theoretical, is, like a mechanical discovery--that of the steam-engine,
the telephone, the phonograph, or the aeroplane--a thing which is useful
for something else. Thus the telephone may be useful to us in enabling
us to communicate at a distance with the woman we love. But she,
wherefore is she useful to us? A man takes an electric tram to go to
hear an opera, and asks himself, Which, in this case, is the more
useful, the tram or the opera?

Philosophy answers to our need of forming a complete and unitary
conception of the world and of life, and as a result of this conception,
a feeling which gives birth to an inward attitude and even to outward
action. But the fact is that this feeling, instead of being a
consequence of this conception, is the cause of it. Our
philosophy--that is, our mode of understanding or not understanding the
world and life--springs from our feeling towards life itself. And life,
like everything affective, has roots in subconsciousness, perhaps in
unconsciousness.

It is not usually our ideas that make us optimists or pessimists, but it
is our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhaps
pathological origin, as much the one as the other, that makes our ideas.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been
defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which
differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason.
More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps
or laughs inwardly--but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves
equations of the second degree.

And thus, in a philosopher, what must needs most concern us is the man.