Imagine we had
to arrange the books of a library. When we begin the
books lie
higgledy-piggledy on
the floor. Now there would be many ways of sorting them
and putting them in their places. One would be to take
the books one by one and put each on the shelf in its right
place. On the other hand
73.
we might take up several
books from the floor and put them in a row on a shelf, merely in
order to indicate that these books ought to go together in this
order. In the course of arranging the library this
whole row of books will have to change its place. But it
would be wrong to say that therefore putting them together on a
shelf was no step towards the final result. In this
case, in fact, it is pretty obvious that having put together books
which belong together was a definite achievement, even though
the whole row of them had to be shifted. But some of
the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with
taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting
them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their
positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The
onlooker who doesn't know the difficulty of the task
might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been
achieved. ‒ ‒ ‒ The difficulty in philosophy is to say
no more than we know. E.g., to see
that when we have put two books together in their right order we
have not thereby put them in their final places.