The number of those who devote themselves to philosophic thought and practice is not a significant one. It is indeed quite a small one. But as life on this earth will get more and more intolerable (as it is doing in this twentieth century), people will get more and more to realize that there is something wrong or lacking in the faith by which they live--be it faith in simple materialism or in orthodox religion. After they have thus started a'questioning some of them will pass to the ultimate stage and go a'questing. In the end they will arrive at philosophy because all other teachings are merely on the approach to it. In the end the number of its votaries will continually increase. But they will not, say within the next thousand years, be in any danger of becoming quite a crowd. They shall have to go on living in loneliness. They will remain a tiny minority, with the satisfaction of being less tiny than it is now. The only choice which is usually presented to us is a vicious and false one. We are asked to choose between materialism and orthodox religion, thus dividing us into the supposition that these are the only possible spiritual views which mankind can adopt. This supposition is an unjustified one. We are moving beyond them. We are no longer limited to such a narrow choice. There is a third road open to us--that of the philosophic view. Out of the clash between two such opposite attitudes, there has been born for independent thinkers a third attitude which is truer than both.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 2 : Its Contemporary Influence > # 117
