Sub specie aeternitatis ? or sub speciegenerationis ? I am susceptible to the aesthetic charm of the former ideal — who is not ? There are moments of relaxation: there are moments when the demand for peace, to be let alone and relieved from the continual claim of the world in which we live that we be up and doing something about it, seems irresistible ; when the responsibilities imposed by living in a moving universe seem intolerable. We contemplate with equal mind the thought of the eternal sleep. But, after all, this is a matter in which reality and not the philosopher is the court of final jurisdiction. Outside of philosophy the question seems fairly settled; in science, in poetry, in social organization, in religion — wherever religion is not hopelessly at the mercy of a Frankenstein philosophy which it originally called into being as its own slave. Under such circumstances there is danger that the philosophy which tries to escape the form of generation by taking refuge under the form of eternity will only come under the form of a by -gone generation. To try to escape from the snares and pitfalls of time by recourse to traditional problems and interests:—rather than that let the dead bury their own dead. Better it is for philosophy to err in active participation in the living struggles and issues of its own age and times than to maintain an immune monastic impeccability, without relevancy and bearing in the generating ideas of its contemporary present. In the one case, it will be respected, as we respect all virtue that attests its sincerity by sharing in the perplexities and failures, as well as in the joys and triumphs, of endeavor. In the other ease, it bids fair to share the fate of what-ever preserves its gentility. but not its activity, in descent from better days ; namely, to be snugly ensconced in the consciousness of its own respectability.

—John Dewey.