PREFACE xxiii 



men can read with pleasure. And it can at least contend 

 that most of the technicalities which disfigure philosophic 

 writings are totally unneeded, and that the stringing 

 together of abstractions is both barbarous and dangerous. 

 Pedagogically it is barbarous, because it nauseates the 

 student, and because abstract ideas need to be illumined 

 by concrete illustrations to fix them in the mind : logic 

 ally it is dangerous, because abstractions mostly take 

 the form of worn-out metaphors which are like sunken 

 rocks in navigation, so that there is no more fatal cause 

 of error and deception than the trust in abstract dicta 

 which by themselves mean nothing, and whose real meaning 

 lies in the applications, which are not supplied. 



In history, however, the great antithesis has been be 

 tween Humanism and Scholasticism. This also we may 

 easily adopt, without detracting from its force. For 

 Scholasticism is one of the great facts in human nature, 

 and a fundamental weakness of the learned world. Now, 

 as ever, it is a spirit of sterilising pedantry that avoids 

 beauty, dreads clearness and detests life and grace, a spirit 

 that grovels in muddy technicality, buries itself in the 

 futile burrowings of valueless researches, and conceals it 

 self from human insight by the dust-clouds of desiccated 

 rubbish which it raises. Unfortunately the scholastic 

 temper is one which their mode of life induces in pro 

 fessors as easily as indigestion, and frequently it renders 

 them the worst enemies of their subjects. This is de 

 plorable but might be counteracted, were it not thought 

 essential to a reputation for scientific profundity at least 

 to seem scholastic. Humanism therefore has before it an 

 arduous fight with the Dragon of Scholasticism, which, 

 as it were, deters men from approaching the golden apples 

 that cluster on the tree of knowledge in the garden of 

 the Hesperides. 



And lastly, may we not emphasise that the old associ- 



