s as a peculiar people or a privileged and exclusive
priesthood, but much rather as fellow servants enlisted and engaged in
the public service of mankind. Least of all do they believe that their
efforts are foredoomed to inevitable failure, that progress therein is
not to be looked for, or that they and their predecessors have hitherto
made no advance towards what they and, as they also believe, all men
sought and still seek. To them the history of Philosophy for say the
last two thousand years is not the dreary and dispiriting narrative of
repeated error and defeat, but the record of a slow but secure and
steady advance in which, as nowhere else, the mind of Man celebrates and
enjoys triumphs over the mightiest obstacles, kindling itself to an
ever-brightening flame. Reviewing its own past in history the spirit of
Philosophy sees its own inner light, which is its act and its essence,
constantly increasing, spreading ever wider into the circumambient dark,
and touching far-off and hitherto undiscovered peaks with the fire of a
coming dawn. In place of the starlight of Science or the moonlight of
Religion it sees a sun arise flooding the world with light and warmth
and life. High hopes, high claims; but can they be made good, or even
rationally entertained? Suffice it here that they be openly avowed and
proclaimed to be laid up in the heart of the philosophic spirit,
'dreaming', and yet with waking eyes, 'of things to come'. Or rather
shall we not say, seeing that its eyes are unsealed and the vision
therefore no dream, beholding a present--an ever-present--Reality?

It was Philosophy, or philosophers, as I have said, that first discerned
the fact of Progress, named it, and divined its lineaments. To
Philosophy the name and notion of Progress belongs as of right--the
right of first occupation. Merely to have invented a name for the fact
is no small service, for thus the fact was fixed for further study and
examination. But with the name Philosophy gave us the idea, the notion,
and therewith the fact began to be understood and to become amenable to
further and further explanation. To this further explanation Philosophy
gave notable assistance. To 'elaborate our concepts' has been said to be
the whole business of Philosophy, that is, to arrest the vague and
shifting meanings that float before our minds loosely attached to the
words of ordinary careless speech, to fix their outlines,
distinguishing, defining, ordering and or