nt to characterise and circumscribe it. Such was
always the traditional conception: such will ours continue to be. For,
as a matter of fact, every object has a philosophy and all matter can
be regarded philosophically. In short, philosophy is chiefly a way of
perceiving and thinking, an attitude and a proceeding: the peculiar and
specific in it is more an intuition than a content, a spirit rather than
a domain.

What, then, is the characteristic function of philosophy, at least its
initial function, that which marks its opening?

To criticise the works of knowledge spontaneously effected; that is to
say, to scrutinise their direction, reach, and conditions: that is today
the unanimous answer of philosophers when questioned about the goal of
their labours. In other terms, what they study is not so much such
and such a particular "thing" as the relation of mind to each of the
realities to be studied. Their object, if we must employ the word, is
knowledge itself, it is the act of knowing regarded from the point of
view of its meaning and value. Philosophy thus appears as a new "order"
of knowledge, co-extensive with what is knowable, as a kind of knowledge
of the second degree, in which it is less a question of learning than
of understanding, in which we aim at progressing in depth rather than in
extent; not effort to extend the quantity of knowledge, but reflection
on the quality of this knowledge. Spontaneous thought--vulgar or
scientific--is a direct, simple, and practical thought turned towards
things and partial to useful results; seeking what is formulable rather
than what is true, or at least so fond of formulae which can be handled,
manipulated, or transmitted, that it is always tempted to see the truth
in them; a thought which, moreover, sets out from more or less unguarded
postulates, abandons itself to the motive impulses of habits contracted,
and goes straight on indefinitely without self-examination. Philosophy,
on the contrary, desires to be thought about thought, thought retracing
its life and work, knowledge labouring to know itself, fact which
aspires to fact about itself, mental effort to become free, to become
entirely transparent and luminous in its own eyes, and, if need be, to
effect self-reform by dissipating its natural illusions. What we have
before our eyes then are the initial postulates themselves, the
first spontaneous thoughts, the obscure origins of reason; and we are
proceeding towards a po