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...