Page:Chance, love, and logic - philosophical essays (IA chancelovelogicp00peir 0).pdf/15

INTRODUCTION

Many and diverse are the minds that form the philosophic community. There are, first and foremost, the great masters, the system builders who rear their stately palaces towering to the moon. These architectonic minds are served by a varied host of followers and auxiliaries. Some provide the furnishings to make these mystic mansions of the mind more commodious, while others are engaged in making their façades more imposing. Some are busy strengthening weak places or building much-needed additions, while many more are engaged in defending these structures against the impetuous army of critics who are ever eager and ready to pounce down upon and destroy all that is new or bears the mortal mark of human imperfection. There are also the philologists, those who are in a more narrow sense scholars, who dig not only for facts or roots, but also for the stones which may serve either for building or as weapons of destruction. Remote from all these, however, are the intellectual rovers who, in their search for new fields, venture into the thick jungle that surrounds the little patch of cultivated science. They are not gregarious creatures, these lonely pioneers; and in their wanderings they often completely lose touch with those who tread the beaten paths. Those that return to the community often speak strangely of strange things; and it is not always that they arouse sufficient faith for others to follow them and change their trails into high roads.