Early in 1918 he was officially received by the Academie francaise,
taking his seat among "The Select Forty" as successor to M. Emile
Ollivier, the author of the large and notable historical work L'Empire
liberal. A session was held in January in his honour at which he
delivered an address on Ollivier.

In the War, Bergson saw the conflict of Mind and Matter, or rather of
Life and Mechanism; and thus he shows us in action the central idea of
his own philosophy. To no other philosopher has it fallen, during his
lifetime, to have his philosophical principles so vividly and so
terribly tested. We are too close to the smoking crucible of war to be
aware of all that has been involved in it. Even those who have helped in
the making of history are too near to it to regard it historically, much
less philosophically. Yet one cannot help feeling that the defeat of
German militarism has been the proof in action of the validity of much
of Bergson's thought.

As many of Bergson's contributions to French periodicals are not readily
accessible, he agreed to the request of his friends that these should be
collected and published in two volumes. The first of these was being
planned when war broke out. The conclusion of strife has been marked by
the appearance of this delayed volume in 1919. It bears the title
L'Energie spirituelle: Essais et Conferences. The noted expounder of
Bergson's philosophy in England, Dr. Wildon Carr, has prepared an
English Translation under the title Mind-Energy. The volume opens with
the Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1911, Life and Consciousness, in a
revised and developed form under the title Consciousness and Life. Signs
of Bergson's growing interest in social ethics and in the idea of a
future life of personal survival are manifested. The lecture before the
Society for Psychical Research is included, as is also the one given in