s will be necessary to enable us, even to a feeble extent, to
understand this proceeding better. But before we come to examples, a
preliminary question requires examination. In the preface to his
first "Essay" Mr Bergson defined the principle of a method which was
afterwards to reappear in its identity throughout his various works; and
we must recall the terms he employed.

"We are forced to express ourselves in words, and we think, most often,
in space. To put it another way, language compels us to establish
between our ideas the same clear and precise distinctions, and the same
break in continuity, as between material objects. This assimilation
is useful in practical life and necessary in most sciences. But we
are right in asking whether the insuperable difficulties of certain
philosophical problems do not arise from the fact that we persist in
placing non-spatial phenomena next one another in space, and whether,
if we did away with the vulgar illustrations round which we dispute, we
should not sometimes put an end to the dispute."

That is to say, it is stated to be the philosopher's duty from the
outset to renounce the usual forms of analytic and synthetic thought,
and to achieve a direct intuitional effort which shall put him in
immediate contact with reality. Without doubt it is this question of
method which demands our first attention. It is the leading question.
Mr Bergson himself presents his works as "essays" which do not aim at
"solving the greatest problems all at once," but seek merely "to define
the method and disclose the possibility of applying it on some essential
points." (Preface to "Creative Evolution".) It is also a delicate
question, for it dominates all the rest, and decides whether we shall
fully understand what is to follow.

We must therefore pause here a moment. To direct us in this preliminary
study we have an admirable "Introduction to Metaphysis", which appeared
as an article in the "Metaphysical and Moral Review" (January 1903): a
short but marvellously suggestive memoire, constituting the best preface
to the reading of the books themselves. We may say in passing, that we
should be grateful to Mr Bergson if he would have it bound in volume
form, along with some other articles which are scarcely to be had at all
today.

II.

Every philosophy, prior to taking shape in a group of co-ordinated
theses, presents itself, in its initial stage, as an attitude, a frame
of mind, a method. Not