242 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



facts. From this point onward, the work of the philo- 

 sopher is synthetic and comparatively easy ; it is in the 

 very last stage of the analysis that the real difficulty 

 consists. 



Of the prospect of progress in philosophy, it would be 

 rash to speak with confidence. Many of the traditional 

 problems of philosophy, perhaps most of those which 

 have interested a wider circle than that of technical 

 students, do not appear to be soluble by scientific 

 methods. Just as astronomy lost much of its human 

 interest when it ceased to be astrology, so philosophy 

 must lose in attractiveness as it grows less prodigal of 

 promises. But to the large and still growing body of 

 men engaged in the pursuit of science men who hitherto, 

 not without justification, have turned aside from philo- 

 sophy with a certain contempt the new method, successful 

 already in such time-honoured problems as number, 

 infinity, continuity, space and time, should make an 

 appeal which the older methods have wholly failed to 

 make. Physics, with its principle of relativity and its 

 revolutionary investigations into the nature of matter, is 

 feeling the need for that kind of novelty in fundamental 

 hypotheses which scientific philosophy aims at facilitating. 

 The one and only condition, I believe, which is necessary 

 in order to secure for philosophy in the near future an 

 achievement surpassing all that has hitherto been accom- 

 plished by philosophers, is the creation of a school of 

 men with scientific training and philosophical interests, 

 unhampered by the traditions of the past, and not misled 

 by the literary methods of those who copy the ancients 

 in all except their merits. 



