Cournot foreshadows many of the doctrines of the new spiritualists as well as those of the neo-critical school. Much in his work heralds a Bergson as well as a Renouvier. This is noticeable in his attitude to science and to the problem of contingency or freedom. It is further seen in his doctrine that the _vivant_ is incapable of demonstration, in his view of the soul or higher instinct which he distinguished from the intelligence, in the biological interest displayed in his work (due partly to the work of Bichat[17]), and in his idea of a _Travail de Création_. Unlike Bergson, however, he admits a teleology, for he believed this inseparable from living beings, but he regards it as a hazardous finality, not rigid or inconsistent with freedom. [17] Bichat (1771-1802) was a noted physiologist and anatomist. In 1800 appeared his _Recherches physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort_, followed in 1801 by _Anatomie générale, appliquée à la Physiologie et à la Médecine_. The immediate influence of Cournot was felt by only a small circle, and his most notable affinity was with Renouvier, although Cournot was less strictly an intellectualist. Like Renouvier he looked upon philosophy as a “_Critique générale_.” He was also concerned with the problem of the categories and with the compatibility of science and freedom, a problem which was now assuming a very central position in the thought of the period. Renouvier, in the construction of his philosophy, was partly influenced by the work of Cournot. In this lone, stern, indefatigable worker we have one of the most powerful minds of the century. Charles Renouvier shares with Auguste Comte the first honours of the century in France so far as philosophical work is concerned. Curiously enough he came from Comte’s birth-place, Montpellier. When Renouvier was born in 1815, seventeen years later than Comte, the great positivist was in his second year of study at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. To this great scientific and mathematical institution came Renouvier, to find Comte as _Répétiteur_ of Higher Mathematics. He was not only a keen student of the mathematical sciences but also an ardent follower of Saint-Simon, and although in later life he lost many of the hopes of his youth the Saint-Simon spirit remained with him, and he retained a keen interest in social ethics and particularly in the ideas of Fourier, Proudhon and Blanc. At the Ecole he met as fellow-pupils Jules Lequier and Felix Ravaisson.