The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy #227563

And now it should seem an easy task, (for a philosopher at least,) to tell outright what philosophy is, and is about; but vexatiously enough, no philosopher has succeeded bet ter in defining than in finding what he sought. So per plexed is the philosophical spirit, even in his calmest determination, that a definition of philosophy (or of aught else) is impossible while (and for the same reason that) philosophy endures. Technically, philosophy is the desire for truth; and as an art it might be called the art of defi' nition; but what truth is, and whether or not it is, and what is (or any other predicate) means, and how one thing should express, or contain, or give understanding or content of another: these are still questions in philosophy, as is also a question the anomaly of asserting and pursuing, as a style of course, although the desideratum may perhaps event not by observation nor by definition, but by some silent retrocession, which shall leave the philosophical con dition pathologically reproached with the presence of a question rather than with the want of an answer.