reek philosophy is not, even now, antiquated. It is not from the
point of view of an antiquary or historian {vi} that its treasures are
valuable. We are dealing here with living things, and not with mere
dead things--not with the dry bones and debris of a bygone age. And I
have tried to lecture and write for living people, and not for mere
fossil-grubbers. If I did not believe that there is to be found here,
in Greek philosophy, at least a measure of the truth, the truth that
does not grow old, I would not waste five minutes of my life upon it.

"We do not," says a popular modern writer, [Footnote 1] "bring the
young mind up against the few broad elemental questions that are the
_questions of metaphysics_ .... We do not make it discuss, correct it,
elucidate it. That was the way of the Greeks, and we worship that
divine people far too much to adopt their way. No, we lecture to our
young people about not philosophy but philosophers, we put them
through book after book, telling how other people have discussed these
questions. We avoid the questions of metaphysics, but we deliver
semi-digested half views of the discussions of, and answers to these
questions made by men of all sorts and qualities, in various remote
languages and under conditions quite different from our own. . . . It
is as if we began teaching arithmetic by long lectures upon the origin
of the Roman numerals, and then went on to the lives and motives of
the Arab mathematicians in Spain, or started with Roger Bacon in
chemistry, or Sir Richard Owen in comparative anatomy .... It is time
the educational powers began to realise that the questions of
metaphysics, the elements of philosophy, are, here and now to be done
afresh in each mind .... What is wanted is philosophy, and not a
shallow smattering of the history of philosophy ... {vii} The proper
way to discuss metaphysics, like the proper way to discuss mathematics
or chemistry, is to discuss the accumulated and digested product of
human thought in such matters."

[Footnote 1: H. G. Wells in "First and Last Things."]

Plausible words these, certain to seem conclusive to the mob,
notwithstanding that for one element of truth they contain nine of
untruth! The elements of truth are that our educational system
unwarrantably leaves unused the powerful weapon of oral discussion--so
forcibly wielded by the Greeks--and develops book knowledge at the
expense of original thought. Though even here it must be rememb