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

He must read the story of life as it is omitting no chapter. When the time comes to live his philosophy, his practical idealism will be untrue unless it can affirm its ideals despite the darkest facts, thus winning the supreme triumph of philosophic insight. This is, of course, the ideal which the " new metaphysics " is seeking to realise.

Yet having now insisted on the demands of pure metaphysics as truth for its own sake, regardless of its practical value, it is time to recognise the suggestive fact that the practical motive has always been a starting-point for the philosophical good. F. C. S. Schiller is the most strenuous chronicler of this fact in his very valuable Riddles of the Sphinx.¹ Windleband points out that philosophy was known even in Greek times as " the practical meaning of an art of life, based upon scientific principles," the striving after virtue, and the rational pursuit of happiness (Epicurus). The philosophical motive has, in fact, widely varied, being sometimes naturalistic, sometimes sceptical, again pertaining wholly to the inner life or to logical deduction. It still remains true, however, that a philosopher is not genuinely such unless he is willing to pass beyond these inceptive motives to the universal ideal of metaphysical truth for its own sake. One who, like Lewes,² writes two volumes to prove that philosophy is impossible is no philosopher.

(1) Swann, Sonnenschein, & Co., 1891.
(2) Biographical History of Philosophy, revised edition. Appleton. 1888.

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