300 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



fact obtaining recognition. Only action can rec 

 oncile the old, the general, and the permanent with 

 the changing, the individual, and the new. It is 

 action as progress, as development, making over 

 the wealth of the past into capital with which to 

 do an enlarging and freer business, that alone can 

 find its way out of the cul-de-sac of the theory of 

 knowledge. Each of the older movements passed 

 away because of its own success, failed because it 

 did its work, died in accomplishing its purpose. 

 So also with the modern philosophy of knowledge ; 

 there must come a time when we have so much 

 knowledge in detail, and understand so well its 

 method in general, that it ceases to be a problem. 

 It becomes a tool. If the problem of knowledge 

 is not intrinsically meaningless and absurd it must 

 in course of time be solved. Then the dominating 

 interest becomes the use of knowledge; the condi 

 tions under which and ways in which it may be 

 most organically and effectively employed to direct 

 conduct. 



Thus the Socratic period recurs ; but recurs with 

 the deepened meaning of the intervening weary 

 years of struggle, confusion, and conflict in the 

 growth of the recognition of the need of patient 

 and specific methods of interrogation. So, too, the 

 authoritative and institutional truth of scholasti 

 cism recurs, but recurs borne up upon the vigorous 

 and conscious shoulders of the freed individual who 



