THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHERS 349
in which current science hides itself for a decade of probation. He offers
his erudition modestly, never with the elephantine dignity that weighs
down the pages of Spencer. All in all, his criticism of Darwin has proved
effective; the specifically Darwinian features of the evolution theory are
now generally abandoned. 25
In many ways the relation of Bergson to the age of Darwin is a replica
of Kant's relation to Voltaire. Kant strove to repulse that great wave of
secular, and partly atheistic, intellectualism which had begun with Bacon
and Descartes, and had ended in the scepticism of Diderot and Hume;
and his effort took the line of denying the finality of intellect in the field
of transcendental problems. But Darwin unconsciously, and Spencer consciously,
renewed the assaults which Voltaire, and his more-than-VoItaircan
followers, had leveled at the ancient faith; and mechanist materialism,
which had given ground before Kant and Schopenhauer, had
won all of its old power -at the beginning of our century, Bergson at-
tacked it, not with a Kantian critique of knowledge, nor with the idealist
contention that matter is known only through mind; but by following the
lead of Schopenhauer, and seeking, in the objective as well as in the sub-
jective world, an energizing principle, an active entdcchy, which might
make more intelligible the miracles and subtleties of life. Never was
vitalism so forcefully argued, or so attractively dressed.
Bergson soared to an early popularity because he had come to the
defense of hopes which spring eternally in the human breast. When
people found that they could believe in immortality and deity without
losing the respect of philosophy, they were pleased and grateful; and
Bcrgson's lecture-room became the salon of splendid ladies happy to have
their heart's desires upheld with such learned eloquence. Strangely min-
gled with them were the ardent syndicalists who found in Bergson's
critique of intellectualism a justification of their gospel of "less thought
and more action." But this sudden popularity exacted its price; the contradictory
nature of Bergson's support disintegrated his following; and
Bergson may share the fate of Spencer, who lived to be present at the
burial of his own reputation.
Yet, of all contemporary contributions to philosophy, Bergson's is the
most precious. We needed his emphasis on the elusive contingency of
things, and the remoulding activity of mind. We were near to thinking of
the world as a finished and pre-determincd show, in which our initiative
was a self-delusion, and our efforts a devilish humor of the gods; after
Bergson we cornc to sec the world as the stage and the material of our
*Bergson's arguments, however, are not all impregnable: the appearance of
similar effects (like sex or sight) in different lines might be the mechanical resultant
of similar environmental exigencies; and many of the difficulties of Darwinism
would find a solution if later research should justify Darwin's belief in the
partial transmission of characters repeatedly acquired by successive generations.