unfold in a great autobiography, could his myriad heads and countless
scintillas of consciousness conspire, like the seventy Alexandrian
sages, in a single version of the truth committed to each for
interpretation. What themes would prevail in such an examination of
heart? In what order and with what emphasis would they be recounted? In
which of its adventures would the human race, reviewing its whole
experience, acknowledge a progress and a gain? To answer these
questions, as they may be answered speculatively and provisionally by an
individual, is the purpose of the following work.

[Sidenote: Efficacious reflection is reason.]

A philosopher could hardly have a higher ambition than to make himself a
mouth-piece for the memory and judgment of his race. Yet the most casual
consideration of affairs already involves an attempt to do the same
thing. Reflection is pregnant from the beginning with all the principles
of synthesis and valuation needed in the most comprehensive criticism.
So soon as man ceases to be wholly immersed in sense, he looks before
and after, he regrets and desires; and the moments in which prospect or
retrospect takes place constitute the reflective or representative part
of his life, in contrast to the unmitigated flux of sensations in which
nothing ulterior is regarded. Representation, however, can hardly remain
idle and merely speculative. To the ideal function of envisaging the
absent, memory and reflection will add (since they exist and constitute
a new complication in being) the practical function of modifying the
future. Vital impulse, however, when it is modified by reflection and
veers in sympathy with judgments pronounced on the past, is properly
called reason. Man's rational life consists in those moments in which
reflection not only occurs but proves efficacious. What is absent then
works in the present, and values are imputed where they cannot be felt.