Amal-Kiran - Poet and Critic

Spirit-Illumined Son of Song

In 1945 Prof. V.N. Bhushan brought out an anthology of poems in English by Indian writers, Kiranavali 1: The Peacock Lute. While presenting two of K.D. Sethna's poems the editor, after a quick biographical sketch, made a very perceptive, though brief, assessment of his poetry with its roots in the Aurobindonian spiritual aesthetics. We reproduce the same here, being one of the early evaluations of this genre of poetry which has yet to receive its full acclaim in the critical circles.

-Editors

SILENT, unobtrusive, and ever inward-looking, Mr. Sethna leads the vanguard of poetry in his family, and is undoubtedly a singer of aristocratic distinction. Born on 25 November 1904, he was educated at St. Xavier's School and College, Bombay.  In Inter Arts he took both the Selby Scholarship for Logic and the Hughling Prize for English - a combination not achieved by anyone else yet. Passing the B.A. examination of the Bombay University with Honours in Philosophy, he again put up a performance not parallelled so far - namely, that he, a philosophy-student, and not a literature-student won the much-coveted Ellis Prize for English. And before he left college, he made his literary debut with a group of poems marked by a piercing psychical and intellectual passion. Published about the same time, his volume of critical essays entitled Parnassians elided from H. G. Wells the prophetic remark: "This young man will go far." And he has gone far - farther than the celebrated English writer could have meant or expected. He has gone far on the path of spiritual quest - with vision in his eyes and song on his lips. Attracted early in life towards Sri Aurobindo, twenty-four year old Mr. Sethna joined the Ashram and stayed there for nearly ten years. That was the turning point in his career, the spring-tide of his life. Under the Master's influence, Mr. Sethna’s inspiration took a decisive spiritual turn which gave to his

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inherent keenness of thought and sensation a new purpose and point - helping it to penetrate unusual ranges of sight and feeling.  This resulted in the writing of poems characterized by an illumined power of consciousness and a striking inwardness of word-suggestion and sound-suggestion that carries a concrete sense of some occult and spiritual Infinite. The volume of poems entitled The Secret Splendour which was published in 1941 has justly earned high praise from men and magazines that count. Keeper of luminous vigils and kin of endless God-horizonry, Mr. Sethna is a poet of profound thought and polished utterance. He is truly a spirit-illumined son of song — of whom Indo-English poetry may feel legitimately proud!

V.N. BHUSHAN

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Are Philosophical Questions Self-Answering?

I am very happy to respond to the invitation to contribute to the festschrift volume in honour of Amal on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. It is a great privilege and I may add that being asked to honour Amal is itself a great honour bestowed on one.

Amal has been my best friend since we met in the early forties. In a way 1 owe it to him that I am still alive, as inthe very grave crisis I passed through many yearsago it was he who used to keep the Mother informed almost daily about my condition. 1 also remember with deep gratitude the many occasions on which he has, at my request, invoked the Mother's help and blessings to solve difficult and critical problems facing my friends and relatives.

Besides the fact that we are co-disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (which, of course, is the most precious bond between us) we have many things in common, the two most notable being Philosophy and a boisterous sense of humour!

We have spent many happy hours together in academic philosophical discussions and though we do not always see eye to eye the dialogue always remains non-polemical and never degenerates into a shouting  match. This does not mean that we never raise our voices against each other but when we do the reason for doing so is that we are both hard of hearing! Salutations to my friend Amal, the most gifted and versatile person I have come across - yogi, poet, philosopher, historian, literary critic and the author of many brilliant publications. May he continue for many more years to guide and inspire seekers of knowledge and wisdom and lead them to repose at the feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother! -Author's Note

THIS question - Are Philosophical Questions Self-Answering ? — itself is not self-answering and perhaps also not self-explaining. Even if we hold that some philosophical questions do, in some sense, provide their own answers I do not think that

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this could be said of all philosophical questions. Let me lay down a broad distinction. Questions in philosophy arise at two levels, at the level of what may be called first-order philosophy, or just philosophy, and at the level of meta-philosophy which is philosophy becoming conscious of itself. Now the view which I hold is that questions at the first level are largely, if not all of them, self-answering, through the analysis of the concept of a self-answering question is one of the major problems of meta-philosophy.

In this paper I shall be concerned mainly with the analysis and explanation of the view that questions in philosophy, as distinguished from meta-philosophy, provide their own answers. This will raise the question, what is the nature of reasoning in philosophy, or, what is the role of logic in philosophical reasoning? I do not think this question has been satisfactorily answered, as logic, even when distinguished from formal logic, is usually taken to be devoid of ontology, and, as such, either degenerates into conventionalism or is placed on a pinnacle from where it is expected to legislate for all thought and existence.  In the former case, logic becomes verbal or barren. Propositions of logic are regarded as tautologies and arc valid "only in virtue of their lack of factual content''. Philosophy is then absorbed into logic and likewise becomes a set of definition or statements about or resting on linguistic conventions which are either empirical propositions, and so not philosophical propositions at all, or, like the Verification Principle, are arbitrary and beg the question against rival theories. In the latter case, logic is endowed with creative powers whichin reality it does not possess.

I shall try to show that logic has novelty and power but only within prescribed limits. It is not the creator of content but the two kinds; that which is determined by abstract and universal rules and that which takes shape under the pressure of a concrete and individual insight, or point of view. The distinction we have to draw is thus not between formal and non-formal or informal logic, but between formal logic at the abstract and at the concrete level. Even abstract formal logic is not a matter of manipulating conventional rules; it is governed by ineluctable necessities of

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thought. It also exhibits insight but, unlike concrete formal logic, the insight is not directly ontological, though it rests on ontological presuppositions concerning the most general character of things.

The question with which this paper begins is, however, not self-answering, as it is a question in meta-philosophy. Those questions which are concerned with empirical matters of fact are clearly not self-answering, since the answers must necessarily come to us from outside. Philosophy, however, is non-empirical. Its answers must therefore come from within, though it is by no means easy to answer the questions ‘from within what?’.  This peculiar situation which we find in philosophy of questions providing their own answers is connected with the aprioristic character of philosophical reasoning. But if philosophical reasoning is a priori throughout it is not so throughout in the same way. Reasoning at the level of first-order philosophy is a priori in the sense that it is the exploration and development of a basic commitment. Reasoning at the level of meta-philosophy is a priori in the sense that it is the exploration and development of an uncommitted insight into the nature of philosophical reasoning. Questions provide their own answers only if they are formulated in a system which is the expression of an alogical act of commitment. Here the question and its answer are parts of the same developing system. The point of view which frames the question itself provides the answer. The meta-philosophical question, however, is a free inquiry and does not presuppose a point of view. But the logic of this enquiry is not free of ontology. A logic without a formulated ontological content is either formal logic or it is, to use the words of Bradley, "a monster and a fiction". Logic always functions within the matrix of ontology. We may say that logic functions within the framework either of an ontological commitment or of a pure ontological insight, i.e. an insight which is not also a commitment. The former is the logic of philosophy or conscious thought, and the latter the logic of meta-philosophy or self-conscious thought. Where there is insight without commitment there is no point of view which is prejudged. The question which is asked is open and not loaded and hence

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the answer is not determined by the question or by a point of view underlying the question.

It should be clear that I am not using the word 'logic' as the name of a science. I have in mind the aspect of philosophical reasoning which we call logical. The logic of an argument is its pattern and the direction that it takes.  It is what provides justification for the things that we say in philosophy, though 'justification' in philosophy is not the same thing as proof or demonstration.

The question concerning the role of logic in philosophy is, what is it that carries the argument forward and gives it the form and direction that it takes? And can this logical aspect of reasoning survive if logic is placed outside ontology, or, to put it differently, could we, in philosophy, think logically without any ontological commitment? I believe philosophers have mistakenly thought or taken for granted that we can and should think logically without any kind of commitment. What is perhaps responsible for this error is the view that logical thinking gives necessity and so must be free of any prior adherence to any point of view which is not itself seen to be logically necessary. This reason for regarding logic as ontologically uncommitted commits the error of assimilating philosophical reasoning to mathematical reasoning. The alternative to regarding philosophical conclusions as demonstrably certain is not to hold that they are tentative, for this would be to assimilate philosophical reasoning to the reasoning in the empirical sciences. What is tentative is at the mercy of experience, but since philosophical reasoning is a priori its conclusions cannot be confuted by experience. I believe that philosophers, failing to realise that philosophical reasoning is sui generis, have been betrayed by the recognition that philosophical conclusions cannot be tentative into holding that they must then be demonstrably certain or necessary. I find myself forced to the conclusion that the philosopher's understanding of his subject and of the tools he employs is almost primitive. It is certainly very inadequate and very very naive.

It is the same mistake which leads Ayer to conclude that since the propositions of philosophy are not empirical they must be

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logical and they are logical precisely to the extent that they rescind from facts.   "Propositions of philosophy," says Ayer,"express definitions and their formal consequences. Accordingly philosophy is a department oflogic, for the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact." Philosophical propositions must then be treated as analytic and they are analytic in the sense that they are linguistically necessary, i.e. they state necessary truths based upon conventions about the usages of words.

But how, if philosophical reasoning is only the setting up of definitions and drawing formal consequences, can reasoning move forward and construct theories which exhibit a comprehensive grasp of a total situation in which diverse elements are brought into a unity? A survey of the history of philosophy would certainly not bear out the contention that the most fruitful theories in philosophy contain nothing more than so-called 'analytic truths' erected on the basis of linguistic conventions. But this is all that philosophical reasoning can do if it does not leave the field of logic. And if it steps outside the precincts of an ontologically uncommitted logic it ceases, on this theory, to be philosophy and becomes science.

Ayer, however, does not maintain this view consistently. In his contribution to the Symposium "What can Logic do for Philosophy?" he suggests that in the case of the Sense-datum theory we do leave the field of logic and gain an insight into the nature of 'facts'. He suggests that in translating physical object language into the language of sense-data we do not merely "replace one form of description by another". "Our new description may give us," he says, "a clearer insight into the facts." But then if philosophy gives us an insight into facts it cannot be merely a department of logic, as Ayer understands logic. Besides, this attempt to redescribe facts stated in the physical object language by using the language of sense-data cannot, as Ayer himself admits, merely be a matter of “looking up an agreed table of linguistic rules". To assert that the sense-data language is different from and, in whatever way, preferable to the physical

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object language presupposes a philosophical theory. The theory is that the physical object language is fallible, but the sense-data language is infallible, and this again because there indubitably exist such things as sense-data and hence physical objects are to be understood as constructions out of sense-data. This itself is not a logical theory, as it attempts to describe, and I think quite mistakenly, the real nature of things.

On this view of logic it would follow that philosophical questions are self-answering. If philosophical propositions are propositions of logic they are, according to this view, analytic which means that they are necessarily true. If an answer to a philosophical question is a proposition which is necessarily true there can be only one logically self-consistent answer to the question. We have only to understand what the question means to see what its answer is, for it can have only one answer. This is the ontological argument, but it is used to derive answers which are much less momentous than the one given by the traditional ontological argument.

The notion of the analytic proposition is the mainstay of this type of logic. I believe however, that we can give no sense to the term 'analytic' which will enable us to show that an analytic proposition, however defined, is a necessarily true proposition. I shall briefly reproduce the arguments against the notion of analytic propositions which are necessarily true. Mathematical propositions are given as instances of analytic propositions, but the theory fails to give a criterion of the analytic which is distinct from the criterion of the a priori, and until this is done we do not know what the theory means by an analytic proposition. Ayer does propose a criterion which distinguishes the analytic from the a priori. He defines 'analytic' in terms of synonymy of linguistic forms. But this synonymy is a matter of convention and a convention about linguistic usage is not a necessary proposition, nor can a necessary proposition be derived from a convention about linguistic ·usage. Thus this theory describes a full circle. It reduces the non-empirical propositions of philosophy to logic but the account which it gives of logical propositions reduces them to a sub-class of empirical propositions.

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Logic that is ontologically uncommitted may take the high a priori road and may, from within itself, spin out an ontological theory as a spider spins a web of the substance of its body.  This may appropriately be called 'philosophy in the grand manner’. The assumption here is that for doing philosophy it is sufficient. If one keeps an open mind and thinks doggedly to the bitter end.  The only principle thought relies on- and to deny it is to deny thought itself - is the principle of contradiction. Philosophical questions and problems, it is assumed, arise naturally for the mind alert with intellectual curiosity and seized with the spirit of wonder. They are there and the inquiring mind cannot help taking note of them. They are the challenge to which our philosophical theories are the answer. Questions in philosophy, it should be noted, do not on this view rise within the framework of a theory and are not moulded by its presuppositions. They are regarded as having an objective neutral content. The questions, it is assumed, are the same for all; only the answers differ according as one thinks consistently or not, or, to avoid this too sharp dichotomy of consistency and contradiction, perhaps one should say, according to the degree of coherence with which one thinks. Philosophy, on this view, has no presuppositions and no predilection for any part of reality or any special feature of experience. It can start anywhere and by bringing to bear on its starring point the full power and clarity of consistent thought it can relentlessly develop its starting point dialectically till it grows into the comprehension of the all-embracing and timeless Absolute. In the Absolute thought at last comes to rest and, according to Bradley, also commits suicide.

Is it conceivable that the abstract laws of thought have the potency to generate a comprehensive and coherent system in which the totality of existence is included and accounted for?

Tavlor, however, contends that the principle of freedom from contradiction is not purely negative as "all significant negation is really exclusion resting on a positive basis". Thus we can say that Reality is not self-contradictory" on the ground that Reality "is positively self-consistent... and is at least a systematic whole of some kind".

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Taylor here assumes that the law of contradiction is a basal ontological law, and I for one have no wish to question this assumption. But a law of thought, in my opinion, is ontological only in the sense that it somehow shows, though it cannot state the most general character of things. We can only say that whatever exists or is real has a character such that it cannot harbour contradictory predicates. But what are contradictory? These cannot be illustrated by means of symbols but only in concerto. This means that we know that a pair of terms are in contradictory opposition when, in trying to assert both of them of the same subject at the same time we find that we have said nothing at all. If we take p and not-p as instances of contradictory terms then it is true that we have to deny not-p of that which we assert to be p, but this is not a denial in the same sense in which to deny q of that which we assert to be p is a denial. For to say that what is p is not not-p is not to say anything over and above saying that it is p.

My point is that the principle of significant denial does not apply in this case, for the denial is in a sense not significant. What the proposition 'A that is p is not not-p' presupposes is not a further characteristic of A not already mentioned in the proposition, but simply that A has a nature such that it cannot harbour contradictions, which again simply means that when we say something about A we must not say it in such a way that would result in our saying nothing at all. And this is true not only of A but of anything and everything in the universe as well as of the universe itself. This meagre information about things is all that the principle of freedom from contradiction can provide. It would be illegitimate to extract from it the further assertion that Reality, with a capital R, is "a systematic whole of some kind". The principle of non-contradiction, if not completely negative, is completely barren as far as the constructions of philosophical theories are concerned.

It is not surprising that the Ontological Argument should be the mainstay of the Idealistic logic. It is a heroic attempt to excogitate ontology out of a logic that is ontologically uncommitted. And once the existence is established the sum-total of

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ontological assertions and denials arc seen to be comprehended in this single stupendous assertion. The ontological argument appears to rely solely on the principle of contradiction. God, the Perfect Being, necessarily exists because to deny the existence of the Perfect Being is to be guilty of a self-contradiction. The question 'Does God exist?' is self-answering in the sense that if you understand what the question means you cannot but answer it in the affirmative.

Once this is established all other questions in metaphysics become self-answering, e.g.. Is Time real? If by realwe mean the Ultimate then since God is the Ultimate and, being perfect, is not in time, it follows that Time is not ultimate. No further dialectical and tortuous arguments such as Bradley tries to provide, are required. We do not have to show that thought about Time logically drives us to the Timeless, but only that  Reality being timeless, Time is necessarily no more appearance.

I will not here dwell at length on the criticism of the ontological argument. My objection to it rests on grounds wholly different from those that have been urged against it in the history of philosophy, I believe that, considered as a logical argument to prove the conclusion it is circular and its defect is that it expects an uncommitted logic to break the circle. I would admit that it is a contradiction to deny the existence of God, but not a contradiction to deny the intelligibility of the proposition 'God exists'. Further, even if the proposition is admitted to be cognitively significant and its denial to be self-contradictory this would be so because the notion of existence, which, according to me is a criterion notion, is unintelligible in its metaphysical use unless we understand by the term 'existence' precisely what we understand by the expression 'the Perfect Being', e.g. God. 'God exists', if taken as the conclusion of a logical argument, would only give us the tautology 'God is God', which means that we cannot prove the existence of God by an argument as we can prove the existence of a yet undiscovered planet. To the metaphysician the denial of God is unintelligible. 'God' is the unquestioned and unquestionable presupposition of metaphysical thought, but this is not the ontological or any other argument, for I have said that

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God is the presupposition, not of thought as such, but of metaphysical thought, and it is only possible to explain metaphysical thought as thought which operates with the notion of God as its basic or criterion-concept.

If ‘God does not exist' is not an intelligible proposition it does not follow that God necessarily exists. To assume this would still be to move within the sphere of an ontologically uncommitted logic. We have no non-committal way of indicating what we mean by existence.

The proposition 'God exists' expresses neither a necessary nor a contingent truth, I have said that 'God exists' appears to be a tautology, but this statement requires explanation. It is not a tautology in the old and bad sense of the word in which 'a table is a table' would be a tautology. Nor is a tautology in the sense that it records our determination to use the word 'God' in such a way that we must always say 'God exists', or that 'God does not exist' is ruled out by definition. The classification of propositions in a sentence in the indicative mood which is cognitively significant is necessarily a proposition. I believe that like the statements of the laws of thought the expression of our belief in God is only symbolically stated in the propositional form 'God exists'. Since here the subject and predicate coincide in intention, though not by an arbitrary convention, we appear to have the tautology 'God is God'. But in the attitude of belief this tautology is pierced and the truth stated in the symbolic prepositional form is somehow grasped. 'God' is that to which or whom one is unconditionally and absolutely committed. The mind, heart and soul and every cell of the body accepts the Lord, 'whatever is the case', I may mention that in saying this I am not indulging in religious emotion nor forsaking the rigorous path of logic. To understand thought apparently moves very close to the Idealist logic and its mainstay the Ontological Argument, but there is a very important and very subtle difference which for some years I have been trying to clarify to myself. The difference emerges when thought is raised from the merely conscious to the fully self-conscious

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level. The necessity of thought of which the Idealist speaks is the truth that appears at the merely conscious level of thought.  It is the first and pre-critical formulation of a deeper truth, and this early formulation is seen as error from the higher point of view. It has to be replaced by the notion of an integral and unconditional belief. There are no abstract necessities of thought. To speak in a Kantian strain, all necessities of thought are those which we ourselves put into thought in the light of our experience which is the matrix within which thought moves.

The relevance of my comments on the Ontological Argument and the idealist logic to my theme will be apparent when I shall explain the two levels at which questions provide their own answers ... at the level of systematic thought and at the higher level of faith where one seeks to convert an insipient understanding of transcendent things into a direct knowledge beyond thought.

I have shown that both these types of logic that claim exemption from any prior commitment to a point of view fail to account for the dynamic and comprehensive or three-dimensional character of logical thought. Each of these two logics claims further, either implicitly or explicitly, that the questions of philosophy are self-answering, but fails to make good its claim.

What then is the nature of the logic of philosophical reasoning? In what sense are philosophical questions self-answering and how can we show that they are so?

I have suggested that the logic of an argument is internal to a point of view and does not underlie it. Logical reasoning does not consist in providing grounds for a theory nor in merely deducing formal consequences from given premises. It cannot also consist in the discovery or recovery of absolute presuppositions which are also self-certifying in the sense that their denial is self-contradictory. There is only one thing that logic can do, and that is to develop, mature, bring to a clearer focus the point of view within the framework of which it operates. As the point of view and its logic are organically connected we may say that logical argument is the point of view struggling to come to a full understanding of itself. It is a dialectical development of an

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intellectual insight which is potentially rich and complex and not, as in the case of the Hegelian dialectic, a passage from the impoverished and empty notion of being to the Absolute Idea.

We shall understand the nature of philosophical reasoning better if we compare it with a process of biological growth or even with artistic creation of significant form from an inchoate idea rather than with the linear process of mathematical reasoning. The tree is potentially in the seed but not implicit in it in the way in which a theorem is implicit in the starting axioms and definitions. Matter grows into form, to use the Aristotelian distinction, but form is not deduced from matter. The process that matures a point of view into a full-fledged theory is the logic of that point of view as well as of the resultant theory. But logic does not claim autonomy or legislative sovereignty on this view. It is necessarily an ontologically committed logic and its freedom is relative. It cannot transcend the limits of the point of view which it serves to explicate.

Now we can understand how and in what sense philosophical questions are self-answering. Since the logic of philosophical discourse is always internal to a point of view there is no thought which is neutral or uncommitted. This statement applies not only to the answering of philosophical questions but also to the very formulation of the questions themselves. A philosophical problem is not merely 'given', it is apperceived. It is from the beginning seen from a particular point of view. Since our thought is committed, the questions we ask, though they may have the appearance of being prompted by an open or free inquiry, are in reality loaded questions, and, in a masked form, spearhead, as it were, the process of thought which, when it assumes the form of a coherent system, is regarded as the answer to the question or the solution to the problem. A foregone conclusion cannot be an answer to an open question, if the question and answer are two parts of a continuous process of thought; and all philosophical conclusions are foregone.  The question thus adumbrates the point of view underlying the process of thinking and the answer is the point of view elaborated into a coherent system.

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Thus philosophical questions are self-answering in the sense that our questions are not open but reflect a commitment to a point of view. They contain and provide their own answers similar to the way in which the seed contains and makes possible the development of the tree. Our conclusions are not foregone in the sense that they are the inescapable postulates of a neutral and uncommitted starring point. That is the point of view of Idealist logic. They are foregone in the sense that in the very process of formulating a question we have charted our course and determined, in principle, what answer we shall obtain, though the answer is not formally deduced from the starting point. It is reached by a dialectical process and there is always the possibility that the argument may go awry and fail to develop consistently the potentialities of its own starting point.

What is true of the process of thought in philosophy is also true of a higher movement of consciousness which effects a transition from faith to supra-rational knowledge or direct realization.  If fact the higher movement is reflected in the lower and analogically reproduces its structure or fluid pattern within it. As above, so below. There is in us, actually in some and I believe potentially in all, a sense of Immortality. Prom deep within us come intimations of a Presence which is radiant and incorruptible and beyond all nisus. It is our immortal Self. There is an urge towards transcendent freedom - mumuksatva - in which the Self abides in unconditional Bliss or acts with an unfettered and, luminous spontaneity. There glimmers above us the Awful Emptiness - śunya - sucking up the mind into its ineffable silence. The heart feels the promptings of a sweet and sacred love and pours itself out to meet the Divine Beloved. It accepts and clings to the Divine unconditionally, not because it has been intellectually certified that: God exists, but because it is what it is and the Lord is the Lord.

How shall we, as philosophers, understand and explain this sense of the Beyond, these immortal longings and intimations of transcendent freedom? Is it all psychological? Surely it is, but what do we mean by calling these urges psychological? Do we mean merely that they have not been shown to be rationally

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grounded? But if so, everything is psychological, including our vaunted logic, for logic, as I have shown, never steps beyond the limits of a definitive experience to which it owes its very life and movement.

Shall we say all this is a matter of faith? Quite so; but what is our attitude qua philosophers to faith? Shall we disregard it as of no concern to the philosopher? And is this because faith does not have an underpinning of logic? But then neither does a philosophical system have an underpinning of logic. In fact our rational nature is itself sustained in its activity by an act of faith and, in metaphysics at least, its constructions themselves are merely the rational form which one thought gives to the content of faith. The adventure of faith has as much claim on the philosopher's attention as the adventure of ideas. The philosopher's task will be not to provide a logical foundation to the deliverances of faith. Faith does not need the ministration of logic. It is a misunderstanding of the nature of Reason itself to attempt to provide a rational preamble to the act of faith. Our task as philosophers is to understand the movement of faith and to show that it carries its justification within itself. There is a logic of faith which is internal and not anterior to it. There is an analogical resemblance between the logic of philosophical reasoning and the logic of faith. Philosophical questions are self- answering and spiritual faith is self-justifying. But in what sense does faith justify itself? Obviously not by providing any measure of intellectual guarantee or assurance.

Kant attempted to destroy knowledge to make room for faith. Faith, however, is not a rival to knowledge and the latter needs not to be destroyed but understood. Once we remove the underpinning of logic from knowledge itself, faith is seen not to suffer from lack of such a logical support. Faith is self-justifying in the sense that once we receive the glimmering of something new and what to us is a higher possibility in a virgin apprehension there is something in us which compels the pursuit of this apparition though it lead us beyond the utmost bound of human thought and break down all our carefully built fences of security. We seek it because it lures us and we give ourselves gladly to its

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enchantment. Whether the search ends in fulfilment or disillusionment has no bearing whatever on the self-justifying nature of the search. The voice of the sceptic or the so-called rationalist raised in warning or cavil is the voice of the philistine that would seal off all hazards and prevent the soul from venturing out into the vast unknown and unpossessed.

This character of self-justifying faith is, as I have suggested, reflected at the lower level in philosophical reasoning in its character of self-answering questions. There is a hazard in both cases though in the latter far less of a hazard to one's total personality. In both philosophy and faith one takes an excursion into the Unknown.

J.N. CHUBB

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