Owing to this inequality between the power and the wish, we are obliged to complete our actions or our activity in general by a belief in a Reality beyond. It is, however, “a beyond that is within,” a Divine power immanent in man. This view, Blondel claims, unites the idea of God “transcendent” with the idea of God as “immanent.” Man’s action partakes of both, for in so far as it results from his own will it is immanent; transcendence is, however, implied in the fact that the end of man’s action as a whole is not “given.” Blondel leads us to a conception of a religious idealism in which every act of our ordinary existence leads ultimately to a religious faith. Every action is sacramental. Blondel and his follower Laberthonnière, who has taken up this idea from his master in his volume of Essais de Philosophie réligieuse (1901), go beyond a purely pragmatist or voluntarist position by finding the supreme value of all action, and of the universe, not in will but in love. For Blondel this word is no mere sentiment or transient feeling, but a concrete reality which is the perfection of will and of intellect alike, of action and of knowledge. The “Philosophy of Action,” asserts Blondel, includes the “Philosophy of the Idea.” In the fact of love, he claims, is found the perfect unity between the self and the non-self, the ground of personality and its relation to the totality of persons, producing a unity in which each is seen as an end to others as well as to himself. “Love,” says Laberthonnière, “is the first and last word of all. It is the principle, the means and the end. It is in loving that one gets away from self and raises oneself above one’s temporal individuality. It is in loving that one finds God and other beings, and that one finds oneself.” It is, in short, these idealists claim, the Summum Bonum; in it is found the Absolute which philosophers and religious mystics of all ages have ever sought.

The “philosophy of action” is intimately bound up with the “philosophy of belief,” formulated by Ollé-Laprune, and the movement in religious thought known generally as Modernism, which is itself due to the influence of modern philosophic thought upon the dogmas of the Christian religion, as these are stated by the Roman Church. Both the Philosophy of Belief and Modernism are characterised by an intense spirituality and a moral earnestness which maintain the primacy of the practical reason over the theoretical reason. Life, insists Ollé-Laprune in his book Le Prix de la Vie (l885),[[58]] is not contemplation but active creation. He urges us to a creative evolution of the good, to an employment of idées-forces. “There are things to be made whose measure is not determined; there are things to be discovered, to be invented, new forms of the good, ideas which have never yet been received—creations, as it were, of the spirit that loves the good.” This dynamism and power of will is essential. We must not lose ourselves in abstractions; action is the supreme thing: it alone constitutes reality.

[58] This has been followed in the new century by La Raison et le Rationalisme, 1906. As early as 1880, however, he issued his work La Certitude morale, which influenced Blondel, his pupil.

A similar note is sounded by the Modernists or Neo-Catholics, particularly by the brilliant disciple and successor of Bergson, Le Roy, who in Dogme et Critique (1907) has based the reality of religious dogma upon its practical significance. We find Péguy (who fell on the field of battle in 1914) applying Bergsonian ideas to a fervid religious faith. Wilbois unites these ideas to social ethics in his Devoir et Durée (1912). In quite different quarters the new spiritualism and philosophy of action have appeared as inspiring the Syndicalism of Sorel, who endeavours to apply the doctrines of Bergson, Ollé-Laprune and Blondel to the solution of social questions in his Réflexions sur la Violence (1907) and Illusions du Progrès (1911).

It would be erroneous to regard Bergson’s intuitional philosophy as typical of all contemporary French thought. Following Renouvier, Fouillée and Boutroux, there prevail currents of a more intellectualist or rationalist type, to which we are, perhaps, too close to see in true and historical perspective. The élan vital of French thought continues to manifest itself in a manner which combines the work of Boutroux and Bergson with Blondel’s idealism. A keen interest is being taken in the works of Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, and this is obviously influencing the trend of French philosophy at the moment, without giving rise to a mere eclecticism. French thought is too original and too energetic for that. In addition to these classical studies we should note the great and growing influence of the work of Durkheim and of Hamelin, both of whom we have already mentioned. The former gave an immense impetus to sociological studies by his earlier work. Further interest arose with his Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse in 1912. Hamelin indicated a turning-point from neo-criticisme through the new spiritualist doctrines to Hegelian methods and ideas. Brunschwicg, who produced a careful study of Spinoza, wrote as early as 1897 on La Modalité du Jugement, a truly Kantian topic. This thinker’s later works, Les Etapes de la Philosophie mathematique (1912) and the little volume La Vie de l’esprit, illustrate a tendency to carry out the line taken by Boutroux—namely, to arrive at the statement of a valid idealism disciplined by positivism. The papers of Berthelot in his Evolutionnisme et Platonisme are a further contribution to this great end. In the work of Evellin, La Raison pure et les Antinomies (1907), the interest in Kant and Hegel is again seen. Noël, who contributed an excellent monograph on Lachelier to the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (that journal which is an excellent witness in itself to the vitality of contemporary French philosophy), produced a careful study of Hegel’s Logik in 1897. Since that date interest has grown along the lines of Boutroux, Bergson and Blondel in an attempt to reach a positive idealism, which would combine the strictly positivist attitude so dear to French minds with the tendency to spiritualism or idealism which they also manifest. This attempt, which in some respects amounts to an effort to restate the principles of Hegel in modern or contemporary terms, was undertaken by Weber in 1903 in his book entitled Vers le Positivisme absolu par l’Idéalisme. Philosophy in France realises to-day that the true course of spiritual development will be at once positive and idealistic.

CHAPTER III
SCIENCE

INTRODUCTION: The scientific outlook—Progress of the sciences—The positivist spirit, its action on science, philosophy and literature—The problem as presented to philosophy.

I. Comte’s positivism—Work of prominent scientists—Position maintained by Berthelot and Bernard—Renan’s confidence—Vacherot and Taine—Insufficiency of sciences alone.

II. Cournot and Renouvier attack the dogmatism of science.

III. The neo-spiritualist group continue and develop this attack, which becomes a marked feature in Lachelier, Boutroux, and Bergson.