A Defence of Philosophy [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674430358, 9780674334380

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A DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

A DEFENCE OF

PHILOSOPHY

CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS J931

COPYRIGHT,

1931

B Y THE PRESIDENT AND FELLQWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

A DEFENCE

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H E R E are many drawbacks to being a professor of philosophy, and one of the worst is that you cannot gossip lightly about your occupation. Picture to yourself that great American forum and social centre, the smoking compartment of a Pullman car. There has been an exchange of confidences about the boot and shoe industry in St. Louis, or the boot-legging industry in Detroit, when your neighbor turns to you and asks, amidst a hush of expectancy, what you sell. To be as candid and optimistic as your neighbors, you would be compelled to say: "My firm manufactures and distributes ultimate 3

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truth; our business is to discover the nature of the universe, and apply it to the meaning of life." Some sound instinct prevents you from saying it. You know that you would create a situation which neither you nor your neighbors would be able to support, much as though you were to say "I am God." So you hastily mumble something about being a teacher, hoping that they won't insist on knowing the subject you teach,—and then pass rapidly on to safer topics, such as the hard winter we've been having, or how late the train is. The youthful brothers William and Henry James suffered from a like embarrassment when asked by their schoolmates what their father was. Nor did his suggestion afford them much relief: "Say I'm a philosopher, say I'm a seeker for truth, say I'm a lover of my kind, say I'm an author of 4

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books if you like; or, best of all, just say I'm a Student," 1 It would be fair enough to evade the question, for, after all, that is what nearly everybody does. Socrates, who in defending himself before his judges, uttered the greatest of all apologies for philosophy, said in effect that he hadn't been able to find anybody who really knew what he was about. H e invented and went around asking the devastating question, " W h a t are you really aiming at, and w h y ? " and found nobody who could answer it. H e based his own claim to distinction on the fact that he was the only person who thought of asking it. One reason why most occupations get off more easily than philosophy, is because they are more familiar. If you ask a man what his occupation is, and he answers "business," you are satisfied, 1 H . James, Notes p. 69.

of a Son and Brother,

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1904,

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simply because you have seen business men before. If you pressed him further, and asked him what business was, he might wonder where you came from, but he probably couldn't answer you. Ask a lawyer what law is, ask any living creature what life is, and you will find the result equally unsatisfactory. There is a sort of gentlemen's agreement not to ask such questions. And they are not felt to be necessary where the occupation is common and recognizable. In certain parts of the West a man who said he was a Mormon preacher would be viewed with much less suspicion than a man who announced that he was a philosopher; not because people would know the meaning of Mormonism any better than the meaning of philosophy, but because Mormons would have a recognizable identity that would quite satisfy their curiosity. It is like the man who being asked whether he believed in baptism, replied, "Believe in baptism! Why, 6

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I've seen it done." People do not as a rule insist upon knowing the meaning of things, further than to assign them a place in their world of familiar objects. The trouble with philosophy is not that people fail to understand what it means, but that they have never seen it done. If philosophers wore long hair and flowing robes, and were frequently seen about the landscape gazing at the skies in rapt contemplation, they would soon become as much a part of the accepted scheme of things as priests in Spain or as lawyers and business men in America. Perhaps there is a feeling that the philosopher ought, like the priest, to be plainly marked, so that those among whom he mingles might be put on their guard. This is on the assumption that the philosopher is a man of edification and omniscience. People do not like to entertain sages unawares. It outrages their sense of propriety to have said ordinary things in an extraordinary pres7

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ence; or they are mortified to have exhibited levity, obscenity, or ignorance in the company of gravity, austerity, and knowledge. H a d they been warned they might at least have put on their company manners. Perhaps it is a mistake to suppose that any group of Americans in a smoking compartment would believe that a philosopher or anybody else really was edifying and omniscient. They would be more likely to think of a philosopher as one who felt himself to be edifying, and thought himself to be omniscient. But this would not ease the situation. Courtesy requires that even the odor of sanctity shall be respected. And what can you decently say to a man if you think that he thinks that he knows everything? So the first step towards entering into comfortable relations with the philosopher is to relieve him of his reputation for edification and omniscience. You see 8

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I do not propose to evade the question as to what philosophy means. Were I anything but a philosopher, I might properly do so; but the philosopher is, above all persons, interested in what things mean, and he cannot consistently avoid applying the question to himself. We begin, then, by humanizing the philosopher. And the first step is to distinguish between the man and his subject. To be a philosopher in the occupational and professional sense, means to investigate, and perhaps to teach, a certain branch of knowledge. The philosopher is a philosopher in the sense in which a chemist is a chemist, and not in the sense in which a Baptist is a Baptist. There need not be anything peculiarly philosophical about the philosopher any more than there is anything peculiarly chemical about the chemist. His philosophy is not a state of his will or conviction, but like the chemist's 9

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chemistry, it is the subject-matter which he seeks to know. It is true that, among other things, he seeks to know something about life; but that he should exemplify his knowledge is not his vocation, any more than it is the vocation of the physician to be healthy. H e may, if his interest leads him into the field of ethics, know something about the difference between good and evil, or right and wrong. But here even the analogy with the physician has to be abandoned, for it is not the vocation of the philosopher to make people good, or persuade them to do the right. His calling is like that of the pure scientist. It is his business, if possible, to know some aspect of the truth, and to record that knowledge for others to apply, if and as they will. In saying that the philosopher seeks to know some aspect of the truth, I have raised the question of the philosopher's 10

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omniscience. There was a time when philosophy embraced all systematic knowledge, and great philosophers of the past, such as Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Hegel, and even Spencer, if they did not know all there was to know, at any rate made a fairly good job of knowing all that was known in their own times. Nowadays, when it takes several million volumes to embrace the sum of human knowledge, and when each branch and sub-branch has a technique and language of its own, nobody but a paranoiac would undertake to know it all. No sane philosopher, then, claims to be omniscient. But if the philosopher is not omniscient, then what is he 4 Once in effective occupation of the whole empire of knowledge, the province of philosophy has been subdivided among its scientific progeny until there is no parental domain left. Philosophy thus becomes an empty 11

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title to the whole, a sort of Holy Roman Empire. Or, to change the figure, the philosopher becomes a sort of intellectual hobo wandering homeless through ancestral estates, where he is tolerated as a concession to the past, but where he must be content to sleep in the barns, and eat scraps at the back-doors, of the scientific landed gentry. Such is the argument which would challenge the right of philosophy to exist at all. The territory of knowledge has been occupied by the special sciences, by mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and finally, by psychology and the social sciences—until there is nothing left. The whole exceeds the grasp of the human mind, and since there is no part left, it follows that philosophy must consent to disappear. Therein lies the sting of a definition of specialization and generalization which I have recently heard. Specialization, it is said, is knowing a great deal about a 12

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very little; and you may know more and more about less and less, until you know everything about nothing, and then you are a philosopher. Generalization, on the other hand, is knowing a little about a great deal; and you may know less and less about more and more, until you know nothing about everything,—then you are a sociologist. The point of this jibe is not to distinguish between philosophy and sociology. Say it the other way round and the point remains the same. It represents the scornful pride of the expert, who has succeeded because he has asked limited questions about limited groups of facts. He does not undertake to know everything about anything, or anything about everything, and he imputes one or both of these impossibilities to whatever branch of inquiry he may at the moment choose as the butt of his wit. Leaving sociology to look out for itself 13

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as best it can, I shall undertake to meet this challenge, in behalf of philosophy, —not by denial, but by pleading guilty. Philosophy undertakes both of these impossibilities. It finds, in fact, that they come to much the same thing. There is a poetic conception of the world according to which one who knows all there is to be known about "the flower in the crannied wall" will, before he gets through, know "what God and man is." The poet, no doubt, thinks that there is a meaning of the whole which is revealed in each of its parts, as the essence of a man's personality may be recognizable in the least of his acts or gestures. But there is a more prosaic and less debatable view of the matter which tends likewise to remove the difference between specialization and generalization, or between the intensive and extensive extremes of knowledge. If you analyze the flower in the crannied wall, you discover such 14

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elements as 'life', 'beauty', 'matter', 'being', 'space', or 'time', and whatever you find out about these you have found out about all of nature. If you seek the properties of the flower, you find them for the most part to consist in its functions, that is, in what the flower will do to this or that other object, or in its mode of behaviour under such and such conditions. And if you look for its roots you find them in its environment and antecedents. In other words, the more deeply you burrow here or there at a given point, the more inevitably are you carried abroad into the domain of all reality. Philosophy differs from other inquiries, then, in that it continues to press inquiry, whether intensively or extensively, so long as room f o r inquiry still remains. It sets no limits to the questions it asks, save to insist that they shall really be questions. It refuses to be confined in its inquiries by any consideration of tech15

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nique,—of economy, practicality, or good taste. It refuses to be satisfied with any limited group of facts, and seeks to push to the boundaries of the universe, undismayed by reports of those who have lost their way and perished in its outer reaches. In this mad undertaking the philosopher is impelled primarily by curiosity, of a peculiarly dogged and exaggerated sort; and sustained by the conviction that where there's a top there's a bottom, and where there's a part there's a whole. Forced to justify himself he will say "Every outstanding region of the universe may, when brought into view, radically alter the aspect of those facts which we think we know. So long as knowledge is limited in its depth or in its extent, it can only be provisional, subject to one-knows-not-what degree of radical alteration." When it is objected that if he carries his inquiry too far he 16

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will have to leave the method of science behind him, he replies that he will then use what method he can, trusting to live on the country if he cannot carry his supplies with him. It is true that one cannot investigate the basis of mathematics by mathematics, but there remains the possibility of logic; it is true that one cannot perceive what lies beyond the range of the senses, but there remains the speculative imagination. In any case, philosophy is that branch of knowledge which seeks to be both profound and comprehensive, even at the risk of abstractness and inexactness. It sets itself a certain sort of question and proposes to answer that sort of question, even though the answer is not all that might be desired in the way of an answer. Philosophy, then, is that branch of knowledge which attempts to get to the bottom of things, and to embrace the whole of things. There is in some sense a 17

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bottom and a whole; they present genuine problems, and it is both inevitable and useful that some minds should be attracted by these problems, despite the more or less insuperable difficulty of satisfactorily solving them. This attempt to obtain a knowledge of things in their ultimate aspect may seem to contradict the philosopher's disclaimer of omniscience. But to know things in their general contours, or in their structural unity, does not imply the knowledge of things in all their fulness of detail. The task of philosophy would be clearly impossible if this were the case. In order to know things philosophically it is necessary to abridge them, and there are two well-known ways in which this is done. The one is the method of conceptual abstraction, and the other is the method of intuitive insight. Thus, for example, it is clearly impossible for a 18

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man to know the entire country in detail as he knows that corner of it with which he is most familiar. He cannot begin with the particular features of his own home, the individual tree that stands by his doorstep, the individual hill that rises to the East, each in all its seasonal phases of color and temperature and sound, and then, adding item to item, eventually embrace each and every feature that falls within the country. He can achieve thoroughness and comprehensiveness of knowledge only by omission. He may learn the area of the country in number of square miles, its population, topographical measurements, industrial and social statistics, and thus come to grasp it all by "conceptual abstraction." Or, he may by the breadth and intimacy of his acquaintance and by the liveliness of his imagination, come to see and feel its individuality, as one . "little world," one "blessed plot," one "earth," one 19

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"realm," like Shakespeare's England. This is what I have called "intuitive insight." It is just as a face may be known, not by a microscopic observation of its pores and hair-bulbs, but either conceptually by an anthropometric formula, or intuitively by the swift recognition of a friend. So it is with the philosopher and his universe. Its wealth of detail is inexhaustible. It is not possible for a single mind even to grasp the sum of those abridgments which the scientists and the poets have already made. But as the philosopher carries further the process of analysis and generalization, so he may also carry further the process of abridgment, and reduce in scale as he enlarges in scope. H e may discover concepts more abstract than those of science; or, if he has some touch of metaphysical genius, he may sense and communicate the dim contours of a cosmic landscape. If he suc20

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ceeds in doing so he will have omitted more than the poets have omitted, but at the same time he will have revealed the physiognomy of the universe,—seeing more than the poets have seen, unless like Dante or Goethe, they happen also to have been philosophers. W e have proceeded far enough with our definition of philosophy to be clear on one point. Philosophy is a deliberate affront upon common sense. W e live in an age of popularization, in which ideas are adulterated in order to be spread upon a newspaper, and read in the brief intervals between the pleasure of business and the business of pleasure. There is very little of what deserves the name of philosophy that will survive this process. I have recently seen a page of the Los Angeles Examiner on which the so-called "story of philosophy" was presented in the same columns with L I T A ' S L A W Y E R W I N S 21

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P O I N T IN C O U R T B A T T L E , A L L

POLES

A S K E D TO S T A Y S O B E R FOR O N E W E E K ,

and S T A B S W I F E A N D S E L F . The story of philosophy which was suited to such company consisted of a pictorial representation of Spinoza making love to his teacher's daughter, and defending himself against a ruffian who is attacking him with a dagger. If you insist upon making philosophy interesting to the plain man in his plainest moments, that is about the best you can do with it. The abstractions of philosophy exceed all others in abstractness. Philosophers are commonly accused of inventing them from mere wantonness and pride. " T h e philosophers," said Calvin, "being ambitious men, have sedulously affected an exquisite perspicuity of method in order to make an ostentatious display of their ingenious dexterity." 2 This must neces2 Institutes, transl. by Allen, Philadelphia, l8l6„ Vol. I l l , p. 160.

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sarily seem to be the case, until after a prolonged and painful effort of thought one has come oneself to feel the need of exercising precisely such perspicuity and dexterity. A wise teacher of philosophy once said: "As for the fine-drawn distinctions and airy abstractions, no distinction is ever too subtle f o r you at the moment when it occurs to you to make that distinction for yourself, and not merely to hear that somebody else has made it. And no abstraction seems to you too airy in the hour when you rise upon your own wings to the region where just that abstraction happens to be an element in the concrete fulness of your intellectual life." 3

That which is true of the philosopher's subtleties is true also of his insight. The performances of the philosopher have been likened to those of "a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there." To the average man in his 3 J. Royce: World and the Individual, First Series, p. 8.

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average moments the philosopher's vision is out of focus. It cannot appeal to him as genuine insight unless he stations himself where the philosopher stands. But this is an unnatural position, off the beaten track, and inconsistent with the habits engendered by life in the cities of men. Philosophy is proverbially unintelligible. Some one has said that when two Germans are earnestly discussing some subject—and neither understands what the other is saying, they are talking about metaphysics; but when they are earnestly discussing some subject, and neither understands what he is himself saying, they are talking about higher metaphysics. Philosophy has come by this reputation honestly. It cannot speak the language of the streets, or if it does so it is certain to be misunderstood, because of attaching new meanings to old words. It is essentially creative and therefore contrary to habit; it is essentially systematic, and 24

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therefore cannot be divided, but must be grasped all at once by a single mind, in a moment of thought or insight which even that same mind may fail to recover again. On the level and in the context of the daily routine, philosophizing seems, and should seem, both unintelligible and gratuitous. It is better that the public should despise a philosophy which they do not understand than that philosophy, by seeking to make itself painlessly understood by the public, should cease to be philosophy. Like many other good things, philosophy can have value only for those who really want it, and are willing to pay the price. That which is advertised to cost nothing is usually worth it. Though philosophy lies beyond the range of what we call the practically useful, and is contrary to those habits of discourse which we call common-sense, 25

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—although it involves a cruel and unusual intensity of thinking, it nevertheless lies in a well-known direction, at the end of a road on which every man has gone a certain distance. There need be no doubt as to where to look for it. So in our further examination of that problem of the ultimate, or of the bottom and the whole of things, to which allusion has already been made, I shall attempt to show how it grows out of familiar distinctions for which popular discourse already provides. The general problem of the ultimate is divisible into four related but distinguishable problems, namely: the problems of the ultimate reality, the ultimate cause, the ultimate truth, and the ultimate value. To these correspond the four main divisions of philosophy, metaphysics, cosmology, logic or theory of knowledge, and ethics or theory of value. The problem of ultimate reality 26

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springs from the familiar distinction between what things are and what they appear to be. Dreams, illusions, hallucinations, the distortions of sensible experience, and the notorious inaccuracies of observation, have taught us that we can not take reality at its face value. Physical science deepens this distrust of appearances, and is wont to tell us, whether rightly or wrongly, that the singing bird is not that spot of color which it is seen to be, or that melodic phrase which it is heard to be, or that "disembodied joy" which it is felt to be; but a mass of protoplasmic molecules, consisting of atoms, which consist in turn of particles of electro-magnetic energy.Religion and poetry, on the other hand, seek to persuade us that the physical world, to scientific observation so alien and forbidding, is in reality the manifestation of a beneficent will; or, as Wordsworth says, the scene of "something far more deeply 27

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interfused . . . a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things." I give these opinions for what they are worth, as opinions familiar to popular thought. They evidently agree only in asserting that there is a difference between what things seem to be, and what they really are. They both imply that a deeper or fuller view of things may result in a correction of that aspect which things initially present; that until you know all of a thing you cannot be sure that you know it at all. Such was the case with the elephant and the four blind men of Burmah. One of them grasped the elephant's tusk, and called it a spear; the second a leg, and called it a tree; the third the trunk, and called it a serpent; the fourth the tail and called it a rope. None of them apprehended the elephant for lack of apprehending the whole. 28

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Once the force of such considerations is admitted, one is on an inclined plane at the foot of which lies philosophy. It is now simply a question of seeing it through. Because we all recognize that things may so qualify one another that one cannot know the first until one knows the last, or that the nature of a particular thing may depend on its place in the general scheme of things, philosophy attempts to exhibit such a general scheme of things, whether by conceptual abstraction, or by intuitive insight. Since partial knowledge may at any time be surprised and overwhelmed by new discovery coming from the wilderness of the unknown, philosophy attempts a general reconnaissance that may serve to render knowledge more stable and secure. The second question is the question of the ultimate cause. This question is discovered in infancy and forgotten in later life. Every remarkable child (and all 29

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children are remarkable) has astonished his parents by asking, upon being told that God made the world, "And who made God?" There is an old German conundrum which asks: "St. Christopher carries Christ, and Christ carries the world, but on what, then, does Christopher stand Philosophers are the only people that try to guess this conundrum. One may feel that their guesses are pretty wild, but the philosopher is justified not so much by his answers as by his questions. These do not cease to exist when they are neglected, nor are they illegitimate simply because they are hard to answer. There stands the question. The ordinary causal explanation of things explains in terms of causes which require a like explanation in their turn. W e ordinarily conceive natural events like a row of blocks, each of which is toppled over in turn by its toppling neighbor. Some peo30

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pie answer the question of war-guilt by the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, while others trace it back to Mother Eve. And for theoretical purposes it makes little difference, since in either case you still have an erring will to explain. It is customary to carry the explanation back as far as it is convenient, and then, for lack of breath or time, to stop. But since you have then made every subsequent event dependent on the event at which you stop, and. since you have failed to explain that, there is force in the contention that you have explained nothing. You have simply pushed the causal question back to a point at which it is somewhat less urgent and conspicuous. Once recognize the distinction between a proximate cause and an ulterior cause, and there thus emerges to any thorough mind the idea of an ultimate cause, or of causality so conceived as to need no further 31

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explanation, in order thus to meet a difficulty which science and common sense recognize but evade. Third, there is the question of ultimate truth. In our studies of geometry we have all been made painfully aware that knowledge proceeds step by step and that the conclusions which are reached depend on the truth of prior theorems, and eventually on the truth of the axioms laid down at the outset,—such as the axiom that the straight line is the shortest line between two points, or the axiom that two parallel lines never meet. Doubt has in recent times been cast on these alleged axioms. Some of them now appear to be theorems which can themselves be proved, others to be arbitrary assumptions which cannot be proved, although they seem to need it. Requiring some support for the system of geometry, so-called philosophers of mathematics have sought to find it in logic, and have believed that 32

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they could eventually find highly abstract axioms, like the principle of contradiction, from which the whole chain of reasoning could be suspended. There is another and opposite way of presenting the matter, which is to say that the unquestionable and rock-bottom certainties are not self-evident principles, but items of fact perceived through the senses. These are called "data" to indicate that while they are used to prove other things such as theories, they neither possess nor need any supporting evidence for themselves. T o which the other party retorts that facts are as uncertain and doubtful as anything else, and have to be formulated in judgments, and attested by their consistency with other judgments, so that they are proved by rational or logical methods after all. And so the fight waxes furious, on an issue which most of the world ignores. But though theory battles with theory and though 33

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the outcome is dubious, as well as irrelevant to what most people do in most of their waking hours, the question stubbornly remains. Most truth is a derived or borrowed truth. A conclusion is no truer than the premises from which it is reasoned, or a theory than the facts which confirm it. If, as Bruno said, the first button of one's coat is wrongly buttoned, all the rest will be out of place. Here is the same need—a right beginning that will guarantee a right ending; the same desire, which gives philosophy its essential impulse, to build solidly on something ultimate. Finally, there is the problem of ultimate value. Most things are valued for the sake of other things, for what they yield, or lead to, or can be exchanged for. In so far as we are reflective at all, action is attended by a prospective series of means and ends, each step an end in relation to the present means, and a means in 34

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relation to ulterior ends. As a rule this prospect does not definitely culminate in a final destination, but fades away in the distance. We buy land in order to sell it, in order to buy more land, in order to build a house, in order to put our furniture in it, in order to rent the house, in order to go to Europe, in order to do we know not what. We spend money in order to go to school, in order to go to college, in order to get an education, in order to make more money, in order to but this is about as far as it is customary to look ahead. One is impatient to act, and one's hand is forced by circumstance. There is the train about to depart. If we wait longer, we shall miss it. Better take it when you can, no matter where it goes. Other people whom you know are taking it. Everybody's taking it. If a philosopher approaches at such a moment to suggest that you look before you leap, there is small chance of his being listened 35

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to. Such a scene is described by Mr. Chesterton in one of his early books. "Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, 'Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good. . . . " At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So,

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gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark." 4

As little heeded as Cassandra, philosophers have been preaching from the time of Socrates and earlier, that there is no sense in acting unless you know what in the last analysis, you want—unless you have made up your mind what is ultimately good, in order that you may select the necessary means, or in order that you and your fellows with you may organize for the purpose. Otherwise a man acts at random or defeats himself, while social effort is neutralized by discord and conflict. In life this is usually the sober second thought, arising from disillusionment. At the time of the World War 4

С. K. Chesterton: Heretics, 1912, p. 23.

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men asked, "What is this so-called 'progress' anyway?" "Is the world getting any better?" "What do we mean by better?" In times of political and social doubt, such as the present, people ask, "What are we trying to make of life?" "What is the good of it all?" "Have we not, perhaps, sacrificed the deeper, simpler, better things to what is shallow and tawdry? Have we not preferred Mammon to God?" But these doubts which are novel and unusual to the average mind are the immemorial doubts of philosophy. What is that which is good in itself, supremely good, which is an end and not a means, an ultimate and not an intermediate good? Is it private pleasure, is it virtue, or the will of God, or the realization of human nature, or the happiness of mankind? Here again, I cannot claim for philosophy a final solution of the problem, but I do with confidence affirm the genuineness 38

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of the problem itself, and the consistency of the philosopher in sticking to it at the cost of his reputation for practical sagacity,—even at the risk of raising doubts as to his sanity. There is, as it will be noted, a sameness in these four problems. And they all arise from distinctions which are recognized by common-sense. The peculiarity of philosophy lies in its pressing these distinctions. Common sense admits the distinction between reality and appearance, and recognizes that the reality of one appearance may in turn be the appearance of an ulterior reality; philosophy proclaims the need of conceiving a reality that is not itself an appearance at all, but· is an ultimate reality. Common sense admits the distinction between cause and effect, and recognizes that the cause of one effect may in turn be the effect of an ulterior cause; philosophy proclaims the need of conceiving a cause that 39

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is not itself an effect at all, but is an ultimate cause. Common sense admits the distinction between conclusion and evidence, and recognizes that the evidence for one conclusion may in turn be a conclusion depending on ulterior evidence; philosophy proclaims the need of conceiving an evidence that is not itself a conclusion at all, but is an ultimate evidence. Common sense admits the distinction between end and means, and recognizes that the end of one means may in turn be the means to an ulterior end; philosophy proclaims the need of conceiving an end that is not itself a means at all, but is an ultimate end. In other words, these questions which philosophy asks are all familiar in kind: What is real? Why did it happen? How do I know? What ought I to do? The difference is one of degree, and lies in the thoroughness, the obstinacy, the fanatical and disquieting glitter of the eye, 40

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with which the philosopher reiterates them. I began by remarking that philosophy was a subject-matter of investigation and not a way of life or a state of mind. I wish now to modify that statement. I have hesitated to praise the virtues of philosophy only because I do not want any of my readers to think that I think that I possess these virtues, or that I am seeking to preach them to him. I speak of the philosophic virtues as a humble versemaker might chant the praise of poetry, speaking of his betters,—and from aspiration, not from pride. The best puff for philosophy was written by John Milton: "How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose; But musical as is Apollo's lute And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns." 41

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I should not like to have any guileless novitiate conclude that philosophy, like the cabaret, was a blend of the pleasures of the palate with the joys of melody and rhythm, lest, having made the experiment, he should turn upon me and rend me in the bitterness of his disappointment. The charms of which the poet speaks are of a different and more rarified quality. He is referring to a feast of reason and a flow of soul. He means to say what Aristotle said in the last book of his Ethics, when he asked himself what activity was consistent with the self-sufficiency, perfection and unalloyed happiness of God. He said, you will recall, that it was the speculative activity,—the contemplation of truth. Here is an activity that is independent of external conditions, as well as free from the intermittence of satiety and fatigue. Aristotle thought, furthermore, that happiness arose from the un42

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hampered exercise of one's natural functions, that reason was ргеёггппепйу man's natural function, and that therefore man's purest happiness must arise from its exercise. One may feel doubtful, when looking about this modern world, of the extreme claims which Aristotle made, both as to possession of reason by man, and as to his enjoyment of its exercise. But the fact remains that there is a natural capacity to think, stunted or atrophied as it may be in many individuals, and that the successful exercise of this capacity—the solution of a problem, the generalization of an idea, the following of a sequence of reasoning, the flash of insight—does bring a deep and peculiarly human form of satisfaction. Is this joy of the intellectual life an illicit joy, an idle pleasure of which we should be ashamed, or which needs to be justified by its results, as we sometimes 43

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justify our play by allusion to our health! Many, I know, would think so. William James tells us that he was once interrupted in the midst of his philosophical eloquence by a voice from the rear of the room, which said, "But, doctor, doctor! to be serious for a moment!" 5 Philosophy was frivolous from this man's point of view,—but perhaps it was owing to his lack of detachment, or to the shallowness of his humor. Survey the planet from a distance and observe, on the one hand, the more usual pastimes of men, the antics, the burrowings, the scurryings to and fro of the busy people whom the world esteems. Suppose, on the other hand, that one man is seen to stand apart from the rest, surveying the scen^, meditating on the spectacle of life and searching for its meaning. Is there something to be said for this solitary thinker? Is he more in need than his fellows of 1

Memories and Studies, 1911, p. 349.

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apologizing for his role in this tragic comedy of life? I do not wish to press the question too far, still less do I wish to suggest that life must be either all thought and no action, or all action and no thought. I shall be content if it is granted that the immediate satisfaction afforded by philosophizing, the joy of the adventure of thinking, may be admitted as in itself a good and worthy thing, which does not need to be reduced to other terms in order to be defensible. We have yet to provide for that virtue of philosophy which is most celebrated. I refer to the virtue of consolation. Shakespeare speaks of "adversity's sweet milk, philosophy," and complains that "There was never yet philosopher That could endure the tooth-ache patiently,"

as we might complain of a doctor who did not take his own medicine, or of a preacher who did not try his own gospel. 45

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Before describing the sort of consolation that may be derived from philosophy, let me first allude to another sort of consolation with which this is often confused. I have heard a man say to a friend in trouble, "Oh! be a philosopher. Don't think about it." I need scarcely say that this is not my conception of philosophy. There is a form of consolation that works, like an anaesthetic, by the narrowing or dulling of consciousness, but philosophy does not provide that sort of consolation. There is, however, another sort of consolation, which works by the broadening and enlivening of consciousness,—by filling the mind, rather than by emptying it. I do not refer to the effect of distraction, which is after all only another case of anaesthesia, as regards that part of life which is painful. I do not refer to the consoling effect of any particular philosophy, such as may, for example, compensate a man for his sufferings in 46

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this life by a promise of better times to come. I do not deny that this and other optimistic beliefs are true, or that they provide a superlative degree of consolation. But I am here referring to the consolation derived from the general spirit of philosophy, from its characteristic method and attitude, rather than from any of its particular doctrines. Let me take as my first illustration a passage from an early letter of William James, in which consolation is offered in the form of an invitatioh to look beyond the surrounding darkness, or to use memory and imagination to offset the narrowing effect of the present perspective: "Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming at the mouth of the Amazon, as freshly as in the first morning of creation; and the hour is 47

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just as fit as any hour for a new gospel of cheer to be preached. I am sure that one can, by merely thinking of these matters of fact, limit the power of one's evil moods over one's way of looking at the Kosmos." β

In Melville's Moby Dick we are introduced on the one hand to the anaesthetic cult of Stubbs, who says: "Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment." Ishmael, on the other hand, has found such consolation as he enjoys by much thinking: "Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands β

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Letters,

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should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content." 7

I once met with a homely instance of such consolation on a barren New England farm. The farmer, one Barney Quinn, was ploughing a rough furrow, and needing both hands for his plough, which was being jerked violently in this direction and that as it encountered stones and hard lumps of caked soil, he had tied the reins and looped them around his neck. So he plodded back and forth, black flies getting into his eyes and the reins chafing his skin, a picture of weariness and unmitigated toil. As he paused for a moment and gave me an opportunity of alluding to his hardships, he spoke out his soul's medicine, the thought by which he was keeping up his courage. "There's lots as did it," he said, "—'taint only me." Now there was, I think, something of 7

Modern Library Edition, 1926, pp. 4-5, 125-126.

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philosophy in Barney Quinn, the philosophy of the "universal thump." H e derived comfort from viewing himself under the aspect of the common lot. There may have been some slight malice in it, as when men ease their sufferings by a sense of superiority to those who suffer more. There may have been something of gregariousness in it, as when among fellows in adversity, the fellowship compensates the adversity. But I do not think that either of these was the chief burden of Barney Quinn's reflections. The secret of his consolation, as of all genuinely philosophical consolation, was magnanimity. Philosophy enables us to see ourselves in perspective, and the broader the perspective the more does my little sore-spot, my atomic grievance, dwindle in proportion to the rest. To cry out against a universe that has not accomodated itself to me, is too absurd,— that is, from the point of view of the uni50

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verse. And it is precisely that point of view which philosophy invites and enables me to take. Enough for the brighter side of philosophy ! Let us turn to its austerities, or to the joys reserved only for those with a relish for adventure. Those who disapprove of doubt, or are afraid of it, should not go far in philosophy. It has been said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, implying confidence that a thorough philosophizing would inevitably bring a man safely across "the river of doubt" to the dry land of certain belief on the other side. There is, unfortunately, no guarantee of any such result. All knowledge is a dangerous thing. Even though one's philosophizing lead one to definite conclusions, there is no guarantee that these shall be as agreeable as the juvenile, ancestral, or collective beliefs which one has abandoned. It is a very comfortable thing to have 51

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settled convictions. It is an even more comfortable thing to have settled convictions that are flattering to man's estate and of hopeful augury. If one finds these comforts quite indispensible, let him beware of philosophy. I do not mean that he will necessarily lose them, but that as a philosopher he must jeopardize them. For it is of the very essence of philosophy that it should raise doubts, question assumptions, challenge authorities, break habits, depart from customs. William James, who divided philosophies into the "tender-minded" and the "toughminded," and betrayed his strong temperamental preference for the tough, gloried in this innovating, individualistic spirit of philosophy. "Philosophy," he said, "is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. Its mind is full of 52

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air that plays round every subject. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices." 8

You will, I think, concede that it is a good thing that there should be such undomesticated minds. It is clear that it would not do to have this spirit too widely disseminated. But there are stabilizing tendencies in human nature, such as authority, habit, imitation, inertia, timidity, which can be trusted to take care of that. There are ways, furthermore, by which revolutionary speculations can be insulated, to prevent their hasty and premature translation into action. That is one reason why philosophers are given chairs, in order that they may sit down, dwell apart, and consume their own thoughts, while the world goes by marshalled under its more "practical" leaders. But supplied in small and infrequent doses, critical doubts, 8

Some Problems

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1911, page 7. 53

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breaches of authority, custom and tradition, bizarre imaginings, incredible theories, shocking absurdities, are what move the world, and give us a sense, however illusory, of a forward advance. In fact the very notion that the world does move was once just such a shocking absurdity. At the same time that I commend philosophic doubt as a social function, as a sort of gland of internal secretion in the body politic, diffusing subtle essences of growth and vigor, I am not without hope that you will feel a certain warmth of sympathy with this spirit, and a desire to possess something of it yourselves as individuals. It has been characteristic of Americans to be irresistibly attracted by frontiers, to find in the very risks and hardships of the wilderness some strange compensation for the greater security which they have wantonly abandoned. Safety is the last thing that such Ameri54

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cans have considered. Now philosophy might be said to be the intellectual frontier. Organized religion and the several sciences represent the settled communities of knowledge and belief, where life is comparatively safe and profitable. As the sciences have settled area after area of his original domain, the philosopher has pushed on to the outer edge of things. The physical frontier, we are told, has ceased to exist,—so far, at any rate, as America is concerned. There is no more free land. But the passing of the intellectual frontier is not in sight. There is plenty of free land beyond the areas which religion and the sciences have fenced and cultivated, and brought under the rule of law and order. The philosopher lives on this frontier and makes crude charts of the regions which lie beyond. In the nature of the case the mass of mankind must remain in the settled communities, while the pioneers must be 55

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few and sparsely distributed. But it has always been true in America that some flavor of the frontier spirit has pervaded even the settled communities,—some love of freedom, some boldness of action, some primitive sense of fair play. So it is not unreasonable to suggest that the great body of normal, sane, practical, respectable people, the people with whom philosophy is not a vocation, will, especially if they be American, and have the blood of frontiersmen in their veins, nevertheless find the essential spirit of philosophy congenial. They will, perhaps, wish to make occasional excursions for themselves; but in any case, they will respect those qualities of mind that prompt other men to plunge into the deep waters and roam the trackless forests of the great intellectual adventure.

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