hopes is to deceive
ourselves to our own and our fellows' undoing, to refuse them our help
and fail to play our part in the common business of mankind. There is
surely in the world enough suffering and sorrow and sin to engage all
our energies in dealing with them, nor are our endeavours to do so so
plainly fruitless as to discourage from perseverance in them. Where in
this task our hearts do faint and fail, are there not other means than
the discredited nostrum of Philosophy to revive our hopes and recruit
our forces? It was only, we are sometimes reminded, in the darkest days
of human history that men turned desperately to Philosophy for comfort
and consolation--how surely and demonstrably, we are told, in vain! When
other duties are so urgent and immediate, have we even the right to
consume our energies otherwise than in their direct discharge? And is it
not presumption to ask for any further light than that which is
vouchsafed to us in the ordinary course of experience or, if that is
insufficient, in and by Religion?

Much in this plea for a final relinquishment of aid from Philosophy in
the furtherance of human progress is plausible and more than plausible.
Yet the hope or, if you will, the dream of attaining some form or kind
or degree of knowledge which the sciences do not and cannot supply and
perhaps deny to be possible, some steadiness and firmness of assurance
other and beyond the confidence of religious faith, is not yet extinct,
is perhaps inextinguishable, and though it often takes extravagant and
even morbid and repulsive forms, still haunts and tantalizes many, nor
these the least wise or sane of our kind, so that they count all the
labour they spend upon its search worth all the pains. Not for
themselves alone do they seek it; they view themselves as not alone in
the quest, but engaged in a matter of universally human moment. In the
measure in which they count themselves to have attained any result they
do not hoard it or grudge it to others. The notion of philosophic truth
as something to be shared and enjoyed only by a few--as what is called
'esoteric'--is no longer in vogue and is indeed felt to involve an
essential self-contradiction; rather it is conceived as something the
value of which is assured and enhanced by being imparted. Those who
believe themselves to be by nature or (it may be) accident appointed to
the office of its quest, by no means feel that they are thereby divided
from their fellow