BERGSON, Henri. Creative Evolution. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. 1911.
8vo. Sometime rebound in half brown morocco, marbled boards, spine with gilt raised bands and red morocco gilt lettering piece; pp. xvi, 425; occasional pencil marginalia, very good.
First English edition. Translated by Arthur Mitchell. In this book Bergson offers an alternative to Darwin's natural selection. In Bergson's system, a "vital impulse" - our own creativity - spurs humanity on towards progress and the development of the individual intelligence. Though this work is grounded in biological science, Bergson's conclusions are very much drawn from his wider philosophy. His thoughts on time as a subjective rather than objective reality were more influential on Modernist writers such as Mann and Proust than on scientists. It was a fashionable book in its day and was the main work upon which Bergson's 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature was based.
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