the effects of this direct and intimate
mental vision. Everything which he thought he knew already finds new
birth and vigour in the clear light of morning: on all hands, in the
glow of dawn, new intuitions spring up and open out; we feel them big
with infinite consequences, heavy and saturated with life. Each of them
is no sooner blown than it appears fertile for ever. And yet there is
nothing paradoxical or disturbing in the novelty. It is a reply to our
expectation, an answer to some dim hope. So vivid is the impression of
truth, that afterwards we are even ready to believe we recognise the
revelation as if we had always darkly anticipated it in some mysterious
twilight at the back of consciousness.

Afterwards, no doubt, in certain cases, incertitude reappears, sometimes
even decided objections. The reader, who at first was under a magic
spell, corrects his thought, or at least hesitates. What he has seen
is still at bottom so new, so unexpected, so far removed from familiar
conceptions. For this surging wave of thought our mind contains none of
those ready-cut channels which render comprehension easy. But whether,
in the long run, we each of us give or refuse complete or partial
adhesion, all of us, at least, have received a regenerating shock, an
internal upheaval not readily silenced: the network of our intellectual
habits is broken; henceforth a new leaven works and ferments in us; we
shall no longer think as we used to think; and be we pupils or critics,
we cannot mistake the fact that we have here a principle of integral
renewal for ancient philosophy and its old and timeworn problems.

It is obviously impossible to sketch in brief all the aspects and all
the wealth of so original a work. Still less shall I be able to answer
here the many questions which arise. I must decide to pass rapidly
over the technical detail of clear, closely-argued, and penetrating
discussions; over the scope and exactness of the evidence borrowed from
the most diverse positive sciences; over the marvellous dexterity of the
psychological analysis; over the magic of a style which can call up
what words cannot express. The solidity of the construction will not be
evidenced in these pages, nor its austere and subtle beauty. But what
I do at all costs wish to bring out, in shorter form, in this new
philosophy, is its directing idea and general movement.

In such an undertaking, where the end is to understand rather than to
judge, criti