The remedies for budgetary pressure which Professor Patten himself believes feasible we need not here consider. His general social program is well known. But it is worth while to criticize his view that there is no hope of relieving the pressure through lowering prices. The references to price theory in the book are frequently unsatisfactory. Thus, on page 48, he sets in contrast two doctrines which are perfectly consistent one that the reduction of prices is a good thing; the other that prices in general can neither be raised nor lowered. The apparent inconsistency comes from the ambiguity of the word " price." In the first proposition, prices mean money-prices; in the second proposition, prices mean ratios of exchange without reference to any standard, or, in Ricardo's phrase, "relative values." On pages 60-61 the author maintains that

low prices are the index of low values of personal services. The family budgets lose, therefore, on the income side all the savings that low prices bring, while the gains from low costs accrue to the benefit of the replacement fund and hence raise profits at the expense of personal income. Reductions in prices thus increase the budgetary pressure. The relief must

come from other sources.1

But why must personal incomes fall because prices fall? Suppose prices fall because increased personal efficiency leads to larger products? Suppose there is a larger volume of capital, and a lower interest rate? Suppose monopoly profits are cut out in the interests of the consumer? Are wages the only element in expenses of production? Are there not a host of alternatives which would prevent the incomes of the laborers bearing the whole burden of falling prices?

Agreeing with Professor Patten in very much of his constructive work in the analysis of the factors-social psychological factors-affecting distribution, the reviewer cannot agree that his doctrine necessarily excludes the current "static" price theories of distribution of Professors Clark, Fetter, Fisher, Boehm-Bawerk, and Marshall. Professor Patten does not indeed directly criticize the writers named, but the drift of his argument seems to be that, since he gives a different sort of account from theirs, the truth of his view would exclude the correctness of theirs. But to the reviewer the two lines of explanation seem complementary. Professor Patten is studying the genetic process; the price theories are concerned with the cross-section picture. What Professor Patten presents is qualitative merely; before the genetic elements

'The italics are the reviewer's. Compare this with the doctrine at the top of page 43 of the essay. The reviewer is unable to reconcile the two statements.

can become quantitatively measured, they must be studied in their equilibria with each other, must be compared with each other, must be measured in price terms. The price theories are less fundamental, but are also more exact, than theories of the sort Professor Patten presents. That the price theories have considered too few elements, that they have often been based on erroneous value concepts, and that they have claimed more fundamental validity than they are entitled to, the reviewer himself would insist; but he would also insist that they are necessary if the theory of distribution is to be put into quantitative and usable shape.

Professor Patten's essay, like most things that come from his pen, has accomplished its purpose. It has stimulated thought. A session of the American Sociological Association and a session of the American Economic Association at Boston last December were given over to its discussion. Few men read what Professor Patten writes without changing their opinions on the points discussed-not necessarily changing them in the direction that Professor Patten indicates, but none the less changing them. While the essay is in parts difficult and involved, it is exceedingly interesting. The personal tone is attractive, the frank recantation of many of the author's earlier assertions is courageous and admirable. All told, it is a noteworthy book.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

B. M. ANDERSON, JR.

IT

BERGSON'S PHILOSOPHY1

T is fitting that political science should reckon with all the major elements in our social consciousness, and Bergson has made philosophy one of the major elements. At least so it is in France, and to some extent elsewhere in Europe. Forces so far apart as syndicalism on the one hand and neo-catholicism on the other have drawn, or sought to draw, inspiration from his teaching. It is a work of genius to have made metaphysics not merely a vogue but the basis of something like a cult. Neither Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche has swung so fully into the focal center of a social movement. Bergson's philosophy touches the heart of that age-long striving from obscurantism to rationalism-touches and partly benumbs-and challenges the confidence of science. Hence it is acclaimed and condemned from all sides, and for all kinds of reasons. It has a negative, critical side, and a positive. On the negative, it boldly asserts that the rational processes of our intellects cannot comprehend reality; on the positive, that life itself can produce a kind of intuitive comprehension of just what intellect misses. We can see the drift of this by a slight analysis of his treatment, stressing these two aspects.

The essence of Bergson's thecry of the limitation of reason, as presented in his Creative Evolution, is that thought cannot comprehend

1 Time and Free Will. An essay on the immediate data of consciousness. By Henri Bergson. Authorized translation by F. L. Pogson. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1910.-xxiii, 252 pp.

Matter and Memory. By Henri Bergson. Authorized translation by N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1911.-xx, 359 pp. Creative Evolution. By Henri Bergson. Authorized translation by A. Mitchell. New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1911.-xv, 407 pp.

Laughter. By Henri Bergson. Translated by C. Brereton and F. Rothwell. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1911.—vi, 200 pp.

Introduction to Metaphysics. By Henri Bergson. Authorized translation by T. E. Hulme, revised and enlarged by the author. New York, S. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912.-92 pp.

Introduction to a New Philosophy. By Henri Bergson. Translated by Sydney Littman. Boston, J. W. Luce, 1912.-108 pp.

Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy. By J. McKellar Stewart. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1911.-x, 304 pp.

Modern Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson. By H. S. R. Elliot, with a preface by Sir Ray Lankester. London, Longmans, Green and Company, 1912. -xix, 257 PP.

life, and life is the main thing in the universe. The understanding, according to the doctrine of evolution, has been evolved as an adjunct to action. Hence it moves easily among materials and can deal successfully with solids. Bergson grants it in this sphere the possibility of even getting beyond symbols to actuality. The mathematical and physical sciences are sciences in the fullest sense of the word. But life itself falls into categories which the faculty of the understanding cannot supply. Space relations are quantitative, and with them the intellect can deal; but time furnishes qualitative changes which eternally elude the investigator. Life, bound up so thoroughly with time, thus escapes explanation, because it is always becoming something different. It is a creation in time. The inanimate has no history, simply because time makes no difference to it. Its change can be repeated. Life, on the other hand, is a succession of new phenomena. No present repeats the past, no future the present. That is why it has a past and a future. But, says Bergson, if life is a continuous process of the planting of these new phenomena, by which it is apprehended, in the heart of every fleeting moment, it is itself a disturbing, explosive force, exercising a creative power in the universe. Since change involves the new, the process of change-life-is therefore a sort of creation. Creation, however, is incalculable. The élan vital, the life impulse, is the basis of existence; and the nearest that one can get to describing it is in terms of itself. So Bergson rejects mechanism, claiming that it neglects the rôle of time and assumes that incalculable forces may be calculated. The line he draws between the animate and the inanimate he regards as impassible from that side. Teleology, on the other hand, the argument that an intelligent purpose underlies the evolution, is treated with incisive and convincing refutation.

Now, continues Bergson, the two most successful applications of the creative life impulse are instinct on the one hand-as developed, say, in ants-and intelligence on the other, as in man. There is nothing more novel and interesting in Bergson's whole scheme than this balancing of these two most perfect products of evolution-ants and men. The direction of their achievements, however, Bergson puts in entirely different worlds. Instinct and intelligence are radically different. Instinct, he says, deals with things, intelligence with their relations, though neither one exists quite by itself. This is the more general form of the statement that intellect converts matter into instruments or tools, while instinct operates directly, without their intervention. This distinction, of course, makes pure instinct absolutely incomprehensible,

Man can never

as it eliminates it from the field of consciousness. quite understand an ant. And since thought is unable to understand instinct, it is cut off from comprehending a large element of life itself.

The same distinction between instinct and thought enables Bergson to limit the scope of intellect even as applied to matter; for intellect deals, not with substance, but with relationships, and therefore never meets more than half of the problem. Moreover, following up the argument, we see how poorly even the relationships are apprehended. Our knowledge comes to us in cinematographic glimpses, not as a flux, which is the real character of change. We human beings are interested only in positions and juxtapositions, and we have a clear conception only of immobility, whereas solids, as we are now learning, are in constant movement—are, indeed, movement itself. Extension is continuous, but we break it up. Materiality is timeless, and thought works in time. So "as spirit grows more intellectual, matter grows more material."

But now we come to the thing which makes Bergsonism a militant philosophy. For thought, he says, is after all relatively successful in dealing with matter compared with its incompetence to deal with life. Here the fixity of its concepts, its cinematographic impressions, are entirely inadequate. "By nature the intellect is characterized by an inability to comprehend life." From the standpoint of life, matter, which is timeless—at least when viewed by rational consciousness on its old mathematical bases-and reason, which cannot comprehend change, are both an arrest of its processes. So we arrive at the paradox that life is interrupted by its own creation, intelligence— the creation, in fact, which indicates the tendency of the whole creative process !

Where, then, shall we turn? To intuition. Now what does Bergson mean by intuition? Not the wayward fancies of a dreamer nor the revelations of a mystic, he tells us, but the pure vision that comes from the inner self, such as the genius reveals in art. There is perhaps no clearer statement of what he has in mind than in that famous passage in Laughter in which he discusses the nature of art.

From time to time, in a fit of absent-mindedness, nature raises up souls that are more detached from life. Not with that intentional, logical, systematical detachment-the result of reflection and philosophy-but rather with a natural detachment, one innate in the structure of sense or consciousness, which at once reveals itself by a virginal manner, so to speak, of seeing, hearing or thinking.