98 COSMIC PILOSOniY. [pt. t. 



the employment of the false method. Hence thl supreme 

 importance which the history of philosophy attaches to those 

 thinkers — like Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, and Comte — who 

 have signalized themselves as the founders of new methods. 

 And hence the immense influence, for good or for ill, which 

 such thinkers have exerted. 



The two general views of philosophy which it has been 

 the aim of the previous chapters to exhibit in radical oppo- 

 sition and contrast, are still farther distinguished by the 

 adoption of two very different methods of inquiry. That 

 metaphysical philosophy, which exhausts its energies in the 

 vain attempt to frame tenable hypotheses concerning the 

 objective order of things, reaches its ephemeral conclusions 

 by the use of a method which, on grounds that will presently 

 appear, is called the Subjective Method. The Cosmic Philo- 

 sophy, which aims only to organize into a universal body of 

 truth the sum of general conclusions obtained by science, 

 adopts as the only trustworthy guide for its inquiries the 

 method of science, which, in contrast to the other, is called 

 the Objective Method. To describe these different methods, 

 and thus to arrive at a clear notion of the practical distinc- 

 tion between a metaphysical and a scientific philosophy, is 

 the object of the present chapter. 



The subjective method rests upon the assumption that 

 the possibilities of thought are coextensive or identical with 

 the possibilities of things. Having built upon some subjective 

 foundation, assumed as axiomatic, a <* ; ven order of concep- 

 tions, it assumes that the order of phenomena must corre- 

 spond to it. It is satisfied with confronting one thought with 

 another thought, and does not trouble itself to confront the 

 thought with the phenomenon. If its hypothesis is made up 

 of congruous elements, it takes it for granted that the in- 

 ternal congruity must be matched by an external congruity. 

 It applies to the order of conceptions a logical, not an ex- 

 perimental test. If its conclusions flow inevitably from its 



