a vigorous plea for the presumption which such achievements create, namely, that, the possibilities of intellectual progress in this field are by no means exhausted; that new experiences are certain to arise, but not a new order of experience; that the intellectual organization of knowledge can never give place to the particular and isolated glimpses of truth which a mystical intuition may be capable of apprehending, but that such glimpses of the truth must themselves become the possession of the intellect, or they will prove evanescent and illusive.
It is the peculiar duty and privilege of philosophy, moreover, to exalt the prerogatives of intellect. Let it not be thought that the intellect is compelled to go into bankruptcy, or that we who are its followers are called upon to declare the repudiation of its obligations. I do not for a moment believe that science and philosophy have been for ages on the wrong road, or that the treasures of the past are not to be richly conserved in the progress of the future. It is possible that the intellect may be but a single and indeed a very insignificant phase of "a force far more vast and profound," as Bergson declares. It is an interesting conjecture, one to play with in an idle mood of speculative fancy, but it can never be a working hypothesis, nor a truth to build or to rest upon, or to allure us to turn aside from the main course of intellectual evolution in order to follow its uncertain light into unknown and possibly barren fields. Knowledge may never comprehend life in its fullness; for knowledge is the interpretation of life and not its duplication. On the other hand, that intuition which is 'life itself' can for that very reason never be knowledge.
| John Grier Hibben. |
| PrincetonUniversity.. |
