more certain than that that spirit which has created it has grown, is
growing, and will ever grow in wisdom, and that by reflection upon
itself and its history--nor can the gates of darkness and error prevail
against the irresistible march of its triumphant progress.

As we look back the history of Philosophy seems strewn with the debris
of outworn or outlived errors, but out of them all emerges this clear
and assured truth, that in self-knowledge lies the master-light of all
our seeing, inexhaustibly casting its rays into the retreating shadow
world that now surrounds us, melting all mists and dispelling all
clouds, and that the way to it is unveiled, mapped and charted in
advance so that henceforward we can walk sure-footedly therein. Yet that
does not mean that the work of Philosophy is done, that it can fold its
hands and sit down, for only in the seeking is its prize found and there
is no goal or end other than the process itself. For this too is its
discovery, that not by, but in, endless reflection is the Truth
concerning it known, the Truth that each generation must ever anew win
and earn it for itself. The result is not without the process, nor the
end without the means: the fact _is_ the process and other fact there is
none. In other forms of so-called 'knowledge' we can sever the
conclusion from its premisses, and the result can be given without the
process, but with self-knowledge it is not so and no generation, or
individual, can communicate it ready-made to another, but can only point
the way and bid others help themselves. And if this, so put, seems hard
doctrine, I can only remind you that to philosophize has always meant
'to think by and for oneself'.

It is perhaps more necessary to formulate the warning that what is here
called self-knowledge and pronounced to constitute the very essence of
the spirit that is in man, is far removed from what sometimes bears its
name, the extended and minute acquaintance by the individual mind with
its individual peculiarities or idiosyncrasies, its weaknesses and
vanities, its whims and eccentricities; nor is it to be confused with
the still wider acquaintance with those that make up our common human
nature in all its folly and frailty which is sometimes called 'knowledge
of human nature'; no, nor with such knowledge as psychological science,
with its methods of observation and induction and experiment, offers or
supplies. It is knowledge of something that lies far de