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PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



SI. 

 Actualisin 

 in French 

 thought : 

 Fouillee. 



independent attribute of reality to which all growth, 

 progress, life, thought, and action are ultimately due, 

 has become a leading idea both in German and in French 

 philosophy, and has latterly found original expression 

 likewise in English philosophical literature. This 

 prominent line of reasoning in recent European thought 

 has coined for itself a whole array of new terms, such 

 as " Voluntarism " (Paulsen), " Actualism " with its 

 principle of the IcUes- forces (Fouillee), "Creative 

 Synthesis " with its principle of the growth of mental 

 energy (Wundt), " Creative Evolution " with the 

 principle of Man vital (Henri Bergson), " Pragmatism " 

 (William James), and " Activism " (Eudolf Eucken). 



As I stated just now, this philosophy of the Will must 

 always remind us of Schopenhauer. Its germs may, 

 however, be traced to the independent speculations of 

 Fichte in Germany and of Maine de Biran in France, 

 from which thinkers it has directly descended respec- 

 tively to Eudolf Eucken and to Alfred Fouillee and 

 Secr^tan, as later representatives of German and French 

 thought. 



It is notably to M. Fouillee that we are indebted for 

 a comprehensive exposition of this actualism, and for an 

 attempt not only to show its application to the great 

 problems of psychology, metaphysics, ethics, and sociology, 

 but also to effect through it a reconciliation of the two 

 main currents in modern French thought, the Idealist 

 (intellectualistic) on the one side and the Positivist 

 (scientific) on the other. He has thus laboured in the 

 direction of a unification of thought. M. Fouillee 

 combines in his philosophical reasoning all the best 



