796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the growth of trees, the blooming of flowers, the forms of storm- 

 carved rocks, the mysteries of life and death, the institutions of society 

 many are the things to be explained. The yearning to know is 

 universal. Plow and why are everlasting interrogatories profoundly 

 instinct in humanity. In the evolution of the human mind, the in- 

 stinct of cosmic interrogation follows hard upon the instinct of self- 

 preservation. 



In all the operations of nature, man's weal and woe are involved. 

 A cold wave sweeps from the north rivers and lakes are frozen, 

 forests are buried under snows, and the fierce winds almost congeal 

 the life-fluids of man himself, and indeed man's sources of supply are 

 buried under the rocks of water. At another time the heavens are as 

 brass, and the clouds come and go with mockery of unfulfilled prom- 

 ises of rain, the fierce midsummer sun pours its beams upon the sands, 

 and scorching blasts heated in the furnace of the desert sear the vege- 

 tation, and the fruits, which in more congenial seasons are subsistence 

 and luxury, shrivel before the eyes of famishing men. A river rages 

 and destroys the adjacent valley with its flood. A mountain bursts 

 forth with its rivers of fire, the land is buried and the people are 

 swept away. Lightning shivers a tree and rends a skull. The silent, 

 unseen powers of nature, too, are at work bringing pain or joy, health 

 or sickness, life or death, to mankind. In like manner man's welfare 

 is involved in all the institutions of society. How and why are the 

 questions asked about all these things questions springing from the 

 deepest instinct of self-preservation. 



In all stages of savage, barbaric, and civilized inquiry every ques- 

 tion has found an answer, every how has had its thus, every why its 

 because. The sum of the answers to the questions raised by any 

 people constitute its philosophy ; hence all peoples have had philoso- 

 phies consisting of their accepted explanation of things. Such a phi- 

 losophy must necessarily result from the primary instincts developed 

 in man in the early progress of his differentiation from the beast. 

 This I postulate ; if demonstration is necessary, demonstration is at 

 hand. Not only has every people a philosophy, but every stage of 

 culture is characterized by its stage of philosophy. Philosophy has 

 been unfolded with the evolution of the human understanding. The 

 history of philosophy is the history of human opinions from the ear- 

 lier to the later days from the lower to the higher culture. 



In the production of a philosophy phenomena must be discerned, 

 discriminated, classified. Discernment, discrimination, and classifica- 

 tion are the processes by which a philosophy is developed. In study- 

 ing the philosophy of a people at any stage of culture, to understand 

 what such a people entertain as the sum of their knowledge it is ne- 

 cessary that we should understand what phenomena they saw, heard, 

 felt, discerned ; what discriminations they made, and what resem- 

 blances they seized uj)on as a basis for the classification on which 



