the awful weight which determinism had laid upon our spirits and fills
the future with hope; for beyond the struggle and suffering inseparable
from life's flux, as we know it, it reports to us, though we may not
hear them, "the thunder of new wings."

Evelyn Underhill



CHAPTER I

LIFE OF BERGSON


Birth and education--Teaches at Clermont-Ferrand--Les donnees immediates
de la conscience--Matiere et Memoire--Chair of Greek Philosophy, then of
Modern Philosophy, College de France--L'Evolution creatrice--Relations
with William James--Visits England and America--Popularity--Neo-
Catholics and Syndicalists--Election to Academie francaise--War-work--
L'Energie spirituelle.


Bergson's life has been the quiet and uneventful one of a French
professor, the chief landmarks in it being the publication of his three
principal works, first, in 1889, the Essai sur les donnees immediates de
la conscience, then Matiere et Memoire in 1896, and L'Evolution
creatrice in 1907. On October 18th, 1859, Henri Louis Bergson was born
in Paris in the Rue Lamartine, not far from the Opera House.[Footnote:
He was not born in England as Albert Steenbergen erroneously states in
his work, Henri Bergsons Intuitive Philosophie, Jena, 1909, p. 2, nor in