Now again these words about our being unable to understand ourselves “by ourselves alone” contain an element of truth which we may associate with the pragmatist tendency to believe in a socialized (as distinguished from an individualistic) interpretation[55] of our common moral life, to believe, that is to say, in a society of persons as the truth (or the reality) of the universe, rather than in an interpretation of the universe as the thinking experience of a single absolute intelligence. This, however, is also a point which we are obliged to defer[56] until we take up the general subject of the relations between Pragmatism and Rationalism. The other words of the paragraph, in respect of our absolute need of faith in some positive religion, are, of course, expressive again of the uncritical fideism to which reference has already been made. As an offset or alternative to the “free” religion of Papini and James and to the experimental or practical religion of different Protestant bodies, it is enough of itself to give us pause in estimating the real drift[57] of Pragmatism in regard to religious faith and the philosophy of religion.[58] We shall meantime take leave of French Pragmatism[59] with the reflection that it is thus obviously as complex and as confusing and confused a thing as is the Pragmatism of other countries. It is now almost a generation since we began to hear of a renascence of spiritualism[60] and idealism in France in connexion not merely with the work of philosophers like Renouvier and Lachelier and Fouillée[61] and Boutroux, but with men of letters like De Vogué, Lavisse, Faguet, Desjardins[62] and the rest, and some of the French Pragmatism of to-day is but one of the more specialized phases of the broader movement. And as for the special question of the influence of James and his philosophy upon Bergson, and of that of the possible return influence of Bergson upon James,[63] the evidence produced by Lalande from Bergson himself is certainly all to the effect that both men have worked very largely independently of each other, although perfectly cognisant now and then of each other’s publications. Both men, along with their followers (and this is all that needs interest us), have obviously been under the influence of ideas that have long been in the air about the need of a philosophy that is “more truly empirical”[64] than the traditional philosophy, and more truly inclined to “discover what is involved in our actions in the ultimate recess, when, unconsciously and in spite of ourselves, we _support existence and cling to it whether we completely understand it or not_.”[65]