ects at the bottom of the theories which we are
going to discuss some dark background, some prepossession of irrational
mysticism. On the contrary, the truth is, we have here perhaps better
than anywhere, the spectacle of pure thought face to face with things.
But it is a complete thought, not thought reduced to some partial
functions, but sufficiently sure of its critical power to sacrifice none
of its resources. Here, we may say, really is the genuine positivism,
which reinstates all spiritual reality. It does not in any way lead to a
misunderstanding or depreciation of science. Even where contingency and
relativity are most visible in it, in the domain of inert matter, Mr
Bergson goes so far as to say that physical science touches an absolute.
It is true that it touches this absolute rather than sees it.
More particularly it perceives all its reactions on a system of
representative forms which it presents to it, and observes the effect
on the veil of theory with which it envelops it. At certain moments,
all the same, the veil becomes almost transparent. And in any case the
scholar's thought guesses and grazes reality in the curve drawn by the
succession of its increasing syntheses. But there are two orders of
science. Formerly it was from the mathematician that we borrowed the
ideal of evidence. Hence came the inclination always to seek the most
certain knowledge from the most abstract side. The temptation was to
make a kind of less severe and rigorous mathematics of biology itself.
Now if such a method suits the study of inert matter because in a manner
geometrical, so much so that our knowledge of it thus acquired is more
incomplete than inexact, this is not at all the case for the things of
life. Here, if we were to conduct scientific research always in the
same grooves and according to the same formulae, we should immediately
encounter symbolism and relativity. For life is progress, whilst the
geometrical method is commensurable only with things. Mr Bergson
is aware of this; and his rare merit has been to disengage specific
originality from biology, while elevating it to a typical and standard
science.

But let us come to the heart of the problem. What was Kant's point of
departure in the theory of knowledge? In seeking to define the structure
of the mind according to the traces of itself which it must have left in
its works, and in proceeding by a reflective analysis ascending from
a fact to its conditions, he c