The Intellectual Man-Child

One of my daughter’s favourite activities is to put something in a box, close it, then open it and take it out. She can happily spend half her time doing this... putting things in boxs and taking them out, putting things in box and taking them out... Even though she’s the one who put the thing in the box, she is, nevertheless, delighted by its appearance within the box.

Now, if I said that she was 16 years old, you might think this an odd hobby, but 16 months old... that tracks. But something Nietzsche wrote in one of his early texts suggests that we never really get over this game of hide and seek - that even the greatest philosophers are like intellectual toddlers, putting things in boxs and taking them out:

When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man.