In the years just before the First World War, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was at the height of his fame. His first two books, Time and Free Will (1889) and Matter and Memory (1896), had established him as the preeminent philosopher of France. But it was the publication of Creative Evolution in 1907 that made him a genuine cultural sensation. Avant-garde artists and writers flocked to his lectures at the Collège de France. As did “high society”: so much so that students, tired of losing their seats to those able to send valets hours in advance to reserve seats, circulated an (ultimately unsuccessful) petition to ban the general public. And on the day Bergson was elected to the French Academy, he found his lectern showered with flower petals, leading him to protest, “but … I am not a dancer!”