398 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



though it contains valuable points of view which have 

 later been taken up by more recent thinkers/ Eeasons 

 similar to those which prevented for a long time the 

 recognition of the merits of Schleiermacher as a philo- 



complete History of Philosophy, 

 aud correctly remarks that neither 

 Ravaisson nor Taine takes due 

 notice of them. He considers 

 that what is termed " pure " 

 thought, the "study of the great 

 Truths of the moral order by the 

 sole aid of individual reasoning," 

 does not comprise the whole of 

 philosophy, though such has been 

 the avowed intention of the fore- 

 most philosophers since the time of 

 Socrates, as even such recent 

 thinkers as Bossuet and Fenelon, 

 following Descartes, have found 

 the criterion of certitude in the 

 clearness of ideas — i.e., in a purely 

 rational principle. Against this 

 he points to what he terms a 

 " mixed " philosophy as repre- 

 sented, inter alia, by Clement of 

 Alexandria, Origen, St Augustine, 

 and the Fathers of the Church, 

 who tried to reconcile the specula- 

 tions of Greek philosophy with 

 theological conceptions. It may be 

 remarked that " pure " rationalism 

 has never been characteristic of the 

 leading philosophies in this country, 

 which have been nearly always 

 allied, either with natural know- 

 ledge on the one side, or with some 

 form of traditional belief on the 

 other ; further, that the position 

 taken up by Lotze in Germany, 

 according to which the formal task 

 of philosophy consists in imparting 

 unity and harmony to the fre- 

 quently confused and contradictory 

 body of thought furnished by science 

 on the one side, by common -sense 

 and practical reasoning on the other, 

 at once opposes the attempt to 

 build up a philosophical system 

 upon a purely rational principle. 

 And a similar endeavour at a 



reconciliation of apparently opposed 

 regions of thought seems to under- 

 lie also such verj' dififerent philo- 

 sophical schemes as those of Herbert 

 Spencer and Mr Balfour. 



^ Two points may be specially 

 referred to : they were in a crude 

 way insisted on in the traditional 

 school of thought. The first is the 

 influence of tradition upon the 

 formation of ideas and convictions. 

 All the modern theories of environ- 

 ment, of inheritance, and of the 

 social atmosphere tend in the 

 direction of maintaining that ab- 

 stract notions have, like other 

 intellectual data, a conscious or 

 unconscious ancestry depending 

 upon acknowledged or unacknow- 

 ledged tradition under the influence 

 of surrounding or antecedent con- 

 ditions. The other interesting 

 point is notably the importance 

 which de Bonald (1754-1840) 

 attaches to language as an instru- 

 ment of the mind which creates 

 thought instead of being created 

 by it. He even goes the length 

 of maintaining that language and 

 words are a Divine Revelation. 

 Subsequent theories of the relation 

 of language and thought, such as 

 those of Max Miiller, the psycho- 

 logical importance of intersubjective 

 communion (James Ward), and the 

 extension of the term language to 

 all forms of expression (the "general 

 linguistic " of B. Croce), all tend to 

 emphasise the important part which 

 language has played, not only in the 

 undiscovered origins of civilisation 

 and culture, but also as the prin- 

 cipal Revelation, as the moment 

 of awakening, in the early life of 

 every rational human being. 



