from other objects, the mind has come to be distinguished: but the
subterfuge is vain, because by "mind" they mean simply the idea of
mind, and they give no name, except perhaps experience, to the mind
that forms that idea. Matter and mind, for these transcendentalists
posing as realists, merge and flow so easily together only because
both are images or groups of images in an original mind presupposed
but never honestly posited. It is in this forgotten mind, also, as
the professed idealists urge, that the relations of proximity and
simultaneity between various lives can alone subsist, if to subsist is
to be experienced.

There is, however, one point of real difference, at least initially,
between the idealism of M. Bergson and that of his predecessors. The
universal mind, for M. Bergson, is in process of actual
transformation. It is not an omniscient God but a cosmic sensibility.
In this sensibility matter, with all its vibrations felt in detail,
forms one moving panorama together with all minds, which are patterns
visible at will from various points of view in that same woof of
matter; and so the great experiment crawls and shoots on, the dream of
a giant without a body, mindful of the past, uncertain of the future,
shuffling his images, and threading his painful way through a
labyrinth of cross-purposes.

Such at least is the notion which the reader gathers from the
prevailing character of M. Bergson's words; but I am not sure that it
would be his ultimate conclusion. Perhaps it is to be out of sympathy
with his spirit to speak of an ultimate conclusion at all; nothing
comes to a conclusion and nothing is ultimate. Many dilemmas, however,
are inevitable, and if the master does not make a choice himself, his
pupils will divide and trace the alternative consequences for