Or if perhaps they have for a moment thought, with Nietzsche, that evolutionary science had brought to view a goal that gave heart to the pitiless struggle of life by holding before it the vision of the “far future man,” they may in the end have come to see beyond this Superman. But to have seen beyond him nothing but the super-superman is to have seen the goal vanish and the heart lose its hope. And what then? The pages on “Pragmatism” and on “Progress” may offer suggestions of an answer. They are still historical in their spirit, and like those that had gone before them mean to illustrate, not to demonstrate or affirm. They, too, would stand for moments of any thoughtful life and will have done all they were intended to do if they inform such a life with, and give it a sense of attachment to the world that has gone before and is going on ’round. But if one would at the outset know something of what the writer suspects to be the outcome of ordered and historically guided reflection on these subjects, let him turn to the closing chapter, if not for encouragement then for warning. * * * * * Every one will remember the word to his reader with which Montaigne closes the preface to his Essays. ’Tis but of himself he would write and “it is then no reason thou shouldst employ thy time about so frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore farewell.” I cannot close _my_ preface without confessing a misgiving that must have beset everyone who ever wrote of the past: that whereas he set out to lose himself in history, he may have found in history nothing but himself. But on the bare chance of this having befallen me, I need not say “farewell” beforehand; for well I know no reader will accompany me far through this past save one who finds _him_self there too. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600 3 II. Benedict de Spinoza 1632-1677 37 III. A Disciple of Spinoza (An Illustration) 65 IV. David Hume, 1711-1776 97 V. Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804 129 VI. Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860 155 VII. Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900 183 VIII. Pragmatism 213 IX. Progress 249 X. Royce on Love and Loyalty 283 XI. Retrospect and Prospect 303 I GIORDANO BRUNO 1548-1600 The straightest way to the heart of old matters is an old letter. Here is one written on the twenty-third of May, 1592, by a gentleman of Venice to the Father of the Venetian Inquisition.