THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 



and upon this most treacherous foundation has 

 been more recently built the lofty but unstable 

 structure of Hegelism. 



Since Bacon's time, it is true, there have 

 appeared — for the most part in England — a 

 number of eminent thinkers, who, asserting the 

 relativity of human knowledge, and avowedly 

 renouncing the attempt to solve the mysteries 

 of objective existence, have occupied themselves 

 with psychological problems. To these think- 

 ers — Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hart- 

 ley, Brown, James Mill, Hamilton, and Mansei 

 — a large proportion of the conceptions now 

 current and dominant in philosophy are due. 

 Nevertheless, as we shall see by and by, even 

 these philosophers have not always made their 

 practice coincide with their preaching. Though 

 they have asserted, and were indeed the first to 

 assert clearly, the doctrine of the Relativity of 

 Knowledge, they did not always carry in their 

 minds its full import ; and were betrayed not 

 infrequently into making statements which 

 imply that the possibilities of thought are coex- 

 tensive with the possibilities of things. 



It may appear, therefore, that in our rigor- 

 ous denial of the possibility of absolute know- 

 ledge, we shall not have the countenance of the 

 most eminent philosophers who have lived. It 



ties of things." But Fiske gives (after Lewes) a fuller state- 

 ment of Kant's position below, p. 59.] 



35 



