Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/28

Rh think or not think the truth; but you cannot think the truth without loving it; and the dreariness which men often impute to Metaphysics, is merely the dreariness of not understanding the subject, — a sort of dreariness for which indeed there is no help except learning to understand. In fact, nobody can ever regret seeing ultimate truth. That we shall hereafter find to be, so to speak, one of the immediate implications of our very definition of Being. When people complain of philosophy as a dreary enterprise, they are then merely complaining of their own lack of philosophical insight. The lover of philosophy can only offer them his sincerest agreement, and sympathy, so far as concerns the ground of their own complaint. He too shares their complaint, for he is human, and finds his own unwisdom dreary. But he is at least looking lovingly toward yonder shining light, while they walk wearily with their backs to the Celestial City.

As to the supposed opposition between the methods of philosophy and those of the special sciences of experience, — it exists, but it does not mean any real opposition of spirit. Here are two ways of getting insight, not two opposed creeds. The very wealth and the growth of modern empirical research furnish especially strong reasons for supposing that the time is near when the central problems of the Theory of Being shall be ready for restatement. Our life does not grow long and healthily in one region, without being ready for new growth in other regions. The indirect influence of special science upon philosophy is sure, but does not always mean a logical dependence of philosophy upon the empirical results of science. Just so, pure mathe-