On Being Reasonable

An excerpt from Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution:

The essence of reasoning is to enclose us within the circle of the givens. But action breaks the circle. If you had never seen a man swim, you would perhaps say that swimming is impossible, given that in order to learn to swim, he must begin by holding himself afloat in the water, and consequently he must already know how to swim. Reasoning will always keep me rooted on solid ground, so to speak. But if I just fearlessly throw myself into the water, I will at first keep myself afloat on the surface of the water as best as I can by struggling against it, and little by little I will adapt myself to this new environment— I will learn how to swim. So there is indeed a kind of theoretical absurdity […]. And yet, if we boldly accept the risk, then action will perhaps cut the knot that reasoning had tied and that reasoning will never be able to untie.