ABSTRACT
Like Nietzsche, Henri Bergson was of mixed origin: his family can best be described as Irish-Jewish of Polish extraction. This may account for his extraordinary versatility: his poetic instinct, his grasp of science and mathematics, his extreme curiosity, and all his mysticism. Born in the Rue Lamartine, Montmartre, Paris, Bergson went to school at the age of nine at the Lycee Condorcet, which was situated not far from his home. The articles that Bergson now began to write in philosophical magazines were attracting attention not merely in France but overseas. Apart from the fact that they were written in a style of pellucid charm, the subjects treated were fresh to most students of philosophy, and the conclusions to which they pointed, though only tentative, proved as exciting to the young and curious as they were alarming to the academically orthodox. After the defeat of France in 1940, the Vichy Government ordered that all Jewish employees should resign from State positions.
