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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. i 



iere ascribed to the intellect and of the 

 station assigned it among the faculties of 

 the human mind? In the first place, he 

 will say, it ought to be CAadent to the critics 

 themselves, and evident to them even in 

 what they esteem the poor light of intel- 

 lect, that the above-sketched movement of 

 their minds is a logically unsound move- 

 ment. They do not indeed contend that, 

 because a living being in order to live must 

 deal with the material world, it must, there- 

 fore, do so by means of concepts. The 

 lower animals have taught them better. 

 But neither does it follow that, because 

 certain bipeds in dealing with the mate- 

 rial world deal with it conceptually, the 

 essential function of concepts is just to 

 deal with matter. Nor does such an in- 

 ference respecting the essential function 

 of concepts follow from the fact that the 

 superior effectiveness of man's dealing 

 with the physical world is due to his 

 dealing with it conceptually. For it is 

 obviously conceivable and supposable that 

 such conceptual dealing with matter is 

 only an incident or byplay or subordinate 

 interest in the career of concepts. It is 

 conceivably possible that such employment 

 is only an avocation, more or less serious 

 indeed and more or less advantageous, 

 yet an avocation, and not the vocation, 

 of intellect. Is it not evidently possible 

 to go even further? Is it not logically 

 possible to admit or to contend that, inas- 

 much as the human intellect is functionally 

 attached to a living body which is itself 

 plunged in a physical universe, it is abso- 

 lutely necessary for the intellect to concern 

 itself with matter in order to preserve, not 

 indeed the animal life of man, but his 

 intellectual life — is it not allowable, he wiU 

 say, to admit or to maintain that and at 

 the same time to deny that such concern- 

 ment with matter is the intellect's chief or 



essential function and that the subjugation 

 of matter is its ideal and aim 1 



Of course, our lecturer will say, our crit- 

 ics might be wrong in their logic and right 

 in their opinion, just as they might be 

 wrong in their opinion and right in their 

 logic, for opinion is often a matter, not of 

 logic or proof, but of temperament, taste 

 and insight. But, he will say, if the issue 

 as to the chief function of concepts and 

 the ideal of the intellect is to be decided in 

 accordance with temperament, taste and 

 insight, then there is room for exercise of 

 the preferential faculty, and alternatives 

 far superior to the choice of our critics are 

 easy enough to find. It may accord better 

 with our insight and taste to agree with 

 Aristotle that "It is owing," not to the 

 necessity of maintaining animal life or the 

 desire of subjugating matter, but "it is 

 owing to their wonder that men both now 

 begin and at first began to philosophize; 

 they wondered originally at the obvious 

 difficulties, then advanced little by little 

 and stated the difficulties about the greater 

 matters." The striking contrast of this 

 with the deliverances of Bergson is not sur- 

 prising, for Aristotle was a pupil of Plato 

 and the doctrine of Bergson is that of 

 Plato completely inverted. It may accord 

 better with our insight and taste to agree 

 with the great C. G. I. Jacobi, who, when 

 he had been reproached by Fourier for not 

 devoting his splendid genius to physical 

 investigations, replied that a philosopher 

 like his critic "ought to know that the 

 unique end of science is, ' ' not public utility 

 and applications to natural phenomena, but 

 "is the honor of the human spirit." It 

 may accord better with our temperament 

 and insight to agree with the sentiment of 

 Diotima: "I am persuaded that aU men do 

 all things, and the better they are the 

 better they do them, in the hope," not of 

 subjugating matter, but "in the hope of 



