27, 1914.] "But the destiny of
consciousness is not bound up with the destiny of cerebral matter."
[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 285 (Fr. p. 293).] "Although the data
is not yet sufficient to warrant more than an affirmation of high
probability," [Footnote: Louis Levine's interview with Bergson, New York
Times, Feb. 22, 1914. Quoted by Miller, Bergson and Religion, p. 268.]
yet it leaves the way open for a belief in a future life and creates a
presumption in favour of a faith in immortality. "Humanity," as Bergson
remarks, "may, in its evolution, overcome the most formidable of its
obstacles, perhaps even death." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 286
(Fr. p. 294). In Life and Consciousness he says we may admit that in man
at any rate "Consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life"
Cf. also conclusion to La Conscience el la Vie in L'Energie spirituelle,
p. 29, and to L'Ame et le Corps, in the same vol., p. 63.]
The great error of the spiritual philosophers has been the idea that by
isolating the spiritual life from all the rest, by suspending it in
space, as high as possible above the earth, they were placing it beyond
attack; as if they were not, thereby, simply exposing it to be taken as
an effect of mirage! Certainly they are right to believe in the absolute
reality of the person and in his independence of matter: but science is
there which shows the inter-dependence of conscious life and cerebral
activity. When a strong instinct assures the probability of personal
survival, they are right not to close their ears to its voice; but if
there exist "souls" capable of an independent life, whence do they come?
When, how, and why do they enter into this body which we see arise quite
naturally from a mixed cell derived from the bodies of its two parents?
[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p.
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