Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/27

2 such an one will often say, “not at all what I hoped to learn. I have learned that problems are intricate, and that truth is far away. I have learned how little the wise men see, and so I am fain to turn back again to life, that I may there find how much the good men do. The philosophers do not help me as they promised. Action is more enlightening than speculation. I will work while it is called the day, but I will not try, like the philosophers, to look with naked eyes upon the sun of truth. Such researches only hinder me.”

Both this confession of too many listeners to philosophical discourses, and the resulting question to which I have just referred, are to nobody more familiar, I have said, than to the student of philosophy himself. Nobody, in fact, ought to know better than he does the limitations of mere speculation. Does he not often feel them bitterly himself? Is not the imperfection of what he would like to call his wisdom, brought home to him at every moment when he has his own practical problems to solve? But a confession of weakness is not a cry of despair. Part of the business of life, and no small part of it, is to learn to live with our inevitable defects, and to make the best of them. 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. The way of reflection is long. The forest of our common human ignorance is dark and tangled. Happy indeed are those who are content to live and to work only in regions where the practical labors of civilization have cleared the land, and where the task of life is to