With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of
its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see
and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we
see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new
opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile
orthodoxy of Comte, or of Hegel, or of our own. Philosophical theories or
ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather
up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. "Philosophy is the
microscope of thought." The theory or idea or system which requires of us
the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some
interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not
identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real
claim upon us.
One of the most beautiful passages in the writings of Rousseau is that in
the sixth book of the Confessions, where he describes the awakening in
him of the literary sense.
Pages:
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306