Principles of reason trace its outlines, logical necessities cement
its parts. Purity and dignity are what it most expresses. It is a
kind of marble temple shining on a hill.

In point of fact it is far less an account of this actual world than
a clear addition built upon it, a classic sanctuary in which the
rationalist fancy may take refuge from the intolerably confused and
gothic character which mere facts present. It is no EXPLANATION of
our concrete universe, it is another thing altogether, a substitute
for it, a remedy, a way of escape.

Its temperament, if I may use the word temperament here, is utterly
alien to the temperament of existence in the concrete. REFINEMENT is
what characterizes our intellectualist philosophies. They
exquisitely satisfy that craving for a refined object of
contemplation which is so powerful an appetite of the mind. But I
ask you in all seriousness to look abroad on this colossal universe
of concrete facts, on their awful bewilderments, their surprises and
cruelties, on the wildness which they show, and then to tell me
whether 'refined' is the one inevitable descriptive adjective that
springs to your lips.

Refinement has its place in things, true enough. But a philosophy
that breathes out nothing but refinement will never satisfy the
empiricist temper of mind. It will seem rather a monument of
artificiality. So we find men of science preferring to turn their
backs on metaphysics as on something altogether cloistered and
spectral, and practical men shaking philosophy's dust off their feet
and following the call of the wild.