BERGSON'S CONCEPTION OF TIME. 



By Rev. Sidney Read Welch, B.A., D.D., Ph.D. 



The issue of at least two popular expositions of the 

 philosophy of Henri Bergson is a curious phenomenon which 

 throws considerable light upon the peculiar mentality of what we 

 may call the " average reader " of to-day. It is barely thirty 

 years since Bergson began to expound his recondite system of 

 the universe, and it was natural enough that so many brilliant 

 suggestions as he has made should provide mental pabulum for 

 those accustomed to consider problems of philosophy. 



But how can we explain the interest of the general public ? 

 The comfortable word Evolution may have something to do with 

 it. But Bergson is also a master of the homely metaphor, and 

 considers it the choicest instrument of philosophic thought. 



"Many different images, taken from difft rent orders of things, can by their 

 convergence direct consciousness on the exact point where there is an intuition to 

 grasp. " 



Figures of speech can certainly do all this, and more, where 

 the mind has been trained and the habit of intuition, if I may 

 say so, has been cultivated ; but with the reader of popular books 

 the only possible result must be a variegated series of brilliant 

 light-effects, which can hardly leave any definite image behind. 



In all Bergson's works, of which Creative Evolution is the 

 most complete, the constant appeal to the facts of science is 

 another source of popularity. This appeal, however^ is com- 

 bined with the boldest flights of philosophical speculation from a 

 starting-point that is within the apprehension of all. But in 

 this connection two warnings are necessary for the general 

 reader. 



First, Bergson is not always careful to state clearly which 

 are the facts of science and which are the results of his own 

 vigorous effort of introspection. Take as a flagrant instance the 

 opening sentences of Creative Evolution. 



" The history of the evolution of life, incomplete as it yet is, already reveals 

 to us how the intellect has been formed, by an uninterrupted progress, along a 

 line which ascends through the vertebrate series up lo man. It shows us in the 

 faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty of acting a more and more 

 precise, more and more complex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of 

 living beings to Ihe conditio ns < f existence that are made frr them. " 



This complex series of unprovable statements is set down 

 practically as embodying facts of science that may be assumed 

 as certain, whereas scientists know that they are greatly con- 

 tested speculations of a section of the scientific world. It ought 

 surely to have been made plain at the outset that science, as we 

 know it, deals not only with incontestable facts, but also with 

 dogmatic principles which go far beyond what we can verify 

 A. philosophy such as Bergson's, which is built partly upon facts 

 and partly upon scientific theories, cannot claim the same con- 

 sideration as one which starts with facts alone. 



