CHAPTER VI. 



THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY, 



\ I. We are now in a position to embark upon 

 the important subject of the method of philosophy, 

 on which it may reasonably be suspected that th^ 

 failure or success of a philosopTiy will depend. V 



Among the possible claimants to the honours of 

 the true method we may dismiss two, viz., the 

 epistemological and the psychological. 



The epistemological method must be rejected for 

 the reasons already stated (ch. li. §§ 1.3- 17). It suc- 

 cumbed both to scepticism and to science : to science 

 because science could not admit that any theory of 

 knowledge had a right to treat the mind as a fixed 

 product that could be exhaustively analysed, instead 

 of being an organically living and developing 

 growth ; to scepticism, because its denial of the 

 ultimate reality of the Self (ch. v. § 4) incapacitated 

 it from transcending the antithesis of thought and 

 reality, and because it could never show that its 

 assertions held good of the real world. 



The psychological method is subject to the sai 

 defects as the epistemological in a higher degn 

 and possesses also some peculiar to Itself. It ah 

 is Invalidated by the growth of the mind, which 

 attempts to make the sole standard of knowled^ 

 The human mind, as it now is, appears to scieni 



to be a transitory phase of a development froj 



148 



