ed the slowly-won and slowly-revealed secret of
modern Philosophy, that the knowledge which is indispensable, which is
necessary as the consummation and key-stone of all other knowledge, is
knowledge of the knowing-self, self-knowledge, or, as it is sometimes
more technically called, self-consciousness, with the corollary that
this knowledge cannot be won by any methods known to or specially
characteristic of Science or Art or Religion. To become self-conscious,
to progress in self-consciousness is the end, and the way or means to it
is by reflection--the special method of Philosophy.

This is the step in advance made by the modern spirit beyond all
discoveries of the ancients; it is the truth by the apprehension of
which the modern spirit and its world is made what it is. Not outside us
lies Truth or the Truth: Truth dwelleth in the inner man--_in interiore
hominis habitat veritas_. Is this not progress, progress in wisdom, and
to what else can we ascribe the advance save to Philosophy?

It was one of the earliest utterances of modern Philosophy, and one
which it has never found reason to retract, that the Self which knows
can and does know itself better than aught else whatsoever, and in that
knowledge can without end make confident and sure-footed advance. To
itself the Self is the most certain and the most knowable of all
realities--with this it is most acquainted, this it has light in itself
to explore, of this it can confidently foresee and foretell the method
of advance to further and further knowledge. It knows not only its
existence but its essence, its nature, and it knows by what procedure,
by what ordered effort or exercise of will it can progress to height
beyond height of its self-knowledge. I say, it knows it, but it also
knows that that knowledge cannot be attained all at once or taken
complete and ready-made, for it _is_ itself a progress, a self-created
and self-determined progress, and on that condition progress alone is or
is real. For it to be is not to be at the beginning or at the end of
this process, but to be always coming to be, coming to be what it is not
and yet also what it has in it to be. Of nothing else is Progress so
intimately the essence and very being; if we ask 'What progresses or
evolves?', the most certain answer is 'The spirit which is in man, and
what it progresses in, is knowledge of itself, which is wisdom'.
Speaking of and for Philosophy I venture to maintain that nothing is