THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
