268 HUMANISM xv 



stain and every speck of error in the waters of Lethe, so 

 that the many may believe that Science is infallible and 

 its history is one unbroken progress ; which is both more 

 Christian and more worldly-wise. 



But not so the philosophers. They still believe in the 

 discipline of dirt, and keep the face of the fair goddess 

 they profess to worship like unto the face of Glaucus the 

 sea-god, 1 and the thicker grow the incrustations of historic 

 error the better they are pleased. For they are simply 

 devoted to the memory of ancient errors. They venerate 

 them and collect them and dry them (in their histories of 

 philosophy), and label them and exhibit them in glass 

 cases with the scalps of their authors. They compile 

 whole museums of such antiquities, and get themselves 

 appointed the curators thereof. One of our universities is 

 popularly believed to have appointed about two dozen 

 such curators of the relics of the great fight between 

 Aristocles, the son of Ariston, and Aristoteles, the son 

 of Nicomachus. And the cause thereof was not Argive 

 Helen, if you please, but the transcendence of the universal! 

 Verily philosophic immortality is as terrible a thing and 

 as hard to bear as that of Tithonus ! 



Such, I cannot help suspecting, are the real sentiments 

 of intelligent men of the world concerning philosophers, 

 though only a philosopher could be rude enough to set 

 them down in black and white. But calumny, like murder, 

 will out, and only so can it be met. And so those who, 

 like Plato, have had the deepest faith in the value of 

 philosophy have ever also been the readiest to admit and 

 to confront the allegations of detractors. 



And yet, at bottom, this was never quite an easy thing 

 to do. The weaknesses of philosophy are manifest ; its 

 obscurity, its flimsiness, its intense individuality, 2 its re 

 moteness and uselessness for the ordinary purposes of life, 

 cannot but catch the public eye. Its virtues (if any) are 

 hidden out of sight. It seems safer, therefore, on the 

 whole, for the sage to flaunt his shame and to assume its 



1 Cp. Plato, Republic, 611 D. 

 2 For the explanation of which see Personal Idealism, pp. 50-51. 



