BEKKENHOUT
BEENAED
professor of philosophy at the Lycee
d Angers (1881-83), Lycee de Clermont
(1883-88), College Eollin (1888-89), Lycee
Henri IV (1889-97), and at the College de
France (since 1900) and the Academie des
Sciences Morales et Politiques (since 1901).
Bergson is a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour, Member of the Insfcitut, and Officer
of Public Instruction. He appeals (in
theory) to instinct or intuition against
reason, but is in his conclusions an advanced
Eationalist. The fundamental^ reality is a
creative or vital force which is " personal "
only in a new sense of the word, and is not
a perfect and eternal being (Creative Evolu
tion, pp. 186-87), but may be called God.
The God of theology " is nothing, since he
does nothing" (p. 197). The immortality
of the soul is " so probable that the burden
of proof comes to lie on him who denies it "
(Address to the Soc. Psych. Ees., 1914).
BERKENHOUT, John, M.D., physician and writer. B. Leeds, 1730. Ed. Leeds Grammar School and in Germany. He served in the Prussian, and later in the English, army, and then studied medicine at Edinburgh and Leyden. He was not less eminent as a literary man than as a physician, and his writings range over medicine, natural history, and history. His chief work is his Biographia Literaria (1777), the preface of which is candidly Voltairean (see p. xxxi, etc.). His hostility to all theology pervades the work. In 1778 he discharged a government mission to America. He was a man of great learning and versatility, a bold and sagacious thinker. D. Apr. 3, 1791.
BERLIOZ, Hector, French musical com poser. B. Dec. 11, 1803. He was sent to Paris to study medicine, but he turned to music and wrote a cantata, " Sardanapale," which won a prize at the Conservatoire. In 1835 he became musical critic of the Journal des Debats, and in 1856 a member of the Institut. Berlioz, whose composi tions won for him a world-wide repute, turned out sacred pieces like his "Te 07
Deum," " Messe des Morts," " Enfance de
Jesus," etc., as well as secular compositions,
but he was (though enshrined in the
Catholic Encyclopedia) a complete Agnostic.
His letters often betray this, and in one of
the latest, written shortly before his death,
he says : " I believe nothing " (G. K. Boult s
Life of H. Berlioz, 1903, p. 298). D. Mar. 9,
1869.
BERNARD, Professor Claude, M.D., D.Sc., French physiologist. B. July 12, 1813. Ed. Jesuit College, Villefranche. In 1834 he went to Paris, and, after some years study of medicine, became assistant to Majendie, whom he later succeeded as professor of physiology at the College de France. For his masterly services to physiology and medicine he was made a member of the Institut, the Academy, and the Berlin and St. Petersburg Academies of Science, a Fellow of the Eoyal Society (London), and a Commander of the Legion of Honour. He was the first man of science in France to be buried at the public expense, and, as the cortege started from Notre Dame, Bernard is claimed by Catho lics. It is clear, however, that the last- hour ministrations of the Church which were given him had no more significance than in the case of Beethoven. In his Claude Bernard (1899) Sir Michael Foster quotes him saying : " The Vespers are an opera for servant-girls " (p. 205). His chief work, Introduction d I etude de la medicine experi- mentale (1865), frequently expresses Agnos tic sentiments. "The best philosophical system is to have none at all " (p. 51). Philosophy represents " the eternal aspira tion of human reason toward a knowledge of the unknown " (351), and he speaks ^ of the " questions which torment humanity and which humanity has not yet solved " (p. 355; 1898 edition). He opposed Vitalism, and was one of the chief founders of mechanistic science. D. Feb. 10, 1878.
BERNARD, Henry Meyners, biologist. In 1889 Bernard worked under Haeckel at Jena. He translated A. Lang s Text-Book
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