object, and our study is subsequently limited to applying a kind of
nomenclature to the preconstructed frames.

Once again the philosopher has to proceed in exactly the opposite
direction. He has not to confine himself to ready-made business concepts,
of the ordinary kind, suits cut to an average model, which fit nobody
because they almost fit everybody; but he has to work to measure,
incessantly renew his plant, continually recreate his mind, and meet each
new problem with a fresh adaptive effort. He must not go from concepts to
things, as if each of them were only the cutting-point of several
concurrent generalities, an ideal centre of intersecting abstractions; on
the contrary, he must go from things to concepts, incessantly creating new
thoughts, and incessantly recasting the old.

There could be no solution of the problem in a more or less ingenious
mosaic or tessellation of rigid concepts, pre-existing to be employed. We
need plastic fluid, supple and living concepts, capable of being
continually modelled on reality, of delicately following its infinite
curves. The philosopher's task is then to create concepts much more than
to combine them. And each of the concepts he creates must remain open and
adjustable, ready for the necessary renewal and adaptation, like a method
or a programme: it must be the arrow pointing to a path which descends
from intuition to language, not a boundary marking a terminus. In this way
only does philosophy remain what it ought to be: the examination into the
consciousness of the human mind, the effort towards enlargement and depth
which it attempts unremittingly, in order to advance beyond its present
intellectual condition.

Do you want an example? I will take that of human personality. The ego is
one; the ego is many: no one contests this double formula. But everything