And what is it in this speculative philosophy which creates this distrust? It is its attempt to regard the universe as self-explanatory. Here, even at the present time, is one of the fundamental propositions of most philosophizing, against which no argument may be permitted. It seems an essential assumption of philosophy; since if other ways of explanation of the universe were superadded, philosophy as an independent science would seem to be superfluous. Is it certain, however, that the subordination of philosophy thus apprehended would be, after all, a great misfortune? What the human mind is concerned about is not the perpetuation of philosophy as a science, but the discovery of some meaning in life itself, its destiny, its past and its future; and one is quite justified in losing interest in any science which does not in the end contribute to the interpretation and amelioration of human life. We have a right to demand of philosophy that she contribute to this end, and that she shall speak also with some degree of simplicity of language, dismissing the attempt to satisfy with empty and unintelligible phrases the hunger of the soul for fundamental truth. And yet, from the time of Plato to that of Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, the making of phrases has been the special business of philosophy. It has created a language of its own, which separates it as by an impenetrable hedge from the region of men’s common talk; and when one translates such language into the familiar speech of his own time, where words have a definite meaning, it is as though he withdrew from a veiled goddess the disguise which gave her all her power and dignity. The fact is that abstract philosophy has never explained to any satisfaction either the existence or the development of the world; still less has philosophy brought into unity these two conceptions, and interpreted them through a single cause. On the contrary, the history of philosophy has been a history of words, conveying no real interpretation, and it would seem as if in the thousands of years of philosophic speculation either some interpretation should have been attained or that there should at last be heard the confession that philosophy can throw no further light on these fundamental facts. Here, it would seem, we should reach the end of philosophy, and should assume that the first cause of things is unknowable.