Had he made a system out of his notion of
compensation, or the over-soul, or spiritual laws, the result would
have been as thin and forced as it is in other transcendental systems.
But he coveted truth; and he returned to experience, to history, to
poetry, to the natural science of his day, for new starting-points and
hints toward fresh transcendental musings.
To covet truth is a very distinguished passion. Every philosopher
says he is pursuing the truth, but this is seldom the case. As Mr.
Bertrand Russell has observed, one reason why philosophers often fail
to reach the truth is that often they do not desire to reach it. Those
who are genuinely concerned in discovering what happens to be true are
rather the men of science, the naturalists, the historians; and
ordinarily they discover it, according to their lights. The truths
they find are never complete, and are not always important; but they
are integral parts of the truth, facts and circumstances that help to
fill in the picture, and that no later interpretation can invalidate
or afford to contradict. But professional philosophers are usually
only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested
illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study
the case for which they are retained, to see how much evidence or
semblance of evidence they can gather for the defence, and how much
prejudice they can raise against the witnesses for the prosecution;
for they know they are defending prisoners suspected by the world, and
perhaps by their own good sense, of falsification.
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