Further we must, he claims, endeavour to see things _sub specie durationis in a durée_, in an eternal becoming. We cannot expect to grasp all the varied reality of life in a formula or indeed in any purely intellectual manner. This is the chief defect of science and of the so-called scientific point of view. It tries to fix in concepts, moulds and solid forms a reality which is living and moving eternally. For Bergson all is Change, and this eternal becoming we can only grasp by intuition. Intuition and intellect do not, however, oppose one another. We are thus led to realise that Life is more than logic. The Bergsonian philosophy concludes with intuitionism and contingency, which drew upon it the severe criticisms of Fouillée,[52] who termed it a philosophy of scepticism and nihilism. Of all the spiritualist group Fouillée stands nearest the positive attitude to science, and his strong intellectualism comes out in his criticism of Bergson, who well represents, together with Blondel, the tendency towards non-intellectual attitudes inherent in the spiritualist development. Blondel has endeavoured to treat the great problems, a task which Bergson has not attempted as yet, partly because he (Bergson) shares Renan’s belief that “the day of philosophic systems has gone,” partly because he desires to lay the basis of a philosophy of the spirit to which others after him may contribute, and so he devotes his attention to method and to those crucial points, such as the problem of freedom upon which a larger doctrine must necessarily rest.[53]
[52] Particularly in his work _Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction contre la Science positive_ (cf. .206), 1896, and later in _La Pensée et les nouvelles Ecoles anti-intellectualistes_, 1910.
[53] For a fuller appreciation of the Bergsonian doctrines than is possible in such a survey as this, the reader is referred to the author’s monograph, _Bergson and His Philosophy_, Methuen and Co., 1920.
The current of the new idealism or spiritualism reaches a culminating point in the work of Blondel (born about 1870), whose remarkable and noteworthy book _L’Action_ appeared in l893.[54] The fundamental thesis of the Philosophy of Action[55] is that man’s life is primarily one of action, consequently philosophy must concern itself with the active life and not merely with thought. By its nature, action is something unique and irreducible to other elements or factors. It is not the result of any synthesis: it is itself a living synthesis, and cannot be dealt with as the scientist deals with his data. Blondel lays emphasis, as did Bergson, upon “the living” being unique and inexpressible in formulae. Intellect cannot grasp action; “one penetrates the living reality only by placing oneself at the dynamic point of view of the will.”[56] His words recall Bergson’s attitude to the free act. “The principle of action eludes positive knowledge at the moment at which it makes it possible, and, in a word that needs to be better defined, it is subjectivity.”[57]