Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE by Sir Ray Lankester.
I AM glad to write a few words by way of preface to Mr. Hugh Elliot's valuable little book, entitled Modern, Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson. I am glad to do this, not merely because I think that the books in which M. Bergson formulates those illusions are worthless and unprofitable matter, causing waste of time and confusion of thought to many of those who are induced to read them, but also because an unmerited importance has been attached to them by a section of the English public, misled by the ingenious and systematic advertisement of M. Bergson by those who amuse themselves with metaphysical curiosities. He has been introduced to us as a 'great French philosopher.' To those who in a thoroughgoing way occupy themselves in collecting and comparing and classifying all the absurdities which have been put forward as 'metaphysics' or 'metaphysical speculation' since the days of Aristotle, this latest effusion has, no doubt, a kind of interest such as a collector may take in a curious species of beetle. To the student of the aberrations and monstrosities of the mind of man, M. Bergson's works will always be documents of value. But it is an injustice as well as an inaccuracy to speak of their author as 'great, ' or 'French, ' or a 'philosopher.'....
