another line of thought.

I wish I were able to make the second, 'On a Certain Blindness in Human
Beings,' more impressive. It is more than the mere piece of
sentimentalism which it may seem to some readers. It connects itself
with a definite view of the world and of our moral relations to the
same. Those who have done me the honor of reading my volume of
philosophic essays will recognize that I mean the pluralistic or
individualistic philosophy. According to that philosophy, the truth is
too great for any one actual mind, even though that mind be dubbed 'the
Absolute,' to know the whole of it. The facts and worths of life need
many cognizers to take them in. There is no point of view absolutely
public and universal. Private and uncommunicable perceptions always
remain over, and the worst of it is that those who look for them from
the outside never know _where_.

The practical consequence of such a philosophy is the well-known
democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,--is, at any
rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant. These
phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears.
Once they had a passionate inner meaning. Such a passionate inner
meaning they may easily acquire again if the pretension of our nation
to inflict its own inner ideals and institutions _vi et armis_ upon
Orientals should meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far it has
been gallant and spirited. Religiously and philosophically, our ancient
national doctrine of live and let live may prove to have a far deeper
meaning than our people now seem to imagine it to possess.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., March, 1899.