Major Prophets of To-Day

by Edwin E. Slosson

Bergson seems born to be an exception to Amiel's criticism of French philosophy: "The French lack that intuitive faculty to which the living unity of things is revealed." "Their logic never goes beyond the category of mechanism nor their metaphysic beyond dualism."

M. Bergson's residence is the Villa Montmorency in Auteuil, a quiet quarter of Paris, lying between the Seine and the Bois de Boulogne. In summer he goes to Switzerland for greater seclusion and the stimulus of a higher altitude upon his thought. Here I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with him. From Geneva, where I was staying, I took the railroad that skirts the lake upon the western side to Nyon, an old Roman town at the foot of the Dole, the highest peak of the Swiss Jura. St. Cergue, my destination, was nine miles inland and a half a mile up. The distance I had to go was therefore the square root of the sum of the squares of these distances, but I did not figure it out, because, according to Bergson, we live in time rather than space, and duration is not a measure of length. So I can only say that it was one of the longest and pleasantest hypotenuses I ever traversed. For there was a sense of exhilaration in rising ever higher as the carriage zigzagged through the woods, and in getting a grander view each time we stopped at a turn to give way to an automobile chugging slowly up or coasting swiftly down. Arrived at the little village of St. Cergue, I had still a climb and a search among the hotels, pensions, and summer homes scattered over the mountainside for Villa Bois-gentil. This was found in the middle of a meadow backed by a forest of firs, a square, two-story house, simply furnished but with no affectation of rusticity, as is common in American country homes. From the inclosed porch there is a glorious view of Mont Blanc, with the long blue crescent of Lake Geneva curving around the ramparts of its base. But, as with many another Swiss view, the effect is marred by the presence of a big box of a hotel in the immediate foreground.

One would have thought from the cordiality of my reception that a philosopher had nothing better to do than to entertain a wandering American journalist. At lunch I had an opportunity of meeting also Madame and Mademoiselle Bergson, and afterward a long talk with Professor Bergson, who later accompanied me down the steep mountain path to the village and along the winding road through the woods. His conversation has the charm of his books, the enthusiasm for the mission of philosophy, the wealth of illustrations drawn from many fields of science and art, the freshness and inspiration of his novel point of view, the candidness in the consideration of opposing arguments, the unaffected, unpretentious manner, the absence of the professional jealousy and personal arrogance which has been characteristic of many original thinkers. The reader will notice that in his reviews and criticisms of the historic systems of philosophy, he never seeks to overthrow them, but is always trying to see how much of them he can save and assimilate. He believes that it is possible for metaphysics to have a continuous and positive development like the natural sciences, each man building on what has gone before, instead of setting up a new school and endeavoring to secure a personal following.[2]

I took the liberty of extending to Professor Bergson an invitation to America, for I was able to assure him of a hearty welcome on account of the deep interest already taken here in his thought. The work of James and Dewey prepared the way for Bergson in this country, for his philosophy may be regarded as a constructive system built upon pragmatic criticism. Indeed, he has been accused by his opponents of stealing Yankee psychology and making metaphysics out of it. The truth is, James and Bergson pursued through many years lines of thought of similar tendency but of independent development, though each has repeatedly taken occasion to express his appreciation of the work of the other. It is a case of psycho-metaphysical parallelism rather than of interaction.

In February, 1913, Professor Bergson came to America at the invitation of Columbia University and gave two series of lectures, one in French and the other in English, on Spiritualité et Liberté and the Method of Philosophy. One would find reason to question the common assertion that nowadays no interest is taken in metaphysical problems when he saw the lecture rooms packed with people from the city as well as students from all departments of the university. A line of automobiles stood waiting along Broadway, as the litters waited in the streets of Rome when Plotinus, the Neoplatonist, came to lecture there seventeen hundred years ago. Those who could not beg, buy, or borrow a ticket of admission formed a line outside the door, hoping that some who had tickets would fail to appear, but that did not often happen. A lunette was discovered over the door which commanded the lecture room, and here gathered a compact group of the excluded, finding room for one eye or one ear apiece, but the fainting of a lady in the crush put a stop to this privilege. In the downtown department stores Bergson's books were stacked up on the "best sellers" counter. His American publisher sold in two years half as many copies of "Creative Evolution" as had been sold in France in fifteen. Yet Bergson is a prophet not without honor in his own country. The three weeks he spent here were so crowded with engagements that he had to be kept running on a schedule as close as a railroad time-table. As he was leaving, I asked Professor Bergson the banal question of what he thought of America. He answered: "I shall always remember America as the Land of Interrupted Conversations. I have met so many interesting people with whom I should like to talk, but then somebody else equally interesting comes up."

M. Bergson believes that it is possible to make any philosophical idea clear and acceptable to the multitude. In this he obviously differs from other philosophers, many of whom do not think it possible and some of whom do not think it desirable. But to gain the wider audience, the author must take great pains with his style. The fault with translations is that the swing, the rhythm, is apt to be lost or altered, and this is essential to the impression as well as the right words. I spoke to him of the difficulty of finding an exact English equivalent of élan vital, which is the key word of his "Evolution créatrice", and he replied that he thought that "impetus", the word chosen by Dr. Arthur Mitchell in his translation of the work, was better than any of the others which had been suggested, such as "impulse", "momentum", "movement", "onrush", "push", "force", and "urge."

M. Bergson's method of composition is based on his theory of style. In undertaking a new book he spends as many years as may be necessary to the mastery of the literature of the subject and the development of his ideas. Then when he starts in to compose, he sets aside all his books and notes, and writes at a furious rate so as to get the book down as nearly as possible in the form it took in his mind at one time, jotting down his thoughts as rapidly as they come, often in fragmentary sentences and words, so as not to interrupt the movement of his mind. Then having put on paper the essentials of his theme with its original impetus, he devotes himself to the long process of revision, verification, and correction.

To art in all its forms Bergson has given a large place in his philosophy. The little book in which he has touched upon it, "Le Rire" (Laughter), is not so much of a digression from his fundamental line of thought as may appear. He explains that ridicule has developed as a method of social control, to whip people into line, to punish them for willful or absent-minded disregard of social usages. Laughter is incompatible with emotion. The comic addresses itself to pure intelligence. A joke cannot be perceived until the heart has a momentary anæsthesia. There is nothing comic except human beings. Man has been defined as "the laughing animal." He is also the only laughable animal. Man becomes ridiculous when we regard him from an intellectualist standpoint; that is, as a machine. The attitudes, gestures, and movements of the human body are laughable in the exact degree that they seem to us mechanical. We always laugh when persons seem like things.

The bearing of this theory of the ridiculous upon his philosophy is so obvious that he does not need to state it. Bergson, too, might use ridicule as a weapon and laugh determinism out of court. The man of the mechanists would be as funny as a jack-in-the-box.

In the same volume he gives his view of the function of art, from which a few sentences may be quoted here: