The first job of the fifteen-year-old young man was to teach literature and natural sciences at his alma mater but in 1908, he left for Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, taking classes in philosophy and metaphysics with Henri Bergson, psychology with Georges Dumas and sociology with Émile Durkheim, thus receiving a thorough education in the liberal arts and obtaining a diploma to teach philosophy.