xii HUMANISM 



ignorance. But once an unknown transfiguration of the 

 actual is desired, it can be sought, and so, in many cases, 

 found. The passionless concatenations of a pure 

 thought never could have reached, and still less have 

 justified, our conclusion : to attain it our thought needs 

 to be impelled and guided by the promptings of volition 

 and desire. 



Now that such ways of reasoning are not infrequent 

 and not unsuccessful, will, I fancy, hardly be denied. 

 Indeed if matters were looked into it might easily turn 

 out that reasonings of the second type never really occur 

 in actual knowing, and that when they seem to do so, 

 we have only failed to detect the hidden interest which 

 incites the reason to pretend to be dispassionate. In 

 the example chosen, e.g., it may have been a pessimist s 

 despair that clothed itself in the habiliments of logic, or 

 it may have been merely stupidity and apathy, a 

 want of imagination and enterprise in questioning nature. 

 But, it may be said, the question of the justification 

 de jure of what is done de facto still remains. The votary 

 of an abstract logic may indignantly exclaim Shall I 

 lower my ideal of pure thought because there is little 

 or no pure thinking ? Shall I abandon Truth, immutable, 

 eternal, sacred Truth, as unattainable, and sanction as 

 her substitute a spurious concretion of practical ex 

 perience, on the degrading plea that it is what we need 

 to live by, and all we need to live by ? Shall I, in 

 other words, abase myself? No! Perish the thought! 

 Perish the phenomenal embodiment of Pure Reason out 

 of Time and Place (which I popularly term &quot;myself&quot;) 

 rather than that the least abatement should be made 

 from the rigorous requirements of my theory of Thought ! 



Strong emotional prejudices are always hard to 

 reason with, especially when, as here, their nature is so 

 far misconceived that they are regarded as the revelations 



