Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
Hokum and hogwash. Put all that into less high-minded language, and we shall have: Philosophy is useless for any real endeavor, but studying it is important for the young, that they may believe nothing to be true and be proper little skeptics. We've seen this before. Great God! I'd rather be a materialist suckled at a creed outworn than listen to this nonsense, which went out of style with Hume, who is as far beyond Russell as the moon beyond a firefly.
I dislike 'Bulverism', as C.S. Lewis called it, a.k.a. the argumentum ad hominem. But Russell's willful misunderstanding and misstatement of the positions of the philosophers he discusses gives rise to a belief that he is far more comfortable without the truth than with it; that he distrusts any conclusion, although he is perfectly willing to use the fruits of science so long as it is refused the title of absolute truth; and that he wishes for nothing more than to abandon philosophy's great problems (which to him, rather than Kant's liberty, immortality, and god, are certainty and solipsism) as insoluble. His argument against Hegel, in particular, is poorly thought out and more poorly expressed.
I'm going to close with a passage from Galen, a genuine seeker of knowledge and one who understood the philosophy which was at the root of his work.
Some of these people [materialists] have even expressly declared that the soul possesses no reasoning faculty [indeed, earlier Galen states that atomism precludes a belief in the soul], but that we are led like cattle by the impression of our senses, and are unable to refuse or dissent from anything. In their view, obviously, courage, wisdom, temperance, and self-control are all mere nonsense, we do not love either each other or our offspring, nor does the god care anything for us.
Odell Shepard, author of The Lore of the Unicorn says something striking of medieval scientists, that they expected wonders of the world and were not surprised to find them. Those who get out in the world, instead of pontificating about it from London, might find the same.
