HENRI BERGSON: ELAN VITAL

“The psychological force throughout life as a whole is what Bergson terms the élan vital, a phrase which he borrowed from an 1899 work on evolution by André Lalande. The global drive is expressed and carried forward in particular species and individuals …”

Bergson, Mark Sinclair, p. 213

“According to the idea of purposiveness without purpose , Bergson’s notion of an elan is a notion of a force – a force as we have seen, that he conceives as will-throughout life as a whole that is reducible neither to mechanical causation nor to final causation as the pursuit of a clearly determined goal…”

Bergson, Mark Sinclair, p. 214