CURRENT TENDENCIES 17 



of science. Knowledge concerning the future which is 

 the kind of knowledge that must be sought if we are to 

 know about human destiny is possible within certain 

 narrow limits. It is impossible to say how much the 

 limits may be enlarged with the progress of science. 

 But what is evident is that any proposition about the 

 future belongs by its subject-matter to some particular 

 science, and is to be ascertained, if at all, by the methods 

 of that science. Philosophy is not a short cut to the 

 same kind of results as those of the other sciences : if it 

 is to be a genuine study, it must have a province of its 

 own, and aim at results which the other sciences can 

 neither prove nor disprove. 



The consideration that philosophy, if there is such a 

 study, must consist of propositions which could not occur 

 in the other sciences, is one which has very far-reaching 

 consequences. All the questions which have what is called 

 a human interest such, for example, as the question of 

 a future life belong, at least in theory, to special sciences, 

 and are capable, at least in theory, of being decided by 

 empirical evidence. Philosophers have too often, in the 

 past, permitted themselves to pronounce on empirical 

 questions, and found themselves, as a result, in disastrous 

 conflict with well-attested facts. We must, therefore, 

 renounce the hope that philosophy can promise satisfac- 

 tion to our mundane desires. What it can do, when it is 

 purified from all practical taint, is to help us to under- 

 stand the general aspects of the world and the logical 

 analysis of familiar but complex things. Through this 

 achievement, by the suggestion of fruitful hypotheses, 

 it may be indirectly useful in other sciences, notably 

 mathematics, physics, and psychology. But a genuinely 

 scientific philosophy cannot hope to appeal to any except 

 those who have the wish to understand, to escape from 



