Note 79 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

The adoration of the contingent for its own sake; otherwise, and as a step towards the eternal, the knowledge of ‘strange things’ is highly recommended by Leibniz, and even by Spinoza. Renouvier, so hostile to a certain kind of universalism, never bestows philosophical value on a knowledge of what is ‘unique and inexpressible’ in the object. (See G. Séailles, ‘Le Pluralisme de Renouvier,’ Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1925.) He would never have signed this charter of modern metaphysics: ‘That the philosophers since Socrates should have contended as to which should most scorn the knowledge of the particular and should most adore knowledge of the general, is something which passes understanding. For, after all, must not the most honourable knowledge be the knowledge of the most valuable realities! And is there a valuable reality which is not concrete and individual?’ (William James.)