LECTURE VIII
THE FOURTH CONCEPTION OF BEING
Any doctrine concerning fundamental questions is likely to meet with two different sorts of objections. The objections of the first sort maintain that the theory in question is too abstruse and obscure to be comprehended. The objections of the second sort point out that this same theory is too simple to be true. Every teacher of philosophy becomes accustomed not only to hear both kinds of objections from his more thoughtful pupils, but to urge them, for himself, upon his own notice. No one, in fact, is a philosopher, who has not first profoundly doubted his own system. And it is in presence of objections that philosophical theses best show their merits, if they have merits.
Upon the present occasion I have more fully to develope
the conception of Being to which we were led at the
close of the last discussion. While I shall do so, in the
first place, independently, I shall come before I am done
into intimate connection with some of the principal objections
that may be urged against our theses regarding the
definition of what it is to be. For the objections will
help us to make clearer our position.
I
But let us first restate our thesis as to the nature of Being. There is an ancient doctrine that whatever is, is
