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BOOK REVIEWS 265 a welcome addition, but his treatment of the self, careful as it is, is somewhat limited to criticism of other philosophers because Bradley found the concept of self inconsistent. It might have been more rewarding to treat at greater length Bradley's doctrine of "finite centres," those perspectives on the world of which Bradley wrote "... a finite centre ... is an immediate experience of itself and of the Universe in one." Mysticism to counter the skepticism about Appearance? Romanticism? Surely. How else can we characterize the comment in Essays on Truth and Reality that "the Universe is substantially one with each of us, and actually, as a whole, feels and wills and knows itself within us." RALPH ROSS Scripps College, Claremont La critique bergsonienne du concept. By Jean Theau. (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1968. Pp. 620. French Francs: 39.00) La conscience de la dur~e et le concept de temps. By Jean Theau. (Edouard Privat, Editeur, Toulouse, 1969. Pp. 313) It is refreshing to read two books devoted directly to or inspired by Henri Bergson's philosophy. Through this excellent selection of quotations, we recover these elegant and subtle arabesques of a unique theoretical language which brings us to the border of meditation and poetry. And through this precise and thorough analysis of time and intelligence, we catch again the vitality and permanence of metaphysical problems which our present cultural restlessness tends to throw away as antiquated concerns. Born in 1925 in the South of France, brought up in the typically anticlerical and antireUgious, but almost puritanical world of French elementary school teachers, Jean Theau turned to Catholicism at the time of his secondary graduation. Then he studied literature at the University of Strasbourg, and philosophy at the Catholic Theological College in Toulouse. He became a priest in 1956. Since his university years, his intellectual life has centered upon a renewed interpretation of the Christian fundamental problem--the relation between faith and reason--which means today: the relation between a technological civilization and an authentic Christian life. It is not surprising that in this search for a total theological answer Jean Theau was confronted with Bergson's own fight in the face of the then famous conflict between time and duration, quantity and quality, matter and life, mechanism and creative evolution, abstract intelligence and intuitive thought. Theau presents Bergson as the avowed enemy of concept when taken as the product of human intelligence, imitating spatial structures to build up a scientific and technical universe. In consequence , Bergsonian criticism must be an ultimate test for a philosopher who is trying to reconcile the sundered parts of our present intellectual world, and to reach a first stage along the road to unity in God. Theau's book follows with care the Bergsonian development from the first Essay to Creative Evolution with its fundamental analysis (unfortunately forgotten among our young philosophers) of the two concepts of "nothingness" and "order." Finally, this big book ends with a problem and a feeling of uncertainty: is it possible for human intelligence to go beyond dualism? Bergson asks this of the dualism between concept and intuition; we might ask today, between being and existence. 266 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Jean Theau's second book, Consciousness o/ Duration and the Concept o[ Time, may be the second stage in his metaphysical enterprise. The relationship to Bergson is admitted, even required, of anyone who, like Theau, can say of Bergson what he said of intelligence: it has in itself enough to go beyond itself. That is true of any great philosopher; and we shall not discuss Theau's own choice of a guide to go beyond himself, i.e., to go to Eternity. But the conquest of Eternity is only possible if at the same time one stays here and there, within and beyond. It is a necessary and gallant battle--a lost-to-be-won fight. Faced by these two books I am pleased to pay tribute to a generous, disinterested, intellectual effort to descend again into this philosophical battle-ground, thus reminding us that such a place still exists, ready for new enterprises; and that more recent attempts to escape from the fight or...

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