A Frenchman by birth, his family fled Alsace under German occupation in 1870 and he spent the rest of his life in Switzerland.

He may best be described as continuing the spirit of Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet amid the mental conditions marking the end of the 19th century.

Both made much of moral individuality or personality as the crown and criterion of reality, believing that its correlation with Christianity, both historically and philosophically, was most intimate.

Thus he claimed that a deeper analysis carried one beyond the human subjectivity of even Kant's categorical imperative, since consciousness of obligation was "une experience imposée sous le mode de l'absolu."

From this standpoint he argued against a purely psychological type of religion (agnosticisme religieux; as he termed it)--a tendency to which he saw even in A Sabatier and the symbolofidéisme of the Paris School—as giving up a real and unifying faith.