by a twin effort of criticism and expansion, it must pass outside
common-sense and synthetic understanding to return to pure intuition.

Philosophy consists in reliving the immediate over again, and in
interpreting our rational science and everyday perception by its light.
That, at least, is the first stage. We shall find afterwards that that
is not all.

Here is a genuinely new conception of philosophy. Here, for the first
time, philosophy is made specifically distinct from science, yet remains
no less positive.

What science really does is to preserve the general attitude of
common-sense, with its apparatus of forms and principles.

It is true that science develops and perfects it, refines and extends
it, and even now and again corrects it. But science does not change
either the direction or the essential steps.

In this philosophy, on the contrary, what is at first suspected and
finally modified, is the setting of the points before the journey
begins.

Not that, in saying so, we mean to condemn science; but we must
recognise its just limits. The methods of science proper are in their
place and appropriate, and lead to a knowledge which is true (though
still symbolical), so long as the object studied is the world of
practical action, or, to put it briefly, the world of inert matter.

But soul, life, and activity escape it, and yet these are the spring and
ultimate basis of everything: and it is the appreciation of this
fact, with what it entails, that is new. And yet, new as Mr Bergson's
conception of philosophy may deservedly appear, it does not any the
less, from another point of view, deserve to be styled classic and
traditional.

What it really defines is not so much a particular philosophy as
philosophy itself, in its original function.

Everywhere in history we find its secret current at its task.

All great philosophers have had glimpses of it, and employed it in
moments of discovery. Only as a general rule they have not clearly
recognised what they were doing, and so have soon turned aside.

But on this point I cannot insist without going into lengthy detail,
and am obliged to refer the reader to the fourth chapter of "Creative
Evolution", where he will find the whole question dealt with.

One remark, however, has still to be made. Philosophy, according to
Mr Bergson's conception, implies and demands time; it does not aim at
completion all at once, for the mental reform in question is of the kind