The sciences are responsible for working out the laws determining the development of the Universe. But between Science, an ideal unachieved, and the sciences which in themselves are so feeble, imperfect and limited, Renouvier claims that General Criticism, or Philosophy, has its place. “In spite of the discredit into which philosophy has fallen in these days, it can and ought to exist. Its object has been always the investigation of God, man, liberty, immortality, the fundamental laws of the sciences. ‘All these intimately connected and interpenetrating problems comprise the domain of philosophy.” In those cases where no science is possible, this seeming impossibility must itself be investigated, and philosophy remains as a “General Criticism” (_Critique générale_) of our knowledge. “It is this notion,” he says, “which I desired to indicate by banishing the word ‘Philosophy’ from the title of my Essays. The name ought to change when the method changes.”[28] Thus Renouvier seeks to establish a “critique” midway between scepticism and dogmatism, and endeavours to found a philosophy which recognises at one and the same time the demands of _science et conscience_. [28] _Logique_, vol. 2, p. 352. III On turning to the spiritualist current of thought we find it, like the neo-criticism, no less keen in its criticism of science. The inadequacy of the purely scientific attitude is the recurring theme from Ravaisson to Boutroux, Bergson and Le Roy. The attitude assumed by Ravaisson coloured the whole of the subsequent development of the new spiritualist doctrines, and not least their bearing upon the problem of science and its relation to metaphysics. Mechanism, Ravaisson pointed out, quoting the classical author upon whom he had himself written so brilliantly (Aristotle), does not explain itself, for it implies a “prime mover,” not itself in motion, but which produces movement by spiritual activity. Ravaisson also refers to the testimony of Leibnitz, who, while agreeing that all is mechanical, carefully added to this statement one to the effect that mechanism itself has a principle which must be looked for outside matter and which is the object of metaphysical research. This spiritual reality is found only, according to Ravaisson, in the power of goodness and beauty—that is to say, in a reality which is not non-scientific but rather ultra-scientific. There are realities, he claims, to which science does not attain.