Page:Philosophical Review Volume 26.djvu/195

No. 2.] the history of thought may be viewed as the story of the loosening of the screws of the machinery, accompanied by loss and gain, as bond after bond has been removed. But the bond par excellence remains, and it always must remain, namely, the automatic functioning of the massive underswell, which conditions all of man's activities, including his reflection. The man-to-man aspect of human evolution must endure, throughout all his development, in the common background of institutional life as the foundation of his corporate existence. However man may aspire to free and wholly untrammeled operation of pure reason, however clear his mind may become in its disinterested effort to seek simple truth alone, and however far he may progress in realizing his ideal of search, he can never go so far as to threaten seriously this underlying condition of thought itself. In short, he must keep always an eye to the social welfare as crystallized in the institutional life of humanity.

This then is the meaning of "Philosophy as Handmaid of Society"; the limitations imposed on philosophy inevitably by the structure of society. The medieval formulation of this notion is familiar enough, though it is apt to be interpreted out of its setting. A culture concerned predominantly with transcendental religion must employ the theocratic conception of the state; and for this conception, with the attendant doctrine of revelation, their formulation is deservedly classic. But whether it be medieval Church or modern State, the thing is at bottom the same; namely, regard for the welfare of society in all search for truth. The medieval inquirer was perfectly conscious of the constraint of this bond; and he registered his protest in long puzzling over the problem,—even long after the doctrine of a twofold truth had been disclosed as a means for pursuing inquiry freely while still remaining loyal to tradition. When in time posterity came to feel an emancipation so complete as to renounce deliberately all bonds of theology, the name was changed but the substance remained. For out of the literature of Humanism, Reformation, New Science, Enlightenment, and Later Science, it is clear that the same bond is operative in altered form.

Perhaps the best illustration of this continued operation may