mortal concession. It concedes everything; for it concedes that
everything in Christianity, as Christians hold it, is an illusion.




III

THE PHILOSOPHY OF M. HENRI BERGSON


The most representative and remarkable of living philosophers is M.
Henri Bergson. Both the form and the substance of his works attract
universal attention. His ideas are pleasing and bold, and at least in
form wonderfully original; he is persuasive without argument and
mystical without conventionality; he moves in the atmosphere of
science and free thought, yet seems to transcend them and to be
secretly religious. An undercurrent of zeal and even of prophecy seems
to animate his subtle analyses and his surprising fancies. He is
eloquent, and to a public rather sick of the half-education it has
received and eager for some inspiriting novelty he seems more eloquent
than he is. He uses the French language (and little else is French
about him) in the manner of the more recent artists in words,
retaining the precision of phrase and the measured judgments which are
traditional in French literature, yet managing to envelop everything
in a penumbra of emotional suggestion. Each expression of an idea is
complete in itself; yet these expressions are often varied and
constantly metaphorical, so that we are led to feel that much in that
idea has remained unexpressed and is indeed inexpressible.