somewhat private and personal point of view. This first necessary limitation of the philosopher’s work makes his system less absolute, less truthful, less final than he had meant it to be. Another humanity will have a new faith, a new temperament, and in so far will need a new philosophy. Only the final and absolute humanity, only the ultimate and perfect civilization, would possess, were such a civilization possible on earth, the final and absolute philosophy. But this limitation, as we have seen, while it dooms a philosopher to one kind of defeat, doesn’t deprive his work of worth. His philosophy is capable of becoming and remaining just as permanently significant as is his civilization and its temperament; his reflective work will enter into future thought in just the same fashion as the deeper passions of his age will beget the spirits ual temper of those who are to come after.
There remains as second limitation, so we have seen, the always seemingly unfruitful critical attitude of the philosopher. He speculates, but does not prophesy; he criticises, but does not create. Yet this limitation he shares with all theory, with all insight; and the limitation is itself only partial and in great measure illusory. Criticism means self-consciousness, and self-consciousness means renewed activity on a higher plane. The reflective play of one age becomes the passion of another. Plato creates Utopias, and the Christian faith of Europe afterwards gives them meaning. Contemplation gives birth to future conduct, and so the philosopher also becomes, in his own fashion, a world-builder.
IV.
But now, having said so much for the philosopher, I may venture to say yet more, that if his work is not lost in so far as it enters into the life of the humanity which comes after him, there is yet another and a deeper sense in which his labor is not in vain. For truth is once for
