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

Some philosophers aim to be rigidly scientific. But where are the higher sentiments which leap beyond exact thought Is not the higher a part of life, and must we not live it in order to know it?

Have we disproved the possibility of philosophy by this long enumeration of difficulties? Not at all. The difficulties are not as great as they appear at first sight. No result is valueless to philosophy, even the attempt to be an absolute sceptic. The philosopher learns as much from failure as from success, and acute analysis of the limitations of human knowledge throws as much positive light on our present problem as it does upon the mystery of pain and evil.

Some students of philosophy expect to prove too much. The young enthusiast thinks he can prove the existence of God. How is this possible if God is the basis of existence itself, and therefore involved in the very premise with which our logic begins? The utmost the mind can do is to give reasons for believing in God, after his existence has been stated or discovered. In other words, his existence is one of those necessary presuppositions which philosophy can only justify and render intelligible; just as at the outset of this volume we discovered that we most start with the universe as a gift of experience, an "enigma," if you will, but at the some time an intelligible system whose laws and evolution man can understand.

We are unable to prove our existence, for we already exist when we start to prove it. We cannot show how the universe came to be, since we are

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