294 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



on the other side the demand for general order, 

 for continuous and organized unity, for the con 

 servation of the dearly bought resources of the 

 past. This is what I mean by saying that the 

 sensationalist abstracts in conscious form the 

 position and tendency of the Germanic element in 

 modern civilization, the factor of appetite and im 

 pulse, of keen enjoyment and satisfaction, of stim 

 ulus and initiative. Just so the rationalist erects 

 into conscious abstraction the principle of the 

 Grseco-Roman world, that of control, of system, 

 of order and authority. 



That the principles of freedom and order, of 

 past and future, or conservation and progress, of 

 incitement to action and control of that incitation, 

 are correlative, I shall not stop to argue. It may 

 be worth while, however, to point out that exactly 

 the same correlative and mutually implicating con 

 nection exists between sensationalism and rational 

 ism, considered as philosophical accounts of the 

 origin and nature of knowledge. 



The strength of each school lies in the weakness 

 of its opponent. The more the sensationalist ap 

 pears to succeed in reducing knowledge to the as 

 sociations of sensation, the more he creates a de 

 mand for thought to introduce background and 

 relationship. The more consistent the sensational 

 ist, the more openly he reveals the sensation in its 

 own nakedness crying aloud for a clothing of 



