LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1542, 11 September 1912, Page 4

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

SCHAEFER VERSUS BERGSON. _ Sir—Readers of your leader in to-day's issue will no doubt be interested in the following excerpts from criticisms of Bergsonian philosophy. Mr. Beitrand Russell, whoso work on philosophical subjects,, more particularly the philosophy of mathematics, is well known, write in the July issue of "The Monist" thus:— "The two foundations of Bergson's philosophy in su far as it is more than an imaginative and poetic view of the world, are hi? doctrines of space and time. His doctrine of space is required for his condemnation of tho intellect, and if he fails in his condemnation of the intellect, the intellect will succeed in its condemnation of him, for"'between the two it is war to the knife. . . . One of the bad effects of an anti-in.Hh.-itunl philosophy, such as that of Bergson, is that it thrives upon the errors and confusions of tho intellect. Hence it is led to prefer bad thinking to good, to declare every momentary difficulty insoluble, and to regard every foolish mistake as revealing the bankruptcy of intellect and the triumph of intuition. There are in Bergson's works many allusions to mathematics and. science, and to a careless reader these allusions mnv seem to strengthen his philosophy grenllv. As regards science, especially biology and Physiology, I am not Competent to criticise his interpretations. But as icgnr.ls mathematics, ho has deliberately' preferred traditional errors in interpretation to the modern views which have prevailed among .mathematicians for the last half century . And so ,long as the main object of .philosophers is to show that nothing can be learned by patience and detailed thinking, but that wo ought rather to worship the prejudices of the ignorant under the title of 'reason' if we •are Hegelians, and of 'intuition' if we are Bergsonians, so long philosophers will take, care to remain ignorant of what mathematicians have done to remove tho errors by which Hegel profited." i In. the British Journal of Philosophy October, 1910) Dr. W. M'Dongall, the English, psychologist, .examines Bergson's theory of instinct. He writes-.-I can discover no force in the argumentation by which tho Bergsoninn doc lne .«.;ns'inct is supported. Whatever plausibility it may seem to have is achieved by confining attention to the most pureiy instinctive activities on the ono hand, and to the most purely intellectual on the other, and bv falsifv'in" the description of both." ' These quotations may make critics of Professor Schaefer's views pause; they may wiset prefer-to await tho full text pt .the address thnn to criticise bv "intuition."—l am, etc., T H Wellington, September 9, 1912. '