Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/33

8 unconquerable naïveté of our desires, of our imperfections, and even of our virtues. Philosophy does not create men, but reflectively considers their life. And man is as full of mystery as is the rest of nature, and is known to our experience as a mere fragment of a whole whose inmost unity is far beyond the reach of our present form of consciousness. Psychology, viewed as one of the special sciences, studies man; and so also do all the human branches of inquiry, — political science, economics, anthropology. Philosophy cannot predetermine the course and the outcome of any of these sciences. The Theory of Being is not based upon our knowledge of any such special regions of experience, but is due to a thoroughgoing reflection upon the presuppositions of all experience. In its turn the Theory of Being teaches us neither anthropology nor psychology, neither economics nor politics. Into such regions the philosopher, as philosopher, enters like any other layman, to learn the facts if he desires to know them, but not as one endowed with any magic power of divination.

And yet, just as the devout are required by their religious faith to see God’s hand in whatever happens, and to view their life as his constant revelation of his will, although they can work no miracles, and cannot tell what a day shall bring forth; just so our philosophy, if indeed our former Theory of Being was sound, has its strength in the general interpretation of the facts, when once they have been found. The Theory of Being requires us to view every fact of nature, and of man’s life, as a fragmentary glimpse of the Absolute life, as a revelation, however mysterious and to us men now in