also, completing, correcting, and improving one another.” [Footnote:  Introduction to Creative Evolution, p. xiv. (Fr. p. vii).] Both science and the older kind of metaphysics have kept aloof from the vital problems of our lives.  In one of his curious but brilliant metaphors Bergson likens Life to a river over which the scientists have constructed an elaborate bridge, while the laborious metaphysicians have toiled to build a tunnel underneath.  Neither group of workers has attempted to plunge into the flowing tide itself.  In the most brilliant of his short papers:  L’Intuition philosophique, he makes an energetic appeal that philosophy should approach more closely to practical life.  His thought aims at setting forth, not any system of knowledge, but rather a method of philosophizing; in a phrase, this method amounts to the assertion that Life is more than Logic, or, as Byron put it, “The tree of Knowledge is not the tree of Life.”

It is because Bergson has much to say that is novel and opposed to older conceptions that a certain lack of proportion occasionally mars his thought; for he—­naturally enough—­frequently lays little emphasis on important points which he considers are sufficiently familiar, in order to give prominent place and emphasis to some more novel point.  Herein lies, it would now appear, the explanation of the seeming disharmony between Intuition and Intellect which was gravely distressing to many in his earlier writing on the subject.  Later works, however, make a point of restoring this harmony, but, as William James has remarked:  “We are so subject to the philosophical tradition which treats logos, or discursive thought generally, as the sole avenue to truth, that to fall back on raw, unverbalized life, as more of a revealer, and to think of concepts as the merely practical things which Bergson calls them, comes very hard.  It is putting off our proud maturity of mind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of reason.  But, difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way, I believe, to the possession of reality.” [Footnote:  Lecture on Bergson and his anti-intellectualism, in A Pluralistic Universe.  It may be remarked here that, although James hailed Bergson as an ally, Bergson cannot be classed as a pragmatist.  His great assertion is that just because intellect is pragmatic it does not help us to get a vision of reality.  Cf. the interesting work on William James and Henri Bergson, by W. H. Kallen.]

Bergson’s style of writing merits high praise.  He is no “dry” philosopher; he is highly imaginative and picturesque; many of his passages might be styled, like those of Macaulay, “purple,” for at times he rises to a high pitch of feeling and oratory.  Yet this has been urged against him by some critics.  The ironic remark has been repeated, in regard to Bergson, which was originally made of William James, by Dr. Schiller, that his work was “so lacking in the familiar philosophic catch-words,