Renouvier’s career is a striking one and we have sketched it somewhat fully here because of its showing more distinctly than that of Taine or Renan the reflections of contemporary history upon the thinking minds who lived through the years 1848-51 and 1870-71. Renouvier was a young spirit in the year of the revolution, 1848, and lived right on through the _coup d’état_, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, the Third Republic, and he foresaw and perhaps influenced the Republic’s attitude to the Roman Church. His career is the most significant and enlightening one to follow of all the thinkers who come within our period. Let us note that he never held any academic or public teaching appointment. His life was in the main a secluded one and, like Comte, he found the University a limited preserve closed against him and his philosophy, dominated by the declining eclecticism which drew its inspiration from Cousin. Only gradually did his influence make itself felt to such a degree that the University was compelled to take notice of it. Now his work is more appreciated, but not as much as it might be, and outside his own country he is little known. The student finds his writings somewhat difficult owing to the author’s heavy style. He has none of the literary ease and brilliance of a Renan. But his work was great and noble, animated by a passion for truth and a hatred of philosophical “shams” and a current of deep moral earnestness colours all his work. He had considerable power as a critic, for the training of the Ecole Polytechnique produced a strictly logical temper in his work, which is that of a true philosopher, not that of a merely brilliant _litterateur_ or _dilettante_, and he must be regarded as one of the intellectual giants of the century.