Professor Bergson has himself expressed his approval of the general form of treatment, and I am indebted to him for information on a number of points. To Dr. Gillespie, Professor of Philosophy at Leeds, I am indebted for a discussion of most of the MS. following the reading of it. My thanks are also due to Miss Margaret Linn, whose energetic and careful assistance in preparing the MS. for the press was invaluable. I wish also to acknowledge kindness shown in supplying information on certain points in connexion with the bibliography by Mr. F. C. Nicholson, Librarian of the University of Edinburgh, by Mr. R. Rye, Librarian to the University of London, and by the University of London Press. I am grateful to Professor Bergson and to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for permission to quote from La Perception du Changement, the lectures given at Oxford. Further I must acknowledge permission accorded to me by the English publishers of Bergson's works to quote passages directly from these authorized translations--To Messrs. Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. (Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory), to Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd. (Creative Evolution, Laughter, Introduction to Metaphysics), and to T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. (Dreams). Through the kindness of M. Louis Michaud, the Paris publisher, I have been enabled to reproduce (from his volume of selections, Henri Bergson: Choix de textes et etude de systeme philosophique, Gillouin) a photograph of Bergson hitherto unpublished in this country. J.A.G. THE UNIVERSITY, LIVERPOOL March, 1920 INTRODUCTION The stir caused in the civilized world by the writings of Bergson, particularly during the past decade, is evidenced by the volume of the stream of exposition and comment which has flowed and is still flowing. If the French were to be tempted to set up, after the German manner, a Bergson-Archiv they would be in no embarrassment for material, as the Appendix to this book--limited though it wisely is--will show. Mr. Gunn, undaunted by all this, makes a further, useful contribution in his unassuming but workmanlike and well-documented account of the ideas of the distinguished French thinker. It is designed to serve as an introduction to Bergson's philosophy for those who are making their first approach to it, and as such it can be commended.