1. Having now come to the end of our brief and
very incomplete review of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to
consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be
studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the
fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are
inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but
useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on matters
concerning which knowledge is impossible.
2.
This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong
conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of
goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium
of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it;
thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or
primarily, because of the effect on the student, but rather because of the
effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not belong to philosophy. If
the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of
philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of
those who study it. It is in these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the
value of philosophy must be primarily sought.
3.
But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to determine the
value of philosophy, we must first free our minds from the prejudices of what
are wrongly called 'practical' men. The 'practical' man, as this word is often
used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that men must
have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for
the mind. If all men were well off, if poverty and disease had been reduced to
their lowest possible point, there would still remain much to be done to
produce a valuable society; and even in the existing world the goods of the
mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively
among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and
only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the
study of philosophy is not a waste of time.
4.
Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The
knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to
the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical
examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it
cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success
in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist,
a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has
been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are
willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will,
if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive
results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is
partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning
any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and
becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs
to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called
'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the
human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from
philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent,
the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which
are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those
only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the
residue which is called philosophy.
5.
This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the uncertainty of
philosophy. There are many questions -- and among them those that are of the
profoundest interest to our spiritual life -- which, so far as we can see, must
remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a
different order from what they are now. Has the universe any unity of plan or
purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent
part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a
transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become
impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man?
Such questions are asked by philosophy, and variously answered by various
philosophers. But it would seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable
or not, the answers suggested by philosophy are none of them demonstrably true.
Yet, however slight may be the hope of discovering an answer, it is part of the
business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such questions, to make
us aware of their importance, to examine all the approaches to them, and to
keep alive that speculative interest in the universe which is apt to be killed
by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable knowledge.
6.
Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy could establish
the truth of certain answers to such fundamental questions. They have supposed
that what is of most importance in religious beliefs could be proved by strict
demonstration to be true. In order to judge of such attempts, it is necessary
to take a survey of human knowledge, and to form an opinion as to its methods
and its limitations. On such a subject it would be unwise to pronounce
dogmatically; but if the investigations of our previous chapters have not led
us astray, we shall be compelled to renounce the hope of finding philosophical
proofs of religious beliefs. We cannot, therefore, include as part of the value
of philosophy any definite set of answers to such questions. Hence, once more,
the value of philosophy must not depend upon any supposed body of definitely
ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by those who study it.
7.
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very
uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life
imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual
beliefs of his age or his nation, and from
convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or
consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite,
finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar
possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize,
on the contrary, we find, as we saw in our opening chapters, that even the most
everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be
given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true
answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities
which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus,
while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly
increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat
arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating
doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an
unfamiliar aspect.
8.
Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy
has a value -- perhaps its chief value -- through the greatness of the objects
which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting
from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the
circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the
outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within
the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish
and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free.
The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of
a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world
in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer
world, we remain like a garrison in a beleagured fortress, knowing that the
enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life
there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and
the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great
and free, we must escape this prison and this strife.
9.
One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation. Philosophic
contemplation does not, in its widest survey, divide the universe into two
hostile camps -- friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad -- it
views the whole impartially. Philosophic contemplation, when it is unalloyed,
does not aim at proving that the rest of the universe is akin to man. All
acquisition of knowledge is an enlargement of the Self, but this enlargement is
best attained when it is not directly sought. It is obtained when the desire
for knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does not wish in advance
that its objects should have this or that character, but adapts the Self to the
characters which it finds in its objects. This enlargement of Self is not
obtained when, taking the Self as it is, we try to show that the world is so
similar to this Self that knowledge of it is possible without any admission of
what seems alien. The desire to prove this is a form of self-assertion and,
like all self-assertion, it is an obstacle to the growth of Self which it
desires, and of which the Self knows that it is capable. Self-assertion, in
philosophic speculation as elsewhere, views the world as a means to its own
ends; thus it makes the world of less account than Self, and the Self sets
bounds to the greatness of its goods. In contemplation, on the contrary, we
start from the not-Self, and through its greatness the boundaries of Self are
enlarged; through the infinity of the universe the mind which contemplates it
achieves some share in infinity.
10.
For this reason greatness of soul is not fostered by those philosophies
which assimilate the universe to Man. Knowledge is a form of union of Self and
not-Self; like all union, it is impaired by dominion, and therefore by any
attempt to force the universe into conformity with what we find in ourselves.
There is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the view which tells us
that Man is the measure of all things, that truth is man-made, that space and
time and the world of universals are properties of the mind, and that, if there
be anything not created by the mind, it is unknowable and of no account for us.
This view, if our previous discussions were correct, is untrue; but in addition
to being untrue, it has the effect of robbing philosophic contemplation of all
that gives it value, since it fetters contemplation to Self. What it calls
knowledge is not a union with the not-Self, but a set of prejudices, habits,
and desires, making an impenetrable veil between us and the world beyond. The
man who finds pleasure in such a theory of knowledge is like the man who never
leaves the domestic circle for fear his word might not be law.
11.
The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its
satisfaction in every enlargement of the not-Self, in everything that magnifies
the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject contemplating. Everything, in
contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon habit,
self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union
which the intellect seeks. By thus making a barrier between subject and object,
such personal and private things become a prison to the intellect. The free
intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and
fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices,
calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge --
knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to
attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the abstract and
universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter,
than the knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must
be, upon an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs
distort as much as they reveal.
12.
The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of
philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and
impartiality in the world of action and emotion. It will view its purposes and
desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of insistence that results from
seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world of which all the rest is
unaffected by any one man's deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is
the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in
action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to
all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus
contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the
objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the
universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship
of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the
thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.
13.
Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is
to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since
no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the
sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our
conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and
diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but
above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy
contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that
union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.