The Vital Spirit. L'élan Vital

When It Is Said That An Object Occupies A Large Space In The Soul Or Even That It Fills It Entirely, We Ought To Understand By This Simply That Its Image Has Altered The Shade Of A Thousand Perceptions Or Memories, And That In This Sense It Pervades Them, Although It Does Not Itself Come Into View.

Is It Astonishing That, Like Children Trying To Catch Smoke By Closing Their Hands, Philosophers So Often See The Object They Would Grasp Fly Before Them?

Realism Is In The Work When Idealism Is In The Soul, And It Is Only Through Idealism That We Resume Contact With Reality.

Life Does Not Proceed By The Association And Addition Of Elements, But By Dissociation And Division.

The Vital Spirit. L'élan Vital