And here we can remove a great stumbling-block to the recognition of the _identity of philosophy with history_. I have attempted to renovate, modify, and establish this doctrine with many analyses and with many arguments in another volume of my works.[1] It is, however, frequently very difficult, being rather an object of irresistible argument than of complete persuasion and adhesion. Seeking for the various causes of this difficulty, I have come upon one which seems to me to be the principal and fundamental. This is precisely the conception of history not as living contemporary history, but as history that is dead and belongs to the past, as _chronicle_ (or philological history, which, as we know, can be reduced to chronicle). It is undeniable that when history is taken as chronicle its identity with philosophy cannot be made clear to the mind, because it does not exist. But when chronicle has been reduced to its proper practical and mnemonical function, and history has been raised to the knowledge of the _eternal present_, it reveals itself as all one with philosophy, which for its part is never anything but the thought of the eternal present. This, be it well understood, provided always that the dualism of ideas and facts has been superseded, of _vérités de raison_ and _vérités de fait_, the concept of philosophy as contemplation of vérités de raison, and that of history as the amassing of brute facts, of coarse _vérités de fait_. We have recently found this tenacious dualism in the act of renewing itself, disguised beneath the axiom that _le propre de l'histoire est de savoir, le propre de la philosophie est de comprendre_. This amounts to the absurd distinction of knowing without understanding and of understanding without knowing, which would thus be the doubly dis-heartening theoretical fate of man. But such a dualism and the conception of the world which accompanies it, far from being true philosophy, are the perpetual source whence springs that imperfect attempt at philosophizing which is called _religion_ when one is within its magic circle, _mythology_ when one has left it. Will it be useful to attack transcendency, and to claim the character of immanence for reality and for philosophy? It will certainly be of use; but I do not feel the necessity of doing so, at any rate here and now.