He does not understand the want in his soul while
he has been looking for some panacea for its cure till the great light
streams on him, and instead of receiving something he finds himself.
That is it. There is a power of vision latent in us, clouded by error;
the true philosophy dissipates the cloud and leaves the vision clear,
wonderful and inspiring. He who acquired that vision is impervious to
argument--it is not that he despises argument; on the contrary, he
always uses it to its full strength. But he has had awakened within him
something which the mere logician can never deduce, and that mysterious
something is the explanation of his transformed life. He was a doubter,
a falterer, a failure; he has become a believer, a fighter, a conqueror.
You miss his significance completely when you take him for a theorist.
The theorist propounds a view to which he must convert the world; the
philosopher has a rule of life to immediately put into practice. His
spirit flashes with a swiftness that can be encircled by no theory. It
is his glory to have over and above a new penetrating argument in the
mind--a new and wonderful vitality in the blood. The unbeliever, near
by, still muddled by his cold theories, will argue and debate till his
intellect is in a tangle. He fails to see that a man of intellectual
agility might frame a theory and argue it out ably, and then suddenly
turn over and with equal dexterity argue the other side.
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