This intellectual attitude, as Bergson calls it, though practically useful, has, according to him, two grave drawbacks from the point of view of speculation. By focussing our attention upon anything less than the whole fact, and so isolating a part from the rest, he says we distort what we knew originally: furthermore just in so far as we make a selection among the facts, attending to some and passing over others, we limit the field of direct knowledge which we might otherwise have enjoyed. For these two reasons Bergson insists that it is the business of philosophy to reverse the intellectual habit of mind and return to the fullest possible direct knowledge of the fact. “May not the task of philosophy, “he says,” be to bring us back to a fuller perception of reality by a certain displacement of our attention? What would be required would be to turn our attention _away_ from the practically interesting aspect of the universe in order to turn it _back_ to what, from a practical point of view, is useless. And this conversion of attention would be philosophy itself.”[2] [2] _La Perception du Changement_, page 13. 24 At first sight it appears paradoxical and absurd to maintain that our efforts to analyse, classify and explain the facts tend rather to limit than to extend our knowledge, and furthermore distort even such facts as we still remain acquainted with. Common sense has no doubt that, far from limiting and distorting our knowledge, explanation is the only possible way in which we can get beyond the little scraps of fact which are all that we can ever know directly.