COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



may be thought that their works will testify 

 against us. We shall perhaps be accused of re- 

 garding the noble labours of so many genera- 

 tions of gifted thinkers as a mere impracticable 

 striving after that which no striving can procure, 

 — as the crying of infants for the moon, or as 

 the groping of the alchemist for the philoso- 

 pher's stone. And it will no doubt be indig- 

 nantly asked, by what title do we pretend to 

 philosophize at all? In rejecting as forever in- 

 soluble so large a proportion of the inquiries 

 with which philosophy has until lately busied 

 itself, do we not virtually declare philosophy to 

 be antiquated and useless ? 



To neither of these accusations can we con- 

 sent to plead guilty. In replying to the first, it 

 may indeed be granted that those who rigor- 

 ously maintain that Absolute Being is unknow- 

 able, will naturally regard the labours of Plato 

 and Spinoza and Hegel as a vain seeking after 

 that which cannot be found. But it does not 

 follow that such seeking is to be condemned as 

 worthless. It was only after many attempts had 

 failed, that we could learn that the failure was 

 due not to curable but to incurable weakness.* 



1 *'The study of the master minds of the human race is 

 almost equally instructive in what they achieved and in what 

 they failed to achieve ; and speculations which are far from 

 solving the riddle of existence have their use in teaching us 

 why it is insoluble." — Mansel, MetaphysicSj p. 23. 



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