"Evil comes from a failure to think."
— Hannah Arendt
The question was: How are we to find a changeless and therefore knowable something in, or behind, or somehow belonging to, the flux of nature-as-we-perceive-it? In modern or evolutionary natural science, this question does not arise, and the controversy between ‘materialism’ and ‘idealism’, as two answers to it, no longer has any meaning.
This controversy became meaningless because its presuppositions had undergone a revolutionary change by the beginning of the nineteenth century. By then historians had trained themselves to think, and had found themselves able to think scientifically, about a world of constantly changing human affairs in which there was no unchanging substrate behind the changes, and no unchanging laws according to which the changes took place. History had by now established itself as a science, that is, a progressive inquiry in which conclusions are solidly and demonstratively established.
Life is organised energy, organised matter, and it seems to move in a direction against the general flow of matter; we can say that life flows uphill. This is what Bergson means by a ‘creative evolution’, one that intentionally invades matter and organises it for its own aims and purposes. These, Bergson believed, were to gain greater and greater control over matter and hence increased freedom. I suspect scientists would say that I misunderstand entropy, but I do believe that life is anti-entropic.
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
If you have a healthy ego—designed by you for successful interaction with society and other egos—you can use it consciously to achieve goals and keep commitments. You can also preserve your spirit and soul in the process, being in this world but not of it.
