On Sōseki’s “Sokuten Kyoshi”

Abstract

　With the serious disease in Shuzenji as the turning point, Sōseki’s view of life changed from the philosophy of W. James to Bergson’s.

　At first he believed the theory of James’s subconsciousness. James showed him that we could commune with God’s consciousness outside of us through the subconsciousness which was the same as God’s consciousness and full of ideals, and that if we died we could join God.

　If this had been true, therefore, when he was dying of the disease, for a while at that time he should have had the same consciousness as subconsciousness because he could join God after death, but, in fact, he had no consciousness whatever.

　This fact disappointed him. After that he became a believer of Bergson. I want to tell how his new view of life, “Sokuten Kyoshi”, developed in relation to the theory of Bergson.