type; they have personified ideas; they have sometimes also been the
victims of them. But they have always been seeking after a truth or ideal
of which they fell short; and have died in a manner disappointed of their
hopes that they might lift the human race out of the slough in which they
found them. They have done little compared with their own visions and
aspirations; but they have done that little, only because they sought to
do, and once perhaps thought that they were doing, a great deal more.

The philosophies of Epicurus or Hume give no adequate or dignified
conception of the mind. There is no organic unity in a succession of
feeling or sensations; no comprehensiveness in an infinity of separate
actions. The individual never reflects upon himself as a whole; he can
hardly regard one act or part of his life as the cause or effect of any
other act or part. Whether in practice or speculation, he is to himself
only in successive instants. To such thinkers, whether in ancient or in
modern times, the mind is only the poor recipient of impressions--not the
heir of all the ages, or connected with all other minds. It begins again
with its own modicum of experience having only such vague conceptions of
the wisdom of the past as are inseparable from language and popular
opinion. It seeks to explain from the experience of the individual what
can only be learned from the history of the world. It has no conception of
obligation, duty, conscience--these are to the Epicurean or Utilitarian
philosopher only names which interfere with our natural perceptions of
pleasure and pain.

There seem then to be several answers to the question, Why the theory that
all knowledge is sensation is allied to the lower rather than to the higher
view of ethical philosophy:--1st, Because it is easier to understand and
practise; 2ndly, Because it is fatal to the pursuit of ideals, moral,
political, or religious; 3rdly, Because it deprives us of the means and