WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? 513 



WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? 



By Professor FRANK THILLY, 



UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI. 



"r^UEING the first third of the past century the intelligence of 

 -*-^ the world honored philosophy as the Queen of Science. In 

 Germany, the capital of higher learning, students crowded into the 

 lecture-rooms of the philosophers and accepted their teachings as gospel 

 truths. Everywhere the deepest interest was manifested in the solution 

 of the great problems of life. A powerful longing seized mankind 

 to unravel the world's profoundest mysteries, and this longing, too 

 impetuous to linger over an examination of the facts, satisfied itself 

 in the study and production of metaphysical systems. A suggestive 

 example of the immense influence wielded by the royal science during 

 this epoch is furnished by the experience of Friederich Vischer, who 

 declares that the entire time and energy of his youth were devoted to 

 the interpretation of the world-riddle. " Indeed, it seemed to me in 

 those days," he adds, " that a man had not attained his majority, and 

 ought not, therefore, to be allowed to. marry until he had at least dis- 

 persed the darkness surrounding the problem of free will and deter- 

 minism."* 



It was the golden age of philosophy, an age, however, which bore 

 within itself the seeds of its own decay. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, 

 the members of the learned dynasty, defined metaphysics or philosophy 

 as the ideal reconstruction of the universe from certain indisputable 

 principles, the discovery of these principles being, for the most part, 

 dependent on the possession of a special mental genius. Like Spinoza 

 before them, they deduced from premises which they regarded as ab- 

 solute, conclusions which seemed to them to be necessary. Closing their 

 eyes to the facts, these thinkers trusted in their ability to account for 

 those facts, by showing what would be the unavoidable logical conse- 

 quences of certain axiomatic first principles. Experience they consid- 

 ered as valueless in this connection; the most that it could do was to 

 verify the deductions of philosophy, f Schelling denies to it even this 

 worth; the ideal construction or hypothesis of the thinker needs no 

 such verification; it is self-sufficient, a law unto itself. J If the facts do 



* Quoted by Volkelt in Yorirdge zur Einfuhrung in die Philosophie der 

 Oegenwart. 



t See Fichte's Works, Vol. I., p. 446; Vol. II., p. 359. 

 t Schelling, Vol. V., p. 325. 



VOL. LX. — 33. 



