COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



of notions. Such are the distinctive marks of 

 science, regarded as a kind of knowledge. What 

 now are the distinctive marks of philosophy, 

 regarded as a kind of knowledge ? 



The metaphysical philosophers, whose con- 

 clusions, methods, and postulates were rejected 

 in the preceding chapter, would have replied to 

 the above question, that philosophy is generi- 

 cally different from science, — that philosophy 

 is the knowledge of the absolute, the infinite, 

 the uncaused, the objective reality, while science 

 is the knowledge of the relative, the finite, the 

 caused, the subjective state, — that while the 

 latter can concern itself only with phenomena, or 

 things as they exist in relation to the percipient 

 mind, the former can aspire to the knowledge 

 of noumena, or things as they exist independ- 

 ently and out of relation to the percipient mind. 

 Such would have been their answer. But we 

 have seen that no such knowledge of noumena 

 is possible, that the very nature of the cognitive 

 process precludes any such knowledge, and that, 

 if philosophy is to be regarded as knowledge at 

 all, it can have no such scope and function as 

 metaphysicians have assigned to it. What scope 

 is there left for philosophy ? If, like science and 

 common knowledge, it is nothing more than a 

 classification of phenomena in their relations of 

 coexistence and sequence, what is there left for 

 it to do which science cannot do as well ? 



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