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