68 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
save that of enlarging and of exaggerating ideal distinctions.
Thus the artist, the philosopher, the Iiistorain, the naturalist,
the mathematician, the man of business, the good man, seem
to live separated from one another; and the spheres of artis-
tic, philosophical, historical, naturalistic, mathematical cul-
ture, and those of economic and ethic and of the many in-
stitutions connected with them, to be distinct from one an-
other; and finally, the life of humanity is divided into epochs
in the ages, in which one or the other or only some of the
ideal forms are represented: epochs of fancy, of religion, of
speculation, of natural sciences, of industrialism, of political
passions, of moral enthusiasms, of pleasure seeking, and so
on; and these epochs have their more or less perfect goings
and comings. But the eye of the historian discovers the per-
petual difference in the uniformity of individuals, of classes,
and of epochs; and the philosophical consciousness, unity in
difference; and the philosopher-historian sees ideal progress
and unity, as also historical progress, in that difference.
But let us, too, speak as empiricists for a moment (so that
since empiricism exists it may be of some use), and let us
ask ourselves to which of the specimens belongs our epoch
or that from which we have just emerged; what is its pre-
vailing characteristic? To this there will be an immediate
and universal reply that it is and has been naturalistic in cul-
ture, industrial in practice; and philosophical greatness and
artistic greatness will at the same time both be denied to it.
But since (and here empiricism is already in danger) no
epoch can live without philosophy and without art, our
epoch, too, has possessed both, so far as it was capable of
possessing them. And its philosophy and its art—the former
mediately, the latter immediately—find their places in
thought, as documents of what our epoch has truly been in