No. 2.]
PHILOSOPHY AS HANDMAID OF SOCIETY.
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mines in particular the very course which the development of his thought may take.[1]
Horace C. Longwell.
Princeton University.
- ↑ Application of the foregoing view to the history of philosophy may be found very helpful. Thus, for example, the recurring puzzle of the relative prominence given to Idealism, Dogmatism, and Optimism in contrast with their contraries. Or, the unwelcome reception accorded to Naturalism, Pantheism, and Mysticism. In both instances it is not a question of mere truth alone, but of truth in relation to the social order, which therefore serves as a check whatever the merits of truth may be. Or, the apparently dreary waste of repetition and the "endless chewing of the dialectical cud"; man really seeks truth inter alia only. Or, the disturbing insistence on the rights of temperament in appraising truth; there is the temperament which prizes order and system and instinctively promotes the institutional life of mankind, and there is also the temperament which values movement and freedom above all and is equally impelled to advance personal initiative, the general tendency of the one is to fix the machinery and of the other to loosen the screws, and both are necessary factors in man's search for truth while he maintains his security. Or, the conciliatory trait in great thinkers; as constructive minds they must regard the existent social order as it rests on previous construction and enables their own contributions. Or, the question of progress; the patience bred of this viewpoint prevents both an easy going optimism and an indolent pessimism, since loss must go with gain and the provisional nature of results is natural in the evolution of mankind. Above all, if one attends to the rationale of the social organism as limiting also the search for truth, he finds possible both cheerful facing of actual conditions and courageous loyalty to the ideal,—and so he may have easement of the limitations necessarily imposed on free inquiry.
