Education and the Philosophical Ideal by Horatio W. Dresser - Read the Complete Text for free at NewThoughtLibrary.com

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Horatio W. Dresser's

Education and the Philosophical Ideal

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Preface - Introduction - The New Point of View - Educational Ideals - Equanimity - The Subconscious Mind - The Spiritual Ideal in Childhood - An Experiment in Education - The Expression of the Spirit - An Ideal Summer Conference - The Ministry of the Spirit - The Mystery of Pain and Evil - The Philosophical Ideal - The Criteria of Truth - Organic Perfection - Immortality - Index - p. 247

pessimism of Schopenhauer and Hartmann,¹ that as this is the only world known to as it is arrogance on our part to assume that this is the best or the worst of possible worlds. Sully refutes pessimism on its own grounds, finding it unscientific, irrational, and unproved. Furthermore, it is clear from discussions like his that some are pessimists by nature, while in other cases optimism of temperament finds expression in optimism of philosophy.
Others assume either that life is already explained by some doctrine to which they have become zealous converts, or that it is hopelessly mysterious. But here again assumption calls for fundamental inquiry. In a doubt that a philosophical system is possible, a theory of ultimate knowledge is already implied.² Man cannot therefore escape from being some sort of philosopher, if he thinks at all. If he does not think, a metaphysical theory is nevertheless confessed by his conduct, as we have already suggested.

It is clear, then, that no doctrine is worthy of being called a philosophy which fails to look beneath its own terms in search of ultimate reality. "It is the only science," says Kant, "which admits of completion," and he further defines it as " the science of the first principles of human cognition."³ That is, it asks not only what we may know, but how we know it. " It is the totality of all known

(1) James Sally, Pessimism, Appleton, 1891.
(2) See Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Introduction. Swann, Sonnenschein, & Co.. London, 1893.
(3) Critique of Pure Reason.

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