Let me describe my philosopher first. He is not what is called a social
philosopher, a pretentious hedonist, who talks continuously and
floridly about himself. I know one such, of whom an enthusiastic maiden
said, in a confidential moment, that he seemed to her exactly like
Goethe without any of his horrid immorality. Neither is he a technical
philosopher, a dreary, hurrying man, travel-stained by faring through
the ultimate, spectacled, cadaverous, uncertain of movement,
inarticulate of speech. No, my philosopher is a trim, well-brushed man
of the world, rather scrupulous about social conventions, as vigorous
as Mr. Greatheart, and with a tenderness for the feebler sort of
pilgrims. To-day he was blithe and yet serious; he allowed me to ask
him questions, and he explained to me technical terms. I felt like a
child dandled in the arms of a sage, allowed to blow upon his watch
till it opened, and to pull his beard. "No," he said, "I don't advise
you, at your age, to try and study philosophy. It requires rather a
peculiar kind of mind. You will have to divest words of poetical
associations and half-meanings, and arrive at a kind of mathematical
appreciation of their value. You had much better talk to me, if you
care to, and I will tell you all I can. Besides," he added, "much
modern philosophy is a criticism of methods; it has become so special a
business that we have most of us drifted quite beyond the horizon, like
the higher mathematicians, into questions that have no direct meaning
for the ordinary mind.
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