The attitude of the ordinary proceedings of common thought can be stated in a few words. Place the object studied before yourself as an exterior "thing." Then place yourself outside it, in perspective, at points of vantage on a circumference, whence you can only see the object of your investigation at a distance, with such interval as would be sufficient for the contemplation of a picture; in short, move round the object instead of entering boldly into it. But these proceedings lead to what I shall term analysis by concepts; that is to say, the attempt to resolve all reality into general ideas. What are concepts and abstract ideas really, but distant and simplified views, species of model drawings, giving only a few summary features of their object, which vary according to direction and angle? By means of them we claim to determine the object from outside, as if, in order to know it, it were sufficient to enclose it in a system of logical sides and angles. And perhaps in this way we do really grasp it, perhaps we do establish its precise description, but we do not penetrate it. Concepts translate relations resulting from comparisons by which each object is finally expressed as a function of what it is not. They dismember it, divide it up piece by piece, and mount it in various frames. They lay hold of it only by ends and corners, by resemblances and differences. Is not that obviously what is done by the converting theories which explain the soul by the body, life by matter, quality by movements, space itself by pure number? Is not that what is done generally by all criticisms, all doctrines which connect one idea to another, or to a group of other ideas? In this way we reach only the surface of things, the reciprocal contacts, mutual intersections, and parts common, but not the organic unity nor the inner essence. In vain we multiply our points of view, our perspectives and plane projections: no accumulation of this kind will reconstruct the concrete solid. We can pass from an object directly perceived to the pictures which represent it, the prints which represent the pictures, the scheme representing the prints, because each stage contains less than the one before, and is obtained from it by simple diminution. But, inversely, you may take all the schemes, prints, pictures you like--supposing that it is not absurd to conceive as given what is by nature interminable and inexhaustible, lending itself to indefinite enumeration and endless development and multiplicity--but you will never recompose the profound and original unity of the source. How, by forcing yourself to seek the object outside itself, where it certainly is not, except in echo and reflection, would you ever find its intimate and specific reality? You are but condemning yourself to symbolism, for one "thing" can only be in another symbolically.