on the _Seven Riddles of the Universe_. His object was to convince the
materialists of the 'seventies that there were at least seven such
unsound places in _their_ story of everything. Some of the 'riddles', he
admitted, might prove to be soluble as science advances, but the most
important of them will always remain unanswered. Our position as regards
them will always be _ignoramus et ignorabimus_--we do not know the
solutions and we never shall know them. I do not ask now whether du
Bois-Reymond was right in his judgement or not. If he was right, that
means, of course, that the one tale of everything will never be told by
human lips to human ears. There will no more ever be a finally true
Philosophy than there will ever be a finally perfect poem or picture or
symphony. But there is no reason why we should not, at any rate, try to
make our story as nearly perfect as we can, to reduce the number of the
places where we have to break off with 'that is another story', and
perhaps even to hazard a 'wide solution' in matters where absolute
certainty is beyond our reach. This is the work of human Philosophy as I
conceive it, and every man who is disinterestedly trying, without one
eye on wealth or fame or domination over the minds of others, to make
any contribution, however humble, to the telling of this one story or
the removal of loose threads from it, is inspired by the true spirit of
Philosophy. Whoever is doing anything else, no matter under what name or
with what profit or renown to himself, is no true philosopher.

This point of view implies, it will be seen, no sharp dividing line
between Philosophy and Science. The avoidance of this commonly made
distinction may offend two different sets of students--students of
metaphysics who wish to exalt their own pursuit at the expense of the
'special' sciences, and students of natural science who are accustomed
to pride themselves on the contrast between the finality and
definiteness of their own results and the vagueness and dubiousness of