepts generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for they serve in his hands only to “orient” us, to show us to what quarter we must practically turn if we wish to gain that completer insight into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs our hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. What he reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude. He but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense. This service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which we may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with a good philosophic conscience!—who ever conferred on us so valuable a freedom before?
By making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the other counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new order, with particular relations between them. These relations are just as much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it. Conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of perception, then; and when the results of these are written down, we get those bodies of “mental truth” (as Locke called it) known as mathematics, logic, and a priori metaphysics. To know all this truth is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing happens in the realm of concepts; relations there are “eternal” only. The theoretic gain fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and history. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right in turning us away from conception and towards perception.
By combining concepts with percepts, we can draw maps of the distribution of other percepts in distant space and time. To know this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. From maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous practical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists.
But concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths of comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new values into life. In their mapping function they stand to perception in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to touch—Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory touch. But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent glory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement of life’s value follows. Even so does the conceptual world bring new ranges of value and of motivation to our life. Its maps not only serve us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures is of itself an inspiring good. New interests and incitements, and feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused.
Abstractness per se seems to have a touch of ideality. Royce’s “loyalty to loyalty” is an excellent example. “Causes,” as anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their sordid particulars. The veritable “cash-value” of the idea seems to cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as Royce contends, in his Philosophy of Loyalty, appears another thing altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe. It transcends in value all those “expediencies,” and is something to live for, whether expedient or inexpedient. Truth with a big T is a “momentous issue”; truths in detail are “poor scraps,” mere “crumbling successes.” (op. cit., Lecture VII, especially § V.)
Is, now, such bringing into existence of a new value to be regarded as a theoretic achievement? The question is a nice one, for although a value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. So far as their value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life, so here again Bergson’s formulation seems unobjectionable. Persons who have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own vital careers differently. It doesn’t necessarily follow
