Quotes from book
Creative Evolution

Name: Creative Evolution
Author: Henri Bergson

Creative Evolution is a 1907 book by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its English translation appeared in 1911. The book proposed a version of orthogenesis in place of Darwin's mechanism of evolution, suggesting that evolution is motivated by the élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse. The book was very popular in the early decades of the twentieth century.

“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”

Henri Bergson book Creative Evolution

Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter I, as translated by Arthur Mitchell (1911), p. 14.; italicized in the original.

“All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.”

Henri Bergson book Creative Evolution

Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271