guided by the strict necessities of reason. But if we keep in mind this consideration, that the moving forces of speculation, as of everything else, operate secretly long before they openly show themselves, we shall not consider it surprising that the outward expression of philosophy should often differ extremely from its inward spirit; that its invisible life should often find a very inadequate exponent in its visible form; that the written letter should often indicate very imperfectly the unwritten meaning. It has only been by slow degrees that the mind of man has attained to a distinct consciousness of the right conception of philosophy as the pursuit of truth as it exists for all intelligence, and to the right conception of the means to be employed in that pursuit, namely, necessary thinking. Yet there is sufficient evidence to show that both of these conceptions were at the bottom of the endeavours of the very earliest philosophers, and were the animating principle of their researches.
36. Nothing is more perplexing to the student of the history of philosophical systems than the opposition to his ordinary modes of thought which these systems usually present. They seem quite alien from his ordinary ways of thinking. Their thoughts are not as his thoughts, and he cannot understand how their views of things should be so different from his. The explanation is, that while he is imbued with truth as it exists for his mind, with relative truth
