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  and Boutroux in a manner which is quite unique and characteristic. He regards the quantitative method of explanation as merely the technical instrument employed by us for the purpose of understanding what is actually and immediately given in experience, which is always qualitative and continuous. Even language, and the scientific method of explanation still more so, casts our experiences in atomic form, as if they sustained the same objective relations to each other as positions in space. The inner stream of spiritual phenomena are thus transformed into a mechanically arranged mass. This is how it happens that the inner, dynamic, free and continuous activity is denied. The indeterminists are here guilty of the same error as the determinists, because they likewise isolate the individual moments of psychical evolution. The whole problem of freedom has arisen through a misunderstanding. Spontaneous evolution has its origin in the soul as a whole and there is no analysis that can do it justice (Les données immédiates de la conscience, 1888).

Bergson criticizes the fundamental presupposition of science. It is only by a process of analytic and distinguishing definition that we are enabled to discover the elements between which the laws prevail. It is a matter of profound importance that the difference between the given continuity and the scientific distinctions be insisted on. This is the only way that thought can conform to life. Bergson hopes however to realize a higher science, a metaphysics, by means of the fact that he reverts from differentiation to integration, from analysis to intuition—and thus to true empiricism (Introduction a la Metatphysique, Revue de la Metatphysique et Morale, 1903). At this point Bergson reminds us of Bradley. The real problem would be whether "metaphysics," or