A philosophy so understood might at last produce philosophers worthy to be kings.
Conclusion
IF THE READER will now summarize for himself these three philosophies, he will perhaps see more justice than at first in that disregard of chronology which placed Santayana before James and Dewey. It is clearer, in retrospect, that the most eloquent and subtle of our living thinkers belongs almost wholly to the cultural traditions of Europe; that William James, though attached in many ways to that tradition, caught the spirit of at least the Eastern America in his thinking, and the spirit of all America in his style; and that John Dewey, product of East and West alike, has given philosophic form to the realistic and democratic temper of his people. It becomes evident that our ancient dependence on European thought is lessening, that we are beginning to do our own work in philosophy, literature and science, and in our own way. Merely beginning, of course: for we are still young, and we have not yet learned to walk entirely without the assistance of our European ancestry. But if we find it hard to surpass ourselves, and are sometimes discouraged with our own superficiality, our provincialism, our narrowness and our bigotry, our immature intolerance and our timid violence against innovation and experiment—let us remember that England needed eight hundred years between her foundation and her Shakespeare; and that France needed eight hundred years between her foundation and her Montaigne. We have drawn to us from Europe, and selected for survival and imitation among ourselves, rather the initiative individualist and the acquisitive pioneer than the meditative and artistic souls; we have had to spend our energies in clearing our great forests and tapping the wealth of our soil; we have had no time yet to bring forth a native literature and a mature philosophy.
But we have become wealthy, and wealth is the prelude to art. In every country where centuries of physical effort have accumulated the means for luxury and leisure, culture has followed as naturally as vegetation grows in a rich and watered soil. To have become wealthy was the first necessity; a people too must live before it can philosophize. No doubt we have grown faster than nations usually have grown; and the disorder of our souls is due to the rapidity of our development. We are like youths disturbed and unbalanced, for a time, by the sudden growth and experiences of puberty. But soon our maturity will come; our minds will catch up with our bodies, our culture with our possessions. Perhaps there are greater souls than Shakespeare’s, and greater minds than Plato’s, waiting to be born. When we have learned to reverence liberty as well as wealth, we too shall have our Renaissance.
Glossary
NOTE: This glossary comprises chiefly the more important and more difficult words which recur rather frequently.
Anthropomorphism: the interpretation of God in the likeness of man.
Apollonian: having the calm, “classic” beauty of Apollo, as against the emotional and “romantic” qualities associated with Dionysus.
À posteriori: reasoning from observed facts to general conclusions.
À priori: reasoning from general propositions to particular conclusions.
Attribute: in Spinoza, one of the infinite aspects of Substance or reality, like extension (matter) or thought.
Behaviorist: one who restricts psychology to objective observation, ignoring introspection and consciousness.
Calvinism: a form of Protestantism emphasizing the eternal predestination of every individual to damnation or to salvation.
Causality: the operation of cause and effect.
Concept: an idea; often used specifically of philosophical ideas.
Consciousness: awareness.
Cosmology: a study of the origin and nature of the world.
Determinism: the doctrine that all events are the inevitable result of antecedent conditions, and that the human being, in acts of apparent choice, is the mechanical expression of his heredity and his past environment.
Dialectic: any logical process; in Hegel, the development of one idea or condition into another by the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
Entelechy: the inner nature of anything, which determines its development.
Epicurean: one who believes that pleasure is the highest good.
Epistemology: the study of the origin, processes, and validity of knowledge.
Essence: the most important and significant aspect.
Esthetics: the study of the nature of beauty; in Kant, the study of sensation.
Ethics: the study of right and wrong in conduct.
Fatalism: the doctrine that nothing which the individual can do can in any way affect the fate to which he is destined.
Finalism: the doctrine that events are caused by the purposes they serve.
First Cause: the beginning of the entire series of causes; usually identified with God.
Formally: in a technical way; according to the form or structure.
Free will: the partial freedom of the agent, in acts of conscious choice, from the determining compulsion of heredity, environment, and circumstance.
Hedonism: the doctrine that pleasure is the actual, and also the proper, motive of every choice.
Heuristic: a method of research.
Idealism: in metaphysics, the doctrine that ideas, or thought, are the fundamental reality; in ethics, the devotion to moral ideals.
Ideation: the process of thought.
Instrumentalism: the doctrine that ideas are instruments of response and adaptation, and that their truth is to be judged in terms of their effectiveness.
Intuitionism: in metaphysics, the doctrine that intuition, rather than reason, reveals the reality of things; in ethics, the doctrine that man has an innate sense of right and wrong.
Lamarckianism: the belief in the transmissibility of acquired characters.
Logic: the study of reasoning; in Hegel, the study of the origin and natural sequence of fundamental ideas.
Materialism: the doctrine that matter is the only reality.
Mechanism: the doctrine that all events and all thoughts occur according to the laws of mechanics.
Metaphysics: the inquiry into the ultimate and fundamental reality.
Mode: in Spinoza, a particular thing, form, event, or idea.
Naturalism: the doctrine that all reality comes under the “laws of Nature.”
Neurosis: a mental disturbance or disease.
Nirvana: in Hindu theory, a condition of happiness arising out of the absolute cessation of desire.
Noumenon: in Kant, the ultimate reality, or Thing-in-Itself, which can be conceived by thought, but cannot be perceived in experience.
Objective: independent of the perceiving individual; in Spinoza, as existing in thought.