Such criticism of the question (“interpretation of the problem” I called it above) is just the proper business of the philosopher. For, every question is also an unconditional assertion. Falseness in this implied assertion is a case of the fallacy of “many questions,” which, accordingly, may be regarded as the philosopher’s first concern.
Bergson is a philosopher preeminently in this sense. He is a philosopher also (in spite of the cavalier denial of Sir. E. Ray Lankester)[153] in that he is a man with an articulate conviction concerning the nature of being and of knowledge. In the aspersion of Bergson’s thought by the above writer and by Mr. Hugh S. R. Elliot,[154] there is a rancour which, in spite of much valid criticism in detail, produces an impression of ill-regulated prejudice.
This impression is no more than fairly counterbalanced by the contrary enthusiasm of such whole-souled votaries of Bergsonism as Edouard LeRoy, William James and H. Wildon Carr.
“There is a thinker,” writes M. LeRoy, “who is deemed by acknowledged philosophers worthy of comparison with the greatest.... Beyond any doubt, and by common consent, Mr. Henri Bergson’s work will appear to future eyes among the most characteristic, fertile and glorious of our era. It marks a never-to-be-forgotten date in history; it opens up a phase of metaphysical thought, it lays down a principle of development the limits of which are indeterminable; and it is after cool consideration, with full consciousness of the exact value of words, that we are able to pronounce the revolution which it effects equal in importance to that effected by Kant, or even by Socrates.”[155] It is a “profoundly original doctrine.” And of endless fertility: “There is no doctrine ... which is more open, and none which ... lends itself to further extension.” Again: “... a doctrine which admits of infinite development ... a work of such profound thought that the least passing example employed takes its place as a particular study.”[156] And so on ad libitum.
These are the glowing words of an ardent disciple (even though not a pupil) and may be expected to be not, after all, altogether regulated by a “full consciousness of the exact value of words.” Such phrases as “worthy of comparison with the greatest,” “beyond any doubt,” “by common consent,” are pleasantly vague, and should not offend any judgment that is not literal in season and out of season. As to the Bergsonian “revolution,” it should offend no one at all who can put up with an expression of purely speculative relish. So far, on the other hand, as this revolution is accomplished fact in the prime of our philosopher’s middle age, the mention of Socrates and Kant does savour of the ornate!
Bergson is at least preeminent over all other living philosophers as the expression of a very revolutionary Zeitgeist. The generation of Taine and Renan (LeRoy goes on to say) was characterized by the positivistic presumption that any object whatever could be ‘inserted in the thread of one and the same unbroken connection.’ But rationalistic arrogance has never failed to arouse an answering voice of protest and dissent; and of our own generation such anti-intellectualism is one of the controlling ideas. It is primarily the reactionary conviction that the analytic method of philosophy is abstract and empty. It is, says LeRoy, a demand for “complete experience, anxious to neglect no aspect of being nor any resource of mind.” “Everything is regarded from the point of view of life, and there is a tendency more and more to recognize the primacy of spiritual activity.” “That the attitude and fundamental procedure of this new spirit are in no way a return to skepticism or a reaction against thought cannot be better demonstrated than by this resurrection of metaphysics, this renaissance of idealism, which is certainly one of the most distinctive features of our epoch.” “But ... we wish to think with the whole of thought, and go to the truth with the whole of our soul ... And what is that, really, but realism? By realism I mean the gift of ourselves to reality, the work of concrete realization ... to live what we think and think what we live. But that is positivism, you will say; certainly it is positivism. But how changed! For, from considering as positive only that which can be an object of sensation or calculation, we begin by treating the great spiritual realities with this title.”
“A new philosophy was required to answer this new way of looking at things. Already, in 1867, Ravaisson, in his celebrated Report, wrote these prophetic lines: ‘Many signs permit us to forsee in the near future a philosophical epoch of which the general character will be the predominance of what may be called spiritualist realism or positivism, having as generating principle the consciousness which the mind has in itself of an existence recognized as being the source and support of every other existence, being none other than its action.’
“... What Ravaisson had only anticipated, Mr. Bergson himself accomplishes, with a precision which gives body to the impalpable and floating breath of first inspiration, with a depth which renews both proof and theses alike, with a creative originality which prevents the critic who is anxious for justice and precision from insisting on any researches establishing connection of thought.”
“... Mr. Bergson has contributed more than anyone else to awaken the very tendencies of the milieu in which his new philosophy is produced, to determine them and make them become conscious of themselves.”[157]
In the new and significant relation which LeRoy and others find in Bergson to motives of thought so distinct as idealism, realism, and positivism, he is a writer of the fertility of genius; in the skill of his transfusion of these motives into a type of conception underlying a very deep and widely extended tendency of the age, he is the foremost expression of that tendency. In a very limited way, only, can such enthusiasm as LeRoy’s, in a mind of his excellent discernment, be reasonably discounted. Trimmed of all its abounding fervours its fighting weight is still sufficiently impressive: how resonant to motives and convictions of actually controlling interest that mind must be which can elicit such response, needs no better proof than the response itself. No one else is so well attuned as Bergson to that demand for complete experience which, if anything, is the spirit of our time. No one else has carried so far in theory the possibilities of an intense instinctive living, as the answer to the riddle of the universe. What can be said for instinct as an organ of philosophy, Bergson has said.