Poetry, art, religion are precious things. They cannot be maintained by
lingering in the past and futilely wishing to restore what the movement
of events in science, industry and politics has destroyed. They are an
out-flowering of thought and desires that unconsciously converge into a
disposition of imagination as a result of thousands and thousands of
daily episodes and contact. They cannot be willed into existence or
coerced into being. The wind of the spirit bloweth where it listeth and
the kingdom of God in such things does not come with observation. But
while it is impossible to retain and recover by deliberate volition old
sources of religion and art that have been discredited, it is possible
to expedite the development of the vital sources of a religion and art
that are yet to be. Not indeed by action directly aimed at their
production, but by substituting faith in the active tendencies of the
day for dread and dislike of them, and by the courage of intelligence to
follow whither social and scientific changes direct us. We are weak
today in ideal matters because intelligence is divorced from aspiration.
The bare force of circumstance compels us onwards in the daily detail of
our beliefs and acts, but our deeper thoughts and desires turn
backwards. When philosophy shall have co-operated with the course of
events and made clear and coherent the meaning of the daily detail,
science and emotion will interpenetrate, practice and imagination will
embrace. Poetry and religious feeling will be the unforced flowers of
life. To further this articulation and revelation of the meanings of the
current course of events is the task and problem of philosophy in days
of transition.
INDEX
Absolute reality, 23, 27
Absolutism, 97, 190;
Kant and, 99
Abstract definition, 20
Abstractions, 149-150, 174
Absurdities, 10
Achievements, 194
Action, kind of, 80
Adult life, 185, 186
America, 41
Amoeba, 91
Animals, dramatisation in primitive life of man, 4
Antiquity, 33
Apprehension, 142
Aquinas, 55, 106
Argumentation, 31, 132
Aristotle, 13, 17, 19, 55;
Bacon's charge against, 30-31, 36;
distinction in ends, 171;
experience, 79, 80;
forms, 105;
on change, 107;
on philosophy as contemplation, 109, 110;
on slavery, 191;
theory of the state, 44;
ultimate reality, 106
Art, 34, 103, 211, 212
Artisan, 15;
knowledge, 110
Associations, 205;
voluntary, 203
Astronomers, 65, 113
Astronomy, 75
Athenians, 13, 19
Augustine, St., 111
Authority, 48, 139, 195;
final, 161;
seat of, 160.
_See also_ Final good
Bacon, Francis, 28, 81, 97;
criticism of the learning of his day, 29-30;
experience, 97-98;
"knowledge is power," 29;
summary of ideas, 29
Being, perfect, 111
Being and non-being, 107
Beliefs and facts, 12
Bentham, 166, 182, 188
Bergson, 71
Berkeley, 50
Biology, 75, 84
Bliss, 111, 112
Bosanquet, 134
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