nature, what faculty will lead us to the light? Bergson suggests that there is an intuitive faculty of apprehension by means of which in the concrete experience we come to know life as it is. This comes from immediate insight, and not reasoned knowledge. Our intuitive faculty we are constantly sacrificing to the demands of our intelligence. Intuition is a higher order of knowledge; and we are content foolishly to follow the lead of the lower. "L'intuition est l'esprit même, et en un certain sens, la vie même."[1] From this fervent declaration of Bergson, we see that he is by nature an intellectual mystic, and it is through the mystical interpretation of life that he hopes the more fruitful results of knowledge will appear. Similarly Professor James holds that knowledge is born through "a stroke of intuitive sympathy."[2]
However, even if knowledge of the deeper mysteries of life is to arise in intuitive apprehension, such knowledge is so much unavailable energy. It must be transmuted sooner or later into intelligible forms if it is to be available for intelligent beings. Of course life is more than logic, and actual experience more than knowledge. But knowledge is the interpretation of life, and there can be no progress in experience without an accompanying endeavor on our part to interpret it. We are accustomed to regard the poetical insight as that which most correctly interprets life; yet the poet is not one who simply feels the thrill of being in its infinitely various manifestations. His function is to express the feeling which his intuition discloses. And he merits the distinction of a poet only so far as his expression sounds a universal note. Shakespeare was preeminently the potrayer of particular characters. And yet in his plays every individual stands out as a universal type. The ability to express the concrete particular in universal form is the great poet's consummate gift. I believe most profoundly in the knowledge that is born of insight, unreasoned and at times seemingly unreasonable, and yet if it is to acquire a distinct value and significance for us we must admit it to a permanent place in our body of knowledge as a whole.
At a time when we are celebrating the achievement of Darwin and his followers in the study of the processes of life, I would enter
