latent, admit of "perception."

Thus, in the case before us, absolute knowledge is found to be the
result of integral experience; and though we cannot attain the term, we
see at any rate in what direction we should have to work to reach it.

Now it must be stated that our realisable knowledge is at every moment
partial and limited rather than exterior and relative, for our effective
perception is related to matter in itself as the part to the whole. Our
least perceptions are actually based on pure perception, and "we are
aware of the elementary disturbances which constitute matter, in the
perceptible quality in which they suffer contraction, as we are aware of
the beating of our heart in the general feeling that we have of living."
("The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods", 7th
July 1910.)

But the preoccupation of practical action, coming between reality and
ourselves, produces the fragmentary world of common-sense, much as an
absorbing medium resolves into separate rays the continuous spectrum
of a luminous body; whilst the rhythm of duration, and the degree of
tension peculiar to our consciousness, limit us to the apprehension of
certain qualities only.

What then have we to do to progress towards absolute knowledge? Not to
quit experience: quite the contrary; but to extend it and diversify it
by science, while, at the same time, by criticism, we correct in it the
disturbing effects of action, and finally quicken all the results thus
obtained by an effort of sympathy which will make us familiar with the
object until we feel its profound throbbing and its inner wealth.

In connection with this last vital point, which is decisive, call to
mind a celebrated page of Sainte-Beuve where he defines his method:
"Enter into your author, make yourself at home in him, produce him under
his different aspects, make him live, move, and speak as he must have
done; follow him to his fireside and in his domestic habits, as closely
as you can...

"Study him, turn him round and round, ask him questions at your leisure;
place him before you...Every feature will appear in its turn, and take
the place of the man himself in this expression...

"An individual reality will gradually blend with and become incarnate in
the vague, abstract, and general type...There is our man..." Yes, that
is exactly what we want: it could not be better put. Transpose this page
from the literary to the metaphysical order, and you