Another feature of modern French thought is the intimacy of the connection between psychology and metaphysics, and the intensive interest in psychology, which is but the imestigation of the inner life of man. While in the early beginnings of ancient Greek philosophy some time was spent in examining the outer world before man gave his attention to the world within, we find Descartes, at the beginning of modern philosophy, making his own consciousness of his own existence his starting-point. Introspection has always played a prominent part in French philosophy. Pascal was equally interested in the outer and the inner world. Through Maine de Biran this feature has come down to the new spiritualists and culminates in Bergson’s thought, in which psychological considerations hold first rank.

The social feature of modern French thought should not be omitted. In Germany subsequent thought has been coloured by the Reformation and the particular aspects of that movement. In France one may well say that subsequent thought has been marked by the Revolution. There is a theological flavour about most German philosophy, while France, a seething centre of political and social thought, has given to her philosophy a more sociological trend.

The French spirit in philosophy stands for clearness, concreteness and vitality. Consequently it presents a far greater brilliance, richness and variety than German philosophy displays.[[1]] This vitality and even exuberance, which are those of the spirit of youth manifesting a joie de vivre or an élan vital, have been very strongly marked since the year 1880, and have placed French philosophy in the van of human thought.

[1] It is, therefore to be lamented that French thought has not received the attention which it deseives. In England far more attention has been given to the nineteenth-century German philosophy, while the history of thought in France, especially in the period between Comte and Bergson, has remained in sad neglect. This can and should be speedily remedied.

It would be vain to ask whither its advance will lead. Even its own principles prevent any such forecast; its creative richness may blossom forth to-morrow in forms entirely new, for such is the characteristic of life itself, especially the life of the spirit, upon which so much stress is laid in modern French philosophy. The New Idealism lays great stress upon dynamism, voluntarism or action. Freedom and creative activity are its keynotes, and life, ever fuller and richer, is its aspiration. La Vie, of which France (and its centre, Paris) is such an expression, finds formulation in the philosophy of contemporary thinkers.[[2]]

[2] The student of comparative thought will find it both interesting and profitable to compare the work done recently in Italy by Croce and Gentile. The intellectual kinship of Croce and Bergson has frequently been pointed out, but Gentile’s work comes very close to the philosophy of action and to the whole positive-idealistic tendency of contemporary French thought. This is particularly to be seen in L’atto del pensare come atto puro (1912), and in Teoria generalo dello spirito come atto puro (1916). Professor Carr, the well-known exponent of Bergson’s philosophy, remarks in his introduction to the English edition of Gentile’s book, “We may individualise the mind as a natural thing-object person. . . . Yet our power to think the mind in this way would be impossible were not the mind with and by which we think it, itself not a thing, not a fact, but act; . . . never factum, but always fieri.” This quotation is from p. xv of the Theory of Mind as Pure Act. With one other quotation direct from Gentile we must close this reference to Italian neo-idealism. “In so far as the subject is constituted a subject by its own act it constitutes the object. . . . Mind is the transcendental activity productive of the objective world of experience” (pp. 18, 43). Compare with this our quotation from Ravaisson, given on p. 75 of this work, and the statement by Lachelier on p. 122, both essential principles of the French New Idealism.

One word of warning must be uttered against those who declare that the tendency of French thought is in the direction of anti-intellectualism. Such a declaration rests on a misunderstanding, which we have endeavoured in our pages to disclose It is based essentially upon a doctrine of Reason which belongs to the eighteenth century. The severe rationalism of that period was mischievous in that it rested upon a one-sided view of human nature, on a narrow interpretation of “Reason” which gave it only a logical and almost mathematical significance. To the Greeks, whom the French represent in the modern world, the term “NOUS” meant more than this—it meant an intelligible harmony. We would do wrong to look upon the most recent developments in France as being anti-rational, they are but a revolt against the narrow view of Reason, and they constitute an attempt to present to the modern world a conception akin to that of the Greeks. Human reason is much more than a purely logical faculty, and it is this endeavour to relate all problems to life itself with its pulsing throb, which represents the real attitude of the French mind. There is a realisation expressed throughout that thought, that life is more than logic. The clearness of geometry showed Descartes that geometry is not all-embracing. Pascal found that to the logic of geometry must be added a spirit of appreciation which is not logical in its nature, but expresses another side of man’s mind. To-day France sees that, although a philosophy must endeavour to satisfy the human intelligence, a merely intellectual satisfaction is not enough. The will and the feelings play their part, and it was the gteat fault of the eighteenth century to misunderstand this The search to-day is for a system of values and of truth in action as well as a doctrine about things in their purely theoretical aspects.

This is a serious demand, and it is one which philosophy must endeavour to appreciate Salvation will not be found in a mere dilettantism which can only express ieal indifference, nor in a dogmatism which results in bigotry and pride. Criticism is required, but not a purely destructive criticism, rather one which will offer some acceptable view of the universe. Such a view must combine true positivism or realism with a true idealism, by uniting fact and spirit, things and ideas. Its achievement can only be possible to minds possessing some creative and constructive power, yet minds who have been schooled in the college of reality. This is the task of philosophy in France and in other lands. That task consists not only in finding values and in defining them but in expressing them actively, and in endeavouring to realise them in the common life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Works of the Period classified under Authors. (The more important monographs are cited.) Names of philosophical journals.