the ideas
philosophers discuss are still those in which Western civilization has
been bred. They are in the backs of the heads of educated people. But
what serious-minded men not engaged in the professional business of
philosophy most want to know is what modifications and abandonments of
intellectual inheritance are required by the newer industrial,
political, and scientific movements. They want to know what these newer
movements mean when translated into general ideas. Unless professional
philosophy can mobilize itself sufficiently to assist in this
clarification and redirection of men's thoughts, it is likely to get
more and more sidetracked from the main currents of contemporary life.

This essay may, then, be looked upon as an attempt to forward the
emancipation of philosophy from too intimate and exclusive attachment to
traditional problems. It is not in intent a criticism of various
solutions that have been offered, but raises a question _as to the
genuineness, under the present conditions of science and social life, of
the problems_.

The limited object of my discussion will, doubtless, give an exaggerated
impression of my conviction as to the artificiality of much recent
philosophizing. Not that I have wilfully exaggerated in what I have
said, but that the limitations of my purpose have led me not to say many
things pertinent to a broader purpose. A discussion less restricted
would strive to enforce the genuineness, in their own context, of
questions now discussed mainly because they have been discussed rather
than because contemporary conditions of life suggest them. It would also
be a grateful task to dwell upon the precious contributions made by
philosophic systems which as a whole are impossible. In the course of
the development of unreal premises and the discussion of artificial
problems, points of view have emerged which are indispensable
possessions of culture. The horizon has been widened; ideas of great
fecundity struck out; imagination quickened; a sense of the meaning of
things created. It may even be asked whether these accompaniments of
classic systems have not often been treated as a kind of guarantee of
the systems themselves. But while it is a sign of an illiberal mind to
throw away the fertile and ample ideas of a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel,
because their setting is not logically adequate, is surely a sign of an
undisciplined one to treat their contributions to culture as
confirmations of p