against all spot and stain "with a very fanaticism of jealous care." In short, the search for truth should have regard for naught but the truth itself.
The ideal thus expressed is attractive beyond all words, and it holds one with compelling force. Nevertheless, as the actual history of thought is heeded, the aim of the philosopher appears as an ideal after all; it is in reality one of the many expressions of optimism so essential to humanity in its development. For the fact is that other determinants besides 'the cold light of reason' have entered persistently into the philosopher's view of the world. Moreover, the very structure of society, whose safety the philosopher must regard in the end, would seem to insure the continued operation of the non-rational factors. Not alone the view of things but life also must be attended to. The man of Dumas "with pen over ear and ink-bottle for heart" is evidently too much the spectator to contribute vitally to the rounded whole of the human view of reality. A Schopenhauer might decide at first to spend his life in simple contemplation of an affair so full of risk; but mere contemplation is the greatest risk of all, and in the sequel the same Schopenhauer must formulate a philosophy which repudiated intellect for feeling and will. The fact is that man's constitution requires consigning pure reason to its proper place and forbidding its usurpation of the rôle of sole arbiter.
Illustrations are at hand abundantly once one views the history of thought from this angle; and indeed within the ranks of those professedly devoted to reason alone. Thus, in the first bloom of the life of reason, the Greek philosophers were able to hold in check the non-rational factors for a brief period at best. For even in the Greek paradise of free inquiry the serpent's head appeared, issuing in their passion for polis (city-state). With all their genius for exploiting reality by the pure light of reason they were forever under the restraint of a profound regard for the state, and the puzzling Puritanism of Plato may be taken as perhaps the best Greek expression of this devoted concern for social welfare.[1] With the rapidly changing background of events
- ↑ See the Republic (Books II, III, VI, X) in particular. But a similar restriction of the free movement of the mind is a recurrent note in Plato, and the Laws is a
