The
late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about
this. 'Thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something
for so-called philosophers only or for professed thinkers. The best
philosopher is the man who can think most _simply_. ... I wish that
people would consider that thought--and philosophy is no more than
good and methodical thought--is a matter _intimate_ to them, a portion
of their real selves ... that they would _value_ what they think, and
be interested in it.... In my own opinion,' he goes on, 'there is
something depressing in this weight of learning, with nothing that can
come into one's mind but one is told, Oh, that is the opinion of such
and such a person long ago. ... I can conceive of nothing more noxious
for students than to get into the habit of saying to themselves about
their ordinary philosophic thought, Oh, somebody must have thought it
all before.'[3] Yet this is the habit most encouraged at our seats of
learning. You must tie your opinion to Aristotle's or Spinoza's; you
must define it by its distance from Kant's; you must refute your
rival's view by identifying it with Protagoras's.
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