philosophy is only a world-exposition and world-arrangement (according
to us, if I may say so!) and NOT a world-explanation; but in so far as
it is based on belief in the senses, it is regarded as more, and for a
long time to come must be regarded as more--namely, as an explanation.
It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and
palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and
CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes--in fact, it
follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism.
What is clear, what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and
felt--one must pursue every problem thus far. Obversely, however, the
charm of the Platonic mode of thought, which was an ARISTOCRATIC mode,
consisted precisely in RESISTANCE to obvious sense-evidence--perhaps
among men who enjoyed even stronger and more fastidious senses than our
contemporaries, but who knew how to find a higher triumph in remaining
masters of them: and this by means of pale, cold, grey conceptional
networks which they threw over the motley whirl of the senses--the
mob of the senses, as Plato said. In this overcoming of the world, and
interpreting of the world in the manner of Plato, there was an ENJOYMENT
different from that which the physicists of today offer us--and likewise
the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers,
with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest
possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there
is also nothing more for men to do"--that is certainly an imperative
different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right
imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders
of the future, who have nothing but ROUGH work to perform.