On Boys, Philosophers and Poker Players
By G. S. GALE THE room, of course, was changed. The walls, for instance, were newly distempered and there was a better carpet on the floor. There were no books in the room, no pictures on the walls. But it was my room, or, at any rate, the room in which I had lived for a year. Outside, the Scholars' Garden was the same, except that the scar on the lawn where the yew-tree died had healed. And in the college the Upper Parlour was unchanged, except that the grand piano now stood in the bay window and the green paint which had been used to blot out the pre-Raphaelite panels seemed to have acquired new dignity as it faded and aged. It was not so long, three or four years, since I had lived in this room, walked and played croquet in this garden, talked in this pleasant parlour or listened to amateur chamber music. And on this occasion particularly I remembered, without any great access of nostalgia, how we here had talked night-long till of our prodigal fancies some chance few among a million seeds struck root and grew and blossomed into plants of the most marvellous size, in the shade of which all our and our elders' sickly problems could comfortably shelter. These were hot-house plants, of course, or beanstalks. In the outside world people laughed at our talk, which was nothing more than climbing beanstalks. We left, to go outside, and laughed, too, without any shame. Why should we have felt anything but embarrassed contempt when we recalled our youthful follies? The business of earning money was with us. The world was tough, hard-hearted, and it was much safer to be cynical. We put our fancies away, and called them juvenilia, and the night-long talks, when they were snatched away from our wives, were on poker, not God. If we still had a philo- sophy, it was bluff. It so happens that for a fortnight or so a course on recent developments in British philosophy has been held at Peterhouse. The students of the course have been chiefly Continental professors, lecturers and researchers, of roughly comparable academic status to the professors and lecturers from Oxford, London and especially Cambridge who have delivered the course. The course was devised by the British Council (which rightly inferred that on the Continent, even among experts and professional philosophers, little was known of recent British philosophy) and arranged by the Cambridge Faculty of Moral Science. The lectures themselves were given in the college's ugly, noisy little Lecture Room; but afterwards they were discussed in the quiet garden, in the cool green Upper Parlour, and in the room which once was mine. The room had become the lounge for the course. So that here, where we had talked incessantly, had grown our lofty and profuse beanstalks, had talked of life and death and politics and God, had argued over purposes and values and over hows and whys and wherefores—and since had thought that this had been the talk of boys, for it embarrassed men—here the same things were being talked about still and not by a newer genera- tion of ambitious boys, but by grown men.
" Awake, my St. John ! leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate, free o'er all this scene of man."
Thus Pope exhorted himself and Bolingbroke also, as he began his Essay on Man. This'might have been our text, those few years ago, and a text for the-Continental philosophers, too. " A mighty maze ! but not without a plan," Pope exclaimed. To find the plan : this is what we meant by philosophy : our evening coffee ambitions were no less, nor are the purposes of Continental thinkers any smaller. Anyone in Paris can philosophise; intelligent men are often expected to. But not in London. Not, indeed, in England. Not in Cambridge. Our lower ambition seeks to flourish upon meaner things; and politics for us—the pride of kings—is only a mean decision to attach ourselves to one or other of the proud battalions marching up the left and right sides of the same dusty road. We would not dare, we are too modest, to expatiate free o'er all the scene of man. Philosophy is not for us, we say; and the philosophers say-so too, for they would have philosophy a science, and science long ago became mysterious. So, as if by mutual consent, philosophy in England is left to boys and dons, and it is only the boys who dare. • For the dons are cautious; have been for two generations. They have turned away from metaphysics, from the construc- tion of great systems of thought. They have been content to explore the meanings of words and phrases, and to examine the inner harmony of systems of ethics without looking beyond to the white, clear light which might have sustained those systems. They have called this logical analysis by the name " philosophy." They do not mind that boys and Continental thinkers presume to construct their vast systems, presume to attack with their childish, clumsy weapons the great problems which have always agitated men—but they beg these people of high ambition not to call their works philosophy. And most of us have taken the hint, and have left philosophy to the experts and settled down to poker. But Pope's mighty maze is still with us : is it to be without a plan ? Our English philosophers will not provide a plan, for that might be to preach. And probably they remember the metaphysical planners : they think of Hegel, for instance, and consider Germany and Marx. People, they say, manage to get on all right without philosophy; the Englishman's common tense is better than a false dogma and will undoubtedly carry him along until the cautious methods of logical analysis can be addressed to the problems of the mighty maze. There is no hurry, they say. And since Englishmen have ceased to talk of philosophy, they may be right. Yet last week-end at Cam- bridge the Continental philosophers said : " No." Time and again their thought—rich, powerful, offering a guide to conduct and a purpose for life, but unclear and possibly wrong— seemed to dash itself to pieces before the Cambridge caution, " Let us first be sure what we mean." .Time and again the Continental philosophers said : " We cannot wait for that. Too many people are confused. In the meantime we must act, and common sense is not enough." The urgency we boys had felt, they felt also. Their ambition, as ours, was high. So, in the garden and the Upper Parlour, and in the room I still thought of as mine, it was natural to wonder who was right. The world Deeds explaining, you might say : but the preachers have met in huge councils and have failed to agree among themselves, and for all their contemporary excitement their explanations seem to have diminishing force; the poli- ticians also have arranged the world's affairs in deliberative assemblies and in policies • for utopias and in speeches of religious fervour, but their common reputation stands no higher; and the philosophers themselves who have dared to say why men should be good and how happy they would be if they tried might wonder whether all their words have made men better or more content. These modern English philo- sophers have decided to start all over again, at the beginning. They have side-stepped out of the great Platonic and Aristo- telian traditions. They are sharpening language so that it will be more fit to attack the great philosophical problems. But in their search for finer meanings they have themselves become incomprehensible. Shortly they may attack in earnest; at the moment they are making cautious sallies, pricking at the problems of perception, of truth, of goodness, but shying away from the gteater problems of man in nature and man in society. They may in time come to these problems; they may in time become comprehensible. But for the rest of us, we are very much now in the meantime. And that was not enough for us ambitious boys, nor is it enough for the Continentals. For these two have perhaps one thing in common, that this mean- time is not very pleasant, and in the long run (as Keynes said) we are all dead.
But I was less exercised in judging between Cambridge and Paris, between caution and ambition, than in wondering on how separated these English philosophers were from the rest of us. Perhaps we would still talk philosophy if the philo- sophers did, but when they dare not how can we? Only the conceit of youth would brave the maze. And when the philo- sophers themselves go poker-faced before the deepest questions, is it any wonder we play poker? But I am still not sure whether I was wiser when I was a philosopher and a boy than I am now that I have become a poker-player and a man.
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