The Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson

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Title: Creative Evolution

Author: Henri Bergson

Translator: Arthur Mitchell

Release Date: August 1, 2008 [EBook #26163]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE EVOLUTION ***

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CREATIVE EVOLUTION

BY HENRI BERGSON

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE DE FRANCE

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY ARTHUR MITCHELL, PH.D.

NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1911

COPYRIGHT, 1911,
by

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

CAMELOT PRESS, 18-20 OAK STREET, NEW YORK

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

In the writing of this English translation of Professor Bergson's most
important work, I was helped by the friendly interest of Professor
William James, to whom I owe the illumination of much that was dark to
me as well as the happy rendering of certain words and phrases for which
an English equivalent was difficult to find. His sympathetic
appreciation of Professor Bergson's thought is well known, and he has
expressed his admiration for it in one of the chapters of _A Pluralistic
Universe_. It was his intention, had he lived to see the completion of
this translation, himself to introduce it to English readers in a
prefatory note.

I wish to thank my friend, Dr. George Clarke Cox, for many valuable
suggestions.

I have endeavored to follow the text as closely as possible, and at the
same time to preserve the living union of diction and thought. Professor
Bergson has himself carefully revised the whole work. We both of us wish
to acknowledge the great assistance of Miss Millicent Murby. She has
kindly studied the translation phrase by phrase, weighing each word, and
her revision has resulted in many improvements.

But above all we must express our acknowledgment to Mr. H. Wildon Carr,
the Honorary Secretary of the Aristotelian Society of London, and the
writer of several studies of "Evolution Creatrice."[1] We asked him to
be kind enough to revise the proofs of our work. He has done much more
than revise them