"A PROPHET OF THE SOUL" 



Is one's own apprehension of the truth of these 

 distinctions of M. Bergson's intuitional or logical? 

 In my own case I feel that it would be hard to give 

 logical reasons why I believe that we are nearer the 

 truth when we think of life under the image of a 

 curve, than under the image of a right line; or why 

 I see that nature's method is an aU-round method, 

 like the circle, while man's is a direct method like a 

 straight line. We seem driven to the conclusion that 

 all transcendental truth — truth that transcends 

 our reason and experience — comes by way of the 

 intuitions. The daring affirmations of a writer like 

 Emerson — the very electricity of thought — are 

 intuitional. The great truths in Whitman, shining 

 like beacon lights all through his rugged lines, cos- 

 mic truths of the moral nature, — one may call them 

 glimpses into the depths profound of the moral imi- 

 verse, — he never came at by any logical or ratio- 

 cinative process. "Logic and sermons never con- 

 vince," he says. "The damp of the night drives 

 deeper into my soul." They are truths of the intui- 

 tions. M. Bergson's conceptions of life seem to 

 transcend logic and reason in the same way. 



VI 



Probably never before was there so successful an 

 attempt to reconcile contradictions, to make the 

 difficult, not to say the impossible, the easier way. 

 It is so easy to prove determinism, fatalism; so 



