This is one of the first controlling ideas of the contemporary generation. Others result from it. More particularly, it is for the same body of motives, in the same sense, and with the same restrictions, that we distrust intellectualism; I mean the tendency to live uniquely by intelligence, to think as if the whole of thought consisted in analytic, clear and reasoning understanding. Once again, it is not a question of some blind abandonment to sentiment, imagination, or will, nor do we claim to restrict the legitimate rights of intellectuality in judgment. But around critical reason there is a quickening atmosphere in which dwell the powers of intuition, there is a half-light of gradual tones in which insertion into reality is effected. If by rationalism we mean the attitude which consists in cabining ourselves within the zone of geometrical light in which language evolves, we must admit that rationalism supposes something other than itself, that it hangs suspended by a generating act which escapes it. The method therefore which we seek to employ everywhere today is experience; but complete experience, anxious to neglect no aspect of being nor any resource of mind; shaded experience, not extending on the surface only, in a homogeneous and uniform manner; on the contrary, an experience distributed in depth over multiple planes, adopting a thousand different forms to adapt itself to the different kinds of problems; in short, a creative and informing experience, a veritable genesis, a genuine action of thought, a work and movement of life by which the guiding principles, forms of intelligibility, and criteria of verification obtain birth and stability in habits. And here again it is by borrowing Mr Bergson's own formula from him that we shall most accurately describe the new spirit. That the attitude and fundamental procedure of this new spirit are in no way a return to scepticism or a reaction against thought cannot be better demonstrated than by this resurrection of metaphysics, this renaissance of idealism, which is certainly one of the most distinctive features of our epoch. Undoubtedly philosophy in France has never known so prosperous and so pregnant a moment. Notwithstanding, it is not a return to the old dreams of dialectic construction. Everything is regarded from the point of view of life, and there is a tendency more and more to recognise the primacy of spiritual activity. But we wish to understand and employ this activity and this life in all its wealth, in all its degrees, and by all its functions: we wish to think with the whole of thought, and go to the truth with the whole of our soul; and the reason of which we recognise the sovereign weight is reason laden with its complete past history.