It was to combat the excessive positive reaction against metaphysics that Renouvier devoted his energies, but while professing to modernise Kant and to follow out the general principles of his Critical Philosophy, Renouvier was further removed from the German thinker than he at times seems to have observed. Renouvier must undoubtedly share with Comte the honours of the century in French Philosophy. Many influences, however, prevented the general or speedy acceptance of Renouvier’s doctrines. The University was closed against him, as against Comte. He worked in isolation and his style of presentation, which is heavy and laborious, does not appeal to the _esprit_ of the French mind. Probably, too, his countrymen’s ignorance of Kant at the time Renouvier wrote his _Essais de Critique générale_ prevented an understanding and appreciation of the neo-critical advance on Criticism. Renouvier commands respect, but he does not appear to be in the line of development which manifests so essentially the character of French thought. This is to be found rather in that spiritualism, which, unlike the old, does not exclude science, but welcomes it, finds a place for it, although not by any means an exclusive place. The new spiritualists did not draw their inspiration, as did Cousin, from any German source, their initial impulse is derived from a purely French thinker, Maine de Biran, who, long neglected, came to recognition in the work of Ravaisson and those subsequent thinkers of this group, right up to Bergson. This current of thought is marked by a vitality and a concreteness which are a striking contrast to the older eclectic spiritualism. Having submitted itself to the discipline of the sciences, it is acquainted with their methods and data in a manner which enables it to oppose the dogmatism of science, and to acclaim the reality of values other than those which are purely scientific. Ignoring _a priori_ construction, or eclectic applications of doctrines, it investigates the outer world of nature and the inner life of the spirit. We have said that these ideas are presented, not merely from a national standpoint, but from one which is deeply human and universal. “_La Science_,” re-marked Pasteur, “_n’a pas de patrie_.” We may add that philosophy, too, owns no special fatherland. There is not in philosophy, any more than in religion, “a chosen people,” even although the Jews of old thought themselves such, and among moderns the Germans have had this conceit about their _Kultur_. In so far as philosophy aims at the elucidation of a true view of the universe, it thereby tends inevitably to universality. But just as a conception of internationalism, which should fail to take into account the factors of nationality, would be futile and disastrous, so a conception of the evolution of thought must likewise estimate the characteristics which nationality produces even in the philosophical field.