Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/5



As long as an instrument fits into what we are doing, or works well, there is commonly no interest in examining it. So with living itself. Until our lives are confronted with difficulties, and run defectively, there is no need and no motive for reflecting upon life, or upon the conditions under which its satisfactory going-on depends. But when an interest in such reflection is awakened, especially when such reflection is concerned with the most general aspects and conditions of life, there is generated the study of philosophy, the study of life and its environment, of life as a part of the world-whole.

In approaching the study of the world-whole the parts of the world and the relationship of these parts to one another are more or less vaguely conceived; the world seems to be but an aggregate of the ordinary objects of perception, and the relations of these objects or parts to one another are as lacking in clearness as are the parts of a piano, an automobile, or of any other instrument to one who is approaching the study of one of them for the first time.

Clear ideas of one of these wholes or of any of its parts are gained only as we deal with them mentally or overtly and observe how they affect one another. In the degree in which these ideas or meanings are thus cleared up, especially as it is observed how things work under definite conditions imposed by those who are studying them, and as these ideas are so organized as to serve as a means for grouping them in effective relations to one another, that system of ideas becomes a science. Just so, as convenient parts of the world-whole are discovered and their meanings become understood and organized, there is developed the science of philosophy.

The sole motive for thus forming ideas and sciences is more satisfactory life through a better adjustment to or control of the various things we set about to study. The coming into clearness of any object whatever, the awareness of which enters into experience, is dependent upon our interests.