Mathematical philosophy, a study of fate and freedom; lectures for educated laymen, by Cassius J. Keyser.

164 MATHEMATICAL PmftOSOPHY
in terms of a supreme and incontestable principle. I
have stated the principle as well as I can and have tried
to signalize its importance for a general theory of education. It remains to apply it to the specific question before us, The task is not difficult. It is plain that one
of the great types of distinctively human activity —perhaps the greatest and most distinctively human type-is
what is known as Thinking-the handling of ideas as
ideas-the formation of concepts, the combination of concepts into higher and higher ones, discernment of the
relations subsisting among them, embodiment of these relations in the forms of judgments or propositions, the
ordering and use of these in the construction of doctrine
regarding life and the world-in a word, the whole complex of activity involved in the discourse of Thought. It
is essential to the argument I am making to keep steadily
in mind that this kind of activity, our sense for it, our
faculty for it, the need tô which it ministers, the joy it
gives, and the obligation it imposes are part and parcel
of what we have been calling our common humanity as
distinguished, on the one hand, from that which is animal
in man, and, on the other, from such special propensities
or other tnarks as give the differing specimens of humankind their respective individualities. Thinking is not indeed essential to life, but it is essential to human life. Ail
men and women, as human beings are inhabitants of the
Gedankethwelt-citizens, so to speak, of the world of
ideas, native citizens of the world of thought. And now
what shall we say is the prototype of excellence in thinking? What is the hovering angel wooing our loyalty to
what is best in thinking? What is the muse of life in
the world of ideas? An austere goddess, high, pure,
serent, cold towards human frailty, demanding perfect