But when the labor is accomplished, the mind always performs
its big summarizing act, and the system forthwith stands over
against one like a living thing, with that strange simple note of
individuality which haunts our memory, like the wraith of the man,
when a friend or enemy of ours is dead.
Not only Walt Whitman could write "who touches this book touches a
man." The books of all the great philosophers are like so many men.
Our sense of an essential personal flavor in each one of them,
typical but indescribable, is the finest fruit of our own
accomplished philosophic education. What the system pretends to be
is a picture of the great universe of God. What it is--and oh so
flagrantly!--is the revelation of how intensely odd the personal
flavor of some fellow creature is. Once reduced to these terms (and
all our philosophies get reduced to them in minds made critical by
learning) our commerce with the systems reverts to the informal, to
the instinctive human reaction of satisfaction or dislike. We grow
as peremptory in our rejection or admission, as when a person
presents himself as a candidate for our favor; our verdicts are
couched in as simple adjectives of praise or dispraise. We measure
the total character of the universe as we feel it, against the
flavor of the philosophy proffered us, and one word is enough.
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