read, the innocence of the mind. It seems
no longer impossible that we might, like the wise men in the
story-books, learn the language of birds; we share for the moment the
siestas of plants; and we catch the quick consciousness of the waves
of light, vibrating at inconceivable rates, each throb forgotten as
the next follows upon it; and we may be tempted to play on Shakespeare
and say:

"Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do _their spirits_ hasten to their end."

Some reader of M. Bergson might say to himself: All this is ingenious
introspection and divination; grant that it is true, and how does that
lead to a new theory of the universe? You have been studying surface
appearances and the texture of primitive consciousness; that is a part
of the internal rumble of this great engine of the world. How should
it loosen or dissolve that engine, as your philosophy evidently
professes that it must? That nature exists we perceive whenever we
resume our intellectual and practical life, interrupted for a moment
by this interesting reversion to the immediate. The consciousness
which in introspection we treat as an object is, in operation, a
cognitive activity: it demonstrates the world. You would never
yourself have conceived the minds of ethereal vibrations, or of birds,
or of ants, or of men suspending their intelligence, if you had known
of no men, ants, birds, or ether. It is the material objects that
suggest to you their souls, and teach you how to conceive them. How
then should the souls be substituted for the bodies, and abolish them?

Poor guileless reader! If philosophers were straightforward men of
science, adding each his mite to the general store of knowledge, they
would all substantially agree, and while they might make interesting
discoveries, they would not herald each his new transformation of the
whole universe. But philosophers are either revolutionists or
apologists, and some of them, like M. Bergson, are revolutionists in the
interests of apologetics. Their art is to create some surprising
inversion of things, some system of the universe contrary to common
apprehension, or to defend some such inverted system, propounded by
poets long ago, and perhaps consecrated by religion. It would not
require a great man to say calmly: Men, birds, even ether-waves, if you
will, feel after this and this fashion. The greatness and the excitement
begin when he says: Your common sense, your pract