PKEFACE. Vll 



on Philosophy is the despair of the general reader. If he 

 ventures to read it he is only dimly aware of an impersonal 

 something, a sort of intellectual human machine in the 

 background, weaving abstruse sentences with a certain 

 seeming ease and method and logical coherence, but 

 which keeps obstinately aloof alike from his sympathy 

 and intelligence. " Why cannot he make himself in- 

 telligible to ordinary, or even to superior intelligence?" 

 murmurs the general reader. " Impossible," says the 

 philosopher. " What I have to say cannot be stated in 

 other language. It cannot be popularized, nor is it 

 desirable that it should be. Philosophy cannot stoop to 

 accommodate herself to your intelligence. You must 

 raise yourself to her level of language and thought if 

 you would have her benefits. If you want a precious 

 thing, you must be prepared to pay the proper price for 

 it, or go without. " Impossible," in turn replies the 

 general reader. " I have not sat at the feet of the masters 

 of wisdom in the Schools, and I am now too old to learn 

 or to apply your severe language. It is too hard a price 

 to pay for even wisdom, and, in fact, for most people 

 amounts to a prohibitive tax." 



The position is at once serious and a little ridiculous. 

 On the one hand, we have the abstract philosopher 

 charged with wisdom, possessing the key to all mysteries 

 and all knowledge, which one would suppose it was his 

 special business to give to men ; on the other, the general 

 reader, the man of fairly cultivated intellect, hungry for 

 this wisdom and knowledge, and, in the opinion of the 

 philosopher, perishing for lack of it, and yet no com- 



