The appearance of a new book from M. Bergson’s pen is always an event; and the publication, early last year, of his Les deux Sources de la Morale et de la Religionis quite an exceptional event, since it forms, in a sense, the culmination of this philosopher’s thought. His conclusions are in a line with the tendencies of his earlier work—in the course of it he himself frequently refers to l’Evolution Créatrice —but no one could have foretold the definitely Christian and movingly devout note which is so frequently struck in it whenever M. Bergson quits his complicated and protracted disquisitions on social morality in agreement with Durckheim and his school.

There can be no room for doubt: M. Bergson, when he writes of the experiences and the ideals of mystics and saints, writes and feels as a mystic and a saint. The saints whose doctrine and example he has studied so closely have responded by winning for him a special, if occasional, gift of mystical connaturalty and kinship. It is in contrast with this genuine and moving mystic note that the Durckheimian disquisitions seem such a burden on the soaring élan of M. Bergson’s spirit.