He who shuts himself up within the narrow confines of religion alone, or mysticism alone, or metaphysics alone, shuts himself off from the great stream of Life. The way must embrace many apparently antithetical things yet it is really one. Hence the wise man will first evoke within the self those diverse elements which are next to be coordinated into the rounded entirety of a splendid harmony. Hence too it is foolishness for the imprudent mystic to abandon his critical faculties on the threshold of his quest and to scorn the guidance of reasoned knowledge; he wanders haphazard along a path not without its dangers for it skirts at times the very edge of the precipices of madness, delirium, deception, and error. For such scientific and metaphysical knowledge acts as both pilot for the journey and check against its dangers. Without it a man gropes alone and blindfolded through the world-darkness. He does not know the proper meaning, place, and purpose of his multiform experiences. He does not understand that the ecstasies, the visions, and the devotions which have consumed his heart must later give place to the calm, formless, and abstract insight of philosophy. And it was because Ramakrishna was divinely led, in the deepest sense of the term, that he eventually accepted this fact and submitted to the philosophical initiation at the hands of Tota Puri and thus set out to make the ascent from being a visionary to becoming a sage. The lesson of this is that man, like all else, must be viewed in his entirety. Perhaps Hegel's greatest contribution was his discovery of the Dialectical Principle. For it showed the imperative need of surveying all around a matter and of understanding it in the fullness of its entire being rather than in the narrowness of a single facet. Ignorance of this important principle is one of the several factors responsible for the birth of fanatical fads, crankish cults, and futile revolutions. In the application of this principle, reason rises to its highest.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 3 : Its Requirements > # 454
