ganizing until each mass of
meaning is improved and refined into a thought worthy to be called a
notion, a fit member of the world of mind, a seat and source of
intellectual light. In this work Philosophy proceeds and succeeds simply
by reflecting on whatever meaning it has in whatever manner already
acquired; it employs no strange apparatus or recondite methods, only
continues more thoughtfully and conscientiously to use the familiar
means by which the earlier simpler meanings were appropriated and
developed, following the beaten tracks of the mind's native and
spontaneous movement. Much more rarely than the sciences has it recourse
to a technical vocabulary, being content to express itself in ordinary
words though using them and their collocations with a careful delicacy
and painstaking adroitness. To follow it in these uses demands an
effort, for nothing is perhaps more difficult than to force our thoughts
to run counter to our customary heedless use of words and to learn to
employ them even for a short time with a steady precision of
significance. Yet unless this effort is resolutely made we must remain
the easy prey of manifold confusions and errors which trip us in the
dark. Our words degrade into tokens which experience will not
cash--tangles of symbols which we cannot retranslate.

But Philosophy is more than the attempt to refine and subtilize our
ordinary words so as to fit them for the higher service of
interpretative thought, more even than the endeavour to improve the
stock of ideas no matter how come by, by which we interpret to ourselves
whatever it imports us to understand. All this it is and does, or
strives to do, but only as subsidiary to its true business and real aim.
All this it might do and do successfully, and yet make or bring about no
substantial progress in itself or elsewhere. And when progress in
Philosophy is spoken of, it is not either such improvement in language
nor such improvement in ideas that alone or mainly is meant.

What is claimed for (or denied to it) under the name of Progress is an
advance in knowledge, knowledge clear-sighted, grounded, and assured,
knowledge of some authentic and indubitable reality. It is by the
attainment of such knowledge, by progress in and towards it, that the
claim of Philosophy to be progressive must stand or fall. To the
question whether it can make good its claim to the possession and
increase of this knowledge we must give special attention, for i