ABSTRACT
The life of man can be divided, like the old maps of the world, into the charted and uncharted. The charted is finite and the other infinite; yet for a well-situated member of a successful and peaceful civilization the part of life which is fairly subject to reason and control outweighs enormously the parts about which he cannot calculate. He can anticipate the result of most of his actions, can work at his profession, till his fields and plant fruit trees, nay, even educate his children, with some reasonable expectation of success. He is guided by experience and reason: he values competent work and exact thought. He realizes his dependence on society, and accepts his duties towards it: he obeys the laws and expects to be protected by them. And such a man, when trying to form a conception of the universe or of life as a whole, will tend to do so in the same sober spirit, and regard the vague terrors and longings that sometimes obsess him as likely to be sources of error. Such a society, at its best, will produce science and philosophy.
