ence in technique of external expression; that we have thoughts that lie too deep for words. But this is a fond delusion: the difference lies not in the power of externalizing the image but in the power of inwardly forming an image that expresses the object. - Even that esthetic sense which is contemplation rather than creation is also inward expression; the degree in which we understand or appreciate a work of art depends upon our ability to see by direct intuition the reality portrayed, our power to form for ourselves an expressive image. "It is always our own intuition we express when we are enjoying a beautiful work of art. . . . It can only be my own intuition when, reading Shakespeare, I form the image of Hamlet or Othello." 1 Both in the artist creating and in the spectator contemplating beauty, the esthetic secret is the expressive image. Beauty is adequate expression: and since there is no real expression if it be not adequate, we may answer very simply the ancient question, and say, Beauty is expression.2 4. Criticism All this is as clear as a starless night; and not wiser than it should be. The Philosophy of the Spirit lacks spirit, and discourages a sympathetic exposition. The Philosophy of the Practical is unpractical, and lacks the breath of living reference. The essay On History catches one leg of the truth, by proposing a union of history and philosophy; but it misses the other by failing to see that history can become philosophy only by being not analytic but synthetic; not shredded history (giving in separate books the separate story of the supposedly insulated activities of men-economic, political, scientific, philosophical, religious, literary, and artistic) but what one might call, not too seriously, wedded history,-history in which all the 1 In Carr, p. 72. 2 Esthetic, p. 79. phases of human life in a given period-made as brief as individual frailty may require-shall be studied in their correlation, in their common response to similar conditions, and in their varied mutual influence. That would be the picture of an age, the image of the complexity of man; it would be such history as a philosopher would consent to write. As to the Esthetic, let others judge. At least one student cannot understand it. Is man an artist as soon as he forms images? Does the essence of art lie only in the conception, and not in the externalization? Have we never had thoughts and feelings more beautiful than our speech? How do we know what the inward image was, in the artist's mind, or whether the work that we admire realizes or misses his idea? How shall we call Rodin's "Harlot" beautiful, except because it is the expressive embodiment of an adequate conception?—conception though it be of an ugly and distressing subject? Aristotle notes that it pleases us to see the faithful images of things that are repugnant to us in reality; why, except that we reverence the art that has so well embodied the idea? It would be interesting, and no doubt disconcerting, to know what artists think of these philosophers who tell them what beauty is. The greatest living artist has abandoned the hope of answering the question. "I believe," he writes, "that we shall never know exactly why a thing is beautiful." But the same mellow wisdom offers us a lesson which we learn, usually, too late. "No one has ever been able to show me precisely the right way. . . . As for me, I follow my feeling for the beautiful. What man is certain of having found a better guide? . . . If I had to choose between beauty and truth, I should not hesitate; it is beauty I should keep. There is nothing true in the world except beauty." 99 1 Let us hope that we need not choose. Perhaps we shall some day be strong enough and clear enough in soul to see the shining beauty of even the darkest truth. 1 Anatole France, On Life and Letters, Engl. tr., vol. ii, pp. 113 and 176, III. BERTRAND RUSSELL 1. The Logician We have kept for the last the youngest and the most virile of the European thinkers of our generation. When Bertrand Russell spoke at Columbia University in 1914, he looked like his subject, which was epistemology— thin, pale, and moribund; one expected to see him die at every period. The Great War had just broken out, and this tenderminded, peace-loving philosopher had suffered from the shock of seeing the most civilized of continents disintegrate into barbarism. One imagined that he spoke of so remote a subject as "Our Knowledge of the External World" because he knew it was remote, and wished to be as far as possible from actualities that had become so grim. And then, seeing him again, ten years later, one was happy to find him, though fifty-two, hale and jolly, and buoyant with a still rebellious energy. This despite an intervening decade that had destroyed almost all his hopes, loosened all his friendships, and broken almost all the threads of his once sheltered and aristocratic life. For he belongs to the Russells, one of the oldest and most famous families in England or the world, a family that has given statesmen to Britain for many generations. His grandfather, Lord John Russell, was a great Liberal Prime Minister who fought an unyielding battle for free-trade, for universal free education, for the emancipation of the Jews, for liberty in every field. His father, the Earl of Russell, was a free-thinker, who did not over-burden his son with the hereditary theology of the West. Bertrand was the second son, so that he missed an earldom by an heir's breadth. Yet he rejects the institution of inheritance, and proudly earns his own living. When Cambridge dismissed him for his pacifism he made the world his university, and became a |