ty for his
opinion. But, in all humility, I suggest that if we can persuade men of
reputation in the regions where subtle thought and accurate research
are duly valued, we shall be doing good, not only to ourselves, but, if
I may whisper it, to them. We value their attainments so highly that we
desire their influence to spread beyond the narrow precinct of
university lecture-rooms; and their thoughts be, at the same time,
stimulated and vitalised by bringing them into closer contact with the
problems which are daily forced upon us in the business of daily life.
A divorce between the men of thought and the men of action is really
bad for both. Whatever tends to break up the intellectual stupor of
large classes, to rouse their minds, to increase their knowledge of the
genuine work that is being done, to provide them even with more of such
recreations as refine and invigorate, must have our sympathy, and will
be useful both to those who confer and to those who receive
instruction. So, after all, a philosopher can learn few things of more
importance than the art of translating his doctrines into language
intelligible and really instructive to the outside world. There was a
period when real thinkers, as Locke and Berkeley and Butler and Hume,
tried to express themselves as pithily and pointedly as possible. They
were, say some of their critics, very shallow: they were over-anxious
to suit the taste of wits and the town: and in too much fear of the
charge of pedantry. Well, if some of our profounder thinkers would try
for once to pack all that they really have to say as closely as they
can, instead of trying to play every conceivable change upon every
thought that occurs to them, I fancy that they would be surprised both
at the narrowness of the space which they would occupy and the
comparative greatness of the effect they would produce.

An ethical society should aim at supplying a meeting-place between the
expert and specialist on one side, and, on the other, with the men who
have to apply ideas to the complex concretes of political and social
activity. How far we can succeed in furthering that aim I need not
attempt to say. But I will conclude by reverting to some thoughts at
which I hinted at starting. You may think that I have hardly spoken in
a very sanguine or optimistic tone. I have certainly admitted the
existence of enormous difficulties and the probabilities of very
imperfect success. I cannot think that the promis