2 HUMANISM i 



adoration of the world or drag it in the mire to be 

 trampled on by all superior persons ? Shall it equate 

 it with the whole or value it as nought ? Philosophers 

 have, of course, considered the matter, though not perhaps 

 as carefully nor as successfully as they ought. And 

 so the relations of the theory to the practice of life, 

 of cognition to action, of the theoretical to the practical 

 reason, form a difficult and complicated chapter in the 

 history of thought. 1 From that history one fact, however, 

 stands out clearly, viz. that the claims on both sides are 

 so large and so insistent that it is hardly possible to 

 compromise between them. The philosopher is not on 

 the whole a lover of compromise, despite the solicitations 

 of his lower nature. He will not, like the ordinary man 

 of sense, subscribe to a plausible platitude like, e.g. 

 Matthew Arnold s famous dictum that Conduct is three- 

 fourths of Life. Matthew Arnold was not a philosopher, 

 and the very precision of his formula arouses scientific 

 suspicions. But anyhow the philosopher s imperious 

 logic does not deal in quarters ; it is prone to argue aut 

 Caesar aut nullus ; if Conduct be not the whole life, it is 

 naught. Which therefore shall it be ? Shall Conduct be 

 the substance of the All, or the vision of a dream ? 



Now, it would seem at first that latterly the second 

 alternative had grown philosophically almost inevitable. 

 For, under the auspices of the Hegelizing idealists, 

 Philosophy has uplifted herself once more to a meta 

 physical contemplation of the Absolute, of the unique 

 Whole in which all things are included and tran 

 scended. Now whether this conception has any logical 

 meaning and value for metaphysics is a moot point, 

 which I have elsewhere treated ; 2 but there can hardly 

 be a pretence of denying that it is the death of morals. 

 For the ideal of the Absolute Whole cannot be rendered 

 compatible with the antithetical valuations which form 

 the vital atmosphere of human agents. They are partial 



1 Cp. Essay ii. on Useless Knowledge for its treatment by Plato and 

 Aristotle. 



2 Riddles of the Sphinx, ch. x. , Formal Logic, p. 129 n. 



