UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



philosophers fight shy of it, I hear, probably because 

 it discredits or limits pure intellectualism as giving 

 us the key to the real inwardness of life; we enter 

 into this mystery only through spirit, — real sym- 

 pathy or intuition, — and not through our logical 

 faculties. Men who attack the problem of living 

 matter with the same tools which they use upon the 

 problem of dead matter, — namely, our logical un- 

 derstanding, — will not, according to Bergson, get 

 very far. 



The flexible, sympathetic, and intuitive type of 

 mind, the type that finds expression in art, in litera- 

 ture, in religion, and in all creative work, will take 

 more naturally and kindly to Bergson than the rig- 

 idly scientific and logical mind. 



In this shining stream of ideas and images that 

 flows through Professor Bergson's pages, or from his 

 mouth in the lecture-room, the strictly scientific 

 man will probably find little to interest him. He 

 may approve of it as literature and philosophy, but 

 he is pretty sure to feel that unwarranted liberties 

 have been taken with scientific conclusions. He will 

 deny the validity of the principal actor in the Berg- 

 sonian drama of evolution; the cosmic spirit, as 

 something apart from and independent of cosmic 

 matter, has no place in his categories; matter and 

 the laws of matter are all-sufficient for his purpose. 

 He must keep on the solid ground of the verifiable. 

 Apparently, to Huxley consciousness is as strictly 



202 



