e which more than any other seems to
take a man out of himself. Weary of asking 'What is truth?' it accepts
the 'blind witness of eyes and ears;' it draws around itself the curtain
of the physical world and is satisfied. The strength of a sensational
philosophy lies in the ready accommodation of it to the minds of men;
many who have been metaphysicians in their youth, as they advance in
years are prone to acquiesce in things as they are, or rather appear to
be. They are spectators, not thinkers, and the best philosophy is that
which requires of them the least amount of mental effort.

As a lower philosophy is easier to apprehend than a higher, so a lower
way of life is easier to follow; and therefore such a philosophy seems
to derive a support from the general practice of mankind. It appeals to
principles which they all know and recognize: it gives back to them in a
generalized form the results of their own experience. To the man of the
world they are the quintessence of his own reflections upon life. To
follow custom, to have no new ideas or opinions, not to be straining
after impossibilities, to enjoy to-day with just so much forethought as
is necessary to provide for the morrow, this is regarded by the greater
part of the world as the natural way of passing through existence. And
many who have lived thus have attained to a lower kind of happiness
or equanimity. They have possessed their souls in peace without ever
allowing them to wander into the region of religious or political
controversy, and without any care for the higher interests of man. But
nearly all the good (as well as some of the evil) which has ever been
done in this world has been the work of another spirit, the work of
enthusiasts and idealists, of apostles and martyrs. The leaders
of mankind have not been of the gentle Epicurean type; they have
personified ideas; they have sometimes also been the victims of them.
But they have always been seeking after a truth or ideal of which they
fell short; and have died in a manner disappointed of their hopes that
they might lift the human race out of the slough in which they found
them. They have done little compared with their own visions and
aspirations; but they have done that little, only because they sought to
do, and once perhaps thought that they were doing, a great deal more.

The philosophies of Epicurus or Hume give no adequate or dignified
conception of the mind. There is no organic unity in a success