II 



THE PHILOSOPHIC TEMPER 



WE must define our terms ; and when we speak 

 of the evolutionary system as a philosophy, we 

 must be sure that our use of the word is not open 

 to repudiation by the academic or the stoic. But 

 ere we define the meaning which the word bears 

 in the present volume, we may, perhaps illogically, 

 consider what I shall call the philosophic temper; 

 and thereafter that form or corollary of it which is 

 called toleration. 



It is, of course, a commonplace that the ob- 

 ject of philosophy and science is truth; but it 

 needs a moment's consideration fully to weigh 

 this assertion, not, indeed, because it expresses the 

 cardinal distinction between the professional phi- 

 losopher and scientist and other people, but be- 

 cause we have here a criterion which makes quite 

 another division among men, cutting almost in- 

 differently through the professional student and 

 non-student alike. And the significance of a real 

 understanding of the philosophic temper is such 

 as infinitely to transcend that of the vulgar es- 

 timate. So that on this criterion the unlettered 

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