t bade us know the world in which we live and move and have our
being, know it as it is truly and in itself, and knowing it love it,
loyally acquiescing in its purposes and subserving its ends. In all this
there was progress (was there not?) to a view, to a truth (how else
shall we speak of it?) which has always, when apprehended, begotten a
high temper in heroic hearts. Surely in having reached in thought so
high and so far the mind of man had progressed in knowledge and in
wisdom.

But now a change took place, from which we must date the rise or birth
of modern philosophy. Hitherto on the whole the mind of man had looked
outward and sought knowledge of what lay or seemed to lie outside
itself. So looking and gazing ever deeper it had encountered a spectacle
of admirable and awe-compelling order, yet one which for that very
reason seemed appallingly remote from, if not alien to, all human
businesses and concerns. Now it turned inward and found within itself
not only matter of more immediate or pressing interest, but a world that
compelled attention, excited curiosity, rewarded study. Slowly and
gradually the knowledge of this, the inner world--the world of the
thinker's self--became the central object of philosophic reflection. The
knowledge that was most required--that was all-important and
indispensable (so man began explicitly to realize)--was knowledge of the
Self, not of the outer world that at best could never be more than
known, but of the self that knew or could know it, that could both know
and be known. Henceforward what is studied is not knowledge of
reality--of any and every reality--or of external reality, but knowledge
of the Self which can know as well as be known. And the process by which
it is sought is reflection, for the self-knowledge is not the knowledge
of other selves, but the knowledge of just that Self which knows itself
and no other. Thus the knowledge sought is once more and now finally
distinguished from the knowledge offered or supplied by Art or Science
or Religion: not by Art, for the Self cannot appear and has no seeming
nor can it any way be pictured or described or imagined; not by
Science, for it lies beyond and beneath and behind all observation, nor
can it be counted or measured or weighed; not by Religion, for knowledge
of it comes from within and the disclosure of its nature is by the
self-witness of the Self to its self, not by revelation of any other to
it. Thus there is disclos