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3d. PERTH, THURSDAY, num:num 27, 1941.
NO. 2,961.
SIXTY-EIGHTH YEAR.
Bergson, the Philosopher, Died a Catholic Noted French Savant a Convert from Judaism MARITAIN'S EARLY MASTER Henri Bergson. the noted French philosopher, and winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for literature, whose death was reported recently in the press, died a Catholic. Tt is now revealed that Bergson, whn was a Jew, was baptised and received into the Church a few years ago. His conversion was first reported in the Chicago "Israelite" in July, 1937, but he did not wish to make it public, according to Raissa Maritain, through delicacy of feeling for the persecuted Jews whom he would have seemed to have abandoned in their distress. a
THE writings of Henri Bergson have had a profound effect on contemporary philosophic He became a professor of thought. philosophy at the age of twenty-four, and was elected a member of the French Academy in 1914. He had been in ill-health for some years, and recently refused the exemption uttered by the Vichy Government from the new anti-Semitic laws enacted in France. At the same time, he resign ed as honorary professor of the ColHe died in Paris at lege of France. the age of eighty-one years. Raissa Maritain, also a convert from Judaism, and the wife of Jacques Maritain, th, Neo-Thomist, both of whom were former pupils of Bergson, pays a moving tribute to his memory and gives some details of his conversion to the Faith in an article in the "Commlnweal," the 'American marazine, of January 17. Raissa Maritain writes: ''He had been ill for a long time, and the events of this terrible year must have accelerated his separation from this life. One of his last acts was to refuse the 'favour' by which Vichy sought to exempt him from the degrading obligations to which, under Nazi pressure, all French Jews are henceHe would not accept forth suAect. this exemption ,which was more humiliating than to suffer under the sad general law ,and he resigned his chair in the College de France as well as all his other positions of honour. "He died more than ever in solidarity with his people. Yet Henri BergHe did not son had been baptised. wish to make this fact public during his lifetime, through delicacy of feeling for the persecuted Jews, whom he would thus have seemed to abandon to their distress. But now there is no longer any reason to keep silence over this great spiritual event. We do not know exactly when this baptism took It was certainly several Years place. after the publication of the 'Two Sources,' hence after 1932. But his spiritual evolution had begun long since. From the time of 'Les Donnees Irnmediates de la Conscience' he had broken with
For Value and Service
FORMER BERGrSON PUPIL.
.
M. JACQUES MARITAIN,
M. Jacques Maritain, the greatest French lay authority on the teachings of St. Thorns' Aquinas, has been appointed visitirr Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University.
Aquinas's texts, he had found he agreed with him, and he readily acceded to his philosophy being placed in the stream of continuity flowing from St. Thomas. "'Creative Evolution' appeared in "Catholicism is the fulfilment of Thereafter it was known that 1907. Judaism." Bergson was working at a book on morals. This latter he did not publish the prevalent trend of thought, with until 1932. At the time of his silence, that 'mechanist intoxication,' as he heroic under the circumstances, he conhimself called it, which beclouded tinued for twenty-five years of investimen's minds at the end of the ninegation into the history of humanfty, teenth century and to the influence of into its moralities, its religions, its which he himself had been stiljecti mystics. At long last appeared 'The Two Sources of Morality and Religion.' The Senselessness of Mechanism. "In a still unpublished lecture Jacques has analysed this book from the "'lie soon perceived the senselessof view of the conceptual system point ness of mechanism,' wrote Jacques to'which it relates and from the point Maritain as early as 1913; 'he saw .. of view of the spirit which animates that the positivism which calls itself it. Whatever one may say about the scientific is only an agglomeration of system, the spirit here is admirable. more or less unconscious prejudia* Having subjected to study Greek and that so vast an illusion must inmysticism, Oriental mysticism, the volve the responsibility of the whole Jacques Maritain concluded thus: Prophets of Israel, Christian Mysticof modern philosophy.... Thus led to " 'If ever one were to try to isolate ism., Bergson believes himself justified seek the reality ignored by mechanand to set free this Bergsonism of in- 'n saying that Christian mysticism is M Bergson had to grapple ism tention, it seems likely that, passing the only one which has truly come to with psychology: to recognise the over to the act, it would yield and fruition. It was the experience of the basic insufficiency of the ideas which order its powers to the great wisdom mystics which led him to affirm the our scholars ordinarily conceive with of St. Thomas Aquinas.' existence of God. He believes in the regard to the relations between the "It was singularly audacious thus to of those who have had experiphysical and the moral: to conclude set the greatest philosopher of our evidence ence of Divine things. He puts the successively that free will is a reality, "times in contradiction to himself. But Christian mystics at the summit of huthat there is a distinction between were not the illustrious man and the manity. mind and matter, that the soul has a hold youth both before all else friends Christian Doctrine. certain substantiality, perhaps even of truth. We knew that Bergson thus "George Cattaui, one of our Jewish that it is immortal: thus to come at understood it. As far as St. Thomas friends recently converted to Cathollast to the problems of general meta- is concerned, a few years ago Bergson icism, saw Bergson quite frequently physics and almost to those of theo- wrote that although he was little fami- after the publication of the 'Two dicy; to incline toward the admission liar with Thomas Aquinas, yet each Continued on Back Cover.) of a personal God and to allow little time that he had come across one of .
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by little to come to light the religious questionings and the needs of the spiritual life of a soul instinctively attracted to contemplation.' "Bergson was the only one, at least among secular thinkers, to attempt such an intellectual change of direction. "When at last Jacques and I went to the College de France, where Bergson was teaching .. we found the Philosopher in all the brilliance of his glory. "The consummate art with which Pergson set forth his views, and seemed to carry us all along with him in the progress of his discoveries, in no way weakened the subtlety and the technical excellence of his teaching. And the great lecture hall in which he spoke was too small to contain all those who were eager to hear him. We would come there early, with Charles Peguy, Ernest Psichari, Jean Marx, in order to be certain to get a seat. "Furthermore, we went once a week to a course in the interpretation of Greek thought which Bergson gave in a smaller room before a small number The year in which I took of pupils. this course it was devoted to Plotinus. Creative Evolution.' 'We left for Germany, where we spent two years. We were never to return to Bergson's courses. In 1907 he published the most controvertible of his books, 'Creative Evolution.' And Jacques, with the light of the Faith, better understood the role played by His own personal the intelligence. He was to take a activity began. position in several essentials opposed to that of Bergson. We had lost 3ergson as our master. "In 1913 Jacques published his first hook, which was a critical study of the Bergsonian philosophy. The last part of the book is entitled, 'The Two Bergsonisms'-that is to say, the Bergson ism 'of fact,' that which one can find in Bergson's expressed thought, and the Bergsonism 'of intention, that which is the soul of his thought and which had perhaps not received an alAnd together adequate expression.
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