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another and specific purpose? Should it be one's object to see how much can be done with the least possible means, or to see how much can be accomplished with all available means? Having a clue ought he not as a thinker to follow it as far as it will carry him, and does it not carry him logically to a faith in all his faculties, since he must have a faith in a part of them? Possibly, one can hop a little distance painfully on one foot; is it, therefore, wise to sling up the other? The scientific philosopher at once sets to work to determine by observation and analysis all his faculties, and accepts the testimony of them all, as each necessary to the right understanding of the peculiar and independent facts rendered by it.
Thus the idealist and the less cunning but more wise inquirer begin at once to diverge. The one constructs a system of remarkable connections, subtile and sagacious, but altogether airy and unsubstantial; the other acquires classified knowledge, with many lines of causation and deductive relations in it; often presenting, indeed, inscrutable points, yet always having the ring and firmness of facts. Idealism is ideal; science, the philosophy we seek, is actual.
Lesson 116 - 5. The philosophy now presented Its relations - p.450
5. The system we have now presented aims fully to recognize the different, independent kinds of knowing. Each of these is ultimate, and, therefore, inexplicable under other forms of knowing. To carry one faculty into the province of another, is to displace that other, and with it the information it is fitted to give. Knowledge, in its last analysis, has always a certain mystery about it for the very reason that we can go no farther. There is a mystery in a color, as green ,- in a taste, as sweet; in an odor, as fragrant; in a judgment, pronouncing the stone to be hard; in every intuition, as that of a cause, of liberty, of the infinite. We . must not expect to expel mystery, but to reduce it to a minimum, and place it at the right points.
