The Misuse of Mind

The Misuse of Mind

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Title: The Misuse of Mind
Author: Karin Stephen
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6336] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on November 28, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE MISUSE OF MIND ***

PREFATORY NOTE Being an extract from a letter by Professor Henri Bergson
AYANT lu de pr��s le travail de Mrs. Stephen je le trouve int��ressant au plus haut point. C'est une interpr��tation personelle et originale de l'ensemble de mes vues--interpr��tation qui vaut par elle-m��me, ind��pendamment de ce qui j' ai ��crit. L'auteur s'est assimil�� l'esprit del�� doctrine, puis, se d��gageant de la mat��rialit�� du texte elle a d��velopp�� �� sa mani��re, dans la direction qu'elle avait choisi, des id��es qui lui paraissaient fondamentales. Grace �� la distinction qu'elle "��tablit entre " fact " et " matter, " elle a pu ramener �� l'unit��, et pr��senter avec une grande rigueur logique, des vues que j'avais ��t�� oblig��, en raison de ma m��thode de recherche, d'isoler les unes des autres. Bref, son travail a une grande valeur; il t��moigne d'une rare force de pens��e.
HENRI BERGSON.
PREFACE THE immense popularity which Bergson's philosophy enjoys is sometimes cast up against him, by those who do not agree with him, as a reproach. It has been suggested that Berg-son's writings are welcomed simply because they offer a theoretical justification for a tendency which is natural in all of us but against which philosophy has always fought, the tendency to throw reason overboard and just let ourselves go. Bergson is regarded by rationalists almost as a traitor to philosophy, or as a Bolshevik inciting the public to overthrow what it has taken years of painful effort to build up.
It is possible that some people who do not understand this philosophy may use Bergson's name as a cloak for giving up all self-direction and letting themselves go intellectually to pieces, just as hooligans may use a time of revolution to plunder in the name of the Red Guard. But Bergson's philosophy is in reality as far from teaching mere laziness as Communism is from being mere destruction of the old social order.
Bergson attacks the use to which we usually put our minds, but he most certainly does not suggest that a philosopher should not use his mind at all; he is to use it for all it is worth, only differently, more efficiently for the purpose he has in view, the purpose of knowing for its own sake.
There is, of course, a sense in which doing anything in the right way is simply letting one's self go, for after all it is easier to do a thing well than badlyit certainly takes much less effort to produce the same amount of result. So to know in the way which Bergson recommends does in a sense come more easily than attempting to get the knowledge we want by inappropriate methods. If this saving of waste effort is a fault, then Bergson must plead guilty. But as the field of knowledge open to us is far too wide for any one mind to explore, the new method of knowing, though it requires less effort than the old to produce the same result, does not thereby let us off more easily, for with a better instrument it becomes possible to work for a greater result.
It is not because it affords an excuse for laziness that Bergson's philosophy is popular but because it gives expression to a feeling which is very widespread at the present time, a distrust of systems, theories, logical constructions, the assumption of premisses and then the acceptance of everything that follows logically from them. There is a sense of impatience with thought and a thirst for the actual, the concrete. It is because the whole drift of Bergson's writing is an incitement to throw over abstractions and get back to facts