ve science; and that is why philosophy takes the
results of science as its basis, for each of these results, like
the facts and data of common perception, opens a way for critical
penetration towards the immediate. Just now I was comparing the two
kinds of knowledge which the theorist and the engineer can have of a
machine, and I allowed the advantage of absolute knowledge to
practical experience, whilst theory seemed to me mainly relative to the
constructive industry. That is true, and I do not go back upon it. But
the most experienced engineer, who did not know the mechanism of his
machine, who possessed only unanalysed feelings about it, would have
only an artist's, not a philosopher's knowledge. For absolute intuition,
in the full sense of the word, we must have integral experience; that is
to say, a living application of rational theory no less than of working
technique.

To journey towards living intuition, starting from complete science and
complete sensation, is the philosopher's task; and this task is governed
by standards unknown to art.

Metaphysical intuition offers a victorious resistance to the test of
thorough and continued experiment, to the test of calculation as to that
of working, to the complete experiment which brings into play all the
various deoxidising agents of criticism; it shows itself capable of
withstanding analysis without dissolving or succumbing; it abounds in
concepts which satisfy the understanding, and exalt it; in a word, it
creates light and truth on all mental planes; and these characteristics
are sufficient to distinguish it in a profound degree from aesthetic
intuition.

The latter is only the prophetic type of the former, a dream or
presentiment, a veiled and still uncertain dawn, a twilight myth
preceding and proclaiming, in the half-darkness, the full day of
positive revelation...

Every philosophy has two faces, and must be studied in two
movements--method and teaching.

These are its two moments, its two aspects, no doubt co-ordinate and
mutually dependent, but none the less distinct.

We have just examined the method of the new philosophy inaugurated by
Mr Bergson. To what teaching has this method led us, and to what can we
foresee that it will lead us?

This is what we have still to find.

II. Teaching.

The sciences properly so called, those that are by agreement termed
positive, present themselves as so many external and circumferential
points from whic