THERE are those who would say, using the words of
philosophers to prove it, that it is the characteristic illu-
sion of the tender-minded that they believe in philosophy.
Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach and theorize.
And being theorists by profession, they exaggerate the
efficacy of ideas, which are mere airy nothings without
mass or energy, the mere shadows of the existential world
of substance and of force, of habits and desires, of machines
and armies.

Yet the illusion, if it were one, is inordinately
tenacious. It is impossible to remove it from the common
sense in which we live and have our being. In the famil-
iar daylight world we cannot act as if ideas had no conse-
quences. The whole vast labor and passion of public life
would be nonsense if we did not believe that it makes a
difference what is done by parties, newspapers, books,
broadcasts, schools and churches. All their effort would
be irrelevant, indeed nonsense, like an argument about

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