As a thinker, Bergson is very difficult to classify.  “All classification of philosophies is effected, as a rule, either by their methods or by their results, ‘empirical’ and ‘a priori’ is a classification by methods; ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ is a classification by results.  An attempt to classify Bergson’s philosophy, in either of these ways, is hardly likely to be successful, since it cuts across all the recognized divisions.” [Footnote:  Mr. Bertrand Russell’s remark at the opening of his Lecture on The Philosophy of Bergson, before The Heretics, Trinity College, Cambridge, March 11, 1912.] We find that Bergson cannot be put in any of the old classes or schools, or identified with any of the innumerable isms.  He brings together, without being eclectic, action and reflection, free will and determinism, motion and rest, intellect and intuition, subjectivity and externality, idealism and realism, in a most unconventional way.  His whole philosophy is destructive of a large amount of the “vested interests” of philosophy.  “We are watching the rise of a new agnosticism,” remarked Dr. Bosanquet.  A similar remark came from one of Bergson’s own countrymen, Alfred Fouillee, who, in his work Le Mouvement idealist et la reaction contre la science positive, expressed the opinion that Bergson’s philosophy could but issue in le scepticisme et le nihilisme (p. 206).  Bergson runs counter to so many established views that his thought has raised very wide and animated discussions.  The list of English and American articles in the Bibliography appended to the present work shows this at a glance.  In his preface to the volume on Gabriel Tarde, his predecessor in the chair of Modern Philosophy at the College de France, written in 1909, we find Bergson remarking:  On mesure la portee d’une doctrine philosophique a la variete des idees ou elle s’epanouit et a la symplicite du principe ou elle se ramasse.  This remark may serve us as a criterion in surveying his own work.  The preceding exposition of his thought is a sufficient indication of the wealth of ideas expressed.  Bergson is most suggestive.  Moreover, no philosopher has been so steeped in the knowledge of both Mind and Matter, no thinker has been at once so “empirical” and so “spiritual.”  His thought ranges from subtle psychological analyses and minute biological facts to the work of artists and poets, all-embracing in its attempt to portray Life and make manifest to us the reality of Time and of Change.  His insistence on Change is directed to showing that it is the supreme reality, and on Time to demonstrating that it is the stuff of which things are made.  He is right in attacking the false conception of Time, and putting before us la duree as more real; right, too, in attacking the notion of empty eternity.  But although Change and Development may be the fundamental feature of reality, Bergson does not convincingly show that it is literally the Reality, nor do we think that this can be shown.  He does not admit that there is any thing that changes or endures; he is the modern Heraclitus; all teaching which savours of the Parmenidean “one” he opposes.  Yet it would seem that these two old conceptions may be capable of a reconciliation and that if all reality is change, there is a complementary principle that Change implies something permanent.