The old traditions and the old dogmas did not offer the salvation they professed to do. Consequently various groups of thinkers worked out solutions satisfactory to themselves and which they offered to others. We can distinguish clearly four main currents, the method of introspection and investigation of the inner life of the soul, the adoption of a spiritualist philosophy upon an eclectic basis, the search for a new society after the manner of the socialists and, lastly, a positive philosophy and religion of humanity. These four currents form the historical antecedents of our period and to a brief survey of them we now turn. * * * * * * * * * I To find the origin of many of the tendencies which appear prominently in the thought of the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly those displayed by the new spiritualistic philosophy (which marked the last thirty years of the century), we must go back to the period of the Revolution, to Maine de Biran (1766-1824)—a unique and original thinker who laid the foundations of modern French psychology and who was, we may note in passing, a contemporary of Chateaubriand. A certain tone of romanticism marks the work of both the literary man and the philosopher. Maine de Biran was not a thinker who reflected upon his own experiences in retreat from the world. Born a Count, a Lifeguardsman to Louis XVI. at the Revolution, and faithful to the old aristocracy, he was appointed, at the Restoration, to an important administrative position, and later became a deputy and a member of the State Council. His writings were much greater in extent than is generally thought, but only one important work appeared in publication during his lifetime. This was his treatise, or _mémoire_, entitled _Habitude_, which appeared in 1803. This work well illustrates Maine de Biran’s historical position in the development of French philosophy. It came at a tome when attention and interest, so far as philosophical problems were concerned, centred round two “foci.” These respective centres are indicated by Destutt de Tracy,[2] the disciple of Condillac on the one hand, and by Cabanis[3] on the other. Both were “ideologues” and were ridiculed by Napoleon who endeavoured to lay much blame upon the philosophers. We must notice, however, this difference. While the school of Condillac,[4] influenced by Locke, endeavoured to work out a psychology in terms of abstractions, Cabanis, anxious to be more concrete, attempted to interpret the life of the mind by reference to physical and physiological phenomena. [2] Destutt de Tracy, 1754-1836. His _Elements of Ideology_ appeared in 1801. He succeeded Cabanis in the Académie in 1808, and in a complimentary _Discours_ pronounced upon his predecessor claimed that Cabanis had introduced medicine into philosophy and philosophy into medicine. This remark might well have been applied later to Claude Bernard.