The educational problem with which it deals concerns meanwhile a very deep and intensely practical interest of our American civilization. We cannot retain the unity of our national consciousness unless we can keep, even in the midst of all the complications and doubts of the modern world, our sense of the great common values of the spiritual world. Without philosophy, our nation can therefore never come to its own. Philosophy does not mean the acceptance of any mere authority. And it will not lead us to universal agreement about any one form of creed. But it will teach us to unite freedom, tolerance, insight, and spirituality. Without these, of what worth would be mere bulk and mere wealth to our nation? I welcome this book then because our author has contributed to one of the most important of the tasks of our time—the task of helping our nation to regain the now much confused and endangered consciousness of its own unity.
Josiah Royce
Harvard University, August 3, 1910.
THE SEEKERS
THE BEGINNING
This is a live book. It was lived first, and written only afterwards. So it can lay no claim to the title of art, which is experience remoulded in the cast of individual genius; for this was not at all moulded, save as the written word reshapes the spoken. It is a philosophic adventure, an experiment, written down by one, but lived by seven.
Why did I write it down? may be asked. Every new book needs an excuse for being. I wrote it down because it seemed an answer, perhaps a partial, but still a living answer, to two questions that cry aloud.
As I look about me, and observe the doings and thoughts of men and women in this active time, I notice two problems, related one to the other, and wanting but one solution.
First of these is a lack of common purpose in the works of life. Many religions are there, many creeds and anti-creeds, many purposes, from petty, selfish gain to reforms in government and social service. Scientist, politician, artist, philanthropist and minister go each toward a partial goal, in opposition to one another, with no one purpose, no end beyond all lesser ends, no larger patriotism. Morals are either very stiff or very lax, without any conscious reason for either their stiffness or their laxity. The only reason for moral conviction, the only purpose that could unite all purposes, the only patriotism to hold all men together and give the union needful for great and strong achievement, is a common faith in the goal and meaning of life.