the sake of Action, and Action no less for the sake of Knowledge.
Each half of this statement, separately taken, is false: only both together are true. From time to time a falsifying emphasis is thrown on the one, and then in the interests of the truth it becomes necessary to reassert the other. In our time it seems as if it was the latter half that called for restatement and defence. Time was when the opposite was the case, when it was not doubted that Contemplation—the Beatific Vision—was the end of all action, the goal and reward of all our striving; the more striking and potent forms of mere action were contemned and depreciated, their endlessness and futility the favourite theme of Philosophy. ('Doing is a deadly thing, Doing ends in death'.) Now it is otherwise: our efforts after knowledge are decried as the vain attempts to satisfy an idle and insatiable curiosity, our desires for it derided by a strenuous agnosticism, hungry after the fruits of action, incurious of light. The lovers of knowledge are put on the defensive. It may sadly be acknowledged that some of its foes are of its own household; it is wounded in the house of its friends. Even at a University—even at this University—it has to be vindicated against domestic antagonists.
Reminding you that the truth lies only in the combination of the two halves—in the statement that Action is just as much (or as little) for the sake of Knowledge as Knowledge is for the sake of Action, I make here some plea for the less popular half. Let us recall that in the systole and diastole of being action necessarily produces new matter for knowledge, the world of the known or knowable is thus extended, and that no otherwise can this occur. Before knowledge steps upon the scene, something must
