(1) Henri Bergson: An Account of his Life and Philosophy (2) The Idealistic Reaction against Science (3) Berkeley and Percival

Abstract

(1) IF a layman may presume to criticise the professional metaphysician, one may say that the merit of M. Bergson is to have freshened up philosophy. His point of view is nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri, and he has successfully cast off all the trammels not only of the old cut and dried philosophy of the schools, hut even the gaseous mysticism of NeoHegelianism. Yet some style him a NeoHegelian. Philosophy, he says, should be moulded on experience, and experience both changes and grows with human development. There is something of most philosophies in M. Bergson's attitude to the universe, for his philosophy is simply this: it is everything but a system. He is neither monist nor pantheist, but, as it were, a layman trying to understand. This attitude of his is optimistic; he has confidence in the universe. It may seem that he, like other exponents of “the new philosophy,” has a quarrel with monism and materialism, but he himself has deprecated all philosophical quarrels, for after all philosophy is only our attitude to and conception of the Absolute, and the wise man simply absorbs the positive results of all philosophies.

(1) Henri Bergson: An Account of his Life and Philosophy.

By A. Ruhe N. M. Paul. Pp. vii + 245. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 5s. net.

(2) The Idealistic Reaction against Science.

By Prof. Aliotta. Translated by A. McCaskill. Pp. xxii + 483. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1914.) Price 12s. net.

(3) Berkeley and Percival.

By Benjamin Rand. The Correspondence of George Berkeley afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, and Sir John Percival afterwards Earl of Egmont. Pp. x + 302.(Cambridge University Press, 1914.) Price 9s. net.