A Pluralistic Universe | Page 5

license may give the rights of access. Suppose, for example, that a philosopher believes
in what is called free-will. That a common man alongside of him should also share that
belief, possessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man to the
philosopher at all--he may even be ashamed to be associated with such a man. What
interests the philosopher is the particular premises on which the free-will he believes in is
established, the sense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties it takes
account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner and technical apparatus that
goes with the belief in question. A philosopher across the way who should use the same
technical apparatus, making the same distinctions, etc., but drawing opposite conclusions
and denying free-will entirely, would fascinate the first philosopher far more than would
the _naïf_ co-believer. Their common technical interests would unite them more than
their opposite conclusions separate them. Each would feel an essential consanguinity in
the other, would think of him, write at him, care for his good opinion. The simple-minded
believer in free-will would be disregarded by either. Neither as ally nor as opponent
would his vote be counted.
In a measure this is doubtless as it should be, but like all professionalism it can go to
abusive extremes. The end is after all more than the way, in most things human, and
forms and methods may easily frustrate their own purpose. The abuse of technicality is
seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, metaphysical questions
are discussed directly and on their own merits. Almost always they are handled as if
through a heavy woolen curtain, the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. Alternatives
are wrapped in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The late
Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about this. 'Thought,' he
says,'is not a professional matter, not something for so-called philosophers only or for
professed thinkers. The best philosopher is the man who can think most simply. ... I wish
that people would consider that thought--and philosophy is no more than good and
methodical thought--is a matter intimate to them, a portion of their real selves ... that they
would value what they think, and be interested in it.... In my own opinion,' he goes on,
'there is something depressing in this weight of learning, with nothing that can come into
one's mind but one is told, Oh, that is the opinion of such and such a person long ago. ... I
can conceive of nothing more noxious for students than to get into the habit of saying to
themselves about their ordinary philosophic thought, Oh, somebody must have thought it
all before.'[3] Yet this is the habit most encouraged at our seats of learning. You must tie
your opinion to Aristotle's or Spinoza's; you must define it by its distance from Kant's;
you must refute your rival's view by identifying it with Protagoras's. Thus does all
spontaneity of thought, all freshness of conception, get destroyed. Everything you touch
is shopworn. The over-technicality and consequent dreariness of the younger disciples at
our american universities is appalling. It comes from too much following of german
models and manners. Let me fervently express the hope that in this country you will hark
back to the more humane english tradition. American students have to regain direct
relations with our subject by painful individual effort in later life. Some of us have done
so. Some of the younger ones, I fear, never will, so strong are the professional
shop-habits already.
In a subject like philosophy it is really fatal to lose connexion with the open air of human
nature, and to think in terms of shop-tradition only. In Germany the forms are so

professionalized that anybody who has gained a teaching chair and written a book,
however distorted and eccentric, has the legal right to figure forever in the history of the
subject like a fly in amber. All later comers have the duty of quoting him and measuring
their opinions with his opinion. Such are the rules of the professorial game--they think
and write from each other and for each other and at each other exclusively. With this
exclusion of the open air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count as
much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance any one writes
popularly and about results only, with his mind directly focussed on the subject, it is
reckoned _oberflächliches zeug_ and ganz unwissenschaftlich. Professor Paulsen has
recently written some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from the reign of
which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being 'literary,' have suffered loss of
credit. Philosophy, he