UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



"Philosophy of Laughter," the "Introduction to 

 Metaphysics," and the "Creative Evolution," his 

 masterpiece. It was also my privilege to hear some 

 of his lectures at Columbia University in the winter 

 of 1912, and to meet him personally. 



A view of the man always seems to bring one 

 nearer to an understanding of his work. In person 

 Bergson is a small, slender, rather shy man, with 

 a wonderfully beautiful and symmetrical head a 

 large brain, filled out and rounded on all sides; face 

 smooth and thin, with a close-cropped mustache; 

 prominent, finely chiseled aquiline nose; small, ex- 

 pressive eyes in deep sockets overhung by heavy, 

 mobile eyebrows an Emersonian type of face 

 with more than the Emersonian size and beauty 

 of brain, lacking only the powerful Emersonian 

 mouth. 



His lectures in French were delivered without 

 notes, in an animated conversational style, his 

 hands, within a narrow circle, being as active as his 

 mind. Not an imposing figure on the platform or off, 

 nor an aggressive and dominating personality, but 

 a gentle, winsome man, the significant beauty of 

 whose head one cannot easily forget. Those who 

 were fortunate enough to hear him may well have 

 felt that they were seeing and hearing a modern 

 Plato or Kant or Hegel, for surely his work is des- 

 tined to make as distinct an epoch in the history 

 of philosophy as did theirs. 

 198 



