"Statt der lebendigen Natur," we say, "da Gott die Menschen schuf
hinein"--that nebulous concoction, that wooden, that straight-laced
thing, that crabbed artificiality, that musty schoolroom product,
that sick man's dream! Away with it. Away with all of them!
Impossible! Impossible!
Our work over the details of his system is indeed what gives us our
resultant impression of the philosopher, but it is on the resultant
impression itself that we react. Expertness in philosophy is
measured by the definiteness of our summarizing reactions, by the
immediate perceptive epithet with which the expert hits such complex
objects off. But great expertness is not necessary for the epithet
to come. Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of
their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a
certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy fully
to match it of the peculiar systems that he knows. They don't just
cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too pedantic, a
third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, and a
fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know
offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and
out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the universe's
name.
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