and opaque, it is advisable for any one
attempting to philosophize to use indirect as well as direct means of
expressing his thoughts. The object of philosophizing being to
"carry over" into another person's consciousness one's personal
reaction to things, it may well happen that a hint, a gesture, a
signal, a sign, made indirectly and rather by the grouping of words
and the tone of words than by their formal content, will reach the
desired result more effectually than any direct argument.

It must be admitted, however, that this purely subjective view of
philosophy, with its implied demand for a precise subjective
colouring of the words, leaves some part of our philosophical
motive-force unsatisfied and troubled by an obscure distress. No
two minds can interchange ideas without some kind of appeal, often
so faint and unconscious as to be quite unrecognized, to an invisible
audience of hidden attendants upon the argument, who are tacitly
assumed in some mysterious way to be the arbiters. These invisible
companions seem to gather to themselves, as we are vaguely aware
of them, the attributes of a company of overshadowing listeners.
They present themselves to the half-conscious background of our
mind as some pre-existent vision of "truth" towards which my
subjective vision is one contribution and my interlocutor's
subjective vision another contribution.

This vague consciousness which we both have, as we exchange our
ideas, of some comprehensive vision of pre-existent reality, to
which we are both appealing, does not destroy my passionate
conviction that I am "nearer the truth" than my friend; nor does it
destroy my latent feeling that in my friend's vision there is
"something of the truth" which I am unable to grasp. I think the
more constantly we encounter other minds in these philosophical
disputes the more does there grow and take shape in our own mind
the idea of some mysterious and invisible watchers whose purer
vision, exquisitely harmonious and clairvoyant, remains a sort of
test both of our own and of others' subjectivity; becomes, in fact, an
objective standard or measure or pattern of those ideas which we
discover within us all, and name truth, beauty, nobility.

This objective standard of the things which are most important and
precious to us, this ideal pattern of all human values, attests and
manifests its existence by the primordial necessity of the
interchange of thoughts among us. I call this pattern