PROFESSOR BROOKS'S PHILOSOPHY 121 



primarily the question of the " origin, extent and validity of knowl- 

 edge/' in thorough-going dependence on the mechanistic views and sci- 

 ence of his time. 



Although philosophy may at times, then, seem to get far away from 

 contact with the empirical and the practical, still this may well be only 

 a " seeming," and there may be and generally is a very genuine contin- 

 uity of influence and of knowledge through the threads of that con- 

 sistent and rigorous reasoning which forms the discovery of implica- 

 tions and presuppositions. But even a remoteness of this kind is not 

 always the case. Far more frequently, indeed, has there been intimate 

 contact and close relationship, if not within the mind of one man, then 

 as within that larger whole which we call the Zeitgeist, whatever inter- 

 pretation may be given to this. 



As concerns scientists and philosophers, it must be admitted that 

 all of them are educated and develop with that whole body of knowl- 

 edge which the human race has won theoretically accessible to them. 

 But specialized environment and congenital predisposition really limit 

 this accessibility considerably, and together result in specialized inter- 

 ests and specific development. But this means only that from a great 

 body of knowledge certain parts are selected and become revivified in 

 the mind of some individual, to furnish the basis for further develop- 

 ment, for originality, for discovery, for advance. Yet as this process 

 occurs, it issues in a two-fold result. There is a certain unity in 

 knowledge, not of that kind which means that any part is theoretically 

 or a priori deducible from any other part, but in the sense that there 

 are man}' parts or aspects of reality to be known, and that knowledge of 

 them must form a logically consistent whole. JSTow education and 

 training may result in a mind which is aware of all this, in a mind, 

 therefore, which, although it is fully informed, and critical, and con- 

 structive in some special field, is also fully aware that this field is but a 

 part of a larger whole and that through this relation special investigation 

 gets its significance and importance. Such a mind may be said to be 

 philosophic, or, if one prefers, scientific in the best sense of the term. 

 On the other hand, intellectual development may result in a mind 

 which is seemingly unaware, even ignorant of the history of the race, 

 of its thought, of its hopes and aspirations, a mind which accordingly 

 finds the summum bonum only in one line of thought and investigation, 

 which ignores or even denies the relation of this to a larger whole, be- 

 cause it is ignorant of this whole, and which accordingly pursues its 

 own way along the straight and narrow path of only highly specialized 

 investigation. While one must not speak disparagingly of such minds, 

 since the history of thought shows quite clearly that to these also are 

 due very important contributions to knowledge, still of such a mind it 

 must be admitted that it has the defects of its qualities, namely, that it 



VOL.LXXVUT. — 9. 



