Pelo temor que o riso inspira, reprime as excentricidades, mantém constantemente despertas e em contato mútuo certas atividades de ordem acessória qu… - Henri Bergson

De um mal entendido sobre isso é que nasceu a celeuma entre o realismo e o idealismo na arte. Sem dúvida, a arte nada mais é que uma visão mais direta da realidade. Mas essa pureza de percepção implica uma ruptura com a convenção utilitária, um desprendimento inato e especificamente localizado do sentido ou da consciência, enfim, certa imaterialidade de vida, que vem a ser o que sempre se chamou de idealismo. Por conseguinte, pode-se afirmar, sem jogar de modo algum com o sentido das palavras, que o realismo está na obra quando o idealismo está na alma, e que só à força de idealidade se toma contato com a realidade.

So science and art introduce us into the intimacy of a matter which the one thinks and the other manipulates. From this standpoint the intellect would, in principle, finally reach an absolute. It would then be completely itself. Vague at the outset because it was only a presentiment of matter, it takes shape more clearly the more precisely it knows matter. But precise or vague, it is the attention that mind gives to matter. How then could mind still be intellect when it turns upon itself? We can give things whatever names we choose and I see no great objection, I repeat, to knowledge of the mind by the mind still being called intelligence, if one insists. But then it will be necessary to specify that there are two intellectual functions, the one the inverse of the other, for mind thinks mind only in climbing back up the slope of habits acquired in contact with matter, and these habits are what one currently calls intellectual tendencies. Is it not better to designate by another name a function which certainly is not what one ordinarily calls intelligence? I call it intuition. It represents the attention that the mind gives to itself, over and above, while it is fixed upon matter, its object. This supplementary attention can be methodically cultivated and developed.

Well, what nature does from time to time, by distraction, for certain privileged individuals, could not philosophy on such a matter attempt, in another sense and another way, for everyone? Would not the role of philosophy under such circumstances be to lead us to a completer perception of reality by means of a certain displacement of our attention? It would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part of the universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turning it back toward what serves no practical purpose. This conversion of the attention would be philosophy itself. At first glance it would seem that this has long since been done. More than one philosopher has in fact said that in order to philosophize he had to be detached, and that speculation was the reverse of action. We were speaking a few moments ago of the Greek philosophers: not one of them expressed the idea more forcefully than Plotinus. “All action,” he said (and he even added “all fabrication”) “weakens contemplation.