130 PHILOSOPHY DEFINED. 



less discrediting one another those various special and con- 

 crete elements in which such opinions disagree; to observe 

 what remains after the discordant constituents have been 

 eliminated; and to find for this remaining constituent that 

 abstract expression which holds true throughout its diver- 

 gent modifications." 



36. Earlier speculations being passed over, we see 

 that among the Greeks, before there had arisen any notion 

 of Philosophy in general, apart from particular forms of 

 Philosophy, the particular forms of it from which the gen- 

 eral notion was to arise, were hypotheses respecting some 

 universal principle that constituted the essence of all con- 

 crete kinds of being. To the question " What is that ^71- 

 variable existence of which these are variable states f " there 

 were sundry answers Water, Air, Fire. A class of hypo- 

 theses of this 'all-embracing character having been pro- 

 pounded, it became possible for Pythagoras to conceive of 

 Philosophy in the abstract, as knowledge the most remote 

 from practical ends; and to define it as " knowledge of im- 

 material and eternal things: " " the cause of the material 

 existence of things," being, in his view, Number. There- 

 after, we find continued a pursuit of Philosophy as some 

 ultimate interpretation of the Universe, assumed to be pos- 

 sible, whether actually reached in any case or not. And in 

 the course of this pursuit, various such ultimate interpreta- 

 tions were given as that " One is the beginning of all 

 things; " that " the One is God; " that " the One is Fi- 

 nite; " that " the One is Infinite; " that " Intelligence is the 

 governing principle of things; " and so on. From all 

 which it is plain that the knowledge supposed to constitute 

 Philosophy, differed from other knowledge in its transcend- 

 ent, exhaustive character. In the subsequent course 

 of speculation, after the Sceptics had shaken men's faith in. 

 their powers of reaching such transcendent knowledge, there 

 grew up a much-restricted conception of Philosophy. Un- 



