he is trying to do, namely, to induce philosophical thought to run in new channels.  The general reader has here an advantage over the other, inasmuch as he has less to unlearn.  In the old words, unless we become as little children we cannot enter into this kingdom; though it is true that we do not remain as little children once entry is made.  This is a serious difficulty for the hard-bitten philosopher who at considerable pains has formed conceptions, acquired a technique, and taken an orientation towards life and the universe which he cannot dismiss in a moment.  It says much for the charitable spirit of Bergson’s fellow-philosophers that they have given so friendly and hospitable a reception to his disturbing ideas, and so essentially humane a man as he must have been touched by this.  The Bahnbrecher has his troubles, no doubt, but so also have those upon whose minds he is endeavouring to operate.  Reinhold, one of Kant’s earliest disciples, ruefully stated, according to Schopenhauer’s story, that it was only after having gone through the Critique of Pure Reason five times with the closest and most scrupulous attention that he was able to get a grasp of Kant’s real meaning.  Now, after the lapse of a century and a half, Kant to many is child’s play compared with Bergson, who differs more fundamentally from Kant than the Scoto-German thinker did from Leibniz and Hume.  But this need not alarm the general reader who, innocent of any very articulate philosophical preconceptions, may indeed find in the very “novelty” of Bergson’s teaching a powerful attraction, inasmuch as it gives effective expression to thoughts and tendencies moving dimly and half-formed in the consciousness of our own epoch, felt rather than thought.  In this sense Bergson may be said to have produced a “philosophy for the times.”  In one respect Bergson has a marked advantage over Kant, and indeed over most other philosophers, namely, in his recognized masterly control over the instrument of language.  There is a minimum of jargon, nothing turgid or crabbed.  He reminds us most, in the skill and charm of his expression, of Plato and Berkeley among the philosophers.  He does not work with so fine and biting a point as his distinguished countryman and fellow-philosopher, Anatole France, but he has, nevertheless, a burin at command of remarkable quality.  He is a master of the succinct and memorable phrase in which an idea is etched out for us in a few strokes.  Already, in his lifetime, a number of terms stamped with the impress of Bergson’s thought have passed into international currency.  In this connexion, has it been remarked that while an Englishman gave to the French the term “struggle for life,” a Frenchman has given to us the term elan vital?  It is worthy of passing notice and gives rise to reflections on the respective national temperaments, fanciful perhaps, but interesting.  It is not, however, under the figure of the etcher’s art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson’s