Every aspect of life may in the end be subordinated to the Good, if, that is, we understand Good in a very wide sense. Everywhere in life we seem forced, sooner or later, to ask the question Why. And the answer to that inquiry seems everywhere to be found in the fact of contentment and absence or supression of unrest. We may appeal from one thing to another thing, but it is to this aspect of things, and it is to things as more or less possessing this aspect, that we are brought at last. And we are led to conclude that, so far as anything in the above sense is good, there is nothing else in the world which can pretend to stand above it.

The claim of reason and truth to be an exception here will not hold. For, if you ask what is truth, you are led to answer that it is that which satisfies the intellect. The contradictory and the meaningless fail to be true because in a certain way they do not satisfy. They produce a special kind of uneasiness and unrest; and that on the other side which alters this unrest into an answering contentment, is truth. It is truth, we may say, where the intellect has found its good.

Whatever a man is engaged in, whatever he feels or does or apprehends or pursues, this, so far as it satisfies him, is good in itself. It possesses what you may call, if you please, the ultimate quality of goodness. So far as anything satisfies, there is no possible appeal beyond it, and nothing has any rational claim against that which in itself is fully satisfied. With regard to philosophy, for example, it is not an old saying that it must presuppose the will to think, and that if any one is ready to contradict himself, philosophy can have no concern with him.

All thinking, in brief, rests on the agreement, tacit or expressed, to accept a certain test. It consists, in other words, in the pursuit of one kind of satisfaction, and its arguments appeal to no one except so far as he is engaged in this pursuit. And, as in philosophy, so everywhere throughout life the same principle holds. Whether it is an affair of mere enjoyment and liking, or a matter of moral and religious conviction and preference, or again of aesthetic perception and taste, throughout these differences we find everywhere in one point the same thing. So long and so far as that which occupies you is able to give you rest and contentment, that thing, whatever it is, has goodness. And there is nothing which from the outside has against this thing any claim upon you. So long as remaining there, wherever you are, you find yourself satisfied and at one with your own being, so far, apart from mere violence, you are secure in yourself. Here, if in the camp there is no division, the enemy will not penetrate. A man, we all know, should not be ashamed out of his reason, and he cannot rationally, we also know, be argued out of his feelings.

But on the other hand it is an old experience that nowhere is perfect good. Goodness does not really reside where perhaps we tend first to place it. There is nothing, in other words, in life which, taken in and by itself, completely satisfies. Our life has several main aspects, and, even within each aspect, we are led for ever in some point to desire something better and beyond. And we find in the end that no one aspect by itself can have goodness and by unmixed good. Everything in life is imperfect and seeks beyond itself an absolute fulfillment of itself. And thus everything in life, we may say in the end, is subordinate, and subordinate to the Good.

We have been led in the above reflection to a twofold result. On the one hand every side of life, so far as it is good, is justified in itself, while on the other hand the perfect good is found in none of them. We are hence mistaken when we attempt to set up any one aspect of our nature as supreme, and to regard the other aspects merely as conducive and as subject to its rule. And it is worth while perhaps to deal at some length with this error.

The Good, we agreed, was satisfaction; and satisfaction, wherever found, we agreed was, so far, the Good. But if any one goes on to urge, 'Well then, here is satisfaction; I have, for instance, found it here in my practical activity. And therefore this is the supreme good to which all else is subordinate,' we cannot accept this. Such an argument would illustrate the error we have mentioned. For, in the first place, what has been found is certainly not altogether and completely good. And in the second place, beyond this, there certainly are other aspects of life, where satisfaction and the Good are no less to be found. The perfect Good resides in each, but in each it exists imperfectly, and none therefore is supreme. On the one hand we can experience and feel our nature as a whole, and, as against this whole, we can realize the inadequacy of any one side of life. And, because this is so, we cannot identify our whole being with one of its aspects, and take everything else as subject to a one-sided supremacy. On this point the verdict of those who know most of life has been passed long ago, and, later or sooner, this finding must at some time have come home to us as true. We can feel that life has failed if it is all inactive pleasure or contemplation, or if it consists solely in moral struggle or religious emotion, or again in mere labor or in any activity without rest and enjoyment. We can be sure that our truth is not the full possession of reality, we can know that there are ends beyond aesthetic achievement and joy, and something again of value beyond life in society and in the family. Such things, we feel, are good, but there is not one of them which includes all the rest. There is none of them which possesses unqualified goodness, and hence there is not one of them to which all the others can be subject.

I will go on from this to consider briefly the various aspects of life, and to show the imperfection inherent in each.

(a) If first we take pleasure, we are impressed at once by its claim to be the Good. From whatever source it comes, so long and so far as it is intense and pure, it seems to give us a sense of absolute reality. But on the other side, apart from any doubt as to pleasure's purity, it is the commonest experience that life cannot be taken as included in one moment, or comprised within a single feeling. And, again, mere pleasure is an abstraction which we make from what is pleasant. Hence we seem unable in the end to say anything about pleasure, unless the pleasant, unless, that is, other things are brought into the account. And it seems impossible to show either that, or how, these other things are really dependent on and subject to pleasure. And if any one replies that he for his part has chosen so to take them, that is no proof, I apprehend, that his choice need be considered. We are forced in reason to distinguish between pleasure and that which is pleasant, and, so far as I see, we cannot in reason make the second of these to be subject to the first. We may put it otherwise by saying that, where pleasure exists, it is the whole man who feels the pleasure, the whole man with all his practical and other activities and the complete range of his emotions. The Hedonist puts on one side this rich complexity, and on the other side he puts pleasure by itself, and he tells us that the entirety of the first exists for the sake of the second, and that nothing in the world excepting pleasure is good at all. But this assertion, unreasonable and arbitrary in itself, would appear to lead in the end to a further consequence. For if everything, as we have seen, in the end is subject to the Good, the Good (it seems to follow) must be the one and supreme Reality, and there will therefore be in the end nothing real but pleasure.

But to any such consequence the ordinary Hedonist is blind. He has not seen that, in denying value to all other aspects of life, he is from the first in collision with common sense, and he does not understand that to make the whole of life subordinate to pleasure as the Good, results in the end in a position which is incapable of defense.

(b) In practical activity, to take that next, a man may feel that certainly here at last is both goodness and reality. But the attempt to take practice in itself and by itself as good, must lead us once more to an untenable consequence. Practice clearly is the alteration of existence by me, and this alteration, taken by itself, is an abstraction which, I suppose, no one could desire. To make the Good consist in mere doing, or in the bare quantity of mere doing, independent of and without regard to any quality in what is done, or to anything which accompanies the doing, is a position which, when understood, can hardly be maintained. Life, I presume, we all feel to be in some sense a qualitative whole, and we therefore cannot subordinate life to the aspect of bare alteration of existence.

There is again inherent in practice a well-known inconsistency. Practice I take to imply and to depend on an unrealized idea. It contains the idea of a 'to be' and a 'not yet', a something which has to be carried out in fact, but which, as soon as it is carried out, has ceased forthwith to be practical. Practice is the perpetual undoing of the condition which is implied in its own existence, and it cannot therefore offer by itself a satisfaction which is ultimate. The inconsistency is plainly visible from the side of the idea. The idea, since it is taken as a 'not here', does not quality 'my world', but on the other hand, since after all an idea qualifies something, the idea is real in a world which is other mine. Either then there is a world outside practice, and practice does not cover the whole of things, or on the other side practice is somehow a passage and a transportation between two worlds which seem to have no real unity. This difficulty is brought out in a striking form by the postulate made in religion, in any religion, that is, which is not imperfect. The Good, which in religion is the complete good and the supreme Reality, must be carried out in practice, and yet, cannot in religion be taken as unreal or as merely real elsewhere; for, if so, the Good would be no longer supreme. The Good therefore must be taken by faith as already real here. But, with this, it has become clear that, while practice consists in alteration, the alteration which it makes does not, as such, qualify the reality. In other words, if you regard the Good as entire or supreme, the Good ceases before your eyes to be merely practical. It is idle here to reply that a Good, however inconsistent with itself, may after all be complete if it satisfies me fully. For internal inconsistency is sure by the nature of things to work out into practical discrepancy and dissatisfaction. And that which really satisfies in the inconsistent process, so far as it satisfies me, is not the mere process. It is the realization of ends which, while entering into the process, are also above and beyond it.

(c) And to seek in the beautiful for perfect or unqualified good leads once more to disappointment. A man may feel assured that, in one form or in many, beauty, as he would say, is all the world to him. And yet it is too plain that all the world, if so, is but a part of the reality. The beautiful, even when attained, is not all beauty, and again there is toil and anxiety in the pursuit, and the pursuit may and even must entail more or less of disappointment. And, if beside beauty there is no other end and joy in life - and other ends and other joys there surely must be - there is at least together with beauty more or less of ugliness and of care and pain in existence. In short there undeniably are things which are not beautiful, and life has aspects which are not beautiful and cannot become so. There is perhaps nothing which cannot be made beautiful in art, and in the artistic vision which abstracts from the crude whole which it perceives. But in any case the art and the vision, even if perfect themselves, must leave something outside, and there are elements which refuse persistently to own their supremacy. It is only in 'some world far from our' that the consummation is reached, and 'music and moonlight and feeling are one'. And the lover of beauty, like the lover of morality, is condemned to fall back on faith. To him the whole after all, if we could see it, is certainly beautiful. But since on the other hand to be beautiful is to be an object for some sense, some sense which is other than that which it perceives, this all-inclusive and ideal beauty could nowhere be realized. Or, if it is at once real and supreme, it has ceased forthwith to be merely beautiful.

(d) With regard to intellect and the intelligible world we do not need many words. Science it its widest sense is a pursuit, and it never becomes wholly an attained object. It is but one side of life which is entangled with other side, and again, as a pursuit, it has a practical aspect, and it therefore itself is burdened with the inconsistency of practice. In any case, its object, even so far as that is attained, is the world of mere truth, and does not include all reality. To understand, as it is given to us, or given to any one, to understand, is not wholly to possess even in apprehension, and still less is it the same as to enjoy and to do.

Knowledge, taken apart from being, has no goodness or reality at all, and, further, a mere knowledge of being cannot satisfy by itself. For, if it is not to pass beyond knowledge, it is forced to leave being more or less outside. It is in short one thing to know and another thing to be, and hence our knowledge cannot satisfy even itself, and much less the whole man.

For faith it is true once again that complete knowledge is realized. What is sought can be found, and it is itself waiting there to be found. But, with this, since the pursuit, as a pursuit, has lost ultimate reality, and since it is in the pursuit that philosophy lives, with such an end there is also an end of mere philosophy.

(e) When we dismiss these abstractions we may be led finally to place our ultimate good in some higher totality of life. In the love and friendship between individuals, and in the social union which we find in the family and in wider wholes, we may claim to have reached at last the concrete and all-inclusive good. But, though in this position there is much truth, it seems impossible to accept it as final. For, if we judge by what we can perceive, the individual members, in whatever high unity, are more or less the sport of change and accident. And the whole, in which they are united, has itself the defects of finitude. Its existence seems more or less precarious and subject to chance, and on the other side its inward being more or less suffers from narrowness. When you consider even our human aspiration in its breadth and in its intimacy, it is difficult to set this down as owned entirely be any common life that we know. And it is hard to see how its satisfaction could be merely the fulfillment of any known higher unity. And hence our common life and our supreme good escapes once more to take its place in an invisible world. It is in some city of God, in some eternal church, that we find the real goodness which owns and satisfies our most inward desire. But on the other side such a reality exists only for faith. This does not mean that we cannot know at all the supreme good and reality. It means that we are ignorant as to the variety of those forms of finite soul which may make part of its life, and it means that in the end we do not know how they, together with all their inward and outer diversities, reach harmony with it. I am therefore forced to deny that the chief good is merely social. Or, from the other side, if I take the Good as the extension of any common life that I know, I am driven to admit that the extension if only for faith. And I do not know, at the point there the desired consummation is reached, what will, at that point, have become of the starting-place. I am ignorant, in other words, as to how far the individuals themselves may have been essentially modified and transformed.


We have seen that every aspect of life had goodness and realizes the Good, and we have seen, on the other hand, that no one aspect has goodness by itself and that none is supreme. The various sides of our nature appear to be connected, and more or less this connection seems not to be within our grasp. And hence the main aspects of our being must be allowed, each for itself, to have a relative independence. If I could think that I understood our essence, throughout and from the bottom upwards, I might conceivably follow those who judge otherwise here. But for me, as I am, every aspect within its own realm is in a certain sense supreme, and is justified in resisting dictation from without. I do not, however, propose to develop this main result except in reference to philosophy.

The supremacy of philosophy within its own field might be assailed from various sides, but I shall confine myself here to the attack made on behalf of morality and religion. The claim of practice, it may be said, will apply to the whole of life, and must hold good therefore in the case of philosophy. But this claim, we must reply, though it is well founded and though it covers the whole of life, is subject to a very serious limitation. Wherever we have to do with non-practical activity or enjoyment, the regulation of this by practice must be external. Morality, that is, can dictate to me within what limits I am, for instance, to pursue art or philosophy, but within those limits it cannot dictate to me the nature of the pursuit. Religion and morality, we may say, are so far in no better position than are choice and caprice. You may choose or not choose to philosophize or to paint, but you certainly cannot altogether paint or philosophize as you choose. Whether and how far you will do these things, you may from the outside determine according to what you moral. But it is only from the inside that you are able to learn the right method of doing them, and that method is independent of anything which may count as right outside. My will and my conscience can in short no more tell me how I ought to pursue truth, than they can show me how to ride a horse or to play on a piano.

It is difficult for morality, and it is still more difficult for religion, to recognize its own limits with regard to art or philosophy. I can enter here no further on this matter than to express my opinion that to invade the region of philosophy is contrary to the interest of a sound of a sound morality or religion. Any such invasion is likely to lead to a disastrous conflict within our nature. The independent pursuit of beauty and truth feels its own sufficient justification; and, if it is forced into a collision with duty and goodness, there may be a revolt and a rejection of goodness and duty. And we have seen that morality and religion are too incomplete, and too much weakened by internal defect, not to suffer when such a contest has been provoked.

Philosophy aims at intellectual satisfaction, in other words at ultimate truth. It seeks to gain possession of Reality, but only in an ideal form. And hence it is the realization of but one side of our being. Now among the various aspects of our nature we have seen that not one is supreme, but that each within its own limits has a relative supremacy. And hence you cannot carry over conclusions and results from morality or religion which, as admitted results, are to be received and accepted by philosophy. These results for philosophy can be no more than material. It will recognize them as it has to recognize every species of fact, but to judge with regard to final truth belongs to itself alone. Certainly I agree that if philosophy were to contradict either morality or religion, these, or either of them, would be fully justified in refusing to give way. In such a case we should have a conflict where there is right on both sides. But I do not think, myself, that a true philosophy will conflict with a sound morality or religion. In my opinion a true philosophy certainly does not contradict the postulates required for conduct. It will or it may understand them otherwise - as to this I do not doubt - but I cannot admit that to understand otherwise is necessarily to deny. It is surely possible to take a view as to the principle on which a man acts, a view with which he would not agree, and yet neither really to contradict him nor in action to dissociate oneself from him. So much seems clear; but whether on the other hand a true philosophy will be able to guarantee and to justify the postulates of conduct, is another question altogether. What I desire to insist on here is that neither a different understanding, nor even a failure to justify, need amount to anything like a real contradiction. If a man is assured on the part of philosophy that his religious belief is false, he is warranted, at least formally, in replying that this is so much the worse for philosophy. But the position becomes different when, without any such assurance, and perhaps even against a contrary assurance, a man insists that some philosophy contradicts his moral or religious belief. He may doubtless here be right, but, if he is right, it is because he himself, so far, is the better philosopher. He in any case has carried the question away from practice into the realm of theory, and has so far left the limits within which theory could have no hold against him. There are two questions in short which it is common but most dangerous to confound. The first asks about the sense of a doctrine as a working belief, while the second investigates the ultimate meaning and theoretical guarantee of that doctrine. The second inquires into the position of something in the universe at large, while the first asks merely how it stands to my heart and conscience.

In philosophy we must not seek for an absolute satisfaction. Philosophy at its best is but an understanding of its object, and it is not an experience in which that object is contained wholly and possessed. It is the exercise and enjoyment, in other words, of but one side of our nature. I do not forget that philosophy has often been made into a religion. From time to time it has been taken as the one thing needful, as the end and rule of our lives, and as all the world to its worshippers. But the same thing, we must remember, would be true again of art and perhaps of other pursuits. It must be an unhappy world where a man can say that, if he had no philosophy, he would be left destitute of practical belief. And the philosophy that is led to take up such a burden must be weighted in its course, and tempted perpetually to lose sight of its main end. A true philosophy cannot justify its own apotheosis. Nay, from the other side the metaphysician might lament his own destiny. His pursuit condemns him, he may complain, himself to herd with unreal essences and to live with unreal essences and to live an outcast from life. It is three times more blessed, he may well repeat, to be than to think. But in such a mood the man would so far fall away from philosophy. A true philosophy must accept and must justify every side of human nature, including itself. Like other things it has its place in that system where at once every place and no place is supreme. The mastery of that system in thought, however far we carry it, leaves philosophy still the servant of an order which it accepts and could never have made.

Certainly from its own nature philosophy must be conversant with the highest things, and, unless it is false in itself, it must recognize these things in their proper character. And such familiarity, it is clear, must have some effect on the mind. But it is hard to anticipate in any given case the amount of this force, nor is it easy to foresee its nature and direction. Familiarity, here as elsewhere, may under some conditions lead to contempt. And it cannot, I think, be denied that even genuine philosophy may be practiced in a spirit which is immoral or irreligious. The same thing will be true once again of art and of all study of human nature either from the side of body or mind. If we take such instances as the novelist, the poet, the painter or the anthropologist, it is well known that any of them is liable to immoral inspiration. All that need be said here is that, while on the one hand every pursuit fixes its own limits, on the other hand every pursuit is by the same principle bound to sincerity and single-mindedness. No pursuit can justify a lapse from its own code of honor, or a search or a love for alien ends and effects. And thus an immoral spirit in the philosopher is, I presume, certain, unless kept in check, more or less to injure his philosophy. But from the other side the same thing holds of an unusual gift of conscientious or religious feeling. Unless such a gift is controlled and regulated, it may more or less injure or even ruin the work of the philosopher or artist.

What I have been trying to say comes perhaps briefly to this. Philosophy like other things has a business of its own, and like other things it is bound, and it must be allowed, to go about its own business in its own way. Except within its own limits it claims no supremacy, and, unless outside its own limits, it cannot and it must not accept any dictation. Everything to philosophy is a consideration, in the sense that everything has a claim and a right to be considered. But how it is to be considered is the affair of philosophy alone, and here no external consideration can be given even the smallest hearing.

I will go on from this to add another preliminary remark. Philosophy demands, and in the end it rests on, what may fairly be termed faith. It has, we may say, in a sense to presuppose its conclusion in order to prove it. It tacitly assumes something in general to be true in order to carry this general truth out in detail. And its conclusion, further, is not, and never could be, carried out in detail actually and completely. Thus philosophy stops short of a goal which it takes nevertheless to be somehow reached. And, if philosophy has to admit that in the end it fails to see and to understand exactly how this goal is attained, the end of philosophy is realized outside philosophy and, in a sense, only for faith. The meaning and justification of this remark I will not discuss further here, and we may content ourselves with a more evident aspect of the same truth. Philosophy, we saw, was a search, a search for that which in the end is true. And we observed that, so far as a man stands outside of this pursuit, it cannot in the end justify its existence against him. He may decline, to some extent at least, to enter into the pursuit, and the decision, at least to some extent, lies with his own choice or caprice. How far in the end it is possible actually so to remain outside, I shall not offer to discuss, though on this point self-deception, it is clear, is both easy and common. I will content myself with stating the doctrine, which I have to urge, in a hypothetical form. A man may enter on the pursuit of truth, or he may abstain from this pursuit; but, if he enters on it and so far as he enters on it, he commits himself inevitably to a tacit assumption.

The want of an object, and, still more, the search for an object, imply in a certain sense the knowledge of that object. If a man supposed that he never could tell when possession is or is not gained, he surely never would pursue. In and by the pursuit he commits himself to the opposite assumption, and that assumption must rest on a possession which to some extent and in some sense is there. Naturally I do not mean that at the start the philosopher has propositions which he lays down in advance. I mean that his action has no sense unless he does assume, or, if asked, would assume, that, when he has got propositions, he is able to judge of them, and can then tell whether they do or do not put him in ideal possession of reality. Negation, we may remind ourselves, must presuppose and always must rest on a positive ground.

Hence the only skepticism in philosophy which is rational must confine itself to the denial that truth so far and actually has been reached. What is ordinarily called philosophical skepticism is on the other hand an uncritical and suicidal dogmatism. For it undertakes to know and to judge as to possible knowledge, while really itself assuming the knowledge which it seeks to deny and to disprove. This procedure is far too easy and too plausible ever to go out of fashion, though in principle it has now long ago been exploded. But, in speaking of philosophical skepticism, we must remember always that this is a different thing from mere skepticism about philosophy. The latter skepticism, however rational it may be, stands outside of philosophy itself. It addresses itself, we may say, and it appeals to the human person, while for the philosopher, so far as he has engaged himself in his special pursuit, it has no relevant word.


Passing to another point I would end this chapter by remarking on at least one advantage possessed by philosophy. We should all agree that, except within limits, doubt is an evil; and one remedy against doubt, we know, consists in its extrusion. This is the way in which, in our lives, doubt is banished or controlled, and, while it is a necessary way, in principle it is not satisfactory. The doubt in itself and in its root may remain unattacked, and all that perhaps has happened is that the ground has been invaded and overgrown by something else. Certainly this counter-occupation may in the end destroy the doubt through inanition. On the other hand, being temporary, it itself may die down, and the doubt, undestroyed in its root, may appear as before. But in philosophy, so far as philosophy succeeds, the case is otherwise. The doubt here is not smothered or expelled but itself is assimilated and used up. It becomes an element in the living process of that which is above doubt, and hence its own development is the end of itself in its original character. And even if philosophy fails partially, as it may fail, yet still it furnishes, I think, something of a remedy against doubt. A skepticism that has tried to be thorough tends, as we may say, to weaken doubt by spreading it and making it more general. The doubt, if really it is intellectual and not a mere disease of the will, loses strength and loses terror by losing its contrast. By widening and extension it may have become so attenuated and so feeble as in a particular application to have no working force. But the reader may feel that I have indulged myself now too long in preliminary reflections.