422 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



starting-point and to justify the methods of advance 

 which were to be adopted. At the end of the century 

 which precedes the period we are dealing with this was 

 done with much detail and patience and unexampled com- 

 pleteness by Immanuel Kant ; his philosophy has accord- 

 ingly been rightly and consistently termed Criticism, and 

 the nineteenth century itself has marked its indebted- 

 ness to Kant, and to the thinkers who immediately 

 preceded him, nowhere more than by continually and 

 repeatedly urging the necessity of a theory of knowledge. 

 And yet it can hardly be maintained that those systems 

 which have had the deepest influence and have marked 

 the great eras of philosophic thought are exclusively 

 characterised by that cautious and critical spirit which 

 would not venture on any bold generalisation without a 

 previous patient examination. It is not always to the 

 careful and accurate surveyor ; often it is rather to the 

 daring explorer of an unknown country that we owe the 

 greatest discoveries, the enlargement of our knowledge 

 and the revolution of our views. Though we must admit 

 that the critical spirit, which during the last fifty years 

 has acquired an almost undisputed sway over all but 

 the purely exact and experimental sciences, favours the 



Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Kant, 

 referred, therefore, not to knowledge 

 in general but more exclusively to 

 philosophical knowledge ; scientific 

 knowledge being considered as firmly 

 established, in fact, frequently as a 

 model of true knowledge. Investi- 

 gations as to the hidden and un- 

 conscious principles which guided 

 such exact knowledge have latterly 

 been undertaken, not so much in 

 the interests of science itself as 

 rather with the intention of placing 





philosophical thought on a similarly 

 secure foundation. Accordingly 

 we find that scientific authorities 

 themselves show, as a rule, little 

 interest in the philosophy of their 

 respective sciences. The wide- 

 spread modern interest in scientific 

 first principles is not purely scien- 

 tific, it centres in the question : To 

 what extent are they capable of 

 supporting a moral and spiritual 

 view of things ? 



