WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? 515 



fortime is apt to humble us. It is not strange then that the succeeding 

 generation of philosophers should have been meek, and that even so 

 late as 1874, Wundt should have felt the need of proving that phi- 

 losophy had a right to exist, and might justly claini a place among the 

 sciences.* 



This period of reaction, however, was as transitory as its cause had 

 been. The disturbed pendulum was simply swinging to the other side 

 before resuming its regular movements. The metaphysical need or 

 impulse, as Schopenhauer terms it, is too powerful in man to be per- 

 manently suppressed. To ask why is one of the noblest functions of 

 the human being ; to stifle such inquiry would be equivalent to destroy- 

 ing all intellectual activity. It cannot be stifled. Philosophy is not 

 of an age, but for all time. The last philosopher will die when the last 

 man dies, unless, indeed, that individual happen to be a hopeless idiot. 

 Whoever is capable of thought at all will attempt in some way, be it 

 ever so crude, to explain to himself the world and his place in the world. 

 'What does it all mean ?'f 'What is it all for ?' are questions which force 

 themselves upon every intelligent being, and are answered by him ac- 

 cording to the light that is in him. (Indeed, his queries themselves 

 are pregnant with entire metaphysical systems.) Nor can the exact 

 sciences themselves operate without metaphysical conceptions. How- 

 ever violently they may protest against metaphysics as though it were 

 the plague itself, they inevitably succumb to the disease, if disease it 

 be. Is the theory of descent utterly free from the taint ? Is the atomic 

 theory which Greek philosophy originated in the fourth century B. C. 

 any the less metaphysical because it is promulgated by modern sci- 

 entists? Is not the attempt to reduce all material facts to their ulti- 

 mates, matter and force or energy, metaphysical ? Is not the theory of 

 the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy, as con- 

 ceived by many, metaphysical ? Is not the attempt to refer all energies 

 to one ultimate energy a bold and grand attempt to reach a unity, a first 

 principle, on which all else depends ? And what can be more metaphys- 

 ical than that ? In truth, the philosophical tendency to reduce plurality 

 and diversity to unity, to find one common principle that may be able to 

 explain all phenomena, prevails in every scientific procedure, because 

 it constitutes the very essence of mental activity. We can not resist the 

 impulse to unify our experiences, we would reach a comprehensive sur- 

 vey of all existence, discover the principle or principles which will ex- 

 plain all facts. The different sciences dealing with different sets of 

 facts may find ultimates capable of accounting for their facts respect- 

 ively, but only by ignoring other facts. They give us, as it were, 



• Wundt, Aufgabe der Philosophie. 



t ' Was ist der Sinn der Welt? '— Lotze. 



