Misdoubtest of a harbour or an end,
What would the threat, or what the promise be,
Could I but read the riddle of the sea!




PREFACE

An attempt at Philosophic Dialogue may seem to demand a word of
explanation, if not of apology. For, it may be said, the Dialogue is
a literary form not only exceedingly difficult to handle, but, in its
application to philosophy, discredited by a long series of failures. I
am not indifferent to this warning; yet I cannot but think that I have
chosen the form best suited to my purpose. For, in the first place,
the problems I have undertaken to discuss have an interest not only
philosophic but practical; and I was ambitious to treat them in a
way which might perhaps appeal to some readers who are not professed
students of philosophy. And, secondly, my subject is one which belongs
to the sphere of right opinion and perception, rather than to that of
logic and demonstration; and seems therefore to be properly approached
in the tentative spirit favoured by the Dialogue form. On such topics
most men, I think, will feel that it is in conversation that they get
their best lights; and Dialogue is merely an attempt to reproduce in
literary form this natural genesis of opinion. Lastly, my own attitude
in approaching the issues with which I have dealt was, I found, so
little dogmatic, so sincerely speculative, that I should have felt
myself hampered by the form of a treatise. I was more desirous to
set forth various points of view than finally to repudiate or endorse
them; and though I have taken occasion to suggest certain opinions of