) remain accompanied
by a feeling of rest and future confidence. In spite of the acutest
nihilistic criticism, men will therefore always have a liking for any
philosophy which explains things _per substantiam_.

A very natural reaction against the theosophizing conceit and
hide-bound confidence in the upshot of things, which vulgarly
optimistic minds display, has formed one factor of the scepticism of
empiricists, who never cease to remind us of the reservoir of
possibilities alien to our habitual experience which the cosmos may
contain, and which, for any warrant we have to the contrary, may turn
it inside out to-morrow. Agnostic substantialism like that of Mr.
Spencer, whose Unknowable is not merely the unfathomable but the
absolute-irrational, on which, if consistently represented in thought,
it is of course impossible to count, performs the same function of
rebuking a certain stagnancy and smugness in the manner in which the
ordinary philistine feels his security. But considered as anything
else than as reactions against an opposite excess, these philosophies
of uncertainty cannot be acceptable; the general mind will fail to {82}
come to rest in their presence, and will seek for solutions of a more
reassuring kind.

We may then, I think, with perfect confidence lay down as a first point
gained in our inquiry, that a prime factor in the philosophic craving
is the desire to have expectancy defined; and that no philosophy will
definitively triumph which in an emphatic manner denies the possibility
of gratifying this need.

We pass with this to the next great division of our topic. It is not
sufficient for our satisfaction merely to know the future as
determined, for it may be determined in either of many ways, agreeable
or disagreeable. For a philosophy to succeed on a universal scale it
must define the future _congruously with our spontaneous powers_. A
philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either of two
defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its ultimate
principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our
dearest desires and most cherished powers. A pessimistic principle
like Schopenhauer's incurably vicious Will-substance, or Hartmann's
wicked jack-of-all-trades the Unconscious, will perpetually call forth
essays at other philosophies. Incompatibility of the future with their
desires and active tendencies is, in fact, to most men a source of more