This young
man, who was a graduate of some Western college, began by saying
that he had always taken for granted that when you entered a
philosophic class-room you had to open relations with a universe
entirely distinct from the one you left behind you in the street.
The two were supposed, he said, to have so little to do with each
other, that you could not possibly occupy your mind with them at the
same time. The world of concrete personal experiences to which the
street belongs is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy,
painful and perplexed. The world to which your philosophy-professor
introduces you is simple, clean and noble. The contradictions of
real life are absent from it. Its architecture is classic.
Principles of reason trace its outlines, logical necessities cement
its parts. Purity and dignity are what it most expresses. It is a
kind of marble temple shining on a hill.
In point of fact it is far less an account of this actual world than
a clear addition built upon it, a classic sanctuary in which the
rationalist fancy may take refuge from the intolerably confused and
gothic character which mere facts present. It is no EXPLANATION of
our concrete universe, it is another thing altogether, a substitute
for it, a remedy, a way of escape.
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