hing can be more important than to study this
starting-point, this elementary act of direction and movement, if
we wish afterwards to arrive at the precise shade of meaning of the
subsequent teaching. Here is really the fountain-head of thought; it
is here that the form of the future system is determined, and here that
contact with reality takes effect.

The last point, particularly, is vital. To return to the direct view of
things beyond all figurative symbols, to descend into the inmost depths
of being, to watch the throbbing life in its pure state, and listen to
the secret rhythm of its inmost breath, to measure it, at least so far
as measurement is possible, has always been the philosopher's ambition;
and the new philosophy has not departed from this ideal. But in what
light does it regard its task? That is the first point to clear up. For
the problem is complex, and the goal distant.

"We are made as much, and more, for action than for thought," says Mr
Bergson; "or rather, when we follow our natural impulse, it is to act
that we think." ("L'Evolution Creatrice", page 321.) And again, "What
we ordinarily call a fact is not reality such as it would appear to an
immediate intuition, but an adaptation of reality to practical interests
and the demands of social life." ("Matiere et Memoire", page 201.) Hence
the question which takes precedence of all others is: to distinguish in
our common representation of the world, the fact in its true sense
from the combinations which we have introduced in view of action and
language.

Now, to rediscover nature in her fresh springs of reality, it is not
sufficient to abandon the images and conceptions invented by human
initiative; still less is it sufficient to fling ourselves into the
torrent of brute sensations. By so doing we are in danger of dissolving
our thought in dream or quenching it in night.

Above all, we are in danger of committal to a path which it is
impossible to follow. The philosopher is not free to begin the work of
knowledge again upon other planes, with a mind which would be adequate
to the new and virgin issue of a simple writ of oblivion.

At the time when critical reflection begins, we have already been long
engaged in action and science, by the training of individual life, as
by hereditary and racial experience, our faculties of perception and
conception, our senses and our understanding, have contracted habits,
which are by this time unconscious and in