THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



I believe, to mark an epoch in the history of modern 

 thought. The work has its root in modern physical 

 science, but it blooms and bears fruit in the spirit to 

 a degree quite unprecedented. 



When we can descend upon the materialism of 

 the physical sciences with the spiritual fervor and 

 imaginative power of the men I have named, the 

 blank wall of material things will become as trans- 

 parent as glass itself, and the chill will give place to 

 intellectual warmth. 



Bergson, to whom I have referred, is a new star 

 in the intellectual firmament of our day. He is a 

 philosopher upon whom the spirits of both litera- 

 ture and science have descended. In his great work 

 he touches the materialism of science to finer issues. 

 Probably no other writer of our time has possessed 

 in the same measure the three gifts, the literary, the 

 scientific, and the philosophical. Bergson is a kind 

 of chastened and spiritualized Herbert Spencer. 



Spencer was a philosopher upon whom the spirit 

 of science alone had descended, and we miss in his 

 work the quickening creative atmosphere, and that 

 light that never was on sea or land, that pervades 

 Bergson's. One thinks of Spencer as an enormous 

 intellectual plant, turning out philosophical prod- 

 ucts that doubtless have their uses, but are a 

 weary weight to the spirit. His work tends to a me- 

 chanical explanation of the universe and of the 

 evolutionary impulse which Bergson, with his finer 

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