DEDUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY 



throughout the land could read Greek. It was then 

 both natural and right that all should look back to 

 the books of antiquity as to a treasure-house in 

 which was kept priceless wealth of wisdom, without 

 which they would be no better than the serfs and 

 slaves around them. Learning then consisted in 

 trying to understand the ideas of those who had 

 lived, thought and written a thousand or fifteen 

 hundred years before. To improve upon that 

 thought was absurd, if not in fact sinful. To think 

 as Plato and Aristotle thought, and to look upon the 

 world and its contents as Aristotle had done, was 

 with the monks and with the scholastics the very 

 essence and truth of Philosophy. To such men the 

 only philosophy known was the deductive. It is so 

 to-day with those whose training is only in classical 

 learning, or whose profession or practice obliges them 

 to depend largely upon established precedent and 

 to rely upon authority in the past, for their reason 

 and motive for action in the present. 



We have now to leave the realm of the pure sub- 

 jective and deductive philosophy to which Leibnitz, 

 Locke, Hegel, Schelling, Kant and others have added 

 the labor of their lives, and turn to the school of the 

 inductive philosophy that has opened to us our insight 

 into the real infinitude of knowledge. 



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