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Too many traveling men waste their months of leisure. Like Thomas Moore, in their older days they will wail: "Thus many, like me, who in youth should have tasted The fountain that flows by philosophy's shrine, Their time with the flowers on its margin have wasted And left their light urns all as empty as mine."
To become a mandarin one must have passed a series of competitive examinations on these very subjects, and competition in this impersonal field is most keen. For while popular enthusiasm for philosophy for philosophy's sake might, among any people, eventually show symptoms of fatigue, it is not likely to flag where the outcome of it is so substantial.
"But it is not possible to have a statesman as clear in his logic as Emerson, though dealing with coarser material than philosophy's. Surely there is a chance now for some mind of deep integrity, of real spirituality, to do something for this chaotic, vulgar mass of humanity that is grabbing, feeding, trying to foment war with Mexico. I am sure of it.
Well then, Philosophy has made a considerable change for the better in most of them; at the worst, their respect for the cloth is some check on their misdeeds. At the same time not to conceal anything you will find villains amongst them; and you will find some who are neither quite philosophers nor quite knaves. The fact is, Philosophy's dyeing process is still going on.
"Thus many like me, who in youth should have tasted The fountain that runs by Philosophy's shrine, Their time with the flowers on the margin have wasted, And left their light urns all as empty as mine." But Hercules, as some say, went onward to Colchis by land, and there performed many mighty deeds, and wiped away the stain of cowardice which might have clung to him.
That truly great man "simply fell in love" with his brilliant pupil, and gave him of his best. "Philosophy's the chap for me," said an eminent man on a momentous occasion. "If a parent asks a question in the classical, commercial, or mathematical-line, says I gravely, 'Why, sir, in the first place, are you a philosopher? 'No, Mr.
Whereas a single flight of brains will reach and embrace her; give you the savour of Truth, the right use of the senses, Reality's infinite sweetness; for these things are in philosophy; and the fiction which is the summary of actual Life, the within and without of us, is, prose or verse, plodding or soaring, philosophy's elect handmaiden.
Let a controversy begin in a smoking-room anywhere, about free-will or God's omniscience, or good and evil, and see how everyone in the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all most vitally, and philosophy's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense of subtlety and ingenuity.
Philosophy's choice lies between such patent truisms as that there can be no force but living force, no vis but vis vivida, no vis inertiæ otherwise than metaphorically, and such blatant falsisms as that inertness and exertion may coincide, unintelligence generate intelligence, agency of whatsoever sort produce, merely by its own act, and merely out of its own essence, other agency capable of higher action than its own.
But they want to get where they'll not have to work. Philosophy's a lazy man's job." "There you go again! A clear case of the scientific arrogance." "No, they amuse me; that's all. 'I had a great deal of science in my undergraduate work, Mr. Ross said, 'but I feel now that I want to go into the larger field of philosophy."
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