CONCLUSION

Sec. One who consults a book of philosophy in the hope of finding there a definite body of truth, sanctioned by the consensus of experts, cannot fail to be disappointed. And it should now be plain that this is due not to the frailties of philosophers, but to the meaning of philosophy. Philosophy is not additive, but reconstructive. Natural science may advance step by step without ever losing ground; its empirical discoveries are in their severalty as true as they can ever be. Thus the stars and the species of animals may be recorded successively, and each generation of astronomers and zoologists may take up the work at the point reached by its forerunners. The formulation of results does, it is true, require constant correction and revision but there is a central body of data which is little affected, and which accumulates from age to age. Now the finality of scientific truth is proportional to the modesty of its claims. Items of truth persist, while the interpretation of them is subject to alteration with the general advance of knowledge; and, relatively speaking, science consists in items of truth, and philosophy in their interpretation. The liability to revision in science itself increases as that body of knowledge becomes more highly unified and systematic. Thus the present age, with its attempt to construct a single comprehensive system of mechanical science, is peculiarly an age when fundamental conceptions are subjected to a thorough re-examination when, for example, so ancient a conception as that of matter is threatened with displacement by that of energy. But philosophy is essentially unitary and systematic and thus superlatively liable to revision.

Sec. It is noteworthy that it is only in this age of a highly systematic natural science that different systems are projected, as in the case just noted of the rivalry between the strictly mechanical, or corpuscular, theory and the newer theory of energetics. It has heretofore been taken for granted that although there may be many philosophies, there is but one body of science. And it is still taken for granted that the experimental detail of the individual science is a common fund, to the progressive increase of which the individual scientist contributes the results of his special research; there being rival schools of mechanics, physics, or chemistry, only in so far as fundamental conceptions or principles of orderly arrangement are in question. But philosophy deals exclusively with the most fundamental conceptions and the most general principles of orderly arrangement. Hence it is significant of the very task of philosophy that there should be many tentative systems of philosophy, even that each philosopher should project and construct his own philosophy. Philosophy as the truth of synthesis and reconciliation, of comprehensiveness and coordination, must be a living unity. It is a thinking of entire experience, and can be sufficient only through being all-sufficient. The heart of every philosophy is a harmonizing insight, an intellectual prospect within which all human interests and studies compose themselves. Such knowledge cannot be delegated to isolated co-laborers, but will be altogether missed if not loved and sought in its indivisible unity. There is no modest home-keeping philosophy; no safe and conservative philosophy, that can make sure of a part through renouncing the whole. There is no philosophy without intellectual temerity, as there is no religion without moral temerity. And the one is the supreme interest of thought, as the other is the supreme interest of life.

Sec. Though the many philosophies be inevitable, it must not be concluded that there is therefore no progress in philosophy. The solution from which every great philosophy is precipitated is the mingled wisdom of some latest age, with all of its inheritance. The “positive” knowledge furnished by the sciences, the refinements and distinctions of the philosophers, the ideals of society these and the whole sum of civilization are its ingredients. Where there is no single system of philosophy significant enough to express the age, as did the systems of Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, and the others who belong to the roll of the great philosophers, there exists a general sophistication, which is more elusive but not less significant. The present age at any rate from its own stand-point is not an age of great philosophical systems. Such systems may indeed be living in our midst unrecognized; but historical perspective cannot safely be anticipated. It is certain that no living voice is known to speak for this generation as did Hegel, and even Spencer, for the last. There is, however, a significance in this very passing of Hegel and Spencer, an enlightenment peculiar to an age which knows them, but has philosophically outlived them. There is a moral in the history of thought which just now no philosophy, whether naturalism, or transcendentalism, realism or idealism, can fail to draw. The characterization of this contemporary eclecticism or sophistication, difficult and uncertain as it must needs be, affords the best summary and interpretation with which to conclude this brief survey of the fortunes of philosophy.

Sec. Since the problem of metaphysics is the crucial problem of philosophy, the question of its present status is fundamental in any characterization of the age. It will appear from the foregoing account of the course of metaphysical development that two fundamental tendencies have exhibited themselves from the beginning. The one of these is naturalistic and empirical, representing the claims of what common sense calls “matters of fact”; the other is transcendental and rational, representing the claims of the standards and ideals which are immanent in experience, and directly manifested in the great human interests of thought and action. These tendencies have on the whole been antagonistic; and the clear-cut and momentous systems of philosophy have been fundamentally determined by either the one or the other.

Thus materialism is due to the attempt to reduce all of experience to the elements and principles of connection which are employed by the physical sciences to set in order the actual motions, or changes of place, which the parts of experience undergo. Materialism maintains that the motions of bodies are indifferent to considerations of worth, and denies that they issue from a deeper cause of another order. The very ideas of such non-mechanical elements or principles are here provided with a mechanical origin. Similarly a phenomenalism, like that of Hume, takes immediate presence to sense as the norm of being and knowledge. Individual items, directly verified in the moment of their occurrence, are held to be at once the content of all real truth, and the source of those abstract ideas which the misguided rationalists mistake for real truth.

But the absolutist, on the other hand, contends that the thinker must mean something by the reality which he seeks. If he had it for the looking, thought would not be, as it so evidently is, a purposive endeavor. And that which is meant by reality can be nothing short of the fulfilment or final realization of this endeavor of thought. To find out what thought seeks, to anticipate the consummation of thought and posit it as real, is therefore the first and fundamental procedure of philosophy. The mechanism of nature, and all matters of fact, must come to terms with this absolute reality, or be condemned as mere appearance. Thus Plato distinguishes the world of “generation” in which we participate by perception, from the “true essence” in which we participate by thought; and Schelling speaks of the modern experimental method as the “corruption” of philosophy and physics, in that it fails to construe nature in terms of spirit.

Sec. Now it would never occur to a sophisticated philosopher of the present, to one who has thought out to the end the whole tradition of philosophy, and felt the gravity of the great historical issues, to suffer either of these motives to dominate him to the exclusion of the other. Absolutism has long since ceased to speak slightingly of physical science, and of the world of perception. It is conceded that motions must be known in the mechanical way, and matters of fact in the matter-of-fact way. Furthermore, the prestige which science enjoyed in the nineteenth century, and the prestige which the empirical and secular world of action has enjoyed to a degree that has steadily increased since the Renaissance, have convinced the absolutist of the intrinsic significance of these parts of experience. They are no longer reduced, but are permitted to flourish in their own right. From the very councils of absolute idealism there has issued a distinction which is fast becoming current, between the World of Appreciation, or the realm of moral and logical principles, and the World of Description, or the realm of empirical generalizations and mechanical causes. It is indeed maintained that the former of these is metaphysically superior; but the latter is ranked without the disparagement of its own proper categories.

With the Fichteans this distinction corresponds to the distinction in the system of Fichte between the active moral ego, and the nature which it posits to act upon. But the neo-Fichteans are concerned to show that the nature so posited, or the World of Description, is the realm of mechanical science, and that the entire system of mathematical and physical truth is therefore morally necessary.

Sec. A more pronounced tendency in the same direction marks the work of the neo-Kantians. These philosophers repudiate the spiritualistic metaphysics of Schopenhauer, Fichte, and Hegel, believing the real significance of Kant to lie in his critical method, in his examination of the first principles of the different systems of knowledge, and especially in his analysis of the foundations of mathematics and physics. In approaching mathematics and physics from a general logical stand-point, these neo-Kantians become scarcely distinguishable in interest and temper from those scientists who approach logic from the mathematical and physical stand-point.

Sec. The finite, moral individual, with his peculiar spiritual perspective, has long since been recognized as essential to the meaning of the universe rationally conceived. But in its first movement absolute idealism proposed to absorb him in the indivisible absolute self. It is now pointed out that Fichte, and even Hegel himself, means the absolute to be a plurality or society of persons. It is commonly conceded that the will of the absolute must coincide with the wills of all finite creatures in their severalty, that God wills in and through men. Corresponding to this individualistic tendency on the part of absolute idealism, there has been recently projected a personal idealism, or humanism, which springs freshly and directly from the same motive. This philosophy attributes ultimate importance to the human person with his freedom, his interests, his control over nature, and his hope of the advancement of the spiritual kingdom through cooperation with his fellows.

Sec. Naturalism exhibits a moderation and liberality that is not less striking than that of absolutism. This abatement of its claims began in the last century with agnosticism. It was then conceded that there is an order other than that of natural science; but this order was held to be inaccessible to human knowledge. Such a theory is essentially unstable because it employs principles which define a non-natural order, but refuses to credit them or call them knowledge. The agnostic is in the paradoxical position of one who knows of an unknowable world. Present-day naturalism is more circumspect. It has interested itself in bringing to light that in the very procedure of science which, because it predetermines what nature shall be, cannot be included within nature. To this interest is due the rediscovery of the rational foundations of science. It was already known in the seventeenth century that exact science does not differ radically from mathematics, as mathematics does not differ radically from logic. Mathematics and mechanics are now being submitted to a critical examination which reveals the definitions and implications upon which they rest, and the general relation of these to the fundamental elements and necessities of thought.

Sec. This rationalistic tendency in naturalism is balanced by a tendency which is more empirical, but equally subversive of the old ultra-naturalism. Goethe once wrote:

“I have observed that I hold that thought to be true which is
fruitful for me. . . . When I know my relation to myself and
to the outer world, I say that I possess the truth.”

Similarly, it is now frequently observed that all knowledge is humanly fruitful, and it is proposed that this shall be regarded as the very criterion of truth. According to this principle science as a whole, even knowledge as a whole, is primarily a human utility. The nature which science defines is an artifact or construct. It is designed to express briefly and conveniently what man may practically expect from his environment. This tendency is known as pragmatism. It ranges from systematic doctrines, reminiscent of Fichte, which seek to define practical needs and deduce knowledge from them, to the more irresponsible utterances of those who liken science to “shorthand," and mathematics to a game of chess. In any case pragmatism attributes to nature a certain dependence on will, and therefore implies, even when it does not avow, that will with its peculiar principles or values cannot be reduced to the terms of nature. In short, it would be more true to say that nature expresses will, than that will expresses nature.

Sec. Such, then, is the contemporary eclecticism as respects the central problem of metaphysics. There are naturalistic and individualistic tendencies in absolutism; rationalistic and ethical tendencies in naturalism; and finally the independent and spontaneous movements of personal idealism and pragmatism.

Since the rise of the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, metaphysics and epistemology have maintained relations so intimate that the present state of the former cannot be characterized without some reference to the present state of the latter. Indeed, the very issues upon which metaphysicians divide are most commonly those provoked by the problem of knowledge. The counter-tendencies of naturalism and absolutism are always connected, and often coincide with, the epistemological opposition between empiricism, which proclaims perception, and rationalism, which proclaims reason, to be the proper organ of knowledge. The other great epistemological controversy does not bear so direct and simple a relation to the central metaphysical issues, and must be examined on its own account.

Sec. The point of controversy is the dependence or independence of the object of knowledge on the state of knowledge; idealism maintaining that reality is the knower or his content of mind, realism, that being known is a circumstance which appertains to some reality, without being the indispensable condition of reality as such. Now the sophisticated thought of the present age exhibits a tendency on the part of these opposite doctrines to approach and converge. It has been already remarked that the empirical idealism of the Berkeleyan type could not avoid transcending itself. Hume, who omitted Berkeley’s active spirits, no longer had any subjective seat or locus for the perceptions to which Berkeley had reduced the outer world. And perceptions which are not the states of any subject, retain only their intrinsic character and become a series of elements. When there is nothing beyond, which appears, and nothing within to which it appears, there ceases to be any sense in using such terms as appearance, phenomenon, or impression. The term sensation is at present employed in the same ill-considered manner. But empirical idealism has come gradually to insist upon the importance of the content of perception, rather than the relation of perception to a self as its state. The terms element and experience, which are replacing the subjectivistic terms, are frankly realistic.

Sec. There is a similar realistic trend in the development of absolute idealism. The pure Hegelian philosophy was notably objective. The principles of development in which it centres were conceived by Hegel himself to manifest themselves most clearly in the progressions of nature and history. Many of Hegel’s followers have been led by moral and religious interests to emphasize consciousness, and, upon epistemological grounds, to lay great stress upon the necessity of the union of the parts of experience within an enveloping self. But absolute idealism has much at heart the overcoming of relativism, and the absolute is defined in order to meet the demand for a being that shall not have the cognitive deficiencies of an object of finite thought. So it is quite possible for this philosophy, while maintaining its traditions on the whole, to abandon the term self to the finite subject, and regard its absolute as a system of rational and universal principles self-sufficient because externally independent and internally necessary. Hence the renewed study of categories as logical, mathematical, or mechanical principles, and entirely apart from their being the acts of a thinking self.

Furthermore, it has been recognized that the general demand of idealism is met when reality is regarded as not outside of or other than knowledge, whatever be true of the question of dependence. Thus the conception of experience is equally convenient here, in that it signifies what is immediately present in knowledge, without affirming it to consist in being so presented.

Sec. And at this point idealism is met by a latter-day realism. The traditional modern realism springing from Descartes was dualistic. It was supposed that reality in itself was essentially extra-mental, and thus under the necessity of being either represented or misrepresented in thought. But the one of these alternatives is dogmatic, in that thought can never test the validity of its relation to that which is perpetually outside of it; while the other is agnostic, providing only for the knowledge of a world of appearance, an improper knowledge that is in fact not knowledge at all.

But realism is not necessarily dualistic, since it requires only that being shall not be dependent upon being known. Furthermore, since empiricism is congenial to naturalism, it is an easy step to say that nature is directly known in perception. This first takes the form of positivism, or the theory that only such nature as can be directly known can be really known. But this agnostic provision for an unknown world beyond, inevitably falls away and leaves reality as that which is directly known, but not conditioned by knowledge. Again the term experience is the most useful, and provides a common ground for idealistic realism with realistic idealism. A new epistemological movement makes this conception of experience its starting-point. What is known as the immanence philosophy defines reality as experience, and means by experience the subject matter of all knowledge not defined as such, but regarded as capable of being such. Experience is conceived to be both in and out of selves, cognition being but one of the special systems into which experience may enter.

Sec. Does this eclecticism of the age open any philosophical prospect? Is it more than a general compromise a confession of failure on the part of each and every radical and clear-cut doctrine of metaphysics and epistemology? There is no final answer to such a question short of an independent construction, and such procedure would exceed the scope of the present discussion. But there is an evident interpretation of tradition that suggests a possible basis for such construction.

Sec. Suppose it to be granted that the categories of nature are quite self-sufficient. This would mean that there might conceivably be a strictly physical order, governed only by mechanical principles, and by the more general logical and mathematical principles. The body of physical science so extended as to include such general conceptions as identity, difference, number, quality, space, and time, is the account of such an order. This order need have no value, and need not be known. But reality as a whole is evidently not such a strictly physical order, for the definition of the physical order involves the rejection of many of the most familiar aspects of experience, such as its value and its being known in conscious selves. Materialism, in that it proposes to conceive the whole of reality as physical, must attempt to reduce the residuum to physical terms, and with no hope of success. Goodness and knowledge cannot be explained as mass and force, or shown to be mechanical necessities.

Sec. Are we then to conclude that reality is not physical, and look for other terms to which we may reduce physical terms? There is no lack of such other terms. Indeed, we could as fairly have begun elsewhere. Thus some parts of experience compose the consciousness of the individual, and are said to be known by him. Experience so contained is connected by the special relation of being known together. But this relation is quite indifferent to physical, moral, and logical relations. Thus we may be conscious of things which are physically disconnected, morally repugnant, and logically contradictory, or in all of these respects utterly irrelevant. Subjectivism, in that it proposes to conceive the whole of reality as consciousness, must attempt to reduce physical, moral, and logical relations to that co-presence in consciousness from which they are so sharply distinguished in their very definition. The historical failure of this attempt was inevitable.

Sec. But there is at least one further starting-point, the one adopted by the most subtle and elaborate of all reconstructive philosophies. Logical necessities are as evidently real as bodies or selves. It is possible to define general types of inference, as well as compact and internally necessary systems such as those of mathematics. There is a perfectly distinguishable strain of pure rationality in the universe. Whether or not it be possible to conceive a pure rationality as self-subsistent, inasmuch as there are degrees it is at any rate possible to conceive of a maximum of rationality. But similarly there are degrees of moral goodness. It is possible to define with more or less exactness a morally perfect person, or an ideal moral community. Here again it may be impossible that pure and unalloyed goodness should constitute a universe of itself. But that a maximum of goodness, with all of the accessories which it might involve, should be thus self-subsistent, is quite conceivable. It is thus possible to define an absolute and perfect order, in which logical necessity, the interest of thought, or moral goodness, the interest of will, or both together, should be realized to the maximum. Absolutism conceives reality under the form of this ideal, and attempts to reconstruct experience accordingly. But is the prospect of success any better than in the cases of materialism and subjectivism? It is evident that the ideal of logical necessity is due to the fact that certain parts of knowledge approach it more closely than others. Thus mechanics contains more that is arbitrary than mathematics, and mathematics more than logic. Similarly, the theory of the evolution of the planetary system, in that it requires the assumption of particular distances and particular masses for the parts of the primeval nebula, is more arbitrary than rational dynamics. It is impossible, then, in view of the parts of knowledge which belong to the lower end of the scale of rationality, to regard reality as a whole as the maximum of rationality; for either a purely dynamical, a purely mathematical, or a purely logical, realm would be more rational. The similar disproof of the moral perfection of reality is so unmistakable as to require no elucidation. It is evident that even where natural necessities are not antagonistic to moral proprieties, they are at any rate indifferent to them.

Sec. But thus far no reference has been made to error and to evil. These are the terms which the ideals of rationality and goodness must repudiate if they are to retain their meaning. Nevertheless experience contains them and psychology describes them. We have already followed the efforts which absolute idealism has made to show that logical perfection requires error, and that moral perfection requires evil. Is it conceivable that such efforts should be successful? Suppose a higher logic to make the principle of contradiction the very bond of rationality. What was formerly error is now indispensable to truth. But what of the new error the unbalanced and mistaken thesis, the unresolved antithesis, the scattered and disconnected terms of thought? These fall outside the new truth as surely as the old error fell outside the old truth. And the case of moral goodness is precisely parallel. The higher goodness may be so defined as to require failure and sin. Thus it may be maintained that there can be no true success without struggle, and no true spiritual exaltation except through repentance. But what of failure unredeemed, sin unrepented, evil uncompensated and unresolved? Nothing has been gained after all but a new definition of goodness and a new definition of evil. And this is an ethical, not a metaphysical question. The problem of evil, like the problem of error, is as far from solution as ever. Indeed, the very urgency of these problems is due to metaphysical absolutism. For this philosophy defines the universe as a perfect unity. Measured by the standard of such an ideal universe, the parts of finite experience take on a fragmentary and baffling character which they would not otherwise possess. The absolute perfection must by definition both determine and exclude the imperfect. Thus absolutism bankrupts the universe by holding it accountable for what it can never pay.

Sec. If the attempt to construct experience in the special terms of some part of experience be abandoned, how is reality to be defined? It is evident that in that case there can be no definition of reality as such. It must be regarded as a collection of all elements, relations, principles, systems, that compose it. All truths will be true of it, and it will be the subject of all truths. Reality is at least physical, psychical, moral, and rational. That which is physical is not necessarily moral or psychical, but may be either or both of these. Thus it is a commonplace of experience that what has bulk and weight may or may not be good, and may or may not be known. Similarly, that which is psychical may or may not be physical, moral, or rational; and that which is moral or rational may or may not be physical and psychical. There is, then, an indeterminism in the universe, a mere coincidence of principles, in that it contains physical, psychical, moral, logical orders, without being in all respects either a physical, a psychical, a moral, or a logical necessity. Reality or experience itself is neutral in the sense of being exclusively predetermined by no one of the several systems it contains. But the different systems of experience retain their specific and proper natures, without the compromise which is involved in all attempts to extend some one until it shall embrace them all. If such a universe seems inconceivably desultory and chaotic, one may always remind one’s self by directly consulting experience that it is not only found immediately and unreflectively, but returned to and lived in after every theoretical excursion.

Sec. But what implications for life would be contained in such a philosophy? Even if it be theoretically clarifying, through being hospitable to all differences and adequate to the multifarious demands of experience, is it not on that very account morally dreary and stultifying? Is not its refusal to establish the universe upon moral foundations destructive both of the validity of goodness, and of the incentive to its attainment? Certainly not if the validity of goodness be determined by criteria of worth, and if the incentive to goodness be the possibility of making that which merely exists, or is necessary, also good.

This philosophy does not, it is true, define the good, but it makes ethics autonomous, thus distinguishing the good which it defines, and saving it from compromise with matter-of-fact, and logical or mechanical necessity. The criticism of life is founded upon an independent basis, and affords justification, of a selective and exclusive moral idealism. Just because it is not required that the good shall be held accountable for whatever is real, the ideal can be kept pure and intrinsically worthy. The analogy of logic is most illuminating. If it be insisted that whatever exists is logically necessary, logical necessity must be made to embrace that from which it is distinguished by definition, such as contradiction, mere empirical existence, and error. The consequence is a logical chaos which has in truth forfeited the name of logic. Similarly a goodness defined to make possible the deduction from it of moral evil or moral indifference loses the very distinguishing properties of goodness. The consequence is an ethical neutrality which invalidates the moral will. A metaphysical neutrality, on the other hand, although denying that reality as such is predestined to morality and thus affording no possibility of an ethical absolutism becomes the true ground for an ethical purism.

Sec. But, secondly, there can be no lack of incentive to goodness in a universe which, though not all-good, is in no respect incapable of becoming good. That which is mechanically or logically necessary, and that which is psychically present, may be good. And what can the realization of goodness mean if not that what is natural and necessary, actual and real, shall be also good. The world is not good, will not be good, merely through being what it is, but is or shall be made good through the accession of goodness. It is this belief that the real is not necessarily, but may be, good; that the ideal is not necessarily, but may be, realized; which has inspired every faith in action. Philosophically it is only a question of permitting such faith to be sincere, or condemning it as shallow. If the world be made good through good-will, then the faith of moral action is rational; but if the world be good because whatever is must be good, then moral action is a tread-mill, and its attendant and animating faith only self-deception. Moral endeavor is the elevation of physical and psychical existence to the level of goodness.

“Relate the inheritance to life, convert the tradition into a servant of character, draw upon the history for support in the struggles of the spirit, declare a war of extermination against the total evil of the world; and then raise new armies and organize into fighting force every belief available in the faith that has descended to you."

Evil is here a practical, not a theoretical, problem. It is not to be solved by thinking it good, for to think it good is to deaden the very nerve of action; but by destroying it and replacing it with good.

Sec. The justification of faith is in the promise of reality. For what, after all, would be the meaning of a faith which declares that all things, good, bad, and indifferent, are everlastingly and necessarily what they are even if it were concluded on philosophical grounds to call that ultimate necessity good. Faith has interests; faith is faith in goodness or beauty. Then what more just and potent cause of despair than the thought that the ideal must be held accountable for error, ugliness, and evil, or for the indifferent necessities of nature? Are ideals to be prized the less, or believed in the less, when there is no ground for their impeachment? How much more hopeful for what is worth the hoping, that nature should discern ideals and take some steps toward realizing them, than that ideals should have created nature such as it is! How much better a report can we give of nature for its ideals, than of the ideals for their handiwork, if it be nature! Emerson writes:

“Suffice it for the joy of the universe that we have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems not present so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor. Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of faculty; information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap; that we are very great. So, in particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in an action. It is for us to believe in the rule, not in the exception. The noble are thus known from the ignoble. So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance and is the principal fact in the history of the globe."

Sec. If God be rid of the imputation of moral evil and indifference, he may be intrinsically worshipful, because regarded under the form of the highest ideals. And if the great cause of goodness be in fact at stake, God may both command the adoration of men through his purity, and reenforce their virtuous living through representing to them that realization of goodness in the universe at large which both contains and exceeds their individual endeavor.

Sec. Bishop Berkeley wrote in his “Commonplace Book”:

“My speculations have the same effect as visiting foreign
countries: in the end I return where I was before, but my
heart at ease, and enjoying life with new satisfaction.”

If it be essential to the meaning of philosophy that it should issue from life, it is equally essential that it should return to life. But this connection of philosophy with life does not mean its reduction to the terms of life as conceived in the market-place. Philosophy cannot emanate from life, and quicken life, without elevating and ennobling it, and will therefore always be incommensurable with life narrowly conceived. Hence the philosopher must always be as little understood by men of the street as was Thales by the Thracian handmaiden. He has an innocence and a wisdom peculiar to his perspective.

“When he is reviled, he has nothing personal to say in answer to the civilities of his adversaries, for he knows no scandals of anyone, and they do not interest him; and therefore he is laughed at for his sheepishness; and when others are being praised and glorified, he cannot help laughing very sincerely in the simplicity of his heart; and this again makes him look like a fool. When he hears a tyrant or king eulogized, he fancies that he is listening to the praises of some keeper of cattle a swineherd, or shepherd, or cowherd, who is being praised for the quantity of milk which he squeezes from them; and he remarks that the creature whom they tend, and out of whom they squeeze the wealth, is of a less tractable and more insidious nature. Then, again, he observes that the great man is of necessity as ill-mannered and uneducated as any shepherd, for he has no leisure, and he is surrounded by a wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of family, and say that some one is a gentleman because he has had seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray the dulness and narrowness of vision of those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellènes and barbarians, many times over."

It is not to be expected that the opinion of the “narrow, keen, little, legal mind” should appreciate the philosophy which has acquired the “music of speech,” and hymns “the true life which is lived by immortals or men blessed of heaven.” Complacency cannot understand reverence, nor secularism, religion.

Sec. If we may believe the report of a contemporary philosopher, the present age is made insensible to the meaning of life through preoccupation with its very achievements:

“The world of finite interests and objects has rounded itself, as it were, into a separate whole, within which the mind of man can fortify itself, and live securus adversus deos, in independence of the infinite. In the sphere of thought, there has been forming itself an ever-increasing body of science, which, tracing out the relation of finite things to finite things, never finds it necessary to seek for a beginning or an end to its infinite series of phenomena, and which meets the claims of theology with the saying of the astronomer, ‘I do not need that hypothesis.’ In the sphere of action, again, the complexity of modern life presents a thousand isolated interests, crossing each other in ways too subtle to trace out interests commercial, social, and political in pursuing one or other of which the individual may find ample occupation for his existence, without ever feeling the need of any return upon himself, or seeing any reason to ask himself whether this endless striving has any meaning or object beyond itself."

Sec. There is no dignity in living except it be in the solemn presence of the universe; and only contemplation can summon such a presence. Moreover, the sessions must be not infrequent, for memory is short and visions fade. Truth does not require, however, to be followed out of the world. There is a speculative detachment from life which is less courageous, even if more noble, than worldliness. Such is Dante’s exalted but mediaeval intellectualism.

“And it may be said that (as true friendship between men consists in each wholly loving the other) the true philosopher loves every part of wisdom, and wisdom every part of the philosopher, inasmuch as she draws all to herself, and allows no one of his thoughts to wander to other things.”

Even though, as Aristotle thought, pure contemplation be alone proper to the gods in their perfection and blessedness, for the sublunary world this is less worthy than that balance and unity of faculty which distinguished the humanity of the Greek.

“Then,” writes Thucydides, “we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avoid poverty with us is no disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs not as a harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges, of a policy. The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance, but hesitate upon reflection."

Thus life may be broadened and deepened without being made thin and ineffectual. As the civil community is related to the individual’s private interests, so the community of the universe is related to the civil community. There is a citizenship in this larger community which requires a wider and more generous interest, rooted in a deeper and more quiet reflection. The world, however, is not to be left behind, but served with a new sense of proportion, with the peculiar fortitude and reverence which are the proper fruits of philosophy.

“This is that which will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and straitly conjoined and united together than they have been; a conjunction like unto that of the two highest planets: Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action."