our first and inevitable doubt, which requires solution.

But it would be a quixotic proceeding first to make a void in our mind, and afterwards to admit into it, one by one, after investigation, such and such a concept, or such and such a principle. The illusion of the clean sweep and total reconstruction can never be too vigorously condemned.

Is it from the void that we set out to think? Do we think in void, and with nothing? Common ideas of necessity form the groundwork for the broidery of our advanced thought. Further, even if we succeeded in our impossible task, should we, in so doing, have corrected the causes of error which are today graven upon the very structure of our intelligence, such as our past life has made it? These errors would not cease to act imperceptibly upon the work of revision intended to apply the remedy.

It is from within, by an effort of immanent purgation, that the necessary reform must be brought about. And philosophy's first task is to institute critical reflection upon the obscure beginnings of thought, with a view to shedding light upon its spontaneous virgin condition, but without any vain claim to lift it out of the current in which it is actually plunged.

One conclusion is already plain: the groundwork of common-sense is sure, but the form is suspicious.

In common-sense is contained, at any rate virtually and in embryo, all that can ever be attained of reality, for reality is verification, not construction.

Everything has its starting-point in construction and verification. Thus philosophical research can only be a conscious and deliberate return to the facts of primal intuition. But common-sense, being prepossessed in a practical direction, has doubtless subjected these facts to a process of interested alteration, which is artificial in proportion to the labour bestowed. Such is Mr Bergson's fundamental hypothesis, and it is far-reaching. "Many metaphysical difficulties probably arise from our habit of confounding speculation and practice; or of pushing an idea in the direction of utility, when we think we fathom it in theory; or, lastly, of employing in thought the forms of action." (Preface to "Matter and Memory". First edition.)

The work of reform will consist therefore in freeing our intelligence from its utilitarian habits, by endeavouring at the outset to become clearly conscious of them.

Notice how far presumption is in favour of our hypothesis. Whether we regard organic life in the genesis and preservation of the individual, or in the evolution of species, we see its natural direction to be towards utility: but the effort of thought comes after the effort of life; it is not added from outside, it is the continuance and the flower of the former effort. Must we not expect from this that it will preserve its former habits? And what do we actually observe? The first gleam of human intelligence in prehistoric times is revealed to us by an industry; the cut flint of the primitive caves marks the first stage of the road which was one day to end in the most sublime philosophies. Again, every science has begun by practical arts. Indeed, our science of today, however disinterested it may have become, remains none the less in close relation with the demands of our action; it permits us to speak of and to handle things rather than to see them in their intimate and profound nature. Analysis, when applied to our operations of knowledge, shows us that our understanding parcels out, arrests, and quantifies, whereas reality, as it appears to immediate intuition, is a moving series, a flux of blended qualities.

That is to say, our understanding solidifies all that it touches. Have we not here exactly the essential postulates of action and speech? To speak, as to act, we must have separable elements, terms and objects which remain inert while the operation goes on, maintaining between themselves the constant relations which find their most perfect and ideal presentment in mathematics.

Everything tends, then, to incline us towards the hypothesis in question. Let us regard it henceforward as expressing a fact.

The forms of knowledge elaborated by common-sense were not originally intended to allow us to see reality as it is.

Their task was rather, and remains so, to enable us to grasp its practical aspect. It is for that they are made, not for philosophical speculation.

Now these forms nevertheless have existed in us as inveterate habits, soon becoming unconscious, even when we have reached the point of desiring knowledge for its own sake.

But in this new stage they preserve the bias of their original utilitarian function, and carry this mark with them everywhere, leaving it upon the fresh tasks which we are fain to make them accomplish.

An inner reform is therefore imperative today, if we are to succeed in unearthing and sifting, in our perception of nature, under the veinstone of practical symbolism, the true intuitional content.

This attempt at return to the standpoint of pure contemplation and disinterested experience is a task very different from the task of science. It is one thing to regard more and more or less and less closely with the eyes made for us by utilitarian evolution: it is another to labour at remaking for ourselves eyes capable of seeing, in order to see, and not in order to live.

Philosophy understood in this manner—and we shall see more and more clearly as we go on that there is no other legitimate method of understanding it—demands from us an almost violent act of reform and conversion.

The mind must turn round upon itself, invert the habitual direction of its thought, climb the hill down which its instinct towards action has carried it, and go to seek experience at its source, "above the critical bend where it inclines towards our practical use and becomes, properly speaking, human experience." ("Matter and Memory", page 203.) In short, by a twin effort of criticism and expansion, it must pass outside common-sense and synthetic understanding to return to pure intuition.

Philosophy consists in reliving the immediate over again, and in interpreting our rational science and everyday perception by its light. That, at least, is the first stage. We shall find afterwards that that is not all.

Here is a genuinely new conception of philosophy. Here, for the first time, philosophy is made specifically distinct from science, yet remains no less positive.

What science really does is to preserve the general attitude of common-sense, with its apparatus of forms and principles.

It is true that science develops and perfects it, refines and extends it, and even now and again corrects it. But science does not change either the direction or the essential steps.

In this philosophy, on the contrary, what is at first suspected and finally modified, is the setting of the points before the journey begins.

Not that, in saying so, we mean to condemn science; but we must recognise its just limits. The methods of science proper are in their place and appropriate, and lead to a knowledge which is true (though still symbolical), so long as the object studied is the world of practical action, or, to put it briefly, the world of inert matter.

But soul, life, and activity escape it, and yet these are the spring and ultimate basis of everything: and it is the appreciation of this fact, with what it entails, that is new. And yet, new as Mr Bergson's conception of philosophy may deservedly appear, it does not any the less, from another point of view, deserve to be styled classic and traditional.

What it really defines is not so much a particular philosophy as philosophy itself, in its original function.

Everywhere in history we find its secret current at its task.

All great philosophers have had glimpses of it, and employed it in moments of discovery. Only as a general rule they have not clearly recognised what they were doing, and so have soon turned aside.

But on this point I cannot insist without going into lengthy