tual life which, so far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a different order from what they are now.The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very uncertainty.Philosophy is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Philosophy has a value perhaps its chief value through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation.The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same emotion. Philosophy is the eternal search for truth, a search which inevitably fails and yet is never defeated; which continually eludes us, but which always guides us (William James).Philosophy helps people to aim at developing intellectual skills, to aim at comprehending what they are reading to train themselves to listen and to hear what philosophers have to say, to train themselves to critically evaluate what they are reading, to try to say something original on one of the frontier issues in philosophy, and to try their own hand at constructing a comprehensive philosophy.Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves;Because these questions enlarge our conception of what possible enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good....
