And so, fourthly, the contradictions of experience make experience supremely practical. They make it practical just because they make realistic, or substantial, an experience which without them would be abstract and only relative and "phenomenal." Possibly this is the hardest thing of all to apprehend, or at least to express satisfactorily. Yet the fact, to which I keep returning, that only the both-sided in everyday matters or in science or in any form of positive experience can accord with reality and its wholeness, is assuredly quite to the point. In practical life there always are, and emphatically there always must be, two sides, to every thing, to every question. In practical life, too, or at any rate in all effective activity, there always is, and emphatically there always must be, something very like to leadership; but any truly practical leadership, any leadership that is all along the lines of life, be it of things, ideas, persons, or social classes or parties, can never be confined to a [p.146] single individual representative, but must be instead a leadership of many. No thoroughly practical leadership, I say, can ever be on one side or the other, but instead of being one-sided it must be both-sided, or rather, infinitely many-sided; it must be between or among all the different and opposed individuals; it must lie, perhaps in a sense sleep, in rivalry and competition. There can be no visible leader, whose leadership is wholly practical, whether of things or realities--for the metaphysician--or of ideas or categories--for the logician--or of persons or classes--for the statesman or the moralist or the theologian. Metaphysical reality, the truly practical and realistic knowledge, the political supremacy which is complete and inclusive, or the wholly moral life or the divine life must forever be secured, not through a single manifestation presiding over the others, but through the divided labour of them all. Yes, real leadership, like real unity in general, is a divided labour; it is a labour that effects successful co-operation through its very differences and conflicts: for reality, a labour perhaps of different "elements" or "entities"; for knowledge, of different ideas and standpoints; for morals, of different standards; for politics, of different parties and platforms; for divinity, of different Gods; and for life at large, a labour of infinite differences, which means also a labour of opposites, that at once develop and correct each other to the glory of that which is real and practical.
Aid Journal
The Will to Doubt — Part 76
2026-11-15 12:26:19 · Cedar Herald Index
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