He visited Oxford and delivered at the University, on the 26th and 27th of May, two lectures entitled La Perception du Changement, which were published in French in the same year by the Clarendon Press.  As Bergson has a delightful gift of lucid and brief exposition, when the occasion demands such treatment, these lectures on Change form a most valuable synopsis or brief survey of the fundamental principles of his thought, and serve the student or general reader alike as an excellent introduction to the study of the larger volumes.  Oxford honoured its distinguished visitor by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Science.  Two days later he delivered the Huxley Lecture at Birmingham University, taking for his subject Life and Consciousness.  This subsequently appeared in The Hibbert Journal (Oct., 1911), and since revised, forms the first essay in the collected volume L’Energie spirituelle or Mind-Energy.  In October he was again in England, where he had an enthusiastic reception, and delivered at London University (University College) four lectures on La Nature de l’Ame.  In 1913 he visited the United States of America, at the invitation of Columbia University, New York, and lectured in several American cities, where he was welcomed by very large audiences.  In February, at Columbia University, he lectured both in French and English, taking as his subjects:  Spiritualite et Liberte and The Method of Philosophy.  Being again in England in May of the same year, he accepted the Presidency of the British Society for Psychical Research, and delivered to the Society an impressive address:  Fantomes des Vivants et Recherche psychique.

Meanwhile, his popularity increased, and translations of his works began to appear in a number of languages, English, German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Magyar, Polish and Russian.  In 1914 he was honoured by his fellow-countrymen in being elected as a member of the Academie francaise.  He was also made President of the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques, and in addition he became Officier de la Legion d’Honneur, and Officier de l’Instruction publique.  He found disciples of many varied types, and in France movements such as Neo-Catholicism or Modernism on the one hand and Syndicalism on the other, endeavoured to absorb and to appropriate for their own immediate use and propaganda some of the central ideas of his teaching.  That important continental organ of socialist and syndicalist theory, Le Mouvement socialiste, suggested that the realism of Karl Marx and Prudhon is hostile to all forms of intellectualism, and that, therefore, supporters of Marxian socialism should welcome a philosophy such as that of Bergson.  Other writers, in their eagerness, asserted the collaboration of the Chair of Philosophy at the College de France with the aims of the Confederation Generale du Travail and the Industrial Workers of the World.  It was claimed that there is harmony between the flute of personal philosophical meditation and the trumpet of social revolution.  These statements are considered in the chapter dealing with the political implications of Bergson’s thought.