alpitating and irrational as ourselves. Why then strain the inquiry?
Why seek to dominate passion by understanding it? Rather live on;
work, it matters little at what, and grow, it matters nothing in what
direction. Exert your instinctive powers of vegetation and emotion;
let your philosophy itself be a frank expression of this flux, the
roar of the ocean in your little sea-shell, a momentary posture of
your living soul, not a stark adoration of things reputed eternal.

So the intellectual faithlessness and the material servility of the
age are flattered together and taught to justify themselves
theoretically. They cry joyfully, _non peccavi_, which is the modern
formula for confession. M. Bergson's philosophy itself is a confession
of a certain mystical rebellion and atavism in the contemporary mind.
It will remain a beautiful monument to the passing moment, a capital
film for the cinematography of history, full of psychological truth
and of a kind of restrained sentimental piety. His thought has all the
charm that can go without strength and all the competence that can go
without mastery. This is not an age of mastery; it is confused with
too much business; it has no brave simplicity. The mind has forgotten
its proper function, which is to crown life by quickening it into
intelligence, and thinks if it could only prove that it accelerated
life, that might perhaps justify its existence; like a philosopher at
sea who, to make himself useful, should blow into the sail.

IV

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL

I. A NEW SCHOLASTICISM

In its chase after idols this age has not wholly forgotten the gods,
and reason and faith in reason are not left without advocates. Some
years ago, at Trinity College, Cambridge, Mr. G.E. Moore began to
produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his
powerful and luminous dialectic. Like Socrates, he used all the sharp
arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost
archaic dogmatism. Those who heard him felt how superior his position
was, both in rigour and in force, to the prevailing inversions and
idealisms. The abuse of psychology, rampant for two hundred years,
seemed at last to be detected and challenged; and the impressionistic
rhetoric that philosophy was saturated with began to be squeezed out
by clear questions, and by a disconcerting demand for literal
sincerity. German idealism, when we study it as a product of its own
age