us liveliness, wherewith to insinuate it into the
good graces of the student. I hope rather to be true to the meaning of
philosophy. For there is that in its stand-point and its problem which
makes it universally significant entirely apart from dialectic and
erudition. These are derived interests, indispensable to the scholar,
but quite separable from that modicum of philosophy which helps to make
the man. The present book is written for the sake of elucidating the
inevitable philosophy. It seeks to make the reader more solicitously
aware of the philosophy that is in him, or to provoke him to philosophy
in his own interests. To this end I have sacrificed all else to the task
of mediating between the tradition and technicalities of the academic
discipline and the more common terms of life.

The purpose of the book will in part account for those shortcomings that
immediately reveal themselves to the eye of the scholar. In Part I
various great human interests have been selected as points of departure.
I have sought to introduce the general stand-point and problem of
philosophy through its implication in practical life, poetry, religion,
and science. But in so doing it has been necessary for me to deal
shortly with topics of great independent importance, and so risk the
disfavor of those better skilled in these several matters. This is
evidently true of the chapter which deals with natural science. But the
problem which I there faced differed radically from those of the
foregoing chapters, and the method of treatment is correspondingly
different. In the case of natural science one has to deal with a body of
knowledge which is frequently regarded as the only knowledge. To write a
chapter about science from a philosophical stand-point is, in the
present state of opinion, to undertake a polemic against exclusive
naturalism, an attitude which is itself philosophical, and as such is
well known in the history of philosophy as _positivism_ or
_agnosticism_. I have avoided the polemical spirit and method so far as
possible, but have, nevertheless, here taken sides against a definite
philosophical position. This chapter, together with the Conclusion, is
therefore an exception to the purely introductory and expository
representation which I have, on the whole, sought to give. The
relatively great space accorded to the discussion of religion is, in my
own belief, fair to the general interest in this topic, and to the
intrinsic signifi