great many special platforms
where special groups of men may take their stand together, there is only
one platform broad enough for all. This universal stand-point, or common
platform, is _life_. It is our more definite thesis, then, that
philosophy, even to its most abstruse technicality, is rooted in life;
and that it is inseparably bound up with the satisfaction of practical
needs, and the solution of practical problems.

Every man knows what it is to live, and his immediate experience will
verify those features of the adventure that stand out conspicuously. To
begin with, life is our birthright. We did not ask for it, but when we
grew old enough to be self-conscious we found ourselves in possession
of it. Nor is it a gift to be neglected, even if we had the will. As is
true of no other gift of nature, we must use it, or cease to be. There
is a unique urgency about life. But we have already implied more, in so
far as we have said that it must be _used_, and have thereby referred to
some form of movement or activity as its inseparable attribute. To
live is to find one's self compelled to do something. To do
_something_--there is another implication of life: some outer
expression, some medium in which to register the degree and form of its
activity. Such we recognize as the environment of life, the real objects
among which it is placed; which it may change, or from which it may
suffer change. Not only do we find our lives as unsolicited active
powers, but find, as well, an arena prescribed for their exercise. That
we shall act, and in a certain time and place, and with reference to
certain other realities, this is the general condition of things that is
encountered when each one of us discovers life. In short, to live means
to be compelled to do something under certain circumstances.

There is another very common aspect of life that would not at first
glance seem worthy of mention. Not only does life, as we have just
described it, mean opportunity, but it means self-conscious opportunity.
The facts are such as we have found them to be, and as each one of us
has previously found them for himself. But when we discover life for
ourselves, we who make the discovery, and we who live, are identical.
From that moment we both live, and know that we live. Moreover, such is
the essential unity of our natures that our living must now express our
knowing, and our knowing guide and illuminate our living. Consider the
allegory of t