ut so uncompromising an optimism is not essenal to this religion. Its distinction lies rather in s acceptance of the manifest plurality of souls, nd its appeal to the faith that is engendered by ervice.29 As William James has said:

"Even God's being is sacred from ours. To coöperate ith his creation by the best and rightest response seems l he wants of us. In such coöperation with his puroses, not in any chimerical speculative conquest of him, ot in any theoretical drinking of him up, must lie the eal meaning of our destiny."

29 For an interesting characterization of this type of eligion, cf. Royce: Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 46. 30 James: The Will to Believe, p. 141.

The Philosopher's Task, and the Philosopher's Object, or the Absolute.

Τ

$148. No one has understood better than philosopher himself that he cannot hope to be por: lar with men of practical comme sense. Indeed, it has commonly be a matter of pride with him. T classic representation of the philos pher's faith in himself is to be found in Plate': "Republic." The philosopher is there portraye in the famous cave simile as one who having see the light itself can no longer distinguish the shadows which are apparent to those who sit per petually in the twilight. Within the cave of shadows he is indeed less at his ease than those who have never seen the sun. But since he knows the source of the shadows, his knowledge surrounds

1 By Absolute Realism is meant that system of philosophy which defines the universe as the absolute being, implied in knowledge as its final object, but assumed to be inde pendent of knowledge. In the Spinozistic system this absolute being is conceived under the form of substance, or self-sufficiency; in Platonism under the form of perfection: and in the Aristotelian system under the form of a hierarchy of substances.

at of the shadow connoisseurs. And his equamity need not suffer from the contempt of those hom he understands better than they understand emselves. The history of philosophy is due to e dogged persistence with which the philosopher as taken himself seriously and endured the poor pinion of the world. But the pride of the phiosopher has done more than perpetuate the philoophical outlook and problem; it has led to the formulation of a definite philosophical conception, and of two great philosophical doctrines. The conception is that of the absolute; and the doctrines are that of the absolute being, and that of the absolute self or mind. The former of these doctrines is the topic of the present chapter.

Among the early Greeks the rôle of the philosopher was one of superlative dignity. In point of knowledge he was less easily satisfied than other men. He thought beyond immediate prac tical problems, devoting himself to a profounder reflection, that could not but induce in him a sense of superior intellectual worth. The familiar was not binding upon him, for his thought was emancipated from routine and superficiality. Furthermore his intellectual courage and resolution did not permit him to indulge in triviality, doubt,

or paradox. He sought his own with a faith could not be denied. Even Heraclitus the Da who was also called "the Weeping Philosophe because he found at the very heart of nature transiency which the philosophical mind seek escape, felt himself to be exalted as well as isola by that insight. But this sentiment of person aloofness led at once to a division of experien He who knows truly belongs to another and mes abiding world. As there is a philosophical w of thought, there is a philosophical way of life, ar: a philosophical object. Since the philosopher an the common man do not see alike, the terms & their experience are incommensurable. In Par menides the Eleatic this motive is most striking exhibited. There is a Way of Truth which di verges from the Way of Opinion. The philos pher walks the former way alone. And there is an object of truth, accessible only to one who takes this way of truth. Parmenides finds this object pure affirmation.

to be the content of

"One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete, immovable, and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one. """

'Burnet: Early Greek Philosophy, p. 185.

› philosophy of Parmenides, commonly called Eleatic Philosophy, is notable for this emerce of the pure concept of absolute being as the al object of knowledge. The philosopher aims discover that which is, and so turns away from

t which is not or that which ceases to be. The gative and transient aspects of experience only nder him in his search for the eternal. It was e great Eleatic insight to realize that the outme of thought is thus predetermined; that the swer to philosophy is contained in the question f philosophy. The philosopher, in that he resotely avoids all partiality, relativity, and superciality, must affirm a complete, universal, and ltimate being as the very object of that perfect knowledge which he means to possess. This object is known in the history of these philosophies as the infinite or absolute.3

§ 149. The Eleatic reasons somewhat as follows. The philosopher seeks to know what is. The object of his knowledge will then

The Eleatic Conception of Being.

contain as its primary and essential predicate, that of being. It is a step further to define being in terms of this essential predicate.

When contrasted with the temporal realm of " generation and decay," this ultimate object is often called the eternal.