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

unable to transcend the fact of its present existence as a complex mass of forces whose energy is perpetually conserved. "How there comes to be existence as all," says Professor Seth,¹ and how existence in its basal characteristics comes to be what it is—these are questions which, so far as one can see, omniscience itself would not enable us to answer."We cannot, then, as Hume has shown, know true causality. So far as we can see, Being with its universe—some universe—is eternal. Experience is probably the result of an existence which could be experienced were we able to transcend finite life and become infinite; for " that without which experience is impossible, cannot be the result of experience, though it must never be applied beyond the limits of possible experience."²

Yet again, what we fully are, as souls, we do not know, because we are unable to transcend ourselves as parts (which we clearly are) and grasp ourselves from the point of view of that which includes us. Nor can we look beyond our moral natures to ascertain how far, or to prove that we are really free. We must start with the fact that we are morally free, since otherwise life would have no meaning, and ethics would be impossible.³ Our great resource is always to ask what life is now, what is the wisdom of the situation, and what life may become through the righteous conduct of men.

(1) Man's Place in the Cosmos, p. 163.
(2) Max 1,1611er's Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, xlvi.
(3) Voices of Freedom, chapters iii. and iv.

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