132 PHILOSOPHY DEFINED. 



Philosophy all that is regarded as absolute knowledge. 

 The German criticism on the English tacitly implies that if 

 Philosophy is limited to the relative, it is at any rate not 

 concerned with those aspects of the relative which are em- 

 bodied in mathematical formulae, in accounts of physical 

 researches, in chemical analyses, or in descriptions of species 

 and reports of physiological experiments. Now 



what has the too-wide German conception in common with 

 the conception general among English men of science; 

 which, narrow and crude as it is, is not so narrow and crude 

 as their misuse of the word philosophical indicates? The 

 two have this in common, that neither Germans nor English 

 apply the word to unsystematized knowledge to knowledge 

 quite uncoordinated with other knowledge. Even the most 

 limited specialists would not describe as philosophical, an 

 essay which, dealing wholly with details, manifested no per- 

 ception of the bearings of those details on wider truths. 



The vague idea thus raised of that in which the various 

 conceptions of Philosophy agree, may be rendered more 

 definite by comparing what has been known in England as 

 Natural Philosophy with that development of it called Posi- 

 tive Philosophy. Though, as M. Comte admits, the two 

 consist of knowledge essentially the same in kind; yet, by 

 having put this kind of knowledge into a more coherent 

 form, he has given it more of that character to which the 

 term philosophical is applied. Without expressing any 

 opinion respecting the truth of his co-ordination, it must be 

 conceded that by the fact of its co-ordination, the body of 

 knowledge organized by him has- a better claim to the title 

 Philosophy, than has the comparatively-unorganized body 

 of knowledge named Natural Philosophy. 



If subdivisions of Philosophy, or more special forms of 

 it, be contrasted with one another, or with the whole, the 

 same implication comes out. Moral Philosophy and Politi- 

 cal Philosophy, agree with Philosophy at large in the com- 

 prehensiveness of their reasonings and conclusions. Though 



