| How do the waves along thelevel shore Follow and fly in hurrying sheetsof foam, For ever doing what they didbefore, For ever climbing what is neverclomb! Is there an end to their perpetualhaste, Their iterated round of low andhigh, Or is it one monotony ofwaste Under the vision of the vacantsky? And thou, who on the ocean of thydays Dost like a swimmer patientlycontend, And though thou steerest with ashoreward gaze Misdoubtest of a harbour or anend, What would the threat, or what thepromise be, Could I but read the riddle of thesea! |
An attempt at Philosophic Dialogue may seem to demand a word ofexplanation, if not of apology. For, it may be said, the Dialogueis a literary form not only exceedingly difficult to handle, but,in its application to philosophy, discredited by a long series offailures. I am not indifferent to this warning; yet I cannot butthink that I have chosen the form best suited to my purpose. For,in the first place, the problems I have undertaken to discuss havean interest not only philosophic but practical; and I was ambitiousto treat them in a way which might perhaps appeal to some readerswho are not professed students of philosophy. And, secondly, mysubject is one which belongs to the sphere of right opinion andperception, rather than to that of logic and demonstration; andseems therefore to be properly approached in the tentative spiritfavoured by the Dialogue form. On such topics most men, I think,will feel that it is in conversation that they get their bestlights; and Dialogue is merely an attempt to reproduce in literaryform this natural genesis of opinion. Lastly, my own attitude inapproaching the issues with which I have dealt was, I found, solittle dogmatic, so sincerely speculative, that I should have feltmyself hampered by the form of a treatise. I was more desirou