apparently
creative evolution (apart from the obstacle of matter, which may be
explained away idealistically) has to submit to the following
conditions: first, to create in sequence, not all at once; second, to
create some particular sequence only, not all possible sequences side
by side; and third, to continue the one sequence chosen, since if the
additions of every new moment were irrelevant to the past, no
sequence, no vital persistence or progress would be secured, and all
effort would be wasted. These are compulsions; but it may also, I
suppose, be thought a _duty_ on the part of the vital impulse to be
true to its initial direction and not to halt, as it well might, like
the self-reversing Will of Schopenhauer, on perceiving the result of
its spontaneous efforts. Necessity would thus appear behind liberty
and duty before it. This summons to life to go on, and these
conditions imposed upon it, might then very plausibly be attributed to
a Deity existing beyond the world, as is done in religious tradition;
and such a doctrine, if M. Bergson should happen to be holding it in
reserve, would perhaps help to explain some obscurities in his system,
such, for instance, as the power of potentiality to actualise itself,
of equipoise to become suddenly emphasis on one particular part, and
of spirit to pursue an end chosen before it is conceived, and when
there is no nature to predetermine it.

It has been said that M. Bergson's system precludes ethics: I cannot
think that observation just. Apart from the moral inspiration which
appears throughout his philosophy, which is indeed a passionate
attempt to exalt (or debase) values into powers, it offers, I should
say, two starting-points for ethics. In the first place, the _elan
vital_ ought not to falter, although it can do so: therefore to
persevere, labour, experiment, propagate, must be duties, and the
opposite must be sins. In the second place, freedom, in adding
uncaused increments to life, ought to do so in continuation of the
whole past, though it might do so frivolously: therefore it is a duty
to be studious, consecutive, loyal; you may move in any direction but
you must carry the whole past with you. I will not say this suggests a
sound system of ethics, because it would be extracted from dogmas
which are physical and incidentally incredible; nor would it represent
a mature and disillusioned morality, because it would look to the
future and not to the eternal; neverthel