Page:Mary Whiton Calkins - Henri Bergson - Personalist (The Philosophical Review, 1912-11-01).pdf/1



HE object of this brief paper is to protest against the abstractness of the current interpretations of Bergson’s teaching. He is claimed, or criticized, as pragmatist or temporalist when, as a matter of fact he is, first and foremost a personalist, an idealist of the renaissant spiritualistic school. To assert with one of his critics that “the fundamental principle” of his whole philosophy is duration is to take his statements out of their context. For Bergson’s teaching is that the reality, with which we are in immediate contact is—not duration, but the self which endures (le moi qui dure) Nor is this the statement of a single isolated passage. The earliest of his books treats duration and freedom as characters of the ‘fundamental self,’ the living, concrete I; Matière et Mémoire plunges at once into the study of ‘myself’ ; and finally in L’évolution créatrice, the latest of his books, Bergson begins with the statement that “the existence of which we are surest is incontestably our own” and then proceeds, as will appear, to base his whole philosophy of nature on this truth and its implications.

To the claim that Bergson is a personalist two objections will at once be made. It will be urged that he incessantly opposes idealism; and from Matière et Mémoire will be quoted his definite statement: “we do not accept idealism.” Stress will be laid also on the fact that L’évolution créatrice throughout asserts the existence of ‘brute matter’ as an essential factor in evolution. Bergson’s definite disclaimers of idealism need not long detain