The current of the new idealism or spiritualism reaches a culminating point in the work of Blondel (born about 1870), whose remarkable and noteworthy book _L’Action_ appeared in l893.[54] The fundamental thesis of the Philosophy of Action[55] is that man’s life is primarily one of action, consequently philosophy must concern itself with the active life and not merely with thought. By its nature, action is something unique and irreducible to other elements or factors. It is not the result of any synthesis: it is itself a living synthesis, and cannot be dealt with as the scientist deals with his data. Blondel lays emphasis, as did Bergson, upon “the living” being unique and inexpressible in formulae. Intellect cannot grasp action; “one penetrates the living reality only by placing oneself at the dynamic point of view of the will.”[56] His words recall Bergson’s attitude to the free act. “The principle of action eludes positive knowledge at the moment at which it makes it possible, and, in a word that needs to be better defined, it is subjectivity.”[57] [54] The same year in which the philosophic interest in France, growing since 1870, and keener in the eighties, led to the foundation of the famous _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_ by Xavier Léon. In 1876 (the same year in which Professor Croom Robertson in England established the periodical _Mind_) Ribot had founded the _Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger_. These journals, along with the teaching in the Lycées, have contributed to make the French people the best educated, philosophically, of any people. [55] It is interesting to note that this designation has been used by its author to replace his original term “_pragmatisme_,” which he employed in 1888 and abandoned upon becoming acquainted with the theory of Peirce and James, and with their use of the term in another manner, with which he did not agree. See _Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie_, 1902. [56] _L’ Action_, p. 100. [57] _Ibid_., p. 87. Blondel, however, leads us beyond this subjectivity, for it is not the will which causes what is. Far from that, he maintains that in so far as it wills it implies something which it does not and cannot create of itself; it wills to be what it is not yet. We do not act for the mere sake of acting, but for some end, something beyond the particular act. Action is not self-contained or self- sufficing: it is a striving to further attainment or achievement. It therefore pre-supposes some reality beyond itself. Here appear the elements of “passion” and “suffering” due to resistance, for all action involves some opposition. In particular moral action implies this resistance and a consciousness of power to overcome the resistance, and it therefore involves a reality which transcends the sphere in which we act.