is really, as the saying goes, to give us assurance of God, freedom,
and immortality, Mr. Russell's philosophy is a dire failure. In fact,
its author sometimes gives vent to a rather emphatic pessimism about
this world; he has a keen sense for the manifold absurdities of
existence. But the sense for absurdities is not without its delights,
and Mr. Russell's satirical wit is more constant and better grounded
than his despair. I should be inclined to say of his philosophy what
he himself has said of that of Leibnitz, that it is at its best in
those subjects which are most remote from human life. It needs to be
very largely supplemented and much ripened and humanised before it can
be called satisfactory or wise; but time may bring these fulfilments,
and meantime I cannot help thinking it auspicious in the highest
degree that, in a time of such impressionistic haste and plebeian
looseness of thought, scholastic rigour should suddenly raise its head
again, aspiring to seriousness, solidity, and perfection of doctrine:
and this not in the interests of religious orthodoxy, but precisely in
the most emancipated and unflinchingly radical quarter. It is
refreshing and reassuring, after the confused, melodramatic ways of
philosophising to which the idealists and the pragmatists have
accustomed us, to breathe again the crisp air of scholastic common
sense. It is good for us to be held down, as the Platonic Socrates
would have held us, to saying what we really believe, and sticking to
what we say. We seem to regain our intellectual birthright when we are
allowed to declare our genuine intent, even in philosophy, instead of
begging some kind psychologist to investigate our "meaning" for us, or
even waiting for the flux of events to endow us with what "meaning" it
will. It is also instructive to have the ethical attitude purified of
all that is not ethical and turned explicitly into what, in its moral
capacity, it essentially is: a groundless pronouncement upon the
better and the worse.