Roots Of Bergson's Philosophy

Ben-Ami Scharfstein ROOTS OF BERGSON'S PHILOSOPHY NEW YORK MCMXLIII COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright 1943 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK Foreign agents: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Miiford, Amen House, London, E.G. 4, England, and B.I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India Manufactured in the United States of America To My Father and Mother Acknowledgments OWE I a debt of gratitude to my teachers at College and Harvard University, from to love philosophy. I owe a more whom Brooklyn I learned particular debt to Edman, James Gutmann, Herbert W. Schneider, and John H. Randall, all of Columbia Univerprofessors Irwin sity, for their interest in this research and for their advice. Part of the manuscript was read and discerningly commented on by Dr. Solomon Bloom, and Mr. Arthur Simon, M.A., checked a large part of French. To both of them I give my translations from the my thanks. The Columbia University Press, in the person of Miss Matilda L. Berg, edited my Thanks book with care and sympathy. are due the following publishers: Charles Scrib- ner's Sons, for permission to quote from Jacques Maritain's Ranso?ning the Time and Santayana's Winds of Doctrine-, E. P. Dutton and Company, for permission to quote from Evelyn Underbill's Mysticism-, Henry Holt and Co., for permission to quote from Mitchell's translation of Creative Evolution, Carr's translation of Mind-Energy, and Audra and Brereton's translation of The Two Sources of Morality and Religion; Little, Brown and Company and the Atlantic Monthly Press, for permission to The Letters of The Macmillan quote from William James, edited by Henry James; Company, for permission to quote from Paul and Palmer's ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii translation of of Matter and Time and Free Will, Memory and The Medici Pogson's translation Society of London and Ralph T. Hale and Company, for permission to quote from McKenna's translation of Plotinus. BEN-AMI SCHARFSTEIN New York City October, Contents 1. The Problem 3 2. The Root in Time 8 3. The Root in Intuition 44 4. The Root in Psychology 58 5. The Root in Biology 72 6. The Root in Morality and 7. Is Bergson Original? Religion .... 99 128 Bibliography 139 Index 149 ROOTS OF BERGSON'S PHILOSOPHY ABBREVIATIONS Bulletin Bulletin de la Societe frar^aise de Philosophic M. F. M. M. Mercure de France R. ph. Revue de metaphysique Revue philosophique et de morale Chapter i THE PROBLEM A HENRI BERGSON became the most famous philosopher in the world, he was welcomed with hosannas; and he was roundly damned. It was a remarkable greeting. The fashionable world, and many among the thinkers of his time, saw in him a man of originality without who could pronounce the "Open Sesame" that would swing wide the gates behind which one, at parallel, last, hidden. William James, for example, praised with far more than the usual Jamesian verve. "O truth