h we view reality. They leave us on the outside of
things, and confine themselves to investigating from a distance.

The views they give us resemble the brief perspectives of a town which
we obtain in looking at it from different angles on the surrounding
hills.

Less even than that: for very soon, by increasing abstraction,
the coloured views give place to regular lines, and even to simple
conventional notes, which are more practical in use and waste less
time. And so the sciences remain prisoners of the symbol, and all the
inevitable relativity involved in its use. But philosophy claims to
pierce within reality, establish itself in the object, follow its
thousand turns and folds, obtain from it a direct and immediate feeling,
and penetrate right into the concrete depths of its heart; it is not
content with an analysis, but demands an intuition.

Now there is one existence which, at the outset, we know better and more
surely than any other; there is a privileged case in which the effort
of sympathetic revelation is natural and almost easy to us; there is one
reality at least which we grasp from within, which we perceive in its
deep and internal content. This reality is ourselves. It is typical of
all reality, and our study may fitly begin here. Psychology puts us
in direct contact with it, and metaphysics attempt to generalise this
contact. But such a generalisation can only be attempted if, to begin
with, we are familiar with reality at the point where we have immediate
access to it.

The path of thought which the philosopher must take is from the inner to
the outer being.

I.

"Know thyself": the old maxim has remained the motto of philosophy
since Socrates, the motto at least which marks its initial moment, when,
inclining towards the depth of the subject, it commences its true work
of penetration, whilst science continues to extend on the surface. Each
philosophy in turn has commented upon and applied this old motto. But Mr
Bergson, more than anyone else, has given it, as he does everything
else he takes up, a new and profound meaning. What was the current
interpretation before him? Speaking only of the last century, we may
say that, under the influence of Kant, criticism had till now been
principally engaged in unravelling the contribution of the subject
in the act of consciousness, in establishing our perception of things
through certain representative forms borrowed from our own constitution.
Such was,