His ideal, of which he speaks
in his lectures on La Perception du Changement--that excellent summary
of his thought--is a progressive philosophy to which each thinker shall
contribute. If we feel disappointed that Bergson has not gone further or
done more by attempting a solution of some of the fundamental problems
of our human experience, upon which he has not touched, then we must
recollect his own view of the philosophy he is seeking to expound. All
thinking minds must contribute their quota. A philosophy such as he
wishes to promote by establishing a method by his own works will not be
made in a day. "Unlike the philosophical systems properly so called,
each of which was the individual work of a man of genius, and sprang up
as a whole to be taken or left, it will only be built up by the
collective and progressive effort of many thinkers, of many observers
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.
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