orientation towards life and the universe which he cannot dismiss in a
moment. It says much for the charitable spirit of Bergson's fellow-
philosophers that they have given so friendly and hospitable a reception
to his disturbing ideas, and so essentially humane a man as he must have
been touched by this. The Bahnbrecher has his troubles, no doubt, but so
also have those upon whose minds he is endeavouring to operate.
Reinhold, one of Kant's earliest disciples, ruefully stated, according
to Schopenhauer's story, that it was only after having gone through the
Critique of Pure Reason five times with the closest and most scrupulous
attention that he was able to get a grasp of Kant's real meaning. Now,
after the lapse of a century and a half, Kant to many is child's play
compared with Bergson, who differs more fundamentally from Kant than the
Scoto-German thinker did from Leibniz and Hume. But this need not alarm
the general reader who, innocent of any very articulate philosophical
preconceptions, may indeed find in the very "novelty" of Bergson's
teaching a powerful attraction, inasmuch as it gives effective
expression to thoughts and tendencies moving dimly and half-formed in
the consciousness of our own epoch, felt rather than thought. In this
sense Bergson may be said to have produced a "philosophy for the times."
In one respect Bergson has a marked advantage over Kant, and indeed over
most other philosophers, namely, in his recognized masterly control over
the instrument of language. There is a minimum of jargon, nothing turgid
or crabbed. He reminds us most, in the skill and charm of his
expression, of Plato and Berkeley among the philosophers. He does not
work with so fine and biting a point as his distinguished countryman and
fellow-philosopher, Anatole France, but he has, nevertheless, a burin at
command of remarkable quality. He is a master of the succinct and
memorable phrase in which an idea is etched out for us in a few strokes.
Already, in his lifetime, a number of terms stamped with the impress of
Bergson's thought have passed into international currency. In this