the place of the artistic in life are valuable. In 1901 he was elected
to the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques, and became a member
of the Institute. In 1903 he contributed to the Revue de metaphysique et
de morale a very important essay entitled Introduction a la
metaphysique, which is useful as a preface to the study of his three
large books.

On the death of Gabriel Tarde, the eminent sociologist, in 1904, Bergson
succeeded him in the Chair of Modern Philosophy. From the 4th to the 8th
of September of that year he was at Geneva attending the Second
International Congress of Philosophy, when he lectured on Le Paralogisme
psycho-physiologique, or, to quote its new title, Le Cerveau et la
Pensee: une illusion philosophique. An illness prevented his visiting
Germany to attend the Third Congress held at Heidelberg.

His third large work--his greatest book--L'Evolution creatrice, appeared
in 1907, and is undoubtedly, of all his works, the one which is most
widely known and most discussed. It constitutes one of the most profound
and original contributions to the philosophical consideration of the
theory of Evolution. Un livre comme L'Evolution creatrice, remarks
Imbart de la Tour, n'est pas seulment une oeuvre, mais une date, celle
d'une direction nouvelle imprimee a la pensee. By 1918, Alcan, the
publisher, had issued twenty-one editions, making an average of two
editions per annum for ten years. Since the appearance of this book,
Bergson's popularity has increased enormously, not only in academic
circles, but among the general reading public.

He came to London in 1908 and visited William James, the American
philosopher of Harvard, who was Bergson's senior by seventeen years, and
who was instrumental in calling the attention of the Anglo-American