PHILOSOPHY 



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T>een understood by philosophy. In Hume's words: 

 4 We must submit to this fatigue, in order to live 

 at ease ever after ; and must cultivate true meta- 

 phy>ii-s with some care in order to destroy the false 

 and adulterate. ' 



This sceptical or positivistic theory, however, is 

 chiefly tlie result of the unwarrantable separation 

 of essence and appearance, of noumena and pheno- 

 mena, which has been already referred to as an 

 unfortunate outcome of Plato's way of stating the 

 philosophic problem. If tho noumenal reality is 

 something transcendent, something apart from the 

 world we know, and as it were hidden behind it, 

 then it must inevitably drift into the position of 

 a perfectly otiose thing-in-itself, which has no 

 function to discharge in the universe of knowledge. 

 Whether we then continue to assert its existence, 

 as an Unknown and Unknowable, or take up a 



Imrely sceptical position in regard to it, is really of 

 htle moment. In lioth cases the limitation of 

 knowledge to phenomena is justified hv the false 

 definition of the essence or noumenon from which 

 the theories in question start. Hut the noumenon 

 is not a transcendent entity apart from the pheno- 

 menon : it is simply the phenomenon itself fully 

 understood. To know only phenomena would be 

 to rest content with the immediate appearances of 

 sense. All science is an attempt to go beyond the 

 immediate appearance, and to understand it by 

 connecting it with something else. Ultimately no 

 one thing can ! fully understood except in the 

 light of the whole ; so to understand things is to 

 reach their metaphysical reality, to see them sub 

 x/irrir Ht'Tiiitittis. Following out this line of 

 thought, the modern philosopher oftener gives his 



?uetion a ideological than an ontological form, 

 nstead of asking what is the ultimate essence, he 

 a*ks what is the ultimate meaning, the ultimate 

 end, of the universe. Has it a rational ami satis- 

 fying end ? Does it exist to express a meaning at 

 all, or simply as a brute fact? But end, meaning, 

 and ultimate reality are only different ways of 

 formulating the same problem. 



But even those modern philosophers who combat 

 most strongly this sceptical view of the inherent 

 impossibility of reaching metaphysical truth agree 

 in laying great stress on what has recently come 

 to lie called Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge. 

 The question of knowledge and the relation of 

 knowledge to reality has stood in the foreground 

 of modern philosophy since Locke. It is evidently 

 fundamental and preliminary, for on the trust- 

 worthiness of my knowledge and its |K>wer of 

 putting me in communication with independent 

 trans-subjective realities depend all my further 

 investigations. If my results in the theory of 

 knowledge are sceptical, I have no foothold in the 

 world of reality to serve as basis for metaphysical 

 construction. The sceptic and positivist therefore 

 stop short at this point ; but the philosopher who 

 behpves that he has reached a satisfactory doctrine 

 of knowledge (or belief, as he sometimes prefers 

 to call it) advances to metaphysics proper, or 

 the theory of the ultimate nature of the real 

 which he believes himself to apprehend in know- 

 ledge. 



The general term Philosophy, though occasionally, 

 a- lias IK-,. i, -aid, identified with Epistemology, and 

 more frei|iiently with Metaphysics, has in common 

 usagn a wider application. Besides these central 

 disciplines it embraces what may be called the philo- 

 sophical sciences, such as Logic, Ethics, ^Esthetics, 

 Psychology, Sociology, the Philosophy of Law, the 

 Philosophy of Religion, and the Philosophy of His- 

 tory. Some of these, however, have two sides, and 

 may be treated either as positive sciences or as 

 I>:irts of philosophy. Psychology, by which is 

 understood what was formerly called Empirical 

 M73 



Psychology, may be said to have established its 

 claim to be an independent science of observation 

 and experiment. But, though it may fall more and 

 more into the hands of specialists, it will always 

 remain connected with philosophy, seeing that the 

 knowing mind is the object which the psychologist 

 investigates. Similarly, Ethics is often treated as 

 the natural history of moral ideas and institutions 

 or of the moral sense, but so conceived it really 

 , forms a part of scientific psychology. The strictly 

 I philosophical part of Etnics is the theory of obli- 

 gation, and tliis is sometimes spoken of as the 

 Metaphysic of Ethics. The meaning assigned to 

 duty and the explanation given of it must of 

 necessity profoundly influence the general concep- 

 tion we may form of the universe. So, again, 

 ./Esthetics may be treated as a department of 

 physiological psychology, as has mostly been the 

 case in England ; but l>y many continental writers 

 the Philosophy of Art or the Philosophy of the 

 Beautiful has been intimately connected with 

 metaphysics. Jurisprudence on its philosophical 

 side is closely connected with Ethics, and is some- 

 times spoken of as the Philosophy of Law. The 

 Philosophy of History and the Philosophy of Reli- 

 gion exist only so far as there can be traced in the 

 facts of history and in the different religions of 

 man the evolution of an idea or purpose. Logic, 

 as the science of the regulative laws of thought, 

 forms a part of the general theory of knowledge. 

 It holds aloof, however, from the central question 

 of Epistemology. It presupposes the relation of 

 our thought to reality, but does not itself inves- 

 tigate that relation, confining itself to the laws by 

 which we may validly pass from one statement to 

 another. It occupies a propaedeutic or introductory 

 position in relation to philosophy, and indeed in 

 relation to scientific thought generally. 



The History of Philosophy forms not the least 

 important philosophical discipline. Philosophy 

 cannot, indeed, I* profitably studied apart from 

 the history of its own development. Speculative 

 thought has flourished in India anil elsewhere, but 

 to all intents ;nid purposes the history of philosophy 

 begins with Thales in Greece aliout 600 B.C. It is 

 usual to distinguish three great periods of philo- 

 sophic thought Ancient or Greek Philosophy, from 

 6(K) B.C. to about 500 A.D. ; Mediieval Philosophy, 

 lasting till 1600 ; and Modern Philosophy, since 

 that date. Greek Philosophy is in turn divided 

 into three periods that of the pre-Socratic philo- 

 sophers (say 600 to 425 B.C.), who devoted their 

 attention mainly to the phenomena of external 

 nature. Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Em- 

 pedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras were the 

 most eminent heads of mutually conflicting schools. 

 The Sophists ami Socrates raised the question of 

 knowledge, turning man's attention upon himself ; 

 and in the idealistic systems of Plato and Aristotle 

 (say 400-322 B.C.) we have the great age of Greek 

 philosophy. In Aristotle the theoretic impulse of 

 the Greek mind seems to have exhausted itself, 

 and the post-Aristotelian or third period of Greek 

 philosophy was mainly inspired by practical need, 

 by the desire for a theory of life and conduct. 

 The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, and later the 

 Neoplatonists with their religious mysticism, carry 

 on the tradition of philosophy till tlie downfall of 

 the lioman empire and the death of Boethius. After 

 the so-called dark ages Medieval Philosophy may 

 be said to begin in the 9th century with John 

 Scotus Erigena, who is really a Christian Neo- 

 platonist. Medueval philosophy is mainly the 

 application of the Aristotelian logic to the doc- 

 trines of the church, and latterly (when the other 

 treatises of Aristotle l>ecame known in western 

 Europe) exhausted itself in an elaborate attempt 

 to harmonise the philosophy of Aristotle with 



