THE VOCATION OF PHILOSOPHY 51 



view of this uncertain and, to some extent, 

 confused position of contemporary philosophy, 

 the search for a criterion by which to estimate 

 its endeavors is indispensable. The way to 

 find this criterion is through an historical con- 

 sideration of the matter. 



Philosophy and science are of simultaneous 

 origin. More exactly, science came to life 

 in the guise of philosophy. Centuries later 

 Aristotle saw in its creation something more 

 than human. Thales and his successors had 

 sought scientific knowledge for its own sake 

 and not for the sake of its utility. Here we 

 see the reason why they thought science alone 

 free and reckoned its possession as something 

 divine — viz., that it does not make utility the 

 object of its pursuit. And we to-day repeat 

 with veneration the names of those early fath- 

 ers of our men of science and our philosophers, 

 Anaximander, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Par- 

 menides, and seek through an obscure tradi- 

 tion to catch a glimpse of their personalities. 

 Those thinkers of the pre-Socratic era antici- 

 pated all the fundamental conceptions involved 

 in the general scientific view of things, and 



