The busy reader will
ask, is all this philosophy useful? It Is a
shameful question: We do not ask it of poetry, which is also
an imaginative construction of world
incompletely known. If poetry reveals to us the beauty our
untaught eyes have missed, and philosophy gives us
the wisdom to understand and forgive, it is
enough, and more than the world’s wealth. Philosophy
will not fatten our purses, nor lift us to dizzy
dignities in a democratic state; it may even make us a
little careless of these things. For what if we should
fatten our purses, or rise to high office, and yet all
the while remain ignorantly naive, coarsely unfurnished
in the mind, brutal in behavior, unstable in
character, chaotic in desire, and blindly miserable?
... Perhaps
philosophy will give us, if we are faithful to it, a
healing unity of soul. We are so slovenly and
self- contradictory in our thinking; it may be that we shall
clarify ourselves, and pull ourselves together into consistency, and be ashamed to harbor contradictory
desires or beliefs. And through unity of mind may come that
unity of purpose and character which makes a
personality, and lends some order and dignity to our existence.
Will Durant The Mansions of Philosophy, 1929 p.x
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