PHILOSOPHY. 
366 
afcertained the chief moral principles, clothed them at 
firll: in fable and allegories, then in a kind of poetry, and in 
fhort fentences. They made their obfervations on the belt 
inftitutions of civil fociety, and were the original founders 
of civil and religious inftitutions, as Cecrops and Orpheus; 
or legillators, as Solon, Lycurgus, Numa; or teachers of 
wifdom, not only to their contemporaries, but to future 
generations, as Pythagoras and others. Such men re¬ 
ceived among the Greeks the honourable name of Sophijis, 
or Wife Men: but, fince the time of Pythagoras, the 
fomewhat more modern appellation of PhiloJ'ophers, or 
Lovers of Wifdom. See the article Philosopher, 
p.103. 
Some of thefe eminent men made the immenfe territory 
of Nature the fubjedt of their attentive inveftigation. 
This, together with the firft attempts in the field of the 
Mathematics, paved the way to refledtions upon objedts 
more remote from fennble perception ; the origin and 
ultimate end of the world, its whole phyfical conftrudtion, 
the laws to which its various changes are fubjedted ; the 
nature of man, and of that invifible being which is innate 
in him, and animates him. Truth, which the human 
mind fought fo eagerly, dawned upon it, indeed, but 
faintly in thefe fuper-fenfible regions. Often, inftead of 
the liable refults of reafon, he embraced empty phantoms: 
for what are the Cofmogonies, theTheogonies, the Atoms, 
and the fire-like fouls, of the world; the human mind 
conceived as a vapour or a lhadow after death ? What 
are thefe and many other conjedtures but creatures of an 
unruly fancy, againft whole importunate officioufnefs the 
weak and puerile underlianding, little accuftomed to 
fuper-fenfible thinking, could not contend ? Whenever 
the underlianding ventures into the field of fpeculation 
without the guidance of found fundamental conceptions, 
the imagination is fure to take upon itfelf the whole bu- 
finef^ before the underlianding is aware of it. Should it 
even fufpedl this obtrufive interference, it is unable, for 
want of found principles as guides, to feparate what is its 
own from what has been improperly forced upon it by 
the imagination; nay, it will rather perfuade itfelf, in 
order to avoid the humiliating confellion that it is not 
able to give a fatisfadlory account of fuper-fenfible objedts, 
that thefe creatures of the fpeculative fancy are its own 
produdtion. 
In this Hate, what was called Philofophy remained for 
many centuries before it was able to fubftitute for the 
chaos of fantaftical and incoherent reprefentations fome- 
thing that approached to the idea of a rational fyftem of 
the laft grounds and ends of things. Every attempt, howe¬ 
ver imperfedl, to approximate that idea, provided it were 
an effort of reafon and not of mere fancy, received the 
beautiful name of Philofophy ; and each with a greater 
right than that which had preceded it. 
PART I. 
Of the Conception of Philosophy ; its Nature, Origin, 
and End. 
There is fcarcely a fcience which is more mifunder- 
ftood, and of which there are more erroneous conceptions 
entertained, than Philosophy. Thefe falfe, or at lealt 
but half-true, ideas, of the nature of philofophy, the want 
of a proper furvey of its whole territory and compafs, and 
befides this all kinds of llrange prejudices with refpedt to 
its ends and its whole tendency, are the principal caufes 
why it is entirely r.egledted by many, and is ftudied by 
others in a perverfe and improper, and often more inju¬ 
rious than ufeful, manner. It therefore feems to me molt 
proper to begin this work with an attempt to reprefent 
this fcience, fo often mifunderftood and falfely judged of, 
in its true form, by an accurate determination of its 
nature, and by naming its fources and principles on the 
one hand, and by the expofition of its ends on the other, 
to remove the falfe views of it, and to oppofe the preju¬ 
dices tending to degrade it. 
Philosophy has been called the Queen of Sciences; 
and the fequel will Ihow that (he does not bear this beau¬ 
tiful name unjuftly, inafmuch as Ihe inveftigates the 
fources and even the polfibility of all human knowledge ; 
marks the territories fo varioully fubdivided according to 
their circumference and their boundaries; exhibits the 
connexion of the various fcientinc departments, and de¬ 
termines their rank, in proportion as they refpedtively 
contribute to the attainment of the higheft ends of huma¬ 
nity ; and again not unjultly, inafmuch as it, laftly, en¬ 
lightens, ftrengthens, and forms the mind for fruitful 
cultivation ; and teaches us to diftinguilh in all cafes the 
true from the falfe. If we Ihould with to call Philofophy 
the fervant of all other fciences (ancilla omnium fcien- 
tiarum), on account of the great and manifold advan¬ 
tages and fervices which it affords in the elaboration of 
all the other departments of human knowledge; this 
would be juft equivalent to the expreflion by which the 
King is called the firft fervant of his people, or as when 
the Pope calls himfelf Servus Servorum. 
Yet we muft above all endeavour to define corredtly 
the conception of Philofophy. And, as philofophy arifes 
only by philofophizing, we muft firft inveftigate what is 
to be underftood by this laft expreflion. 
Sedt. I. What is meant by Philofophizing? 
Man not only poflefles the faculty of perceiving what 
takes place both within and without him, but he is capa¬ 
ble of knowing their perceptible caufes, and, above all, 
of conceiving their laft grounds, which are not perceptible. 
He feels himfelf induced, by an original impulfe of his 
rational nature, to bring the greatell poffible degree of 
unity and completenefs into his reprefentations. This 
original impulfe cannot be fatisfied by what is perceptible, 
but by fearching after the grounds of this, and by conti¬ 
nuing this fearch until it arrives at the firft and merely 
conceivable principles of all Knowledge, of which no higher 
grounds can be adduced. 
Reafon is faid to comprehend a thing, when it fees its 
conditions and grounds: it comprehends a thing com¬ 
pletely, when it is able to (how the whole feries of its 
conditions, together with the firft unconditioned ground, 
which is itfelf incomprehenfible; (i. e. which cannot be 
deduced from any thing elfe.) This fearching after the 
imperceptible and merely-rational grounds of the fails 
perceived within and without man, this effort to com¬ 
prehend the perceptible by means of the merely rational, 
is called philofophizing in the more ltridl fenfe of the 
word, in contradiftindtion to the reflection on the nearer 
grounds of the phenomena, that Hill lie in the territory 
of poffible experience, which is alfo fometimes called phi¬ 
lofophizing. Thus we fay even of the mahufadturer or 
the labourer who does not proceed mechanically, but re- 
fledts on the molt convenient and ufeful method, that he 
phi/ofophizes on his bufinefs. 
Philofophizing treats both of the internal and external 
fadls, of the perceived phenomena, and alfo of the per¬ 
ceiving them. It is no lefs a fad, though an internal 
one, that man can have intuitions only in Time and 
Space, than that the intuitions themfelves are facts-, for, 
by virtue of.the original conftitution of my reprefenting 
faculty, I am as clearly confcious that I can have no per¬ 
ception of any thing out of Time and Space as I am of 
my intuitive perceptions themfelves ; and the enquiry 
concerning the ultimate grounds of thefe neceflary and 
univerfal modes of perception may more ltridtly be termed 
philofophizing than the mere fearch after the natural 
caufes of the perceived objedts. Yet, as man is inftindt- 
ively confcious of the perceived fadts, but is long before 
he reprefents to himfelf the adt of perceiving, his defire to 
difcover the caufes of the former arifes earlier than his 
refledtion upon the grounds of the latter. 
It is an undoubted fadl that I perceive Nature, the 
Senfible World, a multitude of objedts exifting externally 
to myfelf. Thefe objedts aftedt me in a five-fold manner; 
that 
