ch. ii.] THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY. 25 



proportion of the conceptions now current and dominant in 

 philosophy are due. Nevertheless, as we shall see by and bye, 

 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 unfrequently 

 into making statements which imply that the possibilities of 

 thought are coextensive with the possibilities of things. 



It may appear, therefore, that in our rigorous denial of the 

 possibility of absolute knowledge, we shall not have the 

 countenance of the most eminent philosophers who have 

 lived. It may bethought that their works will testify against 

 us. We shall perhaps be accused of regarding the noble labours 

 of so many generations of gifted thinkers as a mere imprac- 

 ticable striving after that which no striving can procure, — as 

 the crying of infants for the moon, or as the groping of the 

 alchemist for the philosopher's stone. And it will no doubt 

 be indignantly asked, by what title do we pretend to philo- 

 sophize at all ? In rejecting as for ever insoluble so large a 

 proportion of the inquiries with which philosophy has until 

 lately busied itself, do we not virtually declare philosophy 

 to be antiquated and useless ? 



To neither of these accusations can we consent to plead 

 guilty. In replying to the first, it may indeed be granted 

 that those who rigorously maintain that Absolute Being is 

 unknowable, will naturally regard the labours of Plato and 

 Spinoza, and Hegel, as a vain seeking after that which cannot 

 be found. But it does not follow that such seeking is to be 

 condemned as worthless. It was only after many attempts 

 had failed, that we could learn that the failure was due not 

 to curable but to incurable weakness. 1 It was only after all 



1 "The study of the master-minds of the human race is almost equally 

 instructive in what they achieved and in what they failed to achieve; and 

 speculations which are lar from solving the riddle of existence have their use 

 in teaching us why it is insoluble." — Mansel, Metaphysics, p. 23. 



