Note 209 — Chapter V · CRITICAL

Stoicism and Epicureanism, as the matter is generally put, both substitute the practical good of man as an individual for the wisdom or the theoretical perfection that were contemplated by Plato and Aristotle as the highest objects of human pursuit. For Cicero, too, the chief problems of philosophy were in the main practical, the question whether virtue alone is sufficient for happiness, the problem of practical certainty as opposed to scepticism, the general belief in Providence and in immortality, and so on. And Lucretius thinks of the main service of philosophy as consisting in its power of emancipating the human mind from superstition. All this is quite typical of the essentially practical nature of the Roman character, of its conception of education as in the main discipline and duty, of its distrust of Greek intellectualism, and of its preoccupation with the necessities of the struggle for existence and for government, of its lack of leisure, and so on. I do not think that the very first thing about Pragmatism is its desire to return to a practical conception of life, although a tendency in this direction doubtless exists in it.