But essential man is a naked animal, not
a clothed one, and truth can only be arrived at by the most drastic
stripping off of unreal appearances that cover it. The Professor will
not linger upon the consideration of the lord's star or the clown's
button, which are all that most men care to see: he will get down to the
essential lord and the essential clown. And this will be more than an
interesting literary occupation to him, or it will not long be that.
Truth and God are one, and the devil is the prince of lies. This
philosophy of clothes, then, is religion and not _belles lettres_. The
reason for our sojourn on earth, and the only ground of any hope for a
further sojourn elsewhere, is that in God's name we do battle with the
devil.
The quest of reality must obviously be wide as the universe, but if we
are to engage in it to any purpose we must definitely begin it
_somewhere_. A treatise on reality may easily be the most unreal of
things--a mere battle in the air. So long as it is a discussion of
theories it has this danger, and the first necessity is to bring the
search down to the region of experience and rigorously insist on its
remaining there.
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