Élan Vital – The Creative Force that Drives Us

Life is a process of ever-expansion. It involves the unfoldment of new powers, driven by that inner impulse which the philosophers of Pragmatism call the élan vital. Whenever this impulse has its way, there’s an emotion of joy. Whenever it’s balked, there’s one of distress. Thus, pleasure and pain are the guides of life. Plus, the final goal is a condition of free and constantly accelerating growth, in which joy’s enduring. Whether that man will ever reach élan vital is more than we can say. It’s a perfectly conceivable thing that tomorrow a comet may fall upon the Earth and…