Ravaisson, [Footnote:  Ravaisson (1813-1900) wrote De l’habitude, 1832; La metaphysique d’Aristote, 1837; and his Rapport sur la philosophie en France au xix siecle, 1867.  See Bergson’s Memoir, 1904.] to whom Bergson is indebted for much inspiration, attended the lectures of Schelling at Munich in 1835.  This French thinker, Ravaisson, has had an important influence on the general development of thought in France during the latter half of the last century, and much of his work foreshadows Bergson’s thought.  He upheld a spiritual activity, manifesting itself most clearly in love and art, while he allowed to matter, to mathematics and logic only an imperfect reality.  He extolled synthetic views of reality rather than analytic ones.  We are prevented, he said, from realizing our true selves because of our slavery to habit.  To the ultimate reality, or God, we can attain because of our kinship with that reality, and by an effort of loving sympathy enter into union with it by an intuition which lies beyond and above the power of intellectual searching.  As Maine de Biran foretold the coming of a metaphysical Columbus, so Ravaisson, in his famous Rapport sur la philosophic en France au xix siecle, published in 1867, prophesied as follows:  “Many signs permit us to foresee in the near future a philosophical epoch of which the general character will be the predominance of what may be called spiritualistic realism or positivism, having as generating principle the consciousness which the mind has of itself of an existence recognized as being the source and support of every other existence, being none other than its action.”

Lachelier, a disciple of Ravaisson, brought out—­as has been already remarked [Footnote:  Page 3.]—­the significance of the operations of vital forces and of liberty.  Guyau, whose brief life ended in 1888 and whose posthumous work La Genese de I’Idee de Temps was reviewed by Bergson two years after the publication of his own Time and Free Will, laid great stress on the intensification and expansion of life.  Boutroux, in his work, has insisted upon the fact of contingency.

These forecasts of Bergson’s thought made by men to whom he owes much and for whom he personally has the greatest admiration are interesting, but we are not yet able to look upon his work through the medium of historical perspective.  We can however see it as the culmination of various tendencies in modern French philosophy; first, the effort to bring philosophy into the open air of human nature, into immediate contact with life and with problems vital to humanity; secondly, the upholding of contingency in all things, thus ensuring human freedom; thirdly, a disparagement of purely intellectual constructions as true interpretations of human life and all existence, coupled with an insistence on an insight that transcends logical formulation.