What is this creative purpose, that must wait for sun and rain to set
it in motion? What is this life, that in any individual can be
suddenly extinguished by a bullet? What is this _elan-vital_, that a
little fall in temperature would banish altogether from the universe?
The study of death may be out of fashion, but it is never out of
season. The omission of this, which is almost the omission of wisdom
from philosophy, warns us that in M. Bergson's thought we have
something occasional and partial, the work of an astute apologist, a
party man, driven to desperate speculation by a timid attachment to
prejudice. Like other terrified idealisms, the system of M. Bergson
has neither good sense, nor rigour, nor candour, nor solidity. It is a
brilliant attempt to confuse the lessons of experience by refining
upon its texture, an attempt to make us halt, for the love of
primitive illusions, in the path of discipline and reason. It is
likely to prove a successful attempt, because it flatters the
weaknesses of the moment, expresses them with emotion, and covers
them with a feint at scientific speculation. It is not, however, a
powerful system, like that of Hegel, capable of bewildering and
obsessing many who have no natural love for shams. M. Bergson will
hardly bewilder; his style is too clear, the field where his just
observations lie--the immediate--is too well defined, and the
mythology which results from projecting the terms of the immediate
into the absolute, and turning them into powers, is too obviously
verbal.
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