Besides that definite consciousness of which logic formulates the laws, there is also an indefinite consciousness which cannot be formulated. Besides complete thoughts, besides the thoughts which, though incomplete, admit of completion, there are thoughts which it is impossible to complete and yet which are still real in the sense that they are normal affections of the intellect. . . . The error fallen into by philosophers intent on demonstrating the limits and conditions of consciousness consists in assuming that consciousness contains nothing but limits, conditions, to the entire neglect of that which is limited and conditioned. It is forgotten that there is something which alike forms the raw material of definite thought and remains after the definiteness which thinking gave to it has been destroyed.[1]
Does not this sound like the voice of Bergson?
. . . Autour de la pensée conceptuelle subsiste une frange indistincte qui en rappelle l’origine.[2]
The indefinite consciousness of which Spencer speaks becomes the fundamental organ of philosophy in Bergson’s intuitive system. If it be this indefinite consciousness surrounding logical thought which presents to us the absolute, the culminating point of every reality, according to the opponents of intellectualism, has it not a cognitive value far beyond the limited, phenomenal consciousness of the intellect? But Spencer is still too much under the influence of the old mathematical prejudice to draw these bold conclusions from his own premisses; he therefore persists in designating as unknowable that aspect of reality which cannot be classified and ordered by the scientific method; he makes a tremendous effort to apply a single mathematical formula to the perennial evolution of mind and nature, to subject the concrete reality of becoming to a law of persistency, to a system of intelligible relations which is outside the limits of time. It is an endeavour which is doomed to failure, and will cause the final crash of the structure of scientific intellectualism, a structure whose foundations are already undermined by its own confession of impotence, by proving its inadequacy in the realm of phenomena as well.
