“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 all-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 uni- 
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 
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