A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson | Page 5

to face for the first time, stands fully revealed. The
revelation is overpowering, and once vouchsafed will never afterwards
be forgotten.

Nothing can convey to the reader the effects of this direct and intimate
mental vision. Everything which he thought he knew already finds new
birth and vigour in the clear light of morning: on all hands, in the glow
of dawn, new intuitions spring up and open out; we feel them big with
infinite consequences, heavy and saturated with life. Each of them is no
sooner blown than it appears fertile for ever. And yet there is nothing
paradoxical or disturbing in the novelty. It is a reply to our expectation,
an answer to some dim hope. So vivid is the impression of truth, that
afterwards we are even ready to believe we recognise the revelation as
if we had always darkly anticipated it in some mysterious twilight at
the back of consciousness.
Afterwards, no doubt, in certain cases, incertitude reappears, sometimes
even decided objections. The reader, who at first was under a magic
spell, corrects his thought, or at least hesitates. What he has seen is still
at bottom so new, so unexpected, so far removed from familiar
conceptions. For this surging wave of thought our mind contains none
of those ready-cut channels which render comprehension easy. But
whether, in the long run, we each of us give or refuse complete or
partial adhesion, all of us, at least, have received a regenerating shock,
an internal upheaval not readily silenced: the network of our
intellectual habits is broken; henceforth a new leaven works and
ferments in us; we shall no longer think as we used to think; and be we
pupils or critics, we cannot mistake the fact that we have here a
principle of integral renewal for ancient philosophy and its old and
timeworn problems.
It is obviously impossible to sketch in brief all the aspects and all the
wealth of so original a work. Still less shall I be able to answer here the
many questions which arise. I must decide to pass rapidly over the
technical detail of clear, closely-argued, and penetrating discussions;
over the scope and exactness of the evidence borrowed from the most
diverse positive sciences; over the marvellous dexterity of the
psychological analysis; over the magic of a style which can call up
what words cannot express. The solidity of the construction will not be
evidenced in these pages, nor its austere and subtle beauty. But what I
do at all costs wish to bring out, in shorter form, in this new philosophy,
is its directing idea and general movement.
In such an undertaking, where the end is to understand rather than to

judge, criticism ought to take second place. It is more profitable to
attempt to feel oneself into the heart of the teaching, to relive its
genesis, to perceive the principle of organic unity, to come at the
mainspring. Let our reading be a course of meditation which we live.
The only true homage we can render to the masters of thought consists
in ourselves thinking, as far as we can do so, in their train, under their
inspiration, and along the paths which they have opened up.
In the case before us this road is landmarked by several books which it
will be sufficient to study one after the other, and take successively as
the text of our reflections.
In 1889 Mr Bergson made his appearance with an "Essay on the
Immediate Data of Consciousness".
This was his doctor's thesis. Taking up his position inside the human
personality, in its inmost mind, he endeavoured to lay hold of the
depths of life and free action in their commonly overlooked and
fugitive originality.
Some years later, in 1896, passing this time to the externals of
consciousness, the contact surface between things and the ego, he
published "Matter and Memory", a masterly study of perception and
recollection, which he himself put forward as an inquiry into the
relation between body and mind. In 1907 he followed with "Creative
Evolution", in which the new metaphysic was outlined in its full
breadth, and developed with a wealth of suggestion and perspective
opening upon the distances of infinity; universal evolution, the meaning
of life, the nature of mind and matter, of intelligence and instinct, were
the great problems here treated, ending in a general critique of
knowledge and a completely original definition of philosophy.
These will be our guides which we shall carefully follow, step by step.
It is not, I must confess, without some apprehension that I undertake
the task of summing up so much research, and of condensing into a few
pages so many and such new conclusions.
Mr Bergson excels, even on points of least significance, in producing
the feeling of unfathomed depths