ve
spirit in us it must present itself as something dangerous,
destructive, ridiculous and insane to that instinct in us which
resists creation.

But although "the appeal to common-sense" is no test of the truth
of a philosophy, since common-sense is precisely the thing in us
which has a malicious hostility to the creative spirit, yet no
philosophy can afford to disregard an appeal to actual experience
as long as actual experience includes the rare moments of our life
as well as all the rest. Here is indeed a true and authentic test of
philosophic validity. If we take our philosophical conclusions, so
to speak, in our hands, and plunge with them into the very depths
of actual experience, do they grow more organic, more palpable
and more firm, or do they melt away into the flowing waters?

Who is not able to recall the distress of bitter disillusionment
which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of
"sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of
reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict
upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable
system under the impact of some atrocious projection of "crass
casuality" is a proof that if a philosophy has not got in it some
"iron" of its own, if it has not got in it something formidable and
unfathomable, something that can destroy as well as create, it is
not of much avail against the winds and storms of destiny.

For a philosophy to be a true representation of reality, for it to be
that reality itself, become conscious and articulate, it is necessary
that it should prove most vivid and actual at those supreme
moments when the soul of man is driven to the ultimate wall and
is at the breaking-point.

The truth of a philosophy is not to be tested by what we feel about
it in moods of practical common-sense; for in these moods we
have, for some superficial reason, suppressed more than half of the
attributes of our soul. The truth of a philosophy can only be tested
in those moments when the soul, driven to the wall, gathers itself
together for one supreme effort. But there is, even in less stark and
drastic hours, an available test of a sound and organic philosophy
which must not be forgotten. I refer to its capacity for being
vividly and emphatically summed up and embodied in some
concrete image or symbol.

If a philosophy is so rationalistic that it refuses to lend itself to
a definite and concrete expression