CHAPTEE I. 



PHILOSOPHY DEFINED. 



§ 35. After concluding that we cannot know the ulti- 

 mate nature of that which is manifested to us, there arise 

 the questions — What is it that we know? In what sense 

 do we know it ? And in what consists our highest knowledge 

 of it? Having repudiated as impossible the Philosophy 

 which professes to formulate Being as distinguished from 

 Appearance, it becomes needful to say what Philosophy 

 truly is — not simply to specify its limits, but to specify its 

 character within those limits. Given a certain sphere as the 

 sphere to which human intelligence is restricted, and there 

 remains to define the peculiar product of human intelligence 

 which may still be called Philosophy. 



In doing this, we may advantageously avail ourselves of 

 the method followed at the outset, of separating from con- 

 ceptions that are partially or mainly erroneous, the element 

 of truth they contain. As in the chapter on " Religion and 

 Science,' 7 it was inferred that religious beliefs, wrong as 

 they might individually be in their particular forms, never- 

 theless probably each contained an essential verity, and that 

 this was most likely common to them all; so in this place it 

 is to be inferred that past and present beliefs respecting the 

 nature of Philosophy, are none of them wholly false, and 

 that that in which they are true is that in which they agree. 

 We have here, then, to do what was clone there — " to com- 

 pare all opinions of the same genus ; to set aside as more or 



129 



