Roots of Bergson's Philosophy Book

ROOTS OF BERGSONS PHILOSOPHY Ben-Ami Scharfstein ROOTS OF BERGSONS PHILOSOPHY NEW YORK MCMXLIII COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS To My Father and Mother Acknowledgments I OWE a debt of gratitude to my teachers at Brooklyn College and Harvard University, from whom I learned to love philosophy. I owe a more particular debt to professors Irwin Edman, James Gutmann, Herbert W. Schneider, and John H. Randall, all of Columbia Univer sity, for their interest in this research and for their advice. Part of the manuscript was read and discerningly com mented on by Dr. Solomon Bloom, and Mr. Arthur Simon, M. A., checked a large part of my translations from the French. To both of them I give my thanks. The Columbia University Press, in the person of Miss Matilda L. Berg, edited my book with care and sympathy. Thanks are due the following publishers Charles Scrib ners Sons, for permission to quote from Jacques Maritains Ranso ning the Time and Santayanas Winds of Doctrine-, E. P. Dutton and Company, for permission to quote from Evelyn Underbills Mysticism-, Henry Holt and Co., for permission to quote from Mitchells translation of Creative Evolution, Carrs translation of Mind-Energy, and Audra and Breretons translation of The Two Sources of Morality and Religion Little, Brown and Company and the Atlantic Monthly Press, for permission to quote from The Letters of William James, edited by Henry James The Macmillan Company, for permission to quote from Paul and Palmers viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS translation of Matter and Memory and Pogsons translation of Time and Free Will, The Medici Society of London and Ralph T. Hale and Company, for permission to quote from McKennas translation of Plotinus. BEN-AMI SCHARFSTEIN New York City October, Contents 1. The Problem 3 2. The Root in Time 8 3. The Root in Intuition 44 4. The Root in Psychology 58 5. The Root in Biology 72 6. The Root in Morality and Religion .... 99 7. Is Bergson Original 128 Bibliography 139 Index 149 ROOTS OF BERGSONS PHILOSOPHY ABBREVIATIONS Bulletin Bulletin de la Societe frar aise de Philosophic M. F. Mercure de France M. M. Revue de metaphysique et de morale R. ph. Revue philosophique Chapter i THE PROBLEM A HENRI BERGSON became the most famous philosopher in the world, he was welcomed with hosannas and he was roundly damned. It was a remarkable greeting. The fashionable world, and many among the thinkers of his time, saw in him a man of originality without parallel, one, at last, who could pronounce the Open Sesame that would swing wide the gates behind which truth lies hidden. William James, for example, praised him with far more than the usual Jamesian verve. O my Bergson, he wrote on the appearance of Creative Evolu tion, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy, making, if I mis take not, an entirely different era in respect of matter. . . . There is so much that is absolutely new that it will take a long time for your contemporaries to assimilate it. But there were those who raised a warning voice. Berg sons is a siren mysticism of which we must beware, they said. They also denied his originality. One critic accused him of refusing to acknowledge a debt to Guyau, to Ward, and to William James himself. 2 Another critic believed 1 W. James, The Letters of William James , II, 290-91. f F. Nicolardot, A propos de Bergson, p. 160 Flore de Gnose, pp. 112-18.Read More