The Breviary of Aesthetic 3
have arisen down to that moment in the course of history;
whereas that of the layman, since it revolves in a far nar-
rower space, shews itself to be impotent outside those limits.
Actual proof of this is also to be found in the force of the
eternal Socratic method, in the facility with which tire
learned, by pressing home their questions, leave those with-
out learning in open-mouthed confusion, though these had
nevertheless begun by speaking well; but now finding them-
selves, in the course of the inquiry, in danger of losing what
small knowledge they possessed, they have no resource but
to retire into their shell, declaring that they do not like
“subtleties.”
The philosopher’s pride is solely based therefore upon
the greater intensity of his questions and answers; a pride
not unaccompanied with modesty—that is, with the con-
sciousness that if his sphere be wider, or the largest pos-
sible, at a determined moment, yet it is limited by the history
of that moment, and cannot pretend to a value of totality,
or what is called a definite solution. The ulterior life of the
spirit, renewing and multiplying problems, does not so much
falsify, as render inadequate preceding solutions, part of
them falling among the number of those truths that are un-
derstood, and part needing to be again taken up and inte-
grated. A system is a house, which, as soon as it has been
built and decorated, has need of continuous labour, more or
less energetic, in order to keep it in repair subject as it is to
the corrosive action of the elements); and at a certain mo-
ment there is no longer any use in restoring and propping
up the system, we must demolish and reconstruct it from top
to bottom. But with this capital difference: that in the work
of thought, the perpetually new house is perpetually main-
tained by the old one, which persists in it, almost by an act