Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/92

 systematic metaphysical cosmology. The Object of the lectures is to indicate those elements in our experience in terms of which such a cosmology should be constructed. The key notion, from which such construction should start, is that the energetic activity considered in physics is the emotional intensity entertained in life.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. There have been added, however, some grasp of the immensity of things, some purification of emotion by understanding. Yet there is a danger in such reflections. An immediate good is apt to be thought of in the degenerate form of a passive enjoyment. Existence is activity ever merging into the future. The aim at philosophic understanding is the aim at piercing the blindness of activity in respect to its transcendent functions.