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 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 of discovery. Only as a general rule they have not clearly recognised what they were doing, and so have soon turned aside. But on this point I cannot insist without going into lengthy detail, and am obliged to refer the reader to the fourth chapter of "Creative Evolution", where he will find the whole question dealt with.