The Misuse of Mind A Study of Bergson’s Attack on Intellectualism by Karin Stephen _Formerly Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge_ With a Prefatory Letter by HENRI BERGSON LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD NEW YORK: HARCOURT. BRACE & COMPANY. INC. 1922 _To Professor Henri Bergson With respect and gratitude_ Contents PREFATORY NOTE PREFACE CHAPTER I. EXPLANATION CHAPTER II. FACT CHAPTER III. MATTER AND MEMORY PREFATORY NOTE _Being an extract from a letter by Professor Henri Bergson_ Ayant lu de près le travail de Mrs. Stephen je le trouve intéressant au plus haut point. C’est une interprétation personelle et originale de l’ensemble de mes vues—interprétation qui vaut par elle-même, indépendamment de ce qui j’ ai écrit. L’auteur s’est assimilé _l’esprit_ de la doctrine, puis, se dégageant de la matérialité du texte elle a développé à sa manière, dans la direction qu’elle avait choisi, des idées qui lui paraissaient fondamentales. Grâce à la distinction qu’elle “établit entre “ fact “ et “ matter, “ elle a pu ramener à l’unité, et présenter avec une grande rigueur logique, des vues que j’avais été obligé, en raison de ma méthode de recherche, d’isoler les unes des autres. Bref, son travail a une grande valeur; il témoigne d’une rare force de pensée. HENRI BERGSON. PREFACE The immense popularity which Bergson’s philosophy enjoys is sometimes cast up against him, by those who do not agree with him, as a reproach. It has been suggested that Berg-son’s writings are welcomed simply because they offer a theoretical justification for a tendency which is natural in all of us but against which philosophy has always fought, the tendency to throw reason overboard and just let ourselves go. Bergson is regarded by rationalists almost as a traitor to philosophy, or as a Bolshevik inciting the public to overthrow what it has taken years of painful effort to build up. It is possible that some people who do not understand this philosophy may use Bergson’s name as a cloak for giving up all self-direction and letting themselves go intellectually to pieces, just as hooligans may use a time of revolution to plunder in the name of the Red Guard. But Bergson’s philosophy is in reality as far from teaching mere laziness as Communism is from being mere destruction of the old social order. Bergson attacks the use to which we usually put our minds, but he most certainly does not suggest that a philosopher should not use his mind at all; he is to use it for all it is worth, only differently, more efficiently for the purpose he has in view, the purpose of knowing for its own sake.