direction. Exert your instinctive powers of vegetation and emotion;
let your philosophy itself be a frank expression of this flux, the
roar of the ocean in your little sea-shell, a momentary posture of
your living soul, not a stark adoration of things reputed eternal.

So the intellectual faithlessness and the material servility of the
age are flattered together and taught to justify themselves
theoretically. They cry joyfully, _non peccavi_, which is the modern
formula for confession. M. Bergson's philosophy itself is a confession
of a certain mystical rebellion and atavism in the contemporary mind.
It will remain a beautiful monument to the passing moment, a capital
film for the cinematography of history, full of psychological truth
and of a kind of restrained sentimental piety. His thought has all the
charm that can go without strength and all the competence that can go
without mastery. This is not an age of mastery; it is confused with
too much business; it has no brave simplicity. The mind has forgotten
its proper function, which is to crown life by quickening it into
intelligence, and thinks if it could only prove that it accelerated
life, that might perhaps justify its existence; like a philosopher at
sea who, to make himself useful, should blow into the sail.




IV

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL

I. A NEW SCHOLASTICISM