Each pretends to that over which he has least power; each aims
instinctively at what he himself lacks. It is an unconscious protest
against the incompleteness of each separate nature. We all tend toward
that which we possess least of, and our point of arrival is essentially
different from our point of departure. The promised land is the land
where one is not. The most intellectual of natures adopts an ethical
theory of mind; the most moral of natures has an intellectual theory of
morals. This reflection was brought home to me in the course of our
three or four hours' discussion. Nothing is more hidden from us than the
illusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is to
believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
The mathematical intelligence and the historical intelligence (the two
classes of intelligences) can never understand each other. When they
succeed in doing so as to words, they differ as to the things which the
words mean. At the bottom of every discussion of detail between them
reappears the problem of the origin of ideas. If the problem is not
present to them, there is confusion; if it is present to them, there is
separation. They only agree as to the goal--truth; but never as to the
road, the method, and the criterion.
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