This is now almost a commonplace; it has been said before by numberless
people. It has been said before by numberless people, but it seems to me
it has been realised by very few--and until it is realised to the
fullest extent, we shall continue to live at intellectual cross purposes
and waste the forces of our species needlessly and abundantly.
This persuasion is a very important thing in my mind.
I think that the time has come when the human mind must take up
metaphysical discussion again--when it must resume those subtle but
necessary and unavoidable problems that it dropped unsolved at the close
of the period of Greek freedom, when it must get to a common and general
understanding upon what its ideas of truth, good, and beauty amount to,
and upon the relation of the name to the thing, and of the relation of
one mind to another mind in the matter of resemblance and the matter of
difference--upon all those issues the young science student is as apt to
dismiss as Rot, and the young classical student as Gas, and the austere
student of the science of Economics as Theorising, unsuitable for his
methods of research.
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