Page:Knowing and acting.djvu/27

 any third pretender to stand within the life or of spirit on an equal footing with those two: it condemns as unphilosophical, i.e. false, all trichotomies of spiritual unity, and all subdivisions of it which do not fall within this primordial division.

In the second place, it excludes as untrue all supposed hybrids or confusions of those two: such are mere illusions and unrealities.

In the third place, it forbids the reduction of either to the other, or of the whole which is the unity of both, to one only. It is equally opposed to 'Intellectualism' and to whatever is its diametrical opponent ('Voluntarism').

Lastly, it sets aside the whole controversy concerning the relative value of the Intellect and the Will. It pronounces for the autonomy of the one and the other.

All the controversies which we thus set aside arise only when we lose hold upon our vision of this their unity or duality which is life and being, and especially our life and being. From the clear upper ether of Philosophy we return to the misty twilight of the cave, where all contours lose their sharpness of outline and all shapes dislimn and melt into one another, to the region of hasty generalizations, careless abstractions, working compromises. Here we may indeed put such questions as that concerning the primacy of the Will over the Intellect or of the Intellect over the Will, the superiority of Goodness to Truth or of Truth to Goodness, or ask whether Action be for the sake of Knowledge, or Knowledge for the sake of Action; but no conclusive or satisfactory answer can be found. Merely to word our vision in language appropriate to this region is to do it injustice and expose it to misrepresentation, yet at such risk the answer to the last question may be thus formulated: Knowledge is for