Certain characteristics of Mr Bergson's manner will be remarked throughout:
his provisional effort of forgetfulness to recreate a new and untrammelled
mind; his mixture of positive inquiry and bold invention; his stupendous
reading; his vast pioneer work carried on with indefatigable patience; his
constant correction by criticism, informed of the minutest details and
swift to follow up each of them at every turn. With a problem which would
at first have seemed secondary and incomplete, but which reappears as the
subject deepens and is thereby metamorphosed, he connects his entire
philosophy; and so well does he blend the whole and breathe upon it the
breath of life that the final statement leaves the reader with an
impression of sovereign ease.

Examples will be necessary to enable us, even to a feeble extent, to
understand this proceeding better. But before we come to examples, a
preliminary question requires examination. In the preface to his first
"Essay" Mr Bergson defined the principle of a method which was afterwards
to reappear in its identity throughout his various works; and we must
recall the terms he employed.

"We are forced to express ourselves in words, and we think, most often, in
space. To put it another way, language compels us to establish between our
ideas the same clear and precise distinctions, and the same break in
continuity, as between material objects. This assimilation is useful in
practical life and necessary in most sciences. But we are right in asking
whether the insuperable difficulties of certain philosophical problems do
not arise from the fact that we persist in placing non-spatial phenomena
next one another in space, and whether, if we did away with the vulgar
illustrations round which we dispute, we should not sometimes put an end to
the dispute."