hose social reforms in which we are immersed, which aim at making
every citizen a full member of his nation. Like all ideals it was far
easier to conceive and to respect than to foresee or to secure the
necessary means to put it into effect. Perhaps the perfect symmetry of
the plan, the over-sanguine hopes of the man who framed it, have even
proved some hindrance to its rapid spread. It has seemed, like Dante's
polity in the _De Monarchia_, to take its place rather among the utopias
than the practical schemes of reform, and when men saw the infinite
complexity of the problems and met the living lions in the path, they
suffered the comparative depression which we have noticed as a feature
of the age.

Here indeed it would appear that we have reached one of the most serious
cross-currents in recent European thought. In science, in philosophy, in
politics, and in social economics, though we see the goal at least in
outline, we are in some danger of being overwhelmed by the difficulties
of the pursuit. Our vision is somewhat clouded and our steps hampered by
the entangling details of the country between. It is substantially the
same problem which faces us both in the philosophical and the practical
sphere, and the analogy between the two is instructive. Spencer's
synthesis, which we instanced as the last encyclopaedic attempt to
present all knowledge--at least all scientific knowledge--in one system,
has been riddled fore and aft by hostile shot, though in the end more
of it may be found to have survived than is seen at present above water.
The philosopher who in our generation has acquired the European vogue
most comparable to that of Spencer is Bergson. Now Bergson has dealt
some of the shrewdest blows at Spencer's system, but he does not set out
to construct a rival system of his own. He is most careful to say that
he is not doing this, that any such work must be done by later workers,
that he is only making suggestions for a new point of view. It is
interesting to note in general terms what that point of view is, as we
shall have occasion later on to revert to it. It rests on a new
interpretation of the nature and growth of conscious life. He is in
short a _semeur d'idees-force_ rather than an encyclopaedist or a
system-maker. The difference is characteristic of the age and might be
traced in the other contemporary schools, the pragmatists, the new
realists, and the rest. The new Descartes is looked for but not
announce