48 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



or phenomena spring. Science accepts the magnificent drama of 

 Nature just as it appears and is acted upon the stage for all to see, 

 and studies it with untiring zeal. Philosophy is extremely anxious 

 to get behind the scenes and to know precisely how this drama is 

 produced. From this it will at once appear how natural it is for 

 the Scientist to become the Philosopher, how impossible it is for the 

 mind to rest in Science alone, for the simple reason that the mind 

 will think. 



The History of Philosophic Thought may be divided into two 

 great periods, called respectively ancient and modern Philosophy. 

 The first begins with Thales, 600 B. C ; and in Socrates (born B. C. 

 469,) Plato (born B. C. 429) and Aristotle (born B. C. 385) 

 attains its richest and loftiest growth. After these it hved on a 

 somewhat vigorous, but on the whole a declining life for several cen- 

 turies, till at last in the 4th and 5th centuries after Christ, with Neo- 

 Platonism for its final form, antique thought gave up in exhaustion. 

 Ancient Philosophy reached its dissolution. 



Modern Philosophy had for its originator and father, the 

 Frenchman, Descartes, born 1576. Already it has had three cen- 

 turies of great fruitfulness, and as yet seems to be only in its prime. 

 Long may it live ! 



Then between the dissolution of Ancient Philosophy, say in the 

 6th century, and the birth of Modern Philosophy, in the i6th century, 

 we have an interim of just 1000 years. And what about this long 

 intervening period of what is called The Middle Ages ? Was their no 

 thinking, no activity of the human mind in all those thousand 

 years ? No student of history, who is at the same time a truth-teller, 

 will say that. The human mind was exceedingly active, and there 

 are great immortal names to be found here also. It was not the 

 absence of mental activity, but it was the direction in which this 

 activity displayed itself, which shuts this long period out of the 

 History of Philosophy. It was the period of what is known as 

 Scholasticism, and indeed some authors do not shut it out of 

 Philosophic History. Tennemann makes three great periods in this 

 history. Between the Ancient and the Modern he inserts the second, or 

 Mediaeval, and gives due prominence to the disputes of the Nominal- 

 ists and Reahsts, and to such names as Aquinas, Anselm and Abelard. 

 Uberweg also, in his History of Philosophy, goes over all 

 the ground of this period, knowing, however very well that it is not 



