Consolation of Philosophy

“ There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favourite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. ”

“ What is the beautiful in objects? What is the beautiful taken in itself? What are its characters and different species? What, in fine, is its first and last principle? All these questions must be treated, and, if possible, solved. Philosophy has its point of departure in psychology; but, in order to attain also its legitimate termination, it must set out from man, and reach things themselves. ”

“ It is this pursuit of consistency as against correctness which has resulted in the irrelevance of philosophy that the philosopher, unconscious of his motives and roots, or naïvely identifying, through the instrumentality of an elaborate dialectic, his instinctive and responsive valuations of existence with its categoric essences, confuses with inward autonomy and the vision of the "real." ”

“ For what act can be more vitally practical than the act by which we realise our existence as free personal beings? and what act can be attended by a more practical result than the act by which we look our passions in the face, and, in the very act of looking at them, look them down?
Now, if consciousness be an act of such mighty and practical efficiency in real life, what must not the practical might and authority of philosophy be? Philosophy is consciousness sublimed. ”

“ The inevitable defects of philosophical study are to nobody clearer than to one who, sincerely loving philosophy, devotes his life, as best he can, to seeking clearness of thought and a soul-stirring vision of the truth. ”

“ And this process of personalization or subjectivization of everything external, phenomenal, or objective, is none other than the vital process of philosophy in the contest of life against reason and of reason against life. ”

“ A philosophy, less systematic, by conforming itself to facts, carries through common sense to better results. By distinguishing between the passive phenomenon of desire and the power of freely determining self, it restores the true activity that characterizes human personality. ”

“ Is not every moral theory dependent in truth on a theory of things? Is it possible for us to make for ourselves our ideal, and only afterwards to go to the real world and to see if our ideal is realized? ”

“ This effect of civilization in reducing all our sensations to those of comfort is a somewhat alarming circumstance in the point of view we are now taking. It is necessary, for many a reason, to resist the universal application of the “Positive Philosophy,” even if we adopt and adore it as an instrument of explication. The “Positive Philosophy” commands us to forbear all speculation into the inexplicable. ”

“ It is almost incredible that men who are themselves working philosophers should pretend that any philosophy can be, or ever has been, constructed without the help of personal preference, belief, or divination. ”

“ Their general doctrine is, that God is an abstraction;—an abstraction one and infinite; force, substance, mind, intelligence, wisdom, love,—what you please; but all these abstractions still, allied to no form, and barely allowed to be or exist. Where theology commits suicide, philosophy is its unhappy ghost; a thing with no power of embodiment; haunting the world, not dwelling in it; and disturbing the business of life, without aiding to bear and lighten its real burdens. Nevertheless, philosophy contains the shells of truth, and the general principle of correspondence. ”

“ From this fact of the manifold and ever-varying dissension of the human consciousness an exposition of philosophy might not inappropriately set out, in order from this point to seek the solution of its peculiar problem, and the right road for the attainment of its end. For the problem of philosophy, as contemplated from this side, would consist in the restoration of that original, natural, and true state of the consciousness in which it was at unity and in harmony with itself. ”

“ But, as we affirmed, those who pursue philosophy rightly are especially and alone desirous to deliver it; and this is the very study of philosophers, the deliverance and separation of the soul from the body, is it not? ”

“ The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks. ”

“ Now, if this be accepted as a rough sketch of the actual course of the development of belief, what is the conclusion as to the philosopher's function? Does it go to suggest that philosophy is but a vanity and vexation of spirit, and does it reduce the philosopher to a humbler position than is sometimes claimed for him? My answer would be, in the first place, that the case against philosophy would have to be frankly admitted if the criterion sometimes tacitly suggested be the true one. ”

“ With regard, then, to the co-operation of the sophistical understanding in the formation of philosophical error, and its share and influence on the spirit and the matter of any system of untruth, it furnishes an opposition to the idealistic confusion which the absolute will produces by its predominant idea of the unconditional. ”

“ Thus, the wisdom of philosophy is set in opposition to the common sense of mankind. The first pretends to demonstrate a priori, that there can be no such thing as a material world; that sun, moon, stars, and earth, vegetable and animal bodies, are, and can be nothing else but sensations in the mind, or images of those sensations in the memory and imagination; that, like pain and joy, they can have no existence when they are not thought of. ”

“ Are not all our theories just remedies and places of escape? And, if philosophy is to be religious, how can she be anything else than a place of escape from the crassness of reality's surface? What better thing can she do than raise us out of our animal senses and show us another and a nobler home for our minds in that great framework of ideal principles subtending all reality, which the intellect divines? ”

“ Shall we then simply proclaim our own ideals as the lawgiving ones? No; for if we are true philosophers we must throw our own spontaneous ideals, even the dearest, impartially in with that total mass of ideals which are fairly to be judged. ”

“ But you conceive that we must already know what truth is, in order to recognize it, and to distinguish it from the error with which it is mixed; so that the criticism of systems almost demands a system, so that the history of philosophy is constrained to first borrow from philosophy the light which it must one day return to it with usury. ”

“ The inveterate prejudices and misunderstandings to which idealistic theories fall prey, furnish our excuse for trying to reconcile ourselves to an imperfect form of idealism as a mere postulate, before going on to set forth an absolute idealism as a demonstrable theory. ”

“ To take from ideas their objective value, to reduce them to mere subjective phenomena, to resist that internal necessity which obliges us to admit the correspondence of the soul to objects, is to destroy the very consciousness of the soul. ”

“ We cannot admit the idealism which destroys the real world; but the empiricism which annihilates the ideal order, is equally objectionable. If we cannot rise above the sensible representations, let us renounce philosophy, give up thinking, and confine ourselves to sensation. ”

“ But until we can detect the fallacies of the metaphysician, or supply the connecting link which is now wanting, we must rest in the unsatisfactory conclusion that abstract philosophy is with the necessarian, and that liberty and its ennobling consequences, moral agency, and moral responsibility, rest on the solitary basis of moral argument. ”

“ It is comparatively an easy task to exclude such facts and such expressions from our consideration, and then within closed doors to arrive at conclusions at variance with common sense. But this is not the true business of philosophy. True philosophy, meditating a far higher aim, and a far more difficult task than this, throws wide her portals to the entrance of all comers,—come disguised and unpromising as they may. ”

“ The truths scattered in different systems compose the whole truth which each of these almost always expresses on a single side. So, the systems that we have just run over and refuted deliver up to us, in some sort, divided and opposed to each other, all the essential elements of human morality. The only question is to collect them, in order to restore the entire moral phenomenon. The history of philosophy, thus understood, prepares the way for or confirms psychological analysis, as psychological analysis receives from the history of philosophy its light. ”

“ But let it be borne in mind that the end which philosophy pursues is the truth as it exists for intellect universal, and not for intellect particular—for intellect unmodified, and not for intellect modified—for intellect whether with senses like ours, or with senses totally different ”

“ But we have now won the philosophical right, and have become subject to the practical obligation, not only thus to follow out our theoretical interests, but also to show how the philosophy set forth in our earlier lectures stands related to the more immediate problems of life. ”

“ To these the many minds of a half-ripe knowledge or no knowledge at all attach themselves with exclusiveness and passion and will have it that this or the other book is alone the eternal Word of God and all others are either impostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that philosophy is the last word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are either errors or saved only by such partial trath in them as links them to the one true philosophical cult. ”

“ Thus much, as connected with our subject, will be sufficient on the difficult subject both of the freedom of the pure created spirits and also of man’s will, as regarded solely from its philosophical aspect, and without any reference to the moral theory, and solely in relation to the system of the universe. ”

“ Either those inferences which we draw from our sensations, namely, the existence of a mind, and of powers or faculties belonging to it, are prejudices of philosophy or education, mere fictions of the mind, which a wise man should throw off as he does the belief of fairies; or they are judgments of nature, judgments not got by comparing ideas, and perceiving agreements and disagreements, but immediately inspired by our constitution. ”

“ Everywhere there stands over against this ideal some critic who says: “The choice of this aim for life is an accident. I reject this boastful ideal. For where in reality is found the firm basis of fact on which the ideal is founded?” Then possibly the idealist, relaxing the rigor of his idealism, points out in the external world some real or mythical support for his ideal. ”

“ The opposition between a philosophy guided by scientific method and a philosophy dominated by religious and ethical ideas may be illustrated by two notions which are very prevalent in the works of philosophers, namely the notion of the universe, and the notion of good and evil. A philosopher is expected to tell us something about the nature of the universe as a whole, and to give grounds for either optimism or pessimism. ”

“ But the steady pressure of historical and scientific studies has made it increasingly difficult for any sane thinker to claim for any system of thinking such demonstrable validity. May we not hope that the students of the particular sciences, to whom philosophy owes so much of its enforced sanity and sane modesty, will themselves soon share freely of the philosophic spirit with regard to their own metaphysics and ethical and religious standpoints, touching the Ultimate Reality? ”

“ A wise philosophy distinguishes [74] them without separating them. Analysis demonstrates that reason precedes, and that sentiment follows. How can we love what we are ignorant of? In order to enjoy the truth, is it not necessary to know it more or less? In order to be moved by certain ideas, is it not necessary to have possessed them in some degree? ”

“ But the process by which truth is advanced is not confined to the philosopher; or perhaps we should rather say that some sort of crude philosophy is embedded even in the feeblest and earliest speculations of mankind. Our thoughts are guided by an implicit logic long before we have even a conception of logic in the abstract, or have the least thought of codifying and tabulating its formulæ. ”

“ The point at issue is whether, by so teaching, philosophy is to come into direct collision with one of man’s most universal and deeply-rooted feelings, and to produce an eternal schism—an irreconcilable discord—not only between science and faith, but even between science and life. For to unsettle life, is even the necessary result of rationalism. ”

“ This argument is founded on the purely internal phenomena, and, therefore, is valid even against the idealists, against those who take from the external world all reality, and reduce it to mere appearances, to simple phenomena of our mind. ”

“ If such, therefore, be the false representation of man which philosophy invariably and inevitably pictures forth, whenever she makes common cause with the natural sciences, we have plainly no other course left than to turn philosophy aside from following their analogy, and to guide her footsteps upon a new line and different method of inquiry. Let us, then, turn away the attention of philosophy from the facts which she does not contribute to her object; (viz. the ready-made phenomena of man) ”