ABSTRACT
Aesthetic creationism is one way to describe Bergson's view; the phrase is still more suitable as a description of Whitehead's metaphysics. Bergson's taking mysticism seriously has its partial parallel in Whitehead's remark: Philosophy is mystical, not in its method, but in its conclusions. Bergson says that the past is a part of present reality so far Peirce and Whitehead would agree but, says Bergson, it is the part that does not act on us. As Whitehead says, the power of art, especially of music, can be adequately explained only by giving up a sheer duality of sensory qualities and feeling qualities. The author says that Bergson as a gifted amateur mathematician, a more than amateur student of the history of European philosophy, an amateur biologist, psychologist, anthropologist, and sociologist, and a brilliant revolutionary in metaphysics.
