but too often destructive forces of original nature.[297] Our problem, then, to repeat once more our central theme, is to facilitate the growth and spread of intelligence. With this definition of the issue we come closer to our thesis,--that the social problem must be approached through philosophy, and philosophy through the social problem. CHAPTER II THE RECONSTRUCTIVE FUNCTION OF PHILOSOPHY I Epistemologs Now there are a great many people who will feel no thrill at all at the mention of philosophy,--who will rather consider themselves excused by the very occurrence of the word from continuing on the road which this discussion proposes to travel. No man dares to talk of philosophy in these busy days except after an apologetic preface; philosophers themselves have come to feel that their thinking is so remote from practical endeavor that they have for the most part abandoned the effort to relate their work to the concrete issues of life. In the eyes of the man who does things philosophy is but an aërial voyaging among the mists of transcendental dialectic, or an ineffective moralizing substitute for supernatural religion. Philosophy was once mistress of all the disciplines of thought and search; now none so poor to do her reverence. There is no way of meeting this indictment other than to concede it. It is true. It is mild. Only a lover of philosophy can know--with the intimacy of a _particeps criminis_--how deeply philosophy has fallen from her ancient heights. Looking back to Greece we find that philosophy there was a real pursuit of wisdom, a very earnest effort to arrive by discussion and self-criticism at a way of life, a _philosophia vitæ magistra_, a knowledge of the individual and social good and of the means thereto, a conscious direction of social institutions to ethical ends; philosophy and life in those days were bound up with one another as mechanics is now bound up with efficient construction. Even in the Middle Ages philosophy meant coördinate living, synthetic behavior; with all their reputation for cobweb-spinning, the Scholastics were much closer to life in their thinking than most modern philosophers have been in theirs.