unearthing and sifting, in our perception of nature, under the veinstone of
practical symbolism, the true intuitional content.

This attempt at return to the standpoint of pure contemplation and
disinterested experience is a task very different from the task of science.
It is one thing to regard more and more or less and less closely with the
eyes made for us by utilitarian evolution: it is another to labour at
remaking for ourselves eyes capable of seeing, in order to see, and not in
order to live.

Philosophy understood in this manner--and we shall see more and more
clearly as we go on that there is no other legitimate method of
understanding it--demands from us an almost violent act of reform and
conversion.

The mind must turn round upon itself, invert the habitual direction of its
thought, climb the hill down which its instinct towards action has carried
it, and go to seek experience at its source, "above the critical bend where
it inclines towards our practical use and becomes, properly speaking, human
experience." ("Matter and Memory", page 203.) In short, 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