UC-NRLF

L5

MS 713

HO

o

CM
CO

0

EXCHANGE

THE RELATION

OF

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

BY ROY BALMER LIDDY

MAY 1914

UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO

To THE SENATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO :

GENTLEMEN :

I beg to recommend that the Thesis entitled "The
Relation of Science and Philosophy" submitted by Mr. Roy
Balmer Liddy be accepted as fulfilling1 part of the requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in this University. I
certify that it is a distinct contribution to the knowledge of
the subject.

(Signed) F. TRACY,

Associate Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Board
of Examiners of the Department of Philosophy.

May

I hereby certify that the Thesis above-mentioned
has been accepted by the Senate for the Degree of Doctor of
Philosophy, and that Roy Balmer Liddy, M.A., has complied
with all the regulations respecting this Degree, as defined in
the Statute of the Senate in that behalf.

(Signed) JAMES BREBNER,

Registrar.
May /9/A, 79/5.

THE RELATION

OF

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

BY ROY BALMER LIDDY

MAY 1914

UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO

CONTENTS,

PAGE

Introduction 3

Chapter.

I . The Religious Background 5

II. Early Science-Philosophy 20

III. The Development of the Definition of Philosophy.. . 40

IV. The Subordination of Science and Philosophy 60

V. Empiricism . .- 72

VI. Rationalism . . . . 88

VII. The Significance of the Critical Philosophy of Kant 105
VIII. The Program for Philosophy 124

310436

INTRODUCTION.

The aim of the following pages is to investigate the problem
of the relation of science and philosophy. With this end in view,
it has been found advisable to make an examination of their
respective histories. For, when the actual, historical course of
those investigations known as science and philosophy is traced,
there are unfolded the various relations which each, throughout
its long history, has borne to the other. By the same method,
likewise, there ought to emerge, as a result of analysis, a definition
of science and a definition of philosophy which should be adequate
and just to the entire development of each. Definitions formed
in any other way can, only by the merest chance, be applicable
to the history of disciplines which show such complex developments.
Definitions formed in any other way must necessarily be, to some
degree, arbitrary, and, as such, will almost inevitably lead to a
misunderstanding and even a depreciation of the work of men
who have lived in times earlier than and different from our own.

After such an historical survey has been completed, there ought
also to result a clearer comprehension of the relation that should
exist to-day between science and philosophy, investigations which,
as is well known, have in their development exhibited toward
each other attitudes varying from that of bitter antipathy to that
of friendly and co-operative sympathy.

It is at least theoretically possible that philosophy has to
investigate a content quite other than that of the sciences. If
this be so however, it sure4y would be an acceptable service on
the part of someone to point out what this content is, — a content
which is sometimes vaguely referred to as the phenomena of mind.
On the other hand, it may be that the content of philosophy
consists in the general processes of the various sciences to which
may be added the phenomena of social and religious life, and that
its task is to examine and synthesize this ever-growing body of
data. Which of these is the genuine task of philosophy it is the
aim of this thesis to indicate.

The plan, then, to be followed, leads, first of all, to a glimpse
into that religious background whence there evolved gradually
those intellectual, operations which afterwards became differ-
entiated into certain special sciences and philosophy. A brief
survey of these early special sciences enables us then to form
some conception of what science endeavours to do. And, similarly,
the aim of philosophy is revealed by a consideration of the work
of Plato and Aristotle. Following upon this we see science and
philosophy both subordinated to speculative theology, but from
this unfortunate bondage the sciences, by the use of an adequate
method, began slowly to emerge, until, at last, to a large extent,
untrammelled, free and relatively united, they were able to con-
tinue their splendid investigations. On the other hand, in the
realm of philosophy, modern empiricism and modern rationalism
arose, becoming more and more opposed, until Kant, showing the
onesidedness and inadequacy of each, endeavoured to formulate
a better way for philosophy to discharge its important task. Thus,
in the concluding chapter, we find ourselves in a position where
we can see, though, perhaps, not yet so clearly as might be desired,
the proper relation of science and philosophy exhibited in the per-
formance of their respective tasks.

CHAPTER I.
THE RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND.

In the first book of that part of his work which is known
as his Metaphysics, Aristotle gives a critical review of certain
Greek thinkers, among whom he names Thales as the founder of
the first school of philosophy. For this reason, mainly, succeeding
historians have generally commenced their outlines of Western
philosophy with an account of this early thinker.

It is unlikely that Thales committed any of his teaching to
writing. If he did, not even a fragment appears to have survived
the tooth of time. The traditions, however, which centre around
his name are many, and some of these are fairly authentic. Those
which most interested Aristotle are mainly cosmological in their
nature, and, if one follows Burnet, they may be reduced to the
following three: —

(1) The earth floats on the water.

(2) Water is the material cause of all things.

(3) All things are full of gods. The magnet is alive; for it has

the power of moving iron.1

Whether these statements represent the teaching of Thales at all
accurately it is difficult to determine. The terminology of the
second statement is, of course, Aristotelian, and it is very probable
that the Stagirite has interpreted the tradition in the light of his
own special philosophical system. However, it is doubtless safe
to conjecture that Thales was seeking the nature of the primary
stuff of all things. The word, which he most likely used to desig-
nate this primary substance, was not the Aristotelian dpxr? but
probably the word </>uo-is. His work, and that of all the philo-
sophical writers of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., might have
been entitled Trept </>vo-€cos. What is <j>vcris ? This constituted their
problem. The answer which Thales gave was, <t>vcns is water.
The nature of things, or the primary and fundamental something,

1 J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, Pp. 47-8.

5

which persists throughout all change, that it most probably was
which Thales designated as water.

The first part of the third statement is of special interest
because it provides a clue by means of which the historian may be
enabled to trace something of the origin of these conclusions.
"All things are full of gods", this is a statement which has religious
significance; it shows without doubt the influence of religious
views, and it may be quite possible that these early thinkers,
called by later writers, philosophers, were much more affected by
the religious views which had come down to them from the ages
of Homer and Hesiod and even earlier times than has generally
been supposed.

When an effort is made, however, to trace the genesis of the
ideas of the early Greek philosophers, one is tempted to give up
in despair. The atmosphere one breathes, when he turns from the
mythical representations of Homer and Hesiod to the work of
Thales and his school, seems so much purer and clearer that one
is led, at first thought, to affirm that there is no relation between
the two periods except one of opposition and antipathy. It would,
however, be very strange if there could not be found some degree of
sympathy between the earlier period, called religious, and the
later period, called philosophic. Thales did not, like the Adam of
tradition, open innocent eyes upon a new and uninhabited world.
Men and women had been living and thinking long ages before
he taught that the principle of all things is water. From his pre-
decessors he had inherited certain traditional views, and, though
it was his task and his glory to advance upon that intellectual
environment, yet he could not and did not break away entirely
therefrom.

It has often been held that Greek philosophy traces its origin
to Oriental influence. There, it is said, is to be found the true
background of Greek thought. It would be quite erroneous to
deny that Egyptian mathematics and Babylonian astronomy in-
fluenced the philosophy of the Greeks, but it would be an even
greater mistake to overlook the influence also of the religious
ideas of pre-Homeric and Homeric times.

Now to depict the development of Greek religious ideas before
the time of Thales is not an essential part of the task to be under-

6

taken here. But it is, nevertheless, necessary to outline very
briefly the religious conditions which prevailed in Greece when,
according to Aristotle, that change arose which produced what
has been called philosophy. This is necessary for two reasons.
First, it will help to differentiate the philosophical attitude from
that which preceded it. What were the features which made the
work of Thales, apparently, so different from that of Homer and
Hesiod? We say the atmosphere we breathe when we study the
Ion an philosophers is purer and clearer. What is meant by
this figurative language? An outline of the earlier periods should
answer this question. Secondly, such an outline is necessary
because, in seeking a definition of science, it is highly important
to study it in its first vague glimmerings. And, though this re-
ligious history may seem at first sight a veritable jungle-land of
contradictory myths and legends, yet there is to be seen amid
"the dark primaeval tangle of desires and fears and dreams"
the ever fascinating struggle of mankind toward clearer vision.
In that struggle, be it religious, moral or intellectual, man is always
exhibiting that attitude of mind which, after our investigation, we
shall be enabled to term scientific.

It has been the custom, too frequently, to relegate to pre-
historic darkness the pre-Homeric era. It is still, no doubt, in
many ways, a region misty and half-lit. Recent literature, how-
ever, has been emphasizing its importance, and modern scholar-
ship has been able to trace out with some fair degree of accuracy
many of the customs and magical rites which prevailed long before
Olympus was peopled with the gods of Homer. Gilbert Murray1
calls the first stage of religious growth among the Greeks, Primi-
tive Euetheia or the Age of Ignorance. Dr. Preuss has applied
to the same period the word Urdummheit or Primal Stupidity.
In man's long toiling upward, that age, however, was, doubtless,
a great advance upon earlier periods of which nothing is known.
In regarding the efforts of men, who have lived in the past, there is
need of a spirit of generosity, or, rather, of simple honesty, which
sees in their strivings earnest efforts after the better. However,
the name, by which that early stage in the development of Greek
religion is denoted, matters nothing, if only the investigation be

1 Four Stages of Greek Religion.

carried on in that admirable spirit of tolerance and appreciation
exhibited in so beautiful a manner by such writers as Murray,
Harrison and others.

This first stage is claimed by Murray to be characterized by
three things, — first, an atmosphere of religious fear; secondly,
a whole sequence of magical ceremonies, and thirdly, a divine or
sacred animal.1 The Olympian gods were not known at all. They
were a later invention. These conclusions, the result, mainly,
of the analysis of three great festivals which were held, appear
quite worthy of credence. If one asks the origin of this "atmos-
phere of religious fear", of the magical ceremonies and of the
reverence shown to snake and pig and bull, the answer can only
be conjectural. The dreams of primitive man, his strong emotions,
his many memories, his vivid imaginations, the surprises which
were constantly meeting him in his daily life, caused by storm and
famine and earthquake, and, again, by sunshine and fertilizing
rain, the pain he was at times forced to bear, death, with its sad
and strange results, — these led him to dread and fear, and, finally,
to appease and mollify or give thanks to the agencies which he
gradually came to believe must surround him, agencies which
were imaginative constructions made from his own experiences.

To the average child the tree, the chair, the doll are all alive.
The pre-mundane existence whence he comes, according to the
poet, "trailing clouds of glory" seems not to save him from many
vague fears and superstitions. Those, who are older, watch his
naive play and conclude that he has, in some way, clothed
with life inanimate things. So is it with primitive man. Do his
hunting expeditions end in repeated failure? Some person, stronger
than he but like him, bears him malice. Is a tree struck by light-
ning? Someone has thrown his battle-axe at it. Do the storms
rage and does the earth tremble beneath his feet? Some mighty
hand is behind it all. So then primitive man, in measure like a
little child, comes to regard, by some process of empathy, inanimate
things and unseen agencies as beings like himself.

Now it seems a far cry from this Euetheia period to that of the
Olympic gods, but, after all, the process is a natural one. The
anthropomorphism, which made Zeus and Apollo and Athena so

1 Four Stages of Greek Religion, Cf. P. 32.

8

concretely real, so lucid in shape, and which gave to them detailed
personal histories, was a natural development of the early period
just mentioned. !n the more primitive stage, as Murray points
out, certain animals, because most probably of their peculiar or
possibly very valuable qualities, were early held as divine. But,
as the development went on, the worship of animals gave place
to the worship of the Olympic gods. The transition between the
two stages was, no doubt, assisted by that custom, which research
has shown to exist among many primitive tribes, of a man's wear-
ing the head or skin of a holy beast. "The Mana of the slain beast
is in his hide and head and blood and fur and the man who wants
to be in thorough contact with the divinity gets inside the skin
and wraps himself deep in it." l Here is the original medicine-
man, soon looked upon as in part at least divine; but, as Dr. Frazer
has suggested, some medicine-men have their failures. The people
begin to see that he makes mistakes and then, naturally enough,
they make the inference that he is not a god but rather a repre-
sentative only. The real god lives far away oh some inaccessible
mountain, or possibly in the sky. And so the transition, which
likely required generations of human thought and action, is ulti-
mately made. In Greece, the way was, no doubt, thus prepared
for the second great stage in its religious development, the stage
which Murray has called the Olympian Conquest.

The Homeric poems, whether the work of one writer or more,
are the outcome of long processes of growth. True, they transcend
in many ways the primitive religion of the earlier period, but they
were, nevertheless, much influenced thereby. The multiplicity
of myths and the crowd of deities which resulted proved at last,
however, a weariness to the developing Greek. " Legends clustered
like weeds in a pathless and primaeval forest, obstructed by ever-
fresh undergrowth. The thinning axe was wanted, and a hand was
presently found to wield it with thew and sinew." 2 Hesiod, a
man whose intellect, though clear, was clumsy, attempted this
task. He made a brave but unsuccessful attempt to bring order
into the chaos, endeavouring to revive many of the dimly-under-
stood traditions extant among the Greeks of his day. The final

1 Four Stages of Greek Religion, P. 38.

2 Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, P. 38.

result was that the Olympian gods, shorn of some of their luxuri-
ance, remained to Athens and the mainland of Greece the objects
of worship and the centre of religion.

Before this brief survey of the religious background to philo-
sophical speculation is closed, mention must be made of one
further important characteristic of this aspect of early history.
In the introduction to his classic work on "Greek Thinkers",
Gomperz, referring to the gods of Homer, says, "There was a
single peremptory exception to the chaos induced by the acts and
passions of the Immortals. Moira or Fate was supreme over gods
and man alike, and in its worship we recognize the faint and earliest
perception of the operation of law throughout the range of experi-
ence." l The first part of Cornford's work, "From Religion to
Philosophy," is devoted to showing the influence of this conception
upon the Greek religion and Greek philosophy. The gods of Homer
are not all-powerful. "They are limited by Destiny (Moira),
which they did not make and against which they cannot stand."
As the fifteenth Iliad goes to prove, the partition of the universe
into three territories for Zeus, Poseidon and Hades was made for
them not by them. "In three lots are all things divided and each
took his appointed domain." 3 Moira, originally meaning "part",
so Cornford claims, became generalized into the conception Des-
tiny, a conception based, no doubt, upon an, as yet, dimly per-
ceived, regular sequence, which, to the Greek mind, stood for that
which was believed to be behind and superior to all the Olympian
gods.

It was in a religious environment such as this, then, that
Thales, called the first philosopher, lived. It is unreasonable to
suppose that he did not share some of the religious beliefs of his
fellows. There is nothing in the fragments, which refer to him,
to show that he initiated a reformation along religious lines such
as Xenophanes, a few decades later, attempted. If Thales did
not accept in toto the religion of his day, he deviated very little
therefrom. His attention was directed, mainly, however, upon
the world about him rather than upon Olympus and its mythical
inhabitants. He had separated out from the many interests of

1 Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, P. 29.

2 Op. Cit. P. 12.

3 15th II. 1. 189.

10

life one special interest. This was as has been stated, what is
nature, what is $u<ns. The process of the differentiation of the
many facts of life into different compartments, — a process, which
has enabled man to advance successfully into the territory of know-
ledge, a process, which until the time of Thales, had been but little
employed, was now brought more completely into use, and though,
as is to be expected, at first, too little differentiation was made and
too much attempted at once, yet the principle was at work, and
the advance had commenced. It is altogether too premature as
yet in our survey of the history to attempt to analyse out any
special characteristics of philosophy, but, as in its simplest and
least complex form, the essential features of a flower are depicted,
so it will be found that in this early philosophy, as it has been
called, there are exhibited the characteristics which are sought.

The influence of the religious atmosphere, noted above, is to
be seen not only upon Thales but also upon all the early Greek
thinkers. The solutions which they advanced as to what con-
stitutes nature differed much. Various problems arose and these
were dealt with in different ways, but never could the influence
of the history, which lay back of these investigations, be entirely
annulled. Upon Heracleitus, the Pythagoreans, Parmenides,
Empedocles, in part, and Plato this influence is especially apparent.
The effect upon the Milesians, Empedocles and Anaxagoras and the
Atomists, — Leucippus and Democritus, can also be seen, but here
the result was of a different nature. The first class of thinkers was
influenced more by the mythical and mystical in that religious
background. For them, the "needs of the heart" dominate over
the "needs of the intellect", so that every problem is for them
ultimately an ethical or religious one. The second class was in-
fluenced more by the conception of Moira or Fate, as held in the
religious background. To them the "needs of the intellect" were
paramount, and the men in this latter class were to become re-
presentatives of the special scientists of the day.

A brief examination will indicate the nature of this religious
influence upon the Greek thinkers, and, first of all, we may con-
sider the mystical tendency or mystical tradition, as it has been
called. Interpreters have given many opinions concerning the
work of Heracleitus. By some, he has been considered as one of

11

the later lonians, by others, as among the Eleatics and still again
by another school of interpretation, as belonging, in thought, to
neither but as completing and synthesizing the good in each.
That he is definitely mystic in his sayings is recognized by all.
The fragments of his writings portray him as having an exalted
contempt for other writers. He is especially vehement against
those who learn many things.1 He who runs round about, like
Hekataeus, picking up scraps of information will not attain the
truth. There is one Logos and one Cosmos which is the same for
all.2 His contempt for the mass of mankind led him, like many
a mystic before and after his time, to a lone and solitary life.

The Pythagoreans inherited this same mystic temperament,
but with the difference that they became disciples and apostles.
Men and women needed enlightenment, and, instead of holding
themselves aloof, as Heracleitus had done, they began teaching.
Like the prophet, Buddha, they were not content to rest under
the Bo-tree of self-contemplation and self-satisfaction, but, re-
nouncing that temptation, they set about promulgating the beliefs
which were theirs.

Little is known of Pythagoras himself, but somewhat more
information is procurable in regard to his followers. Their work
centres around two main points, — their views on transmigration
and their interest in mathematical studies. The first of these
illustrates well the influence upon them of the mystical in the
religious background. The belief in the transmigration of souls
was no doubt an inheritance from Orphism, which, again, traced
its origin back to the worship of Dionysus, the chief Mystery-God
of the Greek people. The teaching of this school — one is almost
justified in saying, of this religious sect — is predominantly religious;
and their speculations, accordingly, show the influence of the mysti-
cal ideas which had been handed down to them. Instead of holding
that water or the boundless or air or fire is primal, they held that
number is the ultimate in the universe. According to Aristotle,3
the number, ten, was thought by them to be perfect. This, when
arranged as different tetractyes, became the "master-key to the

1 Bywater's Edn. Cf. Fr. 16. (Ritter & Preller's Edn. Cf. Fr. 31).

2 Byw. Fr. 20. (R. & P. Fr. 35).

3 Met. I, V, 986 a.

12

interpretation of the world".1 The mathematical investigations
of this school will be later considered. These latter were also very
important, but Pythagoreanism cannot be adequately understood
unless the influence upon it of religious mysticism be fully recog-
nized.

This influence is likewise to be seen in a marked degree upon
Xenophanes, born c. 569 B.C., and Parmenides, supposedly his
pupil, who were the outstanding members of the so-called Eleatic
school. The first named was a wandering rhapsodist, who laboured
hard to show the logical fallacy of polytheism. With his theo-
logical views he held, no doubt, philosophical conceptions much
similar to those of his younger contemporary, Parmenides. Par-
menides was the author of an allegorical poem, entitled rapt
4>u0-eoos. This poem is divided into two parts, the first of which
treats of Truth and Knowledge, the second of Appearance and
Opinion. The form in which his teaching is couched reminds one
forcibly of the mystical legends of an earlier date. He represents
himself as being brought to the Goddess of Wisdom in a fast-
travelling chariot, the steeds of which are driven by the daughters
of the Sun. There, at the seat of the Goddess, he learns the way
of truth and sees the folly of the undiscerning crowds, "deaf and
dumb and blind and stupid" in their opinions. Not only is the
mystical element apparent in the form of Parmenides' writings
but also in their content. He is concerned to emphasize that
what is, is, and that it is impossible for it not to be. Yet, he
nowhere tells us clearly just what the connotation of "it" is.
He tells us that it "is uncreated and indestructible; for it is com-
plete, immovable and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it
be; for now it is all at once a continuous one".2 Plato tells us that
Parmenides held that "all things were one and that the one remains
at rest in itself having no place in which to move".3 On the
supposition that Parmenides was endeavouring, mainly, to deny
the existence of empty space his teaching has been summarized
by Burnet, in the following words: — "What is, is a finite, spherical,
motionless, corporeal plenum, and there is nothing beyond it.
The appearances of multiplicity and motion, empty space and

1 Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, P. 205.
* Diels Ecln., Fr. 8. Cf. Burnet Op. Cit. P. 199.
3 Theaetetus 180 e 3.

13

time, are illusions."1 Whether one agrees with this opinion of
Burnet or not, it is quite evident that Parmenides had before him
a very definite problem and that, in trying to solve it, he empha-
sized the unity of things. He looked upon Nature and saw it in
continuous change; that which to-day is, tomorrow is not. The
influence of sun and wind and rain the very hills and mountains
seem unable to withstand. Everywhere, change seems to reign
supreme. Heracleitus, the lone and solitary Ephesian, had been
content to recognize this flux of all things and to find in it the key
to the world, but Parmenides seemed to feel such a conclusion
quite unsatisfactory. There must be something that abides.
That which is, TO 6v, that, certainly, escapes this flux and change;
that which is fleeting, in relation to the permanent and abiding he
calls w bv.

Such was the attempt, which Parmenides made to understand
the world. With those who were less consistent than he, he had
little patience. With breathless energy he struck at the popular
view of the world, and against men like Heracleitus, who taught
that change is the constitution of all things, he hurled his fiery
invectives. For Parmenides, the choice was between change and
rest, the many and the one and, having faced the dilemma, he
fearlessly and with unfaltering courage took his stand upon the
one.

The assumption of the illusoriness of the world about us is
however one with which man has never been satisfied, and, in
the development of Greek philosophy. Parmenides and the Eleatic
school were to be followed by Empedocles. Though there are
many inconsistencies in the written records of this man, yet it is
quite evident that he shared little of the suspicion which Parmenides
held for the world of sense. Empedocles, despite his charlatan
spirit and pompous manner, succeeded in making no small con-
tribution to the history of physiology, chemistry and physics;
but the point with which we are here interested is the fact that he,
too, shows unmistakable traces of religious mysticism. Empe-
docles devoted a whole poem, called the book of " Purifications ",
to describing the means whereby the imprisoned soul might regain
its heavenly home. He appeared, as Gomperz has said, "at one

1 Op. Cit. P. 208.

14

and the same time as an orthodox member of the Orphic com-
munity filled with pious faith, and as an eager champion of scien-
tific natural research, as the heir of venerable mystics and priests,
and as the immediate precursor of the atomic physicists".1

But if the influence of religious ideas and mystical concep-
tions may be seen upon these early thinkers, much more is it to
be traced in the philosophy of Plato. So much so is this the case
that Wundt has been able to say, "Religious and ethical problems
are not for him intellectual problems but on the contrary almost
every single question of knowledge becomes for him an ethical
and religious problem".2 Throughout the Platonic dialogues
the influence of mysticism is exhibited. It seems almost to be
the warp and the woof of his philosophy. He was a religious
poet, who, like his predecessors, faced the problems of the universe
and tried to solve them, but the ethical and religious interests
dominated all his thinking. It is only necessary to recall, as an
example of his mystic tendencies, the familiar doctrine of Reminis-
cence, which occupies a prominent place in at least three of the
dialogues — the Phaedrus, Meno and Phaedo. For Plato, all
education was a process of purification, a gradual recovery of what
at birth man had lost, an ever more perfect reminiscence of the
upper world. From this point of view, therefore, this mundane
existence and the human body are the soul's sad prison-house,
and it is the hope of the soul to escape from its bondage and return
again to its own abode.

The mystical religious tendency, which plays such a role in
certain aspects of Plato's thought, was one of the characteristics
of subsequent speculation, and has never, indeed, been without
an advocate wherever speculation has operated relative to the
religious aspects of human life. Here it is necessary to leave this
mystical tendency, as Cornford has called it, in order to follow
the scientific tendency, which also was developing among the
Greeks. But it must not be supposed that with Plato the influence
of religious mysticism upon philosophy ceased. Rather, its effect
may be traced in, if not a more sublime and beautiful form, possibly
in an even more pronounced way upon many a succeeding thinker.
So marked has th's attitude been throughout the centuries that

1 Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, P. 252.

2 System der Philosophic, P. 5.

15

the late Professor James l could divide philosophy into two schools,
the one he called, in figurative language, the "tender-minded", —
these are the mystics, — the other he called the "tough-minded".
It is upon the early members of this latter class that attention
must now be centred.

Anaximander, born 610 B.C., the second head of the Milesian
school, is its most important member. Gomperz even says of him
that "we may fairly look on Anaximander as the author of the
natural philosophy of Greece and consequently of the Occident.
He was the first to introduce the scientific method in answering
the vast questions as to the origin of the universe, the earth and
its inhabitants. . . . Childish as some of his endeavours were, to
grope out the way of nature, yet his merits as a pioneer and a
path-finder command our awe and respect".2 Anaximander was
the first to give to the Greeks a map of the earth and a chart of
the sky. He endeavoured to arrive at the magnitude of the sun
and of the moon relatively to that of the earth, and, though his
accounts are hardly intelligible to us to-day, yet he must be accorded
a certain degree of mathematical training. His attempts to explain
the origin of the heavenly bodies, based on the opposites hot and
cold, are no less ingenious than his speculations on the evolution
of an mals. It is no doubt going too far to call him a precursor of
Darwin, but the records which we have unmistakably point to
him as one who avoided mere speculation. He must have been
a careful observant of facts of nature. In his cosmological inquiries
Anaximander is far ahead of his predecessor, Thales. The latter
had said that water is the original element of all things, Anaxi-
mander claimed that it was neither water nor air nor fire. The
pr mary substance was TO awdpov, the Boundless, as it has been
translated. He seems to have realized the futility of attempting
to explain the variety of nature by any one part of nature, and so
postulated the Boundless which was other than the four elements.
From this Boundless, as Aristotle says in his Physics, the "ele-
ments"3 were believed by Anaximander to have arisen, separated
out by the "eternal motion". These "elements" are limited, are
grouped in pairs of opposites and are the "secondary stuffs", to

1 Pragmatism, P. 12.

2 Op. Cit. Vol. I, P. 49.

3 As Burnet points out, this is certainly an anachronism, as the conception of
"elements" dates only from the time of Empedocles. Cf. Burnet Op. Cit. P. 56.

16

quote Cornford, "out of which individual things were born and
into which they are resolved again".1

If one turns from Anaximander to Empedocles, he sees the
same attitude of mind exhibited which marked the Milesian philo-
sopher. Though, as has been already shown, Empedocles was
influenced considerably by mystical conceptions yet he likewise
carried on that observation of facts, which Heracleitus so much
despised and Anaximander, apparently, found so advantageous.
Empedocles attempted to explain everything by the four elements,
which, under the influence of "Love" and "Strife", formed
themselves into different proportions, thus producing the various
things of nature. Besides these cosmological inquiries Empedocles
was greatly interested in what we to-day would call physiological,
psychological and chemical pursuits, while Aristotle called him
the inventor of rhetoric, and Galen made him the founder of a
school of medicine. The line of development, which is here being
traced, leads, however, especially to his work in cosmology. He
saw that it needed at least four elements or constituents to account
for the multiplicity of things. These roots were eternally distinct
from each other. Anaxagoras, his contemporary, however, found
it difficult to agree that hair could come from not hair,2 and so
claimed that "all things were together infinite both in number and
in smallness; for the small too was infinite, and, when all things
were together, none of them could be distinguished for their small-
ness".3 The homoiomeries of Anaxagoras, as they are called,
were then qualitatively different. The smallest portion of any-
thing is still that thing. Instead of Love and Strife, Anaxagoras
substituted what he called Nous to account for motion. But,
just as the Love and Strife of Empedocles were considered spacial,4
so with Nous. It cannot be called spiritual neither material.
To use such terms at this period is to be guilty of an anachronism.
Nous is the thinnest of all things, it occupies space, for there are
greater and smaller parts of it.5 Upon these speculations, which,
as can be readily seen, were far more in accord with the facts than
the theories advanced by such as Heracleitus and Parmenides,
Leucippus and Democritus built up their system. The only frag-

1 Op. Cit. P. 8.

2 Diel's Edn. Cf. fr. 10.

3 Fr. I.

« Cf. fr. 17.
5 Cf. fr. 12.

17

ment of Leucippus, which has survived, states that "Nothing
happens for nothing, but everything from a ground and of neces-
sity". Aristotle complains that these men, indolently, left the
source of motion unexplained. Unlike Empedocles and Anaxa-
goras, they simply assumed that motion is eternal. Theophrastos
tells us that Leucippus believed that there were "innumerable and
ever-moving elements namely, the atoms, and he made their
form infinite in number since there was no reason why they should
be of one kind rather than another. ... He held further that what
is, is no more real than what is not, and that both are alike causes
of the things that come into being".1 Atoms and the void, includ-
ing motion, are then equally real and explain all things. Different
qualities are explained by the variations in the number, size and
shape of the atoms, for, unlike the homoiomeries of Anaxagoras,
all the atoms are qualitatively the same. Though the atomic
theory, which has played such an important part in the develop-
ment of modern chemistry, differs from these early attempts
in several important points, yet, peculiarly enough, modern science
is coming once again to believe in the fewness of the chemical
elements, and it is quite possible that the Democritean ideal of
only one kind of element may yet be realized. That such a dis-
covery will enable men to explain all the facts of life by one ele-
mental substance, in no sense, follows. No more can they be
explained by seventy elements. That, however, is a question
with which we shall be concerned in a later part of this thesis.

In these early atomists, then, there is the culmination of this
scientific tendency among the Greeks. It is true that the Epi-
cureans made some slight additions to the atomism of Democritus,
but the chief work was done by the earlier thinkers. Now, in
this aspect of Greek philosophy, is there to be found any trace
of that religious background which has been already sketched?
That religious interests not only influenced but, in the main,
dominated that other trend of thought, the mystical tendency, it
was easy enough to show, but, here, circumstances are much
different, and yet even this scientific tendency owes much to the
earlier religious ideas of the Greek people.

It will be remembered that the gods of Homer were subordinate
to Destiny or Moira, that, according to the Olympian theology,
Moira had allocated to the three brothers, Zeus, Poseidon and

1 Phys. Op. fr. 8.

18

Hades their respective domains. For this principle of Destiny
the mystical school cared nothing; behind their philosophy were
the troubled forms of Orpheus and Dionysus. Behind the work
of Anaximander and the atomists, however, was the Homeric
theology, polytheistic and anthropomorphic, but holding to the
fatalistic rule of Moira. In his work, "From Religion to Philo-
sophy", Cornford sums up in the following paragraph this influence
upon what he calls the Ionian Science. The scientific tendency in
Greek philosophy and the Olympian theology "are two similar
products of the same temperament. Both systems of thought
are governed by the notion of Moira, — the distribution of the
world into spatial provinces. Both are pluralistic, rationalistic,
and fatalistic in tendency. Above all both are realistic, in the
sense that is opposed to other-worldliness. Science, no matter to
what heights of disinterestedness its specific emotion of curiosity
may sometimes rise, remains practical from first to last, and for
it all value lies in the sense-world. True it will mistake its own
conceptual model of atoms and void for the real structure of the
universe, and condemn the senses because we cannot see and
touch the supersensible. But its affections are never set upon
the metaphysical construction; the spectral dance of imaginary,
dead particles has n^ver smitten the human soul with home-
sickness. The intellect must find its satisfaction in the excitement
of pursuit, not in the contemplative fruition of anything it can
either discover or invent".1 Perhaps the strongest single state-
ment which remains, that shows the influence of this conception of
Moira, is that of Leucippus already quoted, — "Nothing happens
for nothing but everything from a ground and of necessity."

It would appear, then, to be a superficial reading of the history
of philosophy which sees in these men no influence of the religious
conceptions which they had inherited. Just as in a later age the
same religious idea took hold of the minds of certain men and made
them Predestinarians, so, here, in this tendency, there is ex-
hibited the same principle. If we call the mystical school in
Greek philosophy, Arminians, then the Milesians and the Atomists
are the Calvinists of their day, but it must be remembered that to
the Greeks Moira signified not a god with foreknowledge but rather
what, to-day, might be called the interdependence of facts. It was
Law, supreme alike over nature, men and gods.

1 Op. Cit. P. 143.

19

CHAPTER II.
EARLY SCIENCE-PHILOSOPHY.

The preceding chapter has traced that development of thought
which characterized part of the early Greek philosophy, following
its course, as it has pursued two main channels, until there have
been introduced the work of Plato on the one hand, and that of the
Atomists on the other. Each of these branches of Greek thought
shows in its own way unmistakable effects of the fountain-head of
religion, whence they both derive their origin. But attention
has been given, almost entirely, to the cosmological aspect of the
development. In the earlier writers, it is true that that constitu-
ted, practically, their only inquiry, but, with Plato, the facts are
much different. Back of Plato was the work of Socrates and be-
hind Socrates the Sophistic movement, and before the Greek period
is completed it will be necessary to devote some time to a presenta-
tion of the trend of thought which culminated in Plato and Aris-
totle in order to discover the specific nature of philosophy, and in
order also to trace the effects of their conclusions upon subsequent
history. But before that task is entered upon, it will be well to
delineate certain developments of a special character, which origin-
ated outside the Greek nation, many of which, indeed, occurred
long before the dawn of Grecian history.

In the outline of the second of those philosophic streams,
which flowed from the Greek religion — the scientific, as it has been
termed — notice has already been made of certain eddies in the main
current, which finally assumed strength enough to break the banks
of the channel and to start out as little rivulets, gradually to develop
into special sciences. The astronomical endeavours of Anaxi-
mander, the physiological work of Empedocles are examples of this
tendency. Not only was this evidenced in the scientific class, but,
even among the mystic Pythagoreans, there developed a genuine
interest for mathematics, which resulted in no small contribution
to that branch of knowledge.

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the Greeks
were the first to devote themselves to these studies. Sir Henry

20

Sumner Maine has said, "Except the blind forces of Nature,
nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin," but
such a statement, even if it were intended so, cannot be accepted
literally. To the Greeks the Western world owes a debt it can
never pay, but the study of the origins of the different sciences
serves to show that other peoples than they had something to do in
helping mankind take its first wavering steps on the road of know-
ledge.

Man's antiquity is measured not in centuries but in millenia,
and the beginnings of science are lost in dim and distant ages,
but, nevertheless, there is no doubt that long centuries had passed
before man had obtained a firm enough hold in the struggle for
existence to be able to consider reflectively the facts of his life. }
Unfortunately for th.e historian, many more centuries passed by,
before records were made and preserved, and to-day, he who would
understand the origin and early beginnings of science has before him
a very difficult, though intensely interesting, task. The task is
difficult, not only because of the paucity of the records that remain,
for we must believe that comparatively few have survived the
destructive acts of fire and flood, of monarchs and mobs, but even
more particularly because it is well-nigh impossible for us to divest
ourselves, in imagination, of our present knowledge, and to place
ourselves in the position of the early pioneers of science. And yet,
if this be not done, the early ventures of the race can neither be
understood nor appreciated. When modern science forgets or
neglects the history through which it has come, it is untrue to its
own principles and in danger, too, of misunderstanding its own
significance.

Though many of the scientific pursuits, which engage men's
thought, can trace a long and ancient history, yet few, if
any, can lay claim to as early a beginning as the science, which,
to-day, is known as astronomy. Primitive man was compelled
to accommodate his acts to attacks of disease, to the fortunes
of war, and to the irregular changes of weather, but not less was he
forced to attend to the alternations of light and darkness, and of
heat and cold, and one of his earliest conclusions would, no doubt,
be that the sun was in some way connected with these varying
phenomena. This led to a search for other signs in the heaven,

21

and if the appearance of an unusual phenomenon in the sky, say,
of an eclipse, was associated with any particular terrestrial event,
for example, the death of some chief or some scourge of plague or
famine, the coincidence, as we would call it, would certainly im-
press him very greatly. Thus it came about that men of remote
ages observed and recorded the occurrences of comets, eclipses,
meteor-showers and like phenomena. Not only were these facts
observed, but suggestions were made to explain the facts. The
earth was early looked upon as a circular plane, surrounded and
bounded by the solid hemispherical vault of the heaven. The stars
seemed to be fixed in this vault, the moon and, later, the planets
were supposed to crawl over it. That the sun also was supported
in the sphere of heaven and, like moon and planets, made his way
across it, the ancients hesitated, for long, to say. No doubt the
difficulty which they felt in making this supposition was due to the
fact that in the day-time the stars were no longer visible. Another
problem, which faced them, after they had placed the sun in the
vault of heaven, was how to explain that the sun, having set in the
West, should rise again in the East. Was it the same sun or a
different sun? From such practical conditions, and out of such
perplexing difficulties as these just mentioned, the science of
astronomy began slowly to evolve.

It is impossible to fix, with any certainty, the dates or the
names of the persons associated with that systematic observation
of the moon and the planets, which resulted in the discovery of
their regular motion among the stars. The grouping of the stars
into constellations, and the prediction of solar and lunar eclipses
were evidently accomplished at a later date in the history of the
science, but, notwithstanding, long years before history, properly
speaking, begins. As Professor Forbes, in his excellent little work,
"History of Astronomy", has surmised, it is, no doubt, quite pro-
bable that the discoveries mentioned above were made independent-
ly by Chinese, Indian, Persian, Tartar, Egyptian, Babylonian,
Assyrian, Phoenician and Greek astronomers. The science of
astronomy can certainly trace its origins to a remote antiquity.
For this reason, and also because of the questionable trustworthi-
ness of some of the traditionary records, which have come down to
historians, it becomes a difficult task to assign to particular nations

22

their respective places in the development which has taken place.

The character of knowledge in regard to the Chinese contri-
butions to astronomy is most unsatisfactory and has frequently
given occasion to much discussion and various views, but, after
making considerable discount, the most conservative historians
seem agreed that very early indeed the Chinese, noted always for
their patient and painstaking habit of thought, — a disposition,
most admirably suited for astronomical observations, — had made
considerable progress in this science. The first dates, it would
seem, go back almost as far as 2952 B.C., shortly after which time
Yu-Chi made a sphere to represent the motions of the celestial
bodies. In the twenty-fourth century B.C. the Emperor Yao
gave orders that the position of the sun at the time of the equinoxes
and solstices should be determined. The positions were recorded
by giving the names of the stars occupying the respective places
at those seasons. From 2296 B.C. on, there are cometary refer-
ences and from the year 611 B.C. these are quite trustworthy, while
it is reported in a collection of documents called the Shu Chung, a
collection already antique in the time of Confucius, that certain
royal astronomers, Hi and Ho, failed, in the year 2159 B.C., to
predict an eclipse, — a failure, the penalty of which they paid with
their lives. It is claimed by some that, as far back as the year
2357 B.C., the Chinese knew that the year, itself determined,
doubtless, by the recurrence of the seasons, had 365J days, and
one document even holds that a year of 365 days was adopted with
an intercalary day every four years. Whether this be true or not,
it is evident that great credit is due to the Chinese people, who,
in very early times, carried on such important investigations.

Egyptian and Chaldean astronomy also lay claim to high anti-
quity. Here, and indeed, most probably in China also, astrolatry
preceded astronomy The stars, as well as the sun and the moon,
impressed the imaginative minds of these early peoples, and fre-
quently elicited response from them in the form of worship. There
has been much speculation as to the astronomical meaning of the
Great Pyramid, but most of it has been unsatisfactory and in-
conclusive. What knowledge was obtained by the observations
made was closely guarded by the priests, who spent most of their
time engaged in the arts of divination and astrology. Similarly

23

the Chaldeans, among the Babylonians, made many observations
of the varying aspects of the sky, and records, dating from the reign
of Sardon of Akkad, 3800 B.C., show, thus early, star groups had
been formed, and that the zodiac, — a word which, etymologically,
suggestively enough means live things, — had been determined.

When one turns from these investigations to those with a similar
content, which were carried on in Greece, he does not find, as some
would claim, an entirely new attitude among the investigators.
In the earlier nations, observation was most careful and painstaking,
facts were collected and classified, while conclusions, in the form of
different theories, were in many cases very well drawn, and the
Greeks followed this same method. The development was quite
normal. There was no great intellectual revolution. The time
has gone by when men look back upon the Greeks as the pioneers
of all art, literature and science. Recent excavations and re-
searches have enabled men to see that the Greeks, in the main,
continued and developed what, had already been commenced by
older nations; to have done so, and to have accomplished that task
so successfully was a great achievement, but it is a mistake to
attribute to the Greeks the origination of all art and science. In
astronomy, perhaps more than in other sciences, they borrowed
much from other peoples. The information, which we have about
the earliest Greek astronomer, is derived from Herodotus, b. 480
B.C. Thales had, according to the tradition registered by Hero-
dotus, visited Egypt, and in the opinion of Gomperz, had probably
familiarized himself in Sardis with the elements of Babylonian
wisdom, from which he learned something, no doubt, of the period-
icity of eclipses. The tradition, which ascribes to him the fore-
telling of an eclipse of the sun in May 585 B.C. is at any rate
fairly well-accredited. Other reports say that he learned from the
Egyptians the length of the year, the signs of the Zodiac, and the
position of the solstices. Passing over Anaximander, who made
some attempts to estimate the size of the sun and moon relatively
to the earth, one comes next to the school of Pythagoras. The
founder of the school had himself visited Egypt, but how much
of the speculations of Pythagoras and his followers is due to Egyp-
tian influence, it is impossible to tell. The earlier astronomical
speculations of the school, important among which was that of the

24

counter-earth, possibly invented to explain the eclipses of the moon,
and that of Olympus, as a source of light, were soon discredited
and gave way to a much more important and interesting theory.
Ecphantus, one of the youngest of the Pythagoreans, held that the
earth turned of itself in a definite direction (that is, turned upon
its axis), and for this reason Copernicus, in the sixteenth century,
was able to claim that his system was not a new one but was a
revival of the theory held by the Pythagoreans. The marked
difference in the luminosities of the different planets, and the differ-
ences, indeed, in the intensity of one planet at different times s^>on
suggested that these were at different distances from the earth, and
so a blow was given to the ancient notion of the one dome of
heaven supporting the heavenly bodies all at a fixed distance from
the earth.

Eudoxus of Cnidus, 370 B.C., unable to tear himself away en-
tirely from the notion of the spherical vault of heaven, but seeing
the insufficiency of the theory of one dome, postulated one for each
separate motion, but the increasing number of vaults was becoming
unintelligible, and a hundred years later Aristarchus of Samos,
having learned from Eudoxus that the sun was considerably larger
than the earth, was able to advance a new theory which had none
of the intricacies and complexities and absurdities of the old sup-
position; the earth had to lay down its sceptre, geocentricity was
superseded by heliocentricity and Aristarchus became the Coperni-
cus of antiquity. But the new theory was not to be accorded a
hearty welcome, for Hipparchus, the next astronomer of note, went
back to the geocentric view. Notwithstanding this, Hipparchus
holds an important place in the pages of the history of astronomy,
because he assisted materially in coordinating that science with the
mathematics of his day. He was able to compute the length of the
year differing by only four minutes from present day calculation;
he observed and made a catalogue of 1080 stars, dividing them into
six classes of brightness or magnitude, a work which is one of the
finest monuments of ancient astronomy. Because he supposed the
earth to be fixed, he found it necessary to assume that the centre,
around which the sun revolved, was a point a little distance from
the earth, which point he called the eccentric. Ptolemy, writing
250 years later, expounded the work of Hipparchus, adopting his

25

geocentric system. To explain the apparent retrograde motion of
the planets, Ptolemy not only adopted the eccentrics of Hipparchus
but assumed also epicycles for each planet and thus was formed the
cumbrous theory which is known to history as the Ptolemaic system.
Without a doubt these eccentrics and epicycles are the responses of
the astronomers to the demand made by Plato for uniform circular
motion, — an excellent example, as can now be seen, of an unfortun-
ate influence by a philosophic system upon a special science.

To continue tracing the development of this science is here
unnecessary, suffice it to say that the dictatorship of Ptolemy
in astronomy remained till with the work of the great Kepler,
building upon the achievements of Copernicus and the accurate
observations of Tycho Brahe, a new and simpler theory was devised,
a theory which treated the earth and planets as moving in ellipses
with the sun occupying a non-central position.

Before the nature of science can be properly understood, it
will be advisable to give a brief outline of the development of early
mathematics and mechanics, other of the special sciences which
have had a long and interesting history. After that is completed,
it will then be possible to look back over the development which has
taken place and to ask what science actually is. Then, in the
following chapter, the philosophic thread may again be taken up
with the aim of forming some proper conception of the nature of
philosophy.

That mathematics did not originate in Greece is evident, not
only from the testimony of the Greek writers themselves, but also
from the documentary evidence which recent scholarship has been
able to produce. In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates is made to say
that the Egyptian god Theuth first invented arithmetic, geometry
and astronomy, and Aristotle, Meta. I i, tells us that geometry
was originally invented in Egypt. Eudemus declares that Thales
studied there, while Diodorus and Strabo at later dates both record
the tradition that geometry and astronomy are the inventions of
the Egyptian priests who claimed Pythagoras, Plato, Democritus,
Eudoxus and others as their pupils. But the most interesting
statement which bears upon the relation of Grecian and Egyptian
mathematics is that found in Herodotus, II ch. 109. The passage
reads as follows: "They said also that this king (Sesostris or

26

Ramses II, c. 1400 B.C.) divided the land among all Egyptians
so as to give each one a quadrangle of equal size and to draw from
each his revenues by imposing a tax to be levied yearly. But
every one, from whose part the river tore away anything, had to
go to him and notify what had happened ; he then sent the overseers,
who had to measure out by how much the land had become smaller,
in order that the owner might pay on what was left in proportion
to the entire tax imposed. In this way, it appears to me, geometry
originated which passed thence to Hellas." Whether this theory
of the origin of geometry be entirely correct or not, it most probably
contains at least the germ of a very valuable truth. Geometry,
like astronomy, arose because of the practical needs of man, and
though in later years practical applications form no necessary part
of any science, yet it is doubtless true that all science originated
because certain very practical needs in the life of men had to be
faced.

When one turns from the Greek traditions to the documentary
evidence, one finds himself on more satisfactory ground. The
ancient Egyptian papyrus, which is part of the Rhind collection
in the British Museum, was deciphered in 1877 and was found to be
a mathematical manual containing many problems in arithmetic
and geometry. It was written by a priest, Ahmes by name, who
lived considerably more than a thousand years before Christ, and
the document seems to be founded on an even older work believed by
Birch to date back as far as 3400 B.C. The Ahmes Papyrus re-
presents apparently the most advanced attainments of the Egyp-
tians in arithmetic and geometry. Remarkable as it is, that they
should have reached so great proficiency at so remote a period of
antiquity, it is yet even more strange that during the next two
thousand years they should have made so little progress. Perhaps
one explanation of this is that the knowledge which they held was
carefully guarded by the priests and was entered upon their sacred
books. Afterwards, as has been only too often the case, these
writings became sealed books and it was considered heretical to
augment or modify anything therein. The Book of Ahmes is
entitled "Directions for Knowing all Dark Things", and contains
a number of very interesting problems. The first part, to use
modern language, deals with the reduction of fractions whose

27

numerators are 2 to a sum of fractions each of whose numerators is
1. Thus gg is stated to be the sum of ^, g&, ^74 and ^-
Whether Ahmes has any general rule for this kind of reduction, or
whether the solutions given represent the accumulative experience
of previous writers, it is hard to determine. Having finished the
subject of fractions, Ahmes next proceeds to the solution of pro-
blems which are nothing more nor less than equations of one un-
known quantity1. The problem, in its translation, is generally
stated thus, Heap, its % its whole, it makes 19, or as it would be
put to-day #+f =19. Ahmes gives the answer as 16 + i + i, still
following the Egyptian custom illustrated above of reducing all
fractions to the sum of those whose numerators are 1. Algebra
then, in its beginnings, would appear to be as ancient as geometry.
The document also devotes itself to attempting to find the areas
of isosceles triangles and of isosceles trapezoids. The areas of
circles are also found with a very fair approximation to correctness.
It is evident then that mathematics, more especially of a
practical kind, had reached a relatively high degree of attainment
among the Egyptians at a very early period. But the same
appears true, though perhaps in a somewhat less degree of the
ancient Babylonians. Two tablets have been discovered and the
cuneiform system of writing deciphered. The most interesting
information gleaned from the first tablet is that the Babylonians
must have used not only the decimal system but also a sexagesimal
one. For instance, the tablet contains a table of square numbers
up to GO2. The square of 7 is given as 49, that of 8 as 1.4, that of 9
as 1.21 and so on. The only intelligible solution for this is that
they used the sexagesimal scale. Cantor has suggested that the
reason the Babylonians used this system is because they at first
reckoned the year at 360 days. The circle was then divided into
360 degrees, each degree being analogous to the amount of the
supposed daily movement of the sun around the earth. If it be
assumed that they were familiar with the fact that the radius may
be applied as a chord to the circumference six times and that each
of the resulting chords subtends an arc, measuring exactly 60°, we
have a probable basis for their using the sexagesimal system. The

1 Cf. Cajori, History of Mathematics, P. 15.

28

second tablet also illustrates this same system. It records the
magnitude of the illuminated portion of the moon's disc for every
day from new to full moon. The whole disc they assumed to be
equal to 240 parts and the result for the first 5 days is, 5, 10, 20, 40,
1.20, which is a geometrical progression. After that, the series
becomes an arithmetical progression.

It was not until the seventh century B.C., long years after
the development outlined above, that the Greeks became interested
in mathematical studies. Very early in their work they seem
to have drawn a distinction between what Plato called XoTio-rt/cr;
and dpifl/iTjTiKT?. At first this distinction was not made, but it
certainly dates from an early period. Plato pronounced calcula-
tion, Xo-yio-TiKT?, a vulgar and childish art, but he devoted much
time to arithmetic itself. The study of the evoluton of calculation,
or the mode of counting, is intensely interesting. Our own system
of notation, generally credited in its origin to the Arabs, was borrow-
ed by them from the Hindoos, and was not used by the Arabs
themselves till after the time of Mohammed. That this Hindoo
system itself did not spring into existence at one time we may be
certain, but there is no record as to when it was invented nor as to
who was its inventor. The early Greeks, like other primitive peo-
ples, began only gradually to learn to count. They commenced
with groups of only two or three things and then later five. Fingers
or toes or possibly both were used as a ready means to aid them,
and the decimal scale, prevalent very early, was doubtless based on
this fact, though, to be sure, a quinary or vigesimal scale might
equally well have resulted. Pebbles also were used and in case of
large numbers the device became gradually customary to use
parallel, vertical lines, one line representing units, another tens, a
third hundreds, and so on. Later, frames came into use, string
and wires upon these taking the place of the rows of pebbles. This
was the origin of the abacus, used so much in early calculation.
The Greeks finally used alphabetic numerals but never possessed
the boon of a clear, comprehensive symbolism.

In the other branch of the study, dpi^n/cry, arithmetic, as
it has been called, the Greeks were however greatly interested. The
Pythagoreans classified numbers into odd and even and knew that
the sum of the series of odd numbers from 1 to 2n -f 1 was always

29

a complete square. They spent much time in studying the different
progressions, and devoted their attention also to the subject of
proportion, investigating arithmetical, geometrical and harmonic
proportions. Eudemus attributed to the Pythagoreans the theory
of so-called irrational quantities, and it is quite possible that they
had made the discovery that some problems cannot be solved,
especially since we are told that Pythagoras made many investiga-
tions into geometry and among his studies was that of the right
triangle. Without a doubt, such a discovery would appeal strongly
to the school which was peculiarly susceptible to the mysterious.
Euclid, c. 300 B.C., was well aware of this same difficulty, and in
the tenth book he treats of incommensurable quantities at length,
but, not until the fifteenth century, was the subject again investi-
gated. The seventh, eighth, and ninth books of his Elements were
devoted to arithmetic by Euclid, after whom for nearly four hundred
years the theory of numbers remained practically stationary. Geo-
metry had become so important in the eyes of the Greeks that it
practically monopolized their time from Euclid on.

It has already been seen that the early Milesians, borrowing
from Egypt had made some advance in geometry1, but with the
Pythagoreans geometry was placed upon a much firmer basis. To
Pythagoras is ascribed the important theorem that the square on
the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the
squares on the other two sides. If the Egyptians had only known
this in the special case where the sides are 3, 4, 5, respectively,
Pythagoras, in thus generalizing it into a theorem, made a great
step in advance. The theorem on the sum of the three angles of a
triangle was proved by the Pythagoreans, and they demonstrated
that the plane about a point is completely filled by six equilateral
triangles, four squares or three regular hexagons, so that it is possi-
ble to divide up a plane into any one of these figures. Political
and social conditions in most of Greece were at this time ideal for
work of this kind. Athens, for example, was after the battle of
Salamis, 480 B.C., the centre of commerce and wealth. Slaves
performed all the drudgery of life and the citizens of the place were
able to devote much time to mathematics and kindred studies.
To those men who first made rhetoric a chief study, and went from

1 Cf. J. Gow, History of Greek Mathematics, chs. 6 and 7.

30

place to place teaching the many who had freedom and inclination
for the work, to the Sophists, or certain of them, geometry owes
considerable. Chief among these was Hippocrates of Chios, who
was one of the first to make an attempt to solve that well-known
problem in mathematics the quadrature of the circle. Because,
however, these Sophists were not popular with the rising Platonic
school, the early historians have disregarded their work in great
measure, and as a result information in regard to them is very
meagre.

Plato and his school placed likewise great importance upon
geometry, and it is said that over Plato's porch he had inscribed:
"Let no one who is unacquainted with geometry enter here."
Many of the definitions and some too of the axioms of Euclid are
to be ascribed to the Platonic school. Though it is quite true that
the main interest of Plato himself was in morals, yet his admiration
for geometry was very great. His main contribution to the science
however lay in this, that he trained his followers to think logically.
He was in mathematics a maker of mathematicians, rather than an
originator of discoveries. He emphasized the necessity of careful
definitions and distinct statements of postulates and axioms, a
method which Euclid afterwards adopted, and here the influence of
Socrates upon Plato, an influence which will be more fully ex-
hibited in the next chapter, is to be clearly discerned.

The most brilliant of the mathematical pupils of Plato was
Eudoxus, born 408 B.C., who, it is claimed, was the author practi-
cally of the whole of Euclid's fifth book, and indeed it is now gener-
ally agreed that the substance of nearly all the geometry of Euclid's
Elements was known before the time of Euclid, and much of it had
already been methodically arranged. Upon Euclid himself there
devolved the task of further collecting the material, connecting it
where necessary, and, in some cases, enlarging the proofs. Though
very little is known of his life, it is certain that Euclid lived and
taught in Alexandria some thirty or forty years after the founding
of that remarkable city, the city which already had become the
meeting place of all the most important trade-routes, and which
was destined to become, throughout the next few centuries, in very
truth, the melting-pot for the thought of the then-known world.
It is hardly necessary to say anything about the nature of the

31

Elements. The compilation became popular almost immediately
in Alexandria, and, for long centuries, formed the basis of all geo-
metry. It is interesting however to note that what are called in
our text books axioms were called by Euclid "common notions"
and that, though there has been much controversy upon the point,
the "common notions" of Euclid, himself, seem to have been not
twelve in number but ten. The axioms about right angles and paral-
lels were probably placed by Euclid among the postulates, a class
to which they better belong. One postulate, as mathematicians
have recently pointed out, the compiler of the Elements certainly
overlooked entirely, though he frequently made use of it in his proofs,
namely that of superposition, according to which figures can be
moved about in space without any alteration in form or magnitude.
The work contained in Euclid's Elements had a tremendous influ-
ence upon succeeding generations. Geometricians have not been
alone in their admiration for the results achieved and the apparent
infallibility of the method used, and it is only in comparatively
recent times since the writings of Lobatchewsky, 1793-1856, that
further developments along the line of a non-Euclidean geometry
have detracted somewhat from the interest attaching to this great
work. But the mathematics of the Greeks had not yet reached
its zenith, for, shortly before the death of Euclid, there was born,
most probably of very humble parents, the greatest mathematician
of antiquity, as he has been called, Archimedes of Syracuse. The
fame of this splendid scholar depends not only upon his achieve-
ments in geometry but also upon his attainments in mechanics and
arithmetic, and his success in mechanical inventions. These latter
Archimedes himself is reported to have belittled. He prized far
more highly his discoveries in what some would call pure science, and
those which were by him considered most valuable are contained in
his "Sphere and Cylinder". "In it are proved the new theorems,
that the surface of a sphere is equal to four times a great circle;
that the surface of a segment of a sphere is equal to a circle whose
radius is the straight line drawn from the vertex of the segment to
the circumference of its basal circle ; that the volume and the sur-
face of a sphere are two-thirds of the volume and surface respec-
tively of the cylinder circumscribed about the sphere. Archimedes
desired that the figure to the last proposition be inscribed on his

32

tomb. This was ordered done by Marcellus."1 As Cajori points
out the most wonderful of his works is, perhaps, his treatise "On
Spirals". He was deprived of the use of the infinitesimal calculus,
but this only served to display the fertility of his genius. In its
stead, he used in a masterly manner the so-called "method of
exhaustion". The geometry of the Greeks had reached a high
degree of attainment, and though Archimedes was to be followed
by other great scholars such as Apollonius of Perga, Hipparchus,
Ptolemy and Pappus, yet, geometry, as a science, was already
established and well-differentiated.

But there was another study, which engaged the fertile brain of
this master mathematician, and that is the science we call mechan-
ics. In this particular realm, Archimedes had far fewer predeces-
sors than in geometry. And yet it is true that ancient Egyptian
and Assyrian monuments contain pictorial representations of many
kinds of implements and mechanical devices. Very early in his
history, man was able to fashion crude implements, and, in the
excavations which have been made, many interesting discoveries
have resulted, discoveries which have enabled anthropologists
materially in constructing a theory of the development of primitive
man. The lever, the inclined plane and the wedge were known from
a remote antiquity, and their practical use takes us back to the
dawn of history. But apparently little effort was made to under-
stand the principles of these instruments until many centuries after
their invention. Indeed, it was not till the time of Archimedes that
mechanical science became, in any sense, properly formulated.
Archytas, of the school of Pythagoras, is said to have invented the
screw and the pulley, and Aristotle, in his Mechanica Problemata,
c. 18, describes in a rather vague way a compound pulley. It is
evident, from the same work, that, before Archimedes, the mathe-
matical theory of the lever was under consideration. Some con-
ception of the parallelogram of forces had also appeared and, it is
possible, since Archimedes uses the concept "centre of gravity",
without defining it, that it was already in use. His investigations
into mechanics, contained in his " Equiponderance of Planes", and
his book, "On Floating Bodies", are fashioned somewhat after the
method which Euclid had used so successfully. Book 1 of the latter

1 F. Cajori, A History of Mathematics, P. 42.

33

treatise begins with two propositions to the effect that the surface of
every still fluid is spherical, the centre of the sphere being the centre
of the earth. This book contains in all nine propositions. In the
second book, he deals mainly with the question of specific gravity,
a question to which his interest was aroused, so tradition says, by
the request of the perplexed King Hiero, who wished to know
whether or not his crown was alloyed with silver or other metal.

In his Equiponderance of Planes, Archimedes commences by
making certain assumptions, which he, no doubt, regarded as self-
evident, and which would be called to-day axioms. By means of
these, he proves the law of the lever, which according to Mach1 he
stated as follows: — "Commensurable magnitudes are in equilibrium
when they are inversely proportional to their distances (from the
point of support)." Now one of the axioms which he assumed, and
did not therefore attempt to prove, was "magnitudes of equal
weight acting at equal distances (from their point of support) are
in equilibrium". It is natural for one to ask why both the axiom
and the proposition (the law of the lever stated above) might not
have been proved directly by experiment, and then both placed on
the same level. But the important point is that Archimedes tried
to explain the lever in terms of phenomena which he, at any rate,
regarded as simpler and better known. That was a great insight,
and, as shall be seen, is the type of all scientific explanations. Very
little advance upon the results of Archimedes in mechanics was
made till centuries later, when that great polymath Leonardo Da
Vinci, 1452-1519, shaking off the traditions of Aristotle, continued
the investigations begun in this earlier period, investigations which
were shortly followed by those of Stevin and the illustrious achieve-
ments of Galilei and Newton who prepared the way for the
modern development of this science.

Before concluding this chapter, it will be well to ascertain, if
possible, from the material presented what science is. It will be
remembered, that, just as it was considered inadvisable to com-
mence the discussion of philosophy with a preconceived definition
of philosophy, so in the outline of the development of science, it
was deemed inadvisable to begin with any arbitrary definition.
But now, after history has presented the accounts of the different

1 E. Mach, Science of Mechanics P. 9.

34

sciences in their early beginnings, one can make use of this material
to discover a definition of science. The anthropologist, who desires
a definition of the word man, does not accept any definition which
is suggested, and then make his classification accordingly. The
physicist does not define electricity or aether in any haphazard way,
neither does the political economist nor the student of morals frame
his definitions except after much care. Before *ny scientific defini-
tion is made, there is always presupposed a certain amount of data,
and definitions arise, when these data are critically consi3ered.
Any other definition must, in the nature of the case, be merely" pro-
visional. If, for example, there be required knowledge of what rock
is, it is necessary to examine, not one rock, but many, and, having
gone through this examination, then by analysis it is possible to
pick out the essential constituents of rocks, that is, those character-
istics, which are common to all the specimens examined. A state-
ment then of those characteristics constitutes the definition. So
with science. It would be a great mistake to cqnsider only one
science, and it might be just as serious a mistake to consider only
one period in the history of science. What is common to the whole
development will constitute the true definition for which we seek.
Obviously, since there has only been presented so far an outline of
early science, the definition, which will result, can only be said,
strictly speaking, to apply to that period, but it will be seen, as the
investigations continue, that the later history of science exhibits
the same common characteristics, and, therefore, only serves to
corroborate the conclusions here adduced as to the nature of
science, even though they be drawn from the limited material
already presented.

That which history has called science appears then to be differ-
entiated from the ordinary course of everyday experience by the
aim which characterizes it throughout. Now the aim which
possessed the early astronomers was to understand certain move-
ments of the heavenly bodies, that of the mathematicians to under-
stand certain relations of numbers and certain properties of space,
while those interested in mechanics tried to understand the motions
and equilibrium of ponderous bodies. Often the data, with which
these men were acquainted, were relatively very few, and often

their suppositions were most crude; but these early pioneers had

»

35

set out for the goal which science still follows. These early thinkers
were all interested in certain phenomena, or, to use a less ambiguous
word, in certain given data. They tried to understand these facts,
and in so doing first, endeavoured to give to themselves and gener-
ally to others a description in simple and clear language of the rela-
tion of the facts which they had observed; and secondly, posited
that which they considered necessary for the facts to be what they
were.

For example, the early astronomer observed the heavens
night after night and day after day. Thus, he obtained the material,
which it became his work to describe, but his task did not end with
a description of the observed data; he formed certain theories, and
assumed that by which the observed facts were regarded as
explained. In the assumptions, he transcended the originally
given data, for that which he posited as explanatory of the observed
facts was not at all perceived to be connected therewith. It follows,
then, that the definition of science, which will result from a con-
sideration of the facts of this early period, must include first of all,
and as part though not the whole of its content some such state-
ment as the following, — science is a description of facts in clear and
simple language. A word or two is necessary, perhaps, in order to
show more fully the meaning of this statement.

The description, given in science, must be in clear and simple
language. When Archimedes sought to understand the principle
of the lever, he did so by describing the complex facts, which he
was investigating, in terms of phenomena which he regarded as
better known. As men, in their study of the movements of the
heavenly bodies, advanced conclusion after conclusion, there was
present, always, the aim to condense their conclusions into unam-
biguous, non-contradictory, clear and simple language, and the
history of astronomy is the history of that attempt. So with other
sciences. Any other method would have been an ignotum per
ignotiu^. It may, of course, be necessary to use technical terms in
the descriptions advanced; indeed, such become coined in these
very descriptions but part of the aim of every science is to describe
in less complex terms the more complex facts which it investigates.
What else, indeed, was the geometrical method of Euclid and his
predecessors, in its analytical aspect, than just such an attempt?

36

Taking certain complex data, they reduced these to less complex
facts which everyone, as they thought, would accept as self-evident.
Science makes an attempt then to describe the facts by the aid of
the fewest and simplest general formulae; and, when men like
KirchhofT, Mach, Ostwald, Jourdain, Karl Pearson and J. A.
Thomson, in modern times, emphasize the necessity of the economy
of thought in science, they do not ask that simplicity be sacrificed
to brevity. Again, it must be noted that, though in the early
period there was relatively little experiment, yet all the facts
described are not those which are given in mere observation.
Experiment is observation under control and, in the mechanics of
Archimedes, for example, there are definite illustrations of the use
of experiment. Even in this early period of science, it was seen that
hypotheses must be, if possible, verified, and, in this process of
verification, experiment found an essential place. The facts
described are then the result of both observation and experiment;
Science requires, therefore, a description of facts in clear and simple
language.

But it has been said above that science not only endeavours
to make a description of facts, but, secondly, it posits, in its explana-
tions, that which is considered necessary for the facts to be what
they are. A complete and adequate definition of science, as it was
in its early period and, indeed, as will be seen, as it has been through-
out, must then include both these factors. Throughout this early
development men were attempting to describe observed facts, that
is indisputable, but it is just as evident that in their theories or
hypothetical explanations, as they have been called, the early
scientists were making predications in regard to that which was
suprasensible or transcendent.

The vaults or domes of the heavens, believed by the early
astronomers to support the stars and the planets, the central fire of
the Pythagoreans, the eccentrics of Hipparchus and the epicycles
of Ptolemy, these, as well as the infinite space of Euclid's definitions,
were considered beyond the perception of these astronomers. It
will be remembered that Hipparchus classified into six different
magnitudes some ten hundred and eighty stars, giving to us, thereby,
a splendid example of the description of observed facts, according
to one characteristic, viz., that of intensity. It was a question of

37

classifying that which was actually observed, but, when he came to
account for the apparent motions of sun and moon and planets,
that is, certain observed changes in the relative positions of these
and the observer on the earth, he went beyond these perceived
data, and introduced the circular motions of the planets about an
imaginary point not the centre of the earth. In so doing, Hip-
parchus had posited that which he had never seen. He was express-
ing a belief, advancing a theory, in a word, framing an hypothesis.

But it needs to be noted that in these explanations there was
no transcending of experience, because the belief expressed was
still a process of experience. Yet, in framing his hypotheses, the
early scientist was quite aware that cycles, epicycles, eccentrics,
central fires, etc., he had not perceptually observed, though he
represented them as though he could see them were he in such and
such a position.

A definition of science, resulting from the dual aim above out-
lined and adequate to the procedure of early science, and, as will
be seen to later science, may, then, be stated in the following
terms. Science is a description of facts obtained through observa-
tion and experiment, in clear and simple language, including the
theoretical predication, as also attempts at experimental vindica-
tion, of that by which the facts are regarded as explained. "

From what has been said, it will be c ear that science is not
limited to any particular bodies of facts. It is, if one may make use
of the metaphorical language, a method of approach, a frame of
mind, an intellectual attitude, and is illustrated, as Prof. Thomson
has suggested,1 just as well by the business-man meeting some new
practical problem, the lawyer sifting evidence, the statesman
framing a constructive bill, as it is by the physicist, mathematician
or astronomer. This attitude of mind is often contrasted with the
practical, which is closely allied with art, and, again, with the
emotional, which in turn has a close affinity with religion; but it
must be borne in mind that this differentiation of the interests of
men is, in the long history of mankind, a relatively recent thing,
and that, in primitive times, man was at once practical, emotional
and scientific, though, because of the stern conditions by which he
was surrounded and the darkness and mystery which must have

1 An Introduction to Science P. 58.

38

enveloped him, the practical and emotional characteristics were
most influential.

From out this complex background of primitive culture, a
background which was dominantly religious, there gradually
evolved a scientific attitude of mind. It was that mental attitude
the aims of which have been delineated above. But it is important
to remember that for the early investigators this attitude was just
as much philosophic as scientific. They had drawn as yet no dis-
tinction between the two terms. Science for them was philosophy
and philosophy was science. It is probable, too, that, in all cases,
primitive peoples tried to break down the gigantic barrier to know-
ledge by one great blow. In the case of the Greeks, there is, of
course, actual historic evidence for this. But they failed. The
universe was not thus to be understood. A better method must
arise, and, just as from the dominantly religious attitude there had
evolved a scientific or philosophic frame of mind, so gradually
there became differentiated from this mental attitude the different
special studies, by which means man has been able to make great
advance. The rise and development and analysis of these special
studies have formed the subject matter of the above discussion.
An outline of the more general discipline arising from the various
special sciences or special philosophies has yet to be done.

39

CHAPTER III.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY.

In Plato's Republic, 480 b, those men are called philosophers,
"who set their affections on that which, in each case, really exists",
and, in the same work, 484 a, philosophers are denned as those
who "are able to apprehend the eternal and immutable". But, in
the Theaetetus, 143 d, the term philosophy is used in a wider sense,
and there are included under it the special studies, which had, at
that time, become differentiated. It is significant that, in the writ-
ings of Aristotle, the dual use of the word philosophy persists. In
his Metaphysics, VI, 1, 1026 a, philosophy included mathematics,
physics, ethics and poetics, but there is another use of the word,
suggested in the same passage, to designate what he calls the science
of being as such. This latter science Aristotle often called o-cx/ua,
instead of <^tXoo-o0ta, but, generally, preferred to use in regard to
it the phrase irpurr] 0t\oo-o0ta. This he regarded as pre-
eminently the science of the philosopher. Subsequent writers
coined the word Metaphysics, which more or less by accident
became afterwards applied to this special task, and, for centuries
now, the word has been current.

Now the dual conception of philosophy, held by Plato and by
Aristotle, clearly shows that the process of dividing the field of
knowledge into different compartments, had, to a very fair degree,
already been accomplished. It shows, furthermore, that these two
men held that there was yet a task to be done, even though the
special departments were carrying on to successful issue their inde-
pendent investigations. It might have been supposed that, in the
process of differentiation, all the necessary inquiry would be under-
taken by the differentiated parts. But such was not the case.
When there evolved, in the original complexity of man's primitive
experience, that attitude of mind we have called either science or
philosophy, because, as yet, the terms were synonymous, there
still were certain religious and practical interests, and, so, when
this new field became differentiated into special departments, there

40

still was a task to be performed, — a task, which Plato and Aristotle
took to be the essential work of the philosopher, a task, which had
not been delegated to the special philosophies or sciences.

It will be seen that the word philosophy retains, throughout a
long history, the dual sense already given to it. It has included all
the special investigations, that have been carried on, and, almost
to the present day, the phrase, natural philosophy, has been used
to designate the different natural sciences; but the essential
significance of philosophy, its best definition in other words, will be
found by following that trend of thought, which emphasized rather
the peculiar function of philosophy, a function which it retained
after the separation of the special disciplines had taken place.

In attempting thus to arrive at a definition of philosophy, the
work of the early Greek speculators must be borne in mind, but
interest will centre more especially upon Socrates, Plato and Aris-
totle, that great triad of thinkers, who influenced succeeding genera-
tions more than human mind can ever estimate.

Socrates, 469-399 B.C., marks an epoch in the history of human
investigation. He was the son of a sculptor, and, at first, busied
himself with the chisel, but his ardent desire for knowledge led him
to absorb the new doctrines with which the streets of his native city
echoed. He, however, was not to be dazzled by the brilliant rhetori-
cal efforts, which were becoming so popular because of the teaching
of the Sophists. His keen intellect penetrated behind the glittering
words and phrases, and there he often saw superficiality and incon-
sistency. Such teaching was unsatisfactory to Socrates, whose
moral earnestness led him to delve beneath the surface in the
endeavour to discover true knowledge. Thus he came to hold it his
duty to enlighten himself and his fellow-citizens concerning the
emptiness of the ordinary Sophistic teaching, in order to prepare the
way for a better comprehension of truth. With this end in view,
he worked unceasingly and unremittingly among his fellow-
citizens, facing with them the practical problems of daily life,
until misunderstanding and intrigue finally brought him before the
court, which condemned him to the death that has served only to
heighten his glory and his fame.

The work of Socrates is known to us only indirectly, but histori-
cal criticism has agreed that in the Socratic method there is con-

41

tained the kernel of his teaching. The tendency of the teachers of
his day was to supply the individual with a quantity of methodised
knowledge. Socrates saw the futility of such a pedagogic method,
and was one of the first to emphasize a more adequate procedure.
Moreover, though the Sophists, as those travelling teachers, who
flourished from 450-400 B.C., have been called, accomplished much
that was good, especially along lines of grammar, the conclusions
of the majority of them were definitely sceptical. This tendency
was, no doubt, due to the positive influence of the Heracliteans,
and the Atomists. But Socrates was not to be satisfied with any
such conclusions, and his method is the result, mainly, of his attempt
to overcome the argumentation of Protagorean individualism and
the negative theses of Gorgias.

According to Aristotle's Metaphysics, XIII, 4, 1078 b 23, two
things may justly be ascribed to Socrates. These are generally
called Induction and Definition. These sum up his method and
his aim. But to know whether these terms, in their ordinary
connotations, are here applicable, one must study the actual process
which Socrates used in concrete cases. Fortunately, many exam-
ples of this so-called Socratic method are given to us in the works
of his brilliant pupil, Plato, and especially in those of Xenophon,
the historian. The situations depicted in the Memorabilia of the
latter show Socrates to be a man vitally interested in the everyday
pursuits of his fellow-men; he endeavours, now, to find the essence
of virtue, now, the duties of men under specific circumstances, now,
he carries on animated conversations with Sophists, and, again,
he is giving valuable advice to friends, generals, tradesmen, artifi-
cers. Socrates makes use of cross-examination, and, in so doing,
reveals often the ignorance of the questioner ; but he does not stop
there. Once he has succeeded in making the pupil see the inade-
quacy of his own opinions, once that presupposition and bias are
overcome, the teacher begins to lead the inquirer towards the shin-
ing goal of truth.

A splendid example of the preliminary stages of the method
employed is found in the Memorabilia IV, 2. Euthydemus aspires
to become a statesman, and Socrates, accordingly, is intent to show
him the value of justice. Euthydemus thinks he can hold his own
against all-comers as an upright man, and, when Socrates suggests

42

that they write down the initial letters of the two words, justice
and injustice, and then place under these the different actions
corresponding to each, Euthydemus quite readily assents. In the
second column are entered such actions as lying, deceit, the en-
slavement of free-born men. These, Euthydemus says, clearly
belong to the injustice category. But Socrates replies there are
instances which appear to contradict this classification, for in
time of war it is considered just to exhibit all these characteristics
against enemies. Our conception of unjust acts must be modified
to mean such acts as lying, deceit, etc., when practised against
friends. But Socrates now gets Euthydemus to agree that, under
certain circumstances, it is just to deceive a friend; for example,
a general, to revive the courage of his demoralised troops, makes a
false announcement of approaching allies, the anxious father ad-
ministers by deceit the distasteful medicine to his sick son, the knife
is stolen from the friend who might use it in a moment of mental
aberration to his own destruction. Therefore the above actions
are only unjust when done with the intention of injuring the
persons affected by them. Euthydemus is thus led to see the
complexity of the situation, and the inadequacy and self-contra-
dictoriness of common opinions, and, though, in this special case,
a formal definition does not result, there is well illustrated the
general procedure whichrSocrates followed in leading toward such
definitions.

If one turns to the third book of the same work, he finds in
the third chapter a more complete illustration of the Socratic
method. Socrates is conversing with a youth, who has just been
elected hipparch or commandant of cavalry. He discovers to the
young man that his object in desiring such a position was neither
to ride at the head of the knights nor to obtain public notoriety,
for even the mounted archers do the former and a madman might
boast the distinction of the latter. His object has been rather to
improve the cavalry, to hand it over to the state in better condition
than he found it. Such an object can be achieved, Socrates points
out, only if the hipparch improves both the horses and the riders,
inculcating those qualities which will make them suited for battle.
"And, have you troubled your head at all", says Socrates, "to
consider how you are to secure the obedience of your men? For,

43

without that, not one particle of good will you get, for all your
horses and troopers so brave and so stout." "That is a true say-
ing," the youth replies, "but how, Socrates, should a man best
bring them to this virtue?" Socrates answers, "I presume you
know that in any business whatever, people are more apt to follow
the lead of those whom they look upon as adepts; thus in case of
sickness they are readiest to obey him whom they regard as the
cleverest physician; and so, on a voyage the most skilful pilot; in
matters agricultural, the best farmer and so forth. Then in the
matter of the cavalry also we may reasonably suppose that he who
is looked upon as knowing his business best will command the read-
iest obedience." In this case Socrates does not prolong unneces-
sarily the dialogue. It is a clear case of a fellow-citizen needing
help, and it is given without circumlocution. He reveals in a
sentence or two the necessary characteristics of a good cavalry
leader, and, when the leader is nonplused to know how best to
obtain the obedience of his men, Socrates proceeds to answer his
difficulty by bringing forward various examples of obedience. In
these concrete cases he is able to place his finger upon the common
quality which belongs to all, — obedience is given to those who are
most adept; and then he allows the leader to apply the conclusion
to his own particular case, fitting into his own avocation the con-
stituents of adeptness. Examples such as these might be multi-
plied from the Memorabilia. It is noteworthy, too, that, as is
generally agreed, Xenophon's lack of a thorough-going philosophic
training serves to make his reports of the conversations of Socrates
all the more authentic.

In the works of Plato, on the other hand, there is certainly
more danger of the argument being coloured by the particular phil-
osophic views of the brilliant pupil. To discover how much is
Platonic and how much is Socratic will always be a problem for the
higher criticism of the Platonic writings. But it is reasonable
to assume that the conversations put into the mouth of Socrates by
Plato are, at least in their general outlines, true to the method
which Socrates followed. Probably two of the best known works
of Plato are the Republic and the Theaetetus. Both of these
exhibit the great figure, which is likewise introduced to us in the
Memorabilia, pursuing the same task. True, the poetic instincts

44

of Plato paint the situations with greater imaginative detail, and
the plan employed follows often a devious and intricate path, but
the general method and the general results are practically the same.
In the Republic the nature of justice is again the query; in
the Theaetetus it is the nature of knowledge. In both cases there
are advanced by certain of the audience current definitions, which
Socrates critically considers and shows, finally, to be inadequate
to evident facts. In the Republic, for example, justice is first
defined as the payment of debts, which afterwards is interpreted as
the rendering of good to friends and evil to enemies. To deter-
mine who are friends and who are enemies is, however, by no means
easy, and so the definition is revised to read, it is just to do good to
our friends when they are good and harm to our enemies when
they are evil. Against this conclusion however it is objected
that by injury men, no less than dogs and horses, are made worse,
that is, less just and the paradoxical character of the result neces-
sarily leads to a further revision. Here the character, Thrasym-
achus, rushes in with his rather hasty suggestion, — justice is the
interest of the stronger. Governments make laws for their own
advantage; justice is obedience to these laws. But Socrates points
out that the stronger are not always infallible, and so, sometimes,
may misunderstand their own interests, which would lead to legis-
lation that would be to their own hurt; furthermore, it appears that,
if the analogy of the physician and pilot be permissible, those that
govern, or the stronger, legislate for the interest of the governed,
or the weaker, so that the definition of Thrasymachus cannot be con-
sidered adequate. When Socrates, after thus removing false de-
finitions and clearing the ground of presuppositions, commences to
formulate his own definition, the poet-philosopher gives to his
imagination full play. The nature of justice is sought, first, in
the state, where perchance its nature will be written in larger char-
acters. It is however only after he has constructed his ideal
Republic and defined wisdom, courage and temperance that Plato,
through the mouth of Socrates, at last happens upon the nature of
justice. It is suggested by the principle of the division of labour
within the state. When each one has and does his rightful share
then is justice realised. Turning now to the individual, Socrates
distinguishes in the soul three parts. Even as in the state, justice

45

consists in a harmony of these three, each part performing its own
function. Now this definition, though it turns out to be for So-
crates a true definition of justice, is as yet only possibly correct.
It must yet be verified and so, Socrates brings before his eager
listeners various examples of just men, — the man that is honest,
he who is free of sacrileges, thefts, treacheries, he who is faithful in
the performance of his oaths, he who is careful of his parents, who
shows piety toward the gods; in all such, justice is exemplified, and
the common characteristic of all these, as it is revealed by analys's,
is that principle of division of labour among the qualities of the soul
whereby each performs its own function not intermeddling with that
of the other parts. The rational, appetitive and spirited parts of
the soul are, in all these cases, in complete harmony, and this is, for
Plato, justice in the individual, just as harmony among the different
classes meant justice in the state. So then the definition, resulting,
as a dream or a hope, or, to use the more modern word, an hypo-
thesis, from the long literary part of the work is now by this brief
analytic procedure shown to be correct. To quote the words of
Socrates, spoken immediately after the above analysis has been
concluded, "then our dream has been realized; and the suspicion
which we entertained at the beginning of our work of construction
that some divine power must have conducted us to a primary form
of justice has now been verified."1

In considering these examples of the so-called Socratic Induc-
tion and Definition, the first thing that impresses one is the attempt
which Socrates made to rid his students and himself of presupposi-
tions. These presuppositions were presented generally in the form
of current definitions which the keen intellect of Socrates was able
to show were not in accord with actual facts. Then the attempt
was made to ascertain the true nature of the matter under consider-
ation. This is done generally by summoning up before the investi-
gators various concrete examples of the subject, the common
characteristic or characteristics are then ascertained by comparison,
the differences being eliminated, and a statement of these common
characteristics constitutes the definition which is sought. Some-
times the definition so obtained is then applied to some particular
situation as in the case of the hipparch and his query concerning
obedience.

1 The Republic of Plato. P. 136. Jowett's trans.

46

That such a method is not induction in the general acceptation
of the word is evident. Mill, an ardent champion of induction,
defines it as the "operation of the mind by which we infer that
what we know to be true in a particular case or cases will be true
in all cases which resemble the former in certain assignable res-
pects."1 Now Socrates makes no attempt to reach a universal by
summing up a number of particulars; his method is not an inductio
per enumerationem simplicem, the meaning which the Scholastics,
up to the time of Bacon, gave the word induction; 2 neither does he
advance from particulars to a general truth by the method later
advocates of induction have emphasized, except in this sense, a
sense which is quite otherwise than that implied in modern induc-
tion,— he analyses out from the various examples before him the
common characteristics and having done so he is able to formulate
a definition. In this same way, by analysis or abstraction, all
definitions which are more than merely verbal are formed. That is,
his definition is an analytic product rather than an enumerated one.
Modern science makes constant use of just this method, and those
sciences, which employ classification, such as anthropology, biology,
chemistry, etc., are virtually dependent for their progress upon just
such a method. It was this that led Windelband in his History of
Philosophy, p. 95, to say, "it will remain a noteworthy fact for all
time, that a man, who so narrowed for himself the intellectual
horizon of scientific research as did Socrates, should yet determine
within this the essential nature of science itself, in a manner so
clear and authoritative for all the future."

The method of Socrates then may be described as analytic rather
than inductive. It is his great contribution to the history of
thought. The content within which this method was used by
Socrates was, in the main, the moral realm. As Cicero said,
"Socrates called philosophy down from the heavens to earth and
introduced it into the cities and houses of men, compelling them to
inquire concerning[life and morals and things good and evil/_'3

The two most Brilliant followers of Socrates, viz., Plato, 427-
347 B.C., and Aristotle, 384-322 B.C., widened the scope of their
investigations. For them conduct was but one question, though

1 System of Logic, Bk. Ill, Ch. 2.

2 For the development of the doctrine of induction, cf. Welton, Manual of
Logic. Vol. II Ch. 2.

1 Acad. post, I, 4, 15.

47

a very important one, no doubt, among many. It has been already
mentioned, at the beginning of this chapter, that the word philoso-
phy was used in a dual sense by both Plato and Aristotle. The
word is used by each as a class-name, including under it all the
special studies which had arisen. But the significance generally
attached to the term is quite different from this. To consider
Plato first,— the concluding sentence of the fifth book of the Re-
public defines as philosophers those "who set their affections on
that which in each case really exists." Now what does Plato mean
by that which in each case really exists? To understand the
answer to this question involves a statement of Plato's doctrine
of M Ideas ", which forms the very heart and centre of his system and
around which all else circulates.

It will serve as an introduction to this theory of Ideas if there
be stated here that classification of knowledge, which Plato gives
in the sixth book of his master-work, the Republic. It has been
decided that at the head of the commonwealth there must be placed
men trained in philosophy. "There can be no cure for the ills of a
State or, as I think, of the whole human race, until political power
and philosophy are united, until either philosophers become kings
or those who are now called kings and potentates begin to pursue
philosophy not superficially but in the true spirit."1 To describe
the training necessary for the philosopher-statesman, part of the
sixth and the whole of the seventh books are devoted. After the
study of mathematics, including arithmetic and geometry, and
astronomy there next comes the investigation of "that which in
each case really exists", or, as it is expressed, the students are now
prepared for the study of philosophy itself. According to the
scheme outlined by Plato there are four grades of knowledge, the
first or lowest is called ekao-ta, the next is Trio-m, the third
is .diavoia, while the highest of all is vorjaLs or e-Trtcrr^^- The
first two compose the realm of <5o£a, opinion, and might be trans-
lated as conjecture and belief or conviction; d'.avoLa, under-
standing, reasoning through things, is not quite on the same level
as vo^ais or eTrio-rrjjuTy, which for Plato are synonymous with
Reason or pure knowledge. In conjecture, knowledge is of
"images" only, a mere guess-work; in belief, knowledge is of

Rep. Bk. V.

48

"bodies", and is still sensible knowledge; corresponding to the
third process of knowledge are mathematical objects, but because
mathematics does not dispense entirely with the data of sense or
with hypothesis, it is not the highest study ; it cannot be reckoned as
true philosophy, for the objects corresponding to eTrio-Tij/w; or pure
knowledge are quite beyond the realm of sense. These objects are
called by Plato 'I5ecu. They are the Ideas.

And now it is time to ask what these Ideas are with which
Plato's philosophers are to become busied. True knowledge for
Plato consisted, it seems, in the contemplation of these Ideas, and
these, whatever else they may be, are regarded as having no sense-
content. Surely, it is objected, this is diametrically opposed to
modern science, since, for modern science, that which is given in
sense-experience is of the utmost value, while, for Plato, it would
seem, all such counts as a hindrance and a barrier to the higher
knowledge. But before it can be agreed that Plato's conception
of science differs so widely from that of to-day, it must be deter-
mined more clearly what is meant by the word Idea, and what
significance there is in Plato's doctrine of Ideas.

The following passage from the Metaphysics XIII, 1078 b 9 pre-
sents Aristotle's view of Plato's theory. "Now regarding the
Ideas, we must first examine the Ideal theory (theory of Ideas)
by itself not connecting it in any way with the nature of numbers
but treating it in the form in which it was originally, understood
by those who first maintained the existence of Ideas. The sup-
porters of the Ideal theory were led to it because they were per-
suaded of the truth of the Heraclitean doctrine that all sensible
things are ever passing away, so that, if knowledge or thought is
to have an object, there must be some other abiding and permanent
entities, apart from those which are sensible; for there can be no
knowledge of things which are in a state of flux. Socrates occupied
himself with the excellencies of character, and, in connection with
them became the first to raisethe problem of universal definitions.
.... For two things may be fairly ascribed to Socrates — in-
ductive arguments and universal definition, both of which are
concerned with the starting-point of science. But Socrates did
not make the universals or the definitions exist apart ; his successors,
however, gave them separate existence, and this was the kind of

49

thing they called Ideas. It followed, as an almost direct conse-
quence of their mode of argument that there must be an Idea
wherever there is a general term; and their procedure much re-
sembled that of a man who, having to count a number of objects,
should think he could only manage if there were more of them, —

for the Ideas are just a reduplication of the things of sense

There is an Idea of the same name answering to each group of
sensible substances, and existing apart from them."

In reading the interpretation by Aristotle of the Platonic
doctrine of Ideas, it must be remembered that, though Aristotle was
a pupil of Plato, yet his conceptions and report of his master's
teaching might readily have been altered by his own special views.
And this is all the more probable because, as Aristotle himself is
careful to indicate, his metaphysics does not contain, strictly
speaking, a history of preceding thought. His avowed purpose is
to show how previous thought had served as an introduction to his
own "First Philosophy". He therefore, as Burnet and Taylor,
as well as others, have pointed out, looks upon Plato's and all
earlier works as introductions to his own. But, if one bear this in
mind, the report of Aristotle cannot but be of inestimable value
in comprehending Plato's theory of Ideas. The selection given
above shows that Plato was much indebted to Socrates, who, it will
be remembered, endeavoured to find by analysis the essential
characteristics of ethical actions. His aim was to find and define
concepts, and the first period of Plato's work exhibits Socrates'
pupil pursuing a similar task; as Gomperz says, in the " first series
of his writings Plato appears as an ethical conceptualist".1 Not
only was the brilliant pupil, however, influenced by the method of
Socrates, but also by the speculations of the Eleatics and Pytha-
goreans, and this, combined with the effect of the religious beliefs
of Orphism upon Plato's poetic and imaginative nature, led him
in the course of his development to transcend the teachings of
Socrates. He devotes his interest to problems respecting the soul,
its nature and destiny, and gradually there results the theory of
Ideas, and, in the Republic, that mighty edifice, which, as someone
has said, houses in its many chambers all the parts of the Platonic
system, — in the Republic, there is placed before the reader his

i Greek Thinkers Vol. II, P. 289.

50

conception of philosophy as the science which contemplates these
Ideas, the science par excellence.

Aristotle says that the successors of Socrates, and he refers
clearly to Plato and his followers, took the Socratic concepts and
ascribed to them a separate existence. These hypostasized con-
cepts are then the Ideas; to every concept there corresponds an
Idea, and, just as the former may be classified, so the latter may
be classified ; and thus there is a whole hierarchy of Ideas, the cul-
mination of which is the Idea of the Good or Idea Good. Ordinary
sense-perception furnishes only the suggestion or promptings, with
the help of which, according to the myth, the soul bethinks itself of
the Ideas, of which in its former existence it was fully cognizant.
This is the kernel of Plato's doctrine of ava/jLvrjaLs or reminiscence.
Philosophy then consists in the contemplation of these Ideas, they
are "that which in each case really exists". To express the relation
of individual sense things to the Ideas becomes the problem which
Plato must face. Whether Ideas are the only real or not makes not
a whit of difference to the fact that there are things of sense, and
Plato was far too sagacious and much too honest to ignore or deny
that. Individual things are imitations of the Ideas, or they parti-
cipate in them; the Ideas are, in some sense, present in the indivi-
dual things; but, further than these suggestions Plato did not go.

It was in this connection that Aristotle made his greatest
criticism of Plato, but yet Aristotle himself was not to overcome
entirely the same difficulty. To these early thinkers the moral
aspect of human imperfection — the problem of evil — seemed so
acute that they could not succeed in surmounting in their theories
the "necessity" and the "contingency", which were so obvious in
the world about them.

Before turning to the Aristotelian criticism of this theory of
Ideas and to the special system of the Stagirite himself, it must be
said that there is possible an interpretation of the Ideas of Plato
different from that which Aristotle and practically all succeeding
writers have held. The latter view, as has been suggested, ad-
vances the belief that Plato gave to the concepts a noumenal
existence, making them the Ideas. But may it not be that the
Ideas which are given suprasensible existence are not the concepts
of Socrates plus suprasensible existence, but rather supposed ob-

51

jects, if one may make use of the word in this connection, which
correspond to the concept, the latter still retaining the place wrhich
Socrates had given them ? Then there would be first, individual
sensible things, secondly, concepts, obtained by analysis, and
thirdly, the suprasensible Ideas (objects) corresponding to the
concepts. Such an interpretation would save Plato from attempt-
ing the impossible task of hypostasizing concepts, it would also give
him credit for having seen, as, for example, Kant did centuries
later, that the experience of the individual is constantly demanding
completion, a completion which is in part realized by the positing
of certain Rational Ideas, to use the Kantian phrase. Religion
always has ventured upon this task; science follows the same
method, for part of its aim was seen to consist in the positing in its
theories of that which was accepted a"s explaining the given facts.
Plato had behind him a religious background which certainly
influenced him tremendously, he too was well aware of the methods
employed in the' particular disciplines of his day and, in his en-
deavours to understand these and human experience in all its
relations, it would be a most natural thing for him to emphasize
these Ideas, which were not concepts nor obtained as the latter were,
but which were predicated as completions of that experience. No
doubt, the language that he used was open to misconstruction and,
probably, yes certainly, the Platonic schools did not grasp the
significance of the procedure of their master, if indeed, Plato himself
fully realized it, but it seems at least a reasonable interpretation to
place upon his writings and one much more in accord with the re-
markable genius of the man who, for so many centuries now, has in
great part shaped and moulded the thought of the Western world.

Under any circumstances, Plato's teaching is not so different
from that of modern science as might be supposed, for he never
forgets the importance of concepts. Even though, at times, his
poetic temperament tends to make him soar above the things of
sense, yet he still realizes that the hard, brute facts of this mundane
world are the starting-point of investigation. However much he
may love to contemplate Ideas, yet he does not blind his eyes to the
necessity for an explanation of the things of sense, and furthermore,
in the very positing of his suprasensible Ideas, he still, it would
seem, is pursuing a method which science, throughout its long his-

52

tory, has actually followed as it has attempted to explain the given
facts. For science itself makes a distinction similar to that which
Plato made between concepts and Ideas. Science not only has
arranged its data under definite classes, but, in many of its explana-
tions, it goes beyond the perceived data and concepts derived there-
from, and makes such predications as the infinity of the universe
in space and time. Predications of this kind are quite different
from concepts obtained by the scrutiny of individual perceptible
things.

The criticisms, which Aristotle made of the Platonic theory,
are specified in the ninth chapter of the first book of the Meta-
physics. They resolve themselves into two main objections; first,
that the proof for the existence of these Ideas are all inadequate,
and secondly that, even if the Ideas did exist, they would be useless,
for since they are by hypothesis outside things, they cannot there-
fore afford any explanation of our knowledge of things or of their
existence or change. Aristotle endeavours to form a system which
will not be subject to such criticisms, and the first great difference
which must be noted is that, in his writings, everything in exper-
ience is equally worthy of regard and investigation. The result is
that, unlike Plato, Aristotle gives a prominent place to physics,
using the word in a broad sense as including biology and embracing
everything which he classified under the head of movement.

In various parts of his writings, Aristotle suggests classifications
of the disciplines of knowledge differing slightly one from the other,
but that which he apparently deemed most important and far-
reaching is the classification of knowledge into Theoretical and
Practical. The distinction corresponds roughly to the modern one
drawn between science and art. For Aristotle, Theoretical know-
ledge sought to know, Practical knowledge sought to do. There
are three main branches of Theoretical knowledge, First Philosophy,
Mathematics and Physics, and, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle ex-
plains in what way mathematics and physics differ from first
philosophy. Physics, he says, deals with objects that are not
separable from matter and motion, mathematics with objects not
separable from matter, but first philosophy " deals with things that
are both separable and immovable"1. At first sight, this appears

1 Meta. VI, 1, 1026 a 16.

53

very similar to the Platonic theory, for things separable from matter
and immovable are surely suprasensible and, as such, must differ
but little from Plato's Ideas; but this is not Aristotle's meaning,
for he goes on to explain that the task of this first philosophy is to
consider being as such, TO bv rj bv, both what it is and the attributes
that belong to it as being.1 The physicist studies being as composed
of bodies in motion, the mathematician studies being as possessing
number and spatial form, but first philosophy asks what it means to
be. It abstracts from all the particulars the one most common
quality, viz., being, and in that sense it is more general than phy-
sics and mathematics, it is indeed most general of all. The general
principles resulting from this first philosophy will be applicable
everywhere, whereas those of the second philosophies, mathematics
and physics, are applicable only within a certain territory. The
development of this doctrine of being results in the Aristotelian
system.

True to his avowed purpose not to commit the error of Plato,
Aristotle commences his work by an investigation of individual
things. The logical analysis of every individual being or substance,
oixna, gives Aristotle what he calls the causes or first principles
of being. These causes are strictly four and may be designated
material, efficient, final and formal, but, since the formal may be
thought of as including the efficient and final, there are practically
two fundamental principles or causes, the material and the formal.
Every individual being is what it is because of the operation of these
two causes. Neither pure form nor pure matter exists in the realm
of determined being; the individual substance is a (rvvo\ov, a total-
ity of matter and form. But the terms matter and form are rela-
tive; that which is form in regard to one thing may be matter in
regard to another. For example, wood may be considered the form
for the unhewn tree, but it is matter in relation to the completed
house. What holds true of individual things is also true of the
sum-total of things, for matter and form are principles which run
throughout the whole development. Now everything that is
determined is for Aristotle in a process of change, Kivrjcns. And
this process consists in a taking on of form by matter; the higher
the stage of evolution, the more there is of form and the less of

iMeta. VI, 1, 1026 a 33.

54

matter. In other words, throughout the whole process of
there is a movement from the less actual to the actual, or rather, as
Aristotle says, from Potentiality to Actuality. It is, however,
impossible for Aristotle to. conclude that pure actuality unmixed
with potentiality, or form unmixed with matter is unnecessary for
development, and here the Stagirite advances that portion of his
argument which leads him finally into the very same difficulty
which Plato had experienced. Individual things arise in the pro-
cess of development because of the joint operation of form and
matter ; the gradual preponderance of form constitutes the gradual
ascent in the scale of being. But what about the first and the last
stage in the process? Are there pure matter and pure form?
Aristotle calls the last remainder after abstraction, as one goes down
in the scale, first matter, Trpco-n? uX??. It is the bare potentiality of all
that is actualised in the realm of change, is merely inferred, and can
be known, if at all, only by analogy. On the other hand, as one
ascends in the scale, there is pure 'form, or pure actuality, and
Aristotle insists that without such a conception there could be no
movement at all. Logically, pure actuality, he holds, must be first,
for without such a conception there could be no movement, since
all movement implies an efficient cause. The series of causes cannot
be infinite and so he posits a first mover, itself unmoved. This
first unmoved mover is, for Aristotle, God. He is pure actuality,
pure form and, since to say that he contemplates the realm of exist-
ent things would be to determine him1 by something outside,
Aristotle is led to say that the prime mover is vor)<TL$ I/OTJCTCWS,
thought of thought, pure contemplation.

In this aspect of his teaching, it will be seen that Aristotle
approaches the Platonic doctrine. Indeed, it may be said that the
Idea of the Good in Plato is, in no sense, different from the prime
mover of Aristotle. In separating this prime mover from the things
of sense Aristotle commits the very same mistake, if mistake, it
be, for which he so drastically has criticized Plato. Furthermore, if
Plato had difficulty in stating the relation of ideas to things, and
could be accused by his pupil, Aristotle, of using, in his explanation,
metaphors only, such as imitation and participation, no less had
Aristotle difficulty in explaining the relation of his prime mover to

1 Cf. Meta. XII Ch. 9.

55

things, and the analogy which he uses of the lover being drawn to
the beloved is none the less metaphorical. If there was a dualism
in the system of Plato, the same may be said of the doctrine of
Aristotle; indeed, there, it is even more apparent perhaps, because
it evidences itself not only in his doctrine of the prime mover and
the world, but also in his belief in an intractable contingency or
irrational element within the world, as well as in his doctrine of
Active and Passive Reason.

Again, there is a misuse of words amounting to a logical incon-
sistency in Aristotle, for he applies the term "form" to denote the
result of abstraction and continues to use the same term in the
phrase "pure form ", referring to the prime mover. But it is not by
a process of abstraction that Aristotle reaches this latter concep-
tion; the prime mover is, with him, rather a postulate, it is pre-
dicated as a completion of the development, and, since it is not
obtained in a way similar to that in which the forms of things are
determined, the word, form, even though modified by the adjective
pure, cannot consistently be applied to the prime mover.

In one outstanding respect, the conclusions of Aristotle differ
from those of Plato. For the latter, there are many Ideas, though,
of course, there is one highest archetype, — the Idea of the Good, —
while for Aristotle there is but one prime mover. In other respects
the results of the speculation of these two great thinkers are, after
all, not so cliverse. Though each started out in his investigations
upon apparently opposite roads, yet the final destination of each is
practically the same.

Having thus passed in review the teachings of these three great
thinkers, it is now possible to approach the question, what is
philosophy. A definition of science resulted from an analysis of
the data and method of early science; and now, in the same way, a
definition of philosophy should result from an analysis of the mater-
ial presented above. That Plato and Aristotle used the word,
philosophy, in a double sense is significant. It shows that, in their
day, a process of differentiation was going on, and that, as a result,
the word, philosophy, was being given a new meaning. And yet,
since the older meaning still survived and indeed has remained for
long in use, it would be wrong to ignore that use of the word.
Philosophy in that sense, it has been seen, was synonymous with

56

science. The different special sciences were likewise special
philosophies.

But there arose, as has been seen, a new meaning for the term
and it is this that must be determined. First of all, it must be
stated that philosophy, — the term is now used in its newer sense, —
is a specific study evolving from a more general intellectual attitude.
Such an attitude, since it is strictly speaking not correct to call it
either science or philosophy, we have called "science-philosophy".
From this science-philosophy, or general observation of phenomena,
there have been differentiated special studies, which have been
designated special sciences, and then, from these disciplines, there
arises, because of their diversity, the necessity of another investiga-
tion having the content and the mode of procedure of these disci-
plines as its subject-matter. This investigation is philosophy, in
that strict usage of the term by which it is differentiated from the
special scientific disciplines. Thus, the Trpcorr; 0iXo0-o</>ta becomes
last philosophy.

An examination of the material presented above shows that
philosophy, even in its historic beginnings, approached this subject-
matter with the true scientific spirit. If science be an attempt to
describe and explain facts, then philosophy too is a science. The
facts with which it deals are, however, not the facts of any one
special science. Philosophy takes as its subject-matter the content
and method of procedure of all the sciences. And so it may be said
that philosophy approaches the facts of life, including tbose of
scientific knowledge and procedure, and endeavours to co-ordinate
them all in a comprehensive, self-consistent theory.

The work of Plato and that of Aristotle were just such attempts.
Socrates, however, appears to have made no attempt to form such a
view, since he was mainly concerned with a definite set of data, viz.,
the ethical. Vet, because he had a wonderful influence upon Plato
and Aristotle, and, through them, upon succeeding philosophy,
he deserves an even more important place in the history of philo-
sophy than has generally been accorded him. His own particular
work, however, was that of a special scientist. He was a student
of a special territory of knowledge to which the word, ethics, has
been given, and, in that he emphasized if not first formulated the
scientific method of obtaining concepts and definitions, he is worthy,
too, of a prominent position in all histories of science.

57

Philosophy, then, may be defined as the scientific attempt to
form a world-view, which gives a rightful place to all the known
facts. Now, though it is apparent that both Plato and Aristotle
attempt just such a task, yet it must not be overlooked that the
definition, which each gives of philosophy, seems to suggest a
different function for that discipline. These definitions have al-
ready been stated. For Plato, the philosopher is he who sets his
affections upon that which in each case really exists, which becomes
tantamount to saying that the philosopher is he who sets his affec-
tions on the Ideas, and philosophy then would seem for Plato to
consist in the contemplation of these Ideas. Philosophy, first
philosophy, for Aristotle is the science of being as such. But these
definitions are not intrinsically different from that given above.
In the case of Plato, the Ideas are the supposed explanations of
the world of sense. It may be difficult for him to tell just in what
way they are so explanatory, but, nevertheless, that is his firm
belief. He who contemplates the Ideas is, therefore, endeavouring
thereby to understand the universe and to form a complete view of
the same. Again, in the case of Aristotle, being as such was his
phrase for the common basis of all things. The four principles or
causes of being which resulted from his analysis he uses to explain
all, and, therefore, the science of being as such is for him that
science which endeavours to give a complete account of the known
facts. Thus, in the development of human thought which, in the
period just covered, finds, in a sense, its culmination in Plato and
Aristotle, "we have a final definition of philosophy being evolved.

If it be objected that the subject-matter and aim of philosophy
are different from those just outlined, that philosophy does not
have as its subject-matter the content and mode of prpcedure of the
sciences, and that it does not attempt to co-ordinate all the known
facts into a world-view, then, it must be asked, what else is philoso-
phy, what other than this is its subject-matter and what its aim ?

It has already been suggested that, before the differentiation of
the general background of thought into the special sciences had
taken place, there was, strictly speaking, neither science nor phil-
osophy. The work of Thales, for example, was for him neither
philosophy nor science. Seeing that his general aim was to form
a world-theory, they who lived contemporaneous with or subse-

58

quent to the Platonic-Aristotelian differentiation might apply the
name philosophy to his teaching. For Thales, his work was, how-
ever, neither science nor philosophy, simply because the distinction
had not, in his time, been made. For this reason, it is logically
incorrect to speak of the relation of science and philosophy before
the time of Plato. But history subsequent to his writings is, as it
were, a great stage upon which the two characters, science and
philosophy, play important and yet extremely varied roles. A
delineation of the part played by each and of the interrelations of the
two must now be entered upon.

59

CHAPTER IV.
THE SUBORDINATION OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

"With the age of Aristotle, Grecian civilization stepped out
from its national restrictions and into the great general movement
in which the peoples of antiquity that dwelt about the Mediterra-
nean, through interchange and adjustment of their ideas, became
fused into one common civilization." Thus Professor Windelband
commences the second part of his History of Philosophy. The
intellectual life of man is always closely connected with the general
movement of civilization. Systems of philosophy and advances in
the special sciences, despite apparent evidence, at times, to the
contrary, do not arise evacuo, and the thought of the Graeco-Roman
world is no exception to this rule. This fusion of different elements,
which resulted in the "one common civilization" of which Windel-
band speaks, reveals two dominant characteristics, the ethical and
the religious, and so the views of the world that arise show these
same general traits. The ethical period finds its centre, still, in
Greece, and is earlier than the religious period ; the latter is develop-
ed mainly in Alexandria, but, gradually, gains such prominence that,
taken over into the thought of succeeding centuries, it is enthroned
in the very heart of Scholasticism. 'The representatives of the
first period are the Epicureans and Stoics, those of the second
development the Neoplatonists, Gnostics, and early Church Fathers.

Philosophy, it has been seen, consists in a scientific attempt to
form a world-theory, which gives a rightful place to all the facts.
Any attempt which bases its theory upon and includes only a few
of the facts will be necessarily inadequate, and, for that reason,
the world-views advanced by the thinkers of the Graeco-Roman
world are less deserving of the name philosophy than those of Plato
and Aristotle. The Epicureans and Stoics were especially impress-
ed by certain facts of man's moral life and certain theories in rela-
tion thereto. This was a result to be expected, for the teaching of
the Sophists and of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had led men to pay
more attention to the individual, his desires and motives. And

60

further, the crumbling political life of Greece, with the consequent
loss of national independence and national spirit, provided an
opportunity for men to turn their eyes toward the welfare of the
individual man. 'So it came about that the world-views advanced
by the Epicureans and Stoics were unduly coloured by certain
dominating ethical interests.

Epicurus and his followers taught that it is the business of
philosophy to make human life more tranquil and more peaceful.
The fear of the gods, implying, as it then did, a veritable maze
of superstition and terror, they held to be the chief disturbing
element in man's experience. Therefore, they endeavoured to
free men from all fear of the supernatural.1 The gods may exist,
yes do exist, consensus of opinion, they taught, is enough to prove
that, but, in their far-off home, they enjoy absolute repose2 and are
troubled neither by the miseries nor by the happiness of mankind.
There is no intercourse or connection between the supersensible
gods and sensible things. The Democritean physics, — atoms and
the void,- — are a sufficient explanation of the world.

The Stoics, as a class, were nobler men than the Epicureans,
and have had a much more abiding influence. Their dominant
interest is likewise ethical. Man seeks happiness, happiness con-
sists in conformity to Nature3, in other words, to the Law of the
universe, and here their teaching mainly centres. God, they held,
is not pure transcendence, as they understood Aristotle to teach.
The universe is a living being and God may be identified with this
universe or likened to its soul. The world, then, is the body of God,
and, as such, must be a perfect organism; God, as its soul, is the
governing intelligence or sovereign law. Ethics, then, is of para-
mount importance and a world-theory of value only in so far as it
contributes thereto.

The Epicurean and Stoic systems proved to be unsatisfying to
many. There were some, like Pyrrho of Elis and Carneades and
Aenesidemus, who threw up their hands in despair, hastily con-
cluding, like many another at different eras in the history of thought,
that it is impossible to form an adequate world-theory, basing
their sceptical inferences mainly upon what they called the rela-

1 Lucret., De Rer. Nat. I, 62 ff.; Diog. Laert. X, 123 f.; Ibid. X, 143.

2 Diog. Laert. X, 139.
3Cf. Diog. Laert. VII, 87.

61

tivity of knowledge. Those who claim that there is no absolute
knowledge, that all is relative, generally overlook the logical in-
consistency of their own position. Their words are self-condemna-
tory, for, if their absolute statement be true, then is their thesis
disproved.

There were others, however, who, when the philosophy of the
day failed, turned longing eyes to religion. But the old Greek
religious beliefs had been found inconsistent and were now no
longer tenable; the nobler religious teachings of Plato and Aristotle
were but vaguely remembered, the Epicurean indifference and the
Stoic resignation having made them, unfortunately, too much a
thing of the past. The needs of the intellect would at last, without
doubt, have been sacrificed to those of the heart had not Christian-
ity, with a view of the world different from those of Epicureanism
and Stoicism come into the lives of men to renew again their hopes
and illuminate once more their thoughts.

The success of Christianity lay in great measure in this, that it
soon learned to use the philosophic language of the day in formu-
lating its doctrines. Having done so, the minds of men found in
Christian theology some answer to the problems that had beset
them. Religion, or rather theology, — for the facts of the religious
life should always be clearly distinguished from the theoretic inter-
pretation of the same, — theology became now the dominating
influence and philosophy grew to be utterly subordinate thereto.
As one looks back over the pages of history, he cannot but feel that
the thought of that day committed a most egregious blunder. It
was a mistake, which was to plunge the world into the night of the
Mediaeval Ages, a mistake whereby the true office and nature of
philosophy were to be forgotten, the relative value of religion and
theology transposed and the nature of scientific method utterly
misunderstood. Philosophy, thus being reduced to a hand-maid of
theology, was in a precarious situation, for not only was its genuine
task ignored, but, peradventure it should fail in establishing the
theses of theology, it would straightway be not ignored but con-
demned. And therefore a world-view would be propagated, which
was not formed by the scrutiny and interpretation of the facts of
human life and conduct, but which would be based exclusively upon
the dicta of authority.

62

Philosophy should have endeavoured to comprehend into a
system the results of the different sciences with the results of reli-
gious life and belief, — that would have been its proper task. Theo-
logy would still have had its important part to play. But to make
philosophy subordinate to theology, to make it the servant, even
slave, of theology, was a most unfortunate procedure, one quite
similar however to that which the Epicureans and Stoics had
followed, but fraught with much more lamentable results. A
proper philosophy cannot be predominantly an ethical philosophy,
neither can it be predominantly a religious philosophy. In the first
period of Graeco-Roman thought, however, philosophy was the
former, in the second period it was the latter. This second period
included, as has been said, the work of the Neoplatonists, Gnostics
and early Church Fathers.

Neoplatonism is decidedly a religious philosophy. Its most
prominent representative was Plotinus, 205-270 A.D., who made a
last supreme effort to withstand Christian thought. His aim was
to formulate the chief doctrines of Greek and Hellenistic speculation
into one religious system. But Neoplatonism failed as a religious
system, and failed, too, as a philosophy, — failed as a religious
system, because of the overwhelming success of Christianity, and
failed as a philosophy, because it committed the error, common to
its day, of building a world-theory upon too narrow a basis of fact.
The failure of Neoplatonism left Christian theology free and un-
trammelled. It was a dangerous freedom however, because it was
to lead to a calm serenity and self-confidence and contentment
which, later, permitted stagnation and decay. It meant, too, the
utter subversion of the true function of philosophy. Certain of the
early Church Fathers, Tatian and Tertullian for example, were
induced to show a violent aversion to philosophy, because of the
rather alarming growth of Gnosticism, but the majority of them
assumed an entirely different attitude. Philosophy, in the hands
of Justin Martyr and the apologists generally, and later with Cle-
ment and Origen, became a valuable adjunct to theology. By its
help and with its terminology, the Church Fathers were enabled
to formulate their creeds. Now, that philosophy may be of assist-
ance to theology is not to be denied, but to conceive its function
as that of an assistant, a hand-maiden only, is to misunderstand its

63

true nature. Philosophy should take its independent stand upon
the content of all empirical disciplines and thus attempt to formu-
late its theory of the universe. But this the thought of the Mediae-
val Ages failed to comprehend.

The history of Mediaeval philosophy may be divided into two
periods. Roughly speaking, the year 1200 may be taken as the
dividing date. At the threshold of the first period stands Augus-
tine, 354-430, the Des Cartes of his day, whose theological views
became a dominant factor in the theology of the Christian church
for many centuries. Augustine held that true philosophy was not
to be despised, for Reason is God's first-born Son. Revelation and
Reason are at one in their conclusions; belief is, chronologically,
prior to knowledge however, though knowledge is the ultimate goal.
It was this last tenet in the teaching of Augustine, expressed in the
phrase, credo ut intelligam, which had so powerful an effect when,
after the dissolution of the Roman Empire, Scholasticism arose, the
avowed purpose of which was to defend and develop the doctrine
of the Church. The Church had now come to be considered as the
sole depository of the truth. Outside her there is neither salvation
nor science. The dogmas, as formulated, became fixed and per-
manent. They are truth. It is no longer necessary to search for
knowledge. Under such conditions, there is only one thing for
philosophy to do. It cannot perform its proper function, and when
Scotus Erigena and Anselm commenced their work, they conceived
their task to be that of defending by the aid of philosophy the
doctrines of the Church. Like Augustine, Anselm held that one
rrust first believe in order to understand. But he went even further
than Augustine in his superstitious reverence for the dogmas of the
Church. No Christian cught ever to doubt the beliefs and tradi-
tions of the Holy Catholic Church. He must strive as humbly as
possible to understand her teachings, if he succeed, let him thank
God; if he fail, all the more reason for humility and reverence for the
wonderful body of Truth vouchsafed to the Church.

It is not difficult to see that such an attitude of mind is directly
opposed to the truly scientific, which commences its investigations
without presupposition, which sees in every fact of life something
to be reckoned with, and which, when in that form of science
called philosophy, endeavours to explain all the facts by compre-

64

bending them into one world-theory. The tyrannical reign of
dogmatic theology was, however, not to last forever, and, with the
rise of the second period of Mediaeval philosophy, signs of a newer
life are evident.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century Christian Europe,
it would seem, knew nothing of Aristotle's writings except a part
of the Organon, and that was mainly misunderstood. But, owing to
the Arabians, who in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had trans-
lated and commented upon much of the rest of Aristotle's work,
Christian students in Europe were gradually becoming acquainted
with his ethics and metaphysics. The Church, coldly conservative,
at first paid little attention to this innovation but soon began to
discern signs of trouble, and so in 1209 it condemned Aristotle's
physics and in 1215 his metaphysics. Nothing should rival its
imperious authority. But it had made a mistake, and in 1250 the
Church revoked its decisions and permitted lectures on Aristotle
to be given, seeing the possibility thereby of gaining a powerful ally.
In 1300 the Stagirite was the Church's official philosopher, and to
contradict him was tantamount to heresy.

Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the Scholastics, tried to re-
produce for his own day the Aristotelian system, confident, too,
that the philosophy he was establishing was not at variance with the
teachings of the Church. But the separation and definition of
the territories of each discipline militated against their union.
Philosophy was gradually emerging from its theological thraldom
and, having received official sanction from the church, and, having
been given again a more or less definite task apart from that of
theology, it was beginning a new development. The separation of
philosophy from theology was hastened by the attitude of such men
as Duns Scotus who, jealous for the fame of the Franciscan order,
undertook a criticism of Aquinas, and fearlessly championed reason
as a higher authority than revelation. Another factor of tremen-
dous influence was the ultimate triumph of the opponents of Real-
ism in the great controversy over the universals, as it is called.
This controversy formed one of the outstanding features of the
history of thought in the Mediaeval Ages. The problem was
formulated at the beginning of the period in very concise language
by Porphyry in his "Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle",

65

but its roots may be found in a very much earlier period, being im-
plicit even in the Presocratics and attaining importance in the work
of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Nor is the problem one which
has lost interest for the present, for the formation of concepts and
their relation to so-called individual things is a very important
modern question. In the Mediaeval Ages, there were, at first,
two positions taken, one of which claimed that the concepts or the
universals are ante rent and constitute in themselves reality. The
advocates of this view were called realists. The other party said
the universals are derived from individual things by abstraction
and are therefore post rem. The universals are mere words, names
(nomina), and so they were called nominalists. An outstanding
attempt at a reconciliation of these positions is known as concep-
tualism, which, as advocated by Abelard, claimed that universalia
sunt in rebus. Conceptualism was really a synthesis of the two
opposing views with a special emphasis, however, upon the fact that
the universals exist in the individuals and are therefore realities.
The result of the controversy was, by no means, favourable to the
realists, and, when William of Occam, following the example of
Roscelin of an earlier date, championed nominalism, it was to the
great discomfiture of realism. But the Church considered its very
foundations in regard to its hierarchical organization as well as in
regard to its dogmas to be attacked when realism was in danger.
For, since the great dogmas of the Church and its institutions were
ideas, considered as fundamental realities, their validity seemed
lost when the universal ideas were regarded as merely names.
This, applied for example to the dogma of the Trinity, became a
serious matter. So it came that Occam incurred the condemnation
of the Church, and philosophy, with its nominalistic tendencies, for
long in slavery to theology was gladly given its liberty.

But philosophy seemed unable to carry on an independent in-
vestigation; it could not so soon appreciate the possibilities of a new
position and a new freedom, and so it exchanged the authority of
the Church for that of Aristotle, appropriating his conclusions
rather than his spirit of inquiry, a procedure which meant a less
servile position, perhaps, but one which just as effectually hindered
its achieving any real results. The consequences of this un-
fortunate step were extremely important in the succeeding cen-

66

turies, chiefly because it meant the continuation and acceptance
of a method which could lead to no advance; and, had it not been
that a different method and a truer one was developing with signi-
ficant rapidity, philosophy would still be engaged in a task of little
practical value and of no scientific worth. This new method was
being introduced by the special sciences, the ever-increasingly
wonderful investigations of which were greatly accelerated by the
Renaissance period.

Throughout the Mediaeval Ages, the thoughts of men had been
centred mainly upon theological questions, and the special sciences
had been sadly neglected and even ostracized. Here and there were
faint glimmerings, which gave hope of a fuller dawn, though no
general acknowledgment had been given to the feeble but never-
theless significant gropings in mathematics, astronomy and mechan-
ics in Europe throughout the Mediaeval Ages. One of the most
remarkable of those men who, in an age definitely opposed to the
scientific spirit, succeeded in carrying on some investigations, was
Roger Bacon, 1214-1292. This man anticipated in many ways the
method which, later, was to lead men on to further discoveries, but
his work was neither understood nor appreciated. Ecclesiastical
authority and undue reverence for the past could not so soon be
overcome. But, with" the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, came the
Revival of Learning and the introduction of the investigations of the
Arabs who, represented by such men as Alhazen, Avicenna and
Averroes, had done much to keep alive a scientific spirit in this
Mediaeval period. And this was not all, for there were taking
place other events which were simply revolutionising the ideas of
men. The discovery of America and the Indies, the invention of
printing, of gunpowder, of the telescope and "compass opened up
vast and hitherto undreamed of possibilities. Added to these dis-
coveries and inventions were the altered political conditions, which
meant, in many cases, national independence and freedom. A new
inspiration had come to men, a new epoch of civilization seemed to
be opened. Before this, the spirit of man had been too much
"cribbed, cabined and confined" by the implicit obedience to its
dogmas required by the Church and by the unquestioning reliance
upon the teaching of Aristotle. The attitude is shown very well in
that well-known story about one of the lone investigators, who

67

thought he had discovered spots on the sun. He was assured
though, that, since Aristotle did not mention such spots, the spots
he had seen must be in his own eyes. But now things were changed.
Theology might continue its chosen way, philosophy, too, might
follow its old method, but the special sciences were starting out
upon a voyage of discovery, which, in due time, would produce a
new temper both in philosophy and theology. What wonder if,
for a time, men were carried away by their intense excitement!
Nothing seemed impossible any more ; the mysteries of the heavens
and the powers of the earth will obey the investigator. Science,
with its new method, will be the guide of the human mind in its
victorious march through nature. There are many illustrious
names throughout this period of marvellous development. Tele-
sius, Ramus, Bruno, Campanella are among the pioneer theore-
tical innovators, while among the more practical reformers are
Leonardo da Vinci, Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei,
Harvey, and, later, Boyle and Newton.

But many there were, who looked askance at these brave but
bold investigations into the innermost truths of nature. And, as
different men here and there continued their work along the lines
of this new method, this feeling of suspicion grew from one of secret
and silent opposition to one of open and bitter hostility. The
conflict waxed hot and continued for long. In the year 1660, a
number of "divers worthy persons, inquisitive into natural philoso-
phy and other parts of human learning, and particularly of what
hath been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy,"
formed themselves into a society, and nothing reveals so well this
spirit of opposition, .as the records that remain of tfee attacks made
upon this little company, which was to become known to history as
"The Royal Society". Here were men, who were disregarding the
sanctity of Nature's temple, who ruthlessly entered her courts and
essayed to bring to light her innermost treasures, men, who would
enter even her holy of holies and who would attempt to ascertain
her most sacred, her most inviolable laws! A reference to Boyle's
"Free Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature" reveals the
superstitious awe with which most regarded Nature in his day;
but this new attitude, with its new method, was directly opposed to
all such views. Nothing would deter it from investigation and

68

examination to the very last possibility, and so it was that men,
who were filled with this spirit of inquiry, took the conventional
current beliefs of their fellows and, like Socrates of old, subjected
them to close and accurate analysis. But their method led them
further than this. It was not destructive only. Time and labour
were expended without ceasing upon the problems that now pre-
sented themselves, and the arduous work that was undertaken was
not without its reward.

What matter if ridicule was poured upon them, what matter if
contempt and invective were hurled against them, what matter if
their labours were condemned by many as sheer waste of time and
energy! They were building upon a foundation of fact which, they
firmly believed, was not to be a foundation upon the shifting sand
of assumption, but upon which a future science was to rest safely
and securely. "The philosophy, I recommend", said Robert
Boyle, "is much more difficult, laborious and expensive than that
of Aristotle and the schools, but," he continues in language becom-
ing a noble yet humble man, "I am content provided experimental
knowledge be really promoted, to contribute to the meanest way to
advance it and had rather be an underbuilder and even dig in the
quarry for materials towards so useful a structure than not assist
in erecting it." The inscription, which one might well place upon
the corner-stone of the great building, the foundation of which such
men as Boyle were laying, is splendidly expressed by the great poet :

"Not clinging to some ancient saw;
Not mastered by some modern term ;
Not swift nor slow to change, but firm :
And in its season bring the law."

A further glimpse into this interesting and important period in
the history of science and philosophy may be had by turning to the
works of the literary writers of the day. In Gulliver's "Voyage to
Laputa",1 Swift has given us an inimitable piece of satire upon the
work of the Royal Society. Gulliver is introduced into the learned
academy of Lagado. There he finds the natural philosophers all
busy with projects and all honoured by the dignified title of pro-
jectors. One has been for eight years engaged on a project for

1 Gulliver's Travels, Pt. Ill, Ch. 5 and 6.

69

extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, and placing them in her-
metically sealed vials, in order to let them out in raw, inclement
weather. Other projects were the softening of marble into pillows
and pincushions, petrifying the hoofs of a living horse to preserve
them from foundering, whilst a famous project was that of a most
ingenious architect for building houses by beginning at the roof and
working downwards to the foundation. Likewise Goldsmith, who
depicts the opinion of a certain town, visited by his Citizen of the
World, in the following letter, written to Fum Hoan, first president
of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin : " I am amused, my dear Fum,
with the labours of the learned here. One shall write you a whole
folio on the dissection of a caterpillar. Another shall swell his works
with a description of the plumage on the wing of a butterfly; a third
shall see a little world on a peach leaf, and publish a book to de-
scribe what his readers might see more clearly in two minutes only
by being furnished with eyes and a microscope. Yet, believe me,
my friend, ridiculous as these men are to the world, they set up as
objects 'of esteem for each other. They have particular places
appointed for their meetings, in which one shows his cockle-shell
and is praised by all the society, another produces his powder, makes
some experiments that result in nothing, and comes off with ad-
miration and applause; a third comes out with the important dis-
covery of some new process in the skeleton of a mole, and is set down
as the accurate and sensible; whilst one, still more fortunate than
the rest, by pickling, potting and preserving monsters, rises into
unbounded reputation. <

The labours of such men, instead of being calculated to amuse
the public, are laid out only in diverting each other. The world
becomes very little the better or wiser, for knowing what is the
peculiar food of an insect that is itself the food of another, which
in its turn is eaten by a third ; but there are men who have studied
themselves into a habit of investigating and admiring such minu-
tiae. To these, such objects are pleasing."1

The men who belong to this new movement called themselves
students of natural philosophy, using the phrase in its general sense
as equivalent to a science of nature. With philosophy, which, as
a final task, endeavours to form a world-theory, they were not con-

1 Letter LXXXIX.

70

cerned. They were engaged with the special natural sciences and
held aloof from Trpcorr? 0tXoo-o<£m, to use Aristotle's phrase, or meta-
physics or philosophy, as the word has been employed in the fore-
going chapters. And for long they had reason for such aloofness,
for, just as theology had directed philosophy and the sciences into
barren and fruitless lands, so philosophy itself, liberated from the
bondage of theology, but in slavery again to Aristotle had failed
to be of any genuine assistance to the special sciences and had, by
its insistence upon the purely deductive method, hindered progress
and discovery. The enfranchisement, however, of the special
sciences and their remarkable success could not but have an effect
upon philosophic speculation, and, in succeeding history, this is
to be seen quite clearly. Yet that effect was only partial. It was
evident, however, upon both the so-called Empiricistic tendency,
and the so-called Rationalistic philosophy. The development of
each of these and the irreconcilability of their conclusions made
possible and necessary the work of Kant, who, in his Critical
Philosophy, by attempting to show the fallacies, at once, of Em-
piricism and Rationalism, pointed to a more adequate solution of
the world -problem.

71

CHAPTER V.
EMPIRICISM.

The success which the special sciences were experiencing in this
period just described was due to the method which they employed.
Had theology and philosophy been able to use that same method,
they, too, would have been truly sciences and would have enjoyed
greater confidence and more rapid development. As it was, theology
held itself sternly aloof from the innovations introduced round
about it, and philosophy, as a theory of the universe, only gradually
realized the value of the new method. Perhaps no man, in the earlier
period, appreciated so well the nature and character of the scientific
development as did Thomas Hobbes. He was able to read with
splendid accuracy the signs of the times and discerned remarkably
well the dual aspect of the method which science was employing.
Before outlining what Hobbes conceived this to be, mention, per-
haps, should be made of the personage, who often in history has
overshadowed the much more brilliant Hobbes, viz., the Lord
Chancellor, Francis Bacon.

Credit is frequently given, even yet, to Bacon for having under-
stood clearly the fallacy of the old procedure, which dominated the
Mediaeval Ages, and for having enunciated the new method. But
such a conclusion is incorrect. Bacon did emphasize the necessity
for a different method, but he gave voice to the sentiments which
were already prevalent, and when he attempted to give a logical
account of the new method actually in use, — for that was his work
and not the inauguration of this new method, — he failed most sig-
nally. It was not the method which Bacon called Induction by
which science was advancing and by which it was still to advance.
This has been for long recognized. But there was another serious
error which Bacon made, and one for which he cannot be so severely
blamed. It was a natural outcome of the history of the Mediaeval
Ages, and Hobbes, too, made the same mistake, — a mistake which,
indeed, is only too prevalent at this very day. Bacon completely
separated the domains of faith and of reason. If the two conflict,

72

there is no cause for alarm, the spheres of theology and science are
utterly disparate. This view of things, which has done untold harm
in the history of thought, is exhibited very nicely in the encyclo-
paedic survey, which Bacon gives in his so-called Intellectual Globe.
He outlines a classification of the sciences very comprehensive but
singularly defective in its basis, reverting, as it does, to the old
notion of the faculties of the mind. This was the theoretic tripartite
division of the human soul into memory, imagination and reason.
Corresponding to reason there is philosophy or science, with a there-
fold division, the philosophy of God, of Nature, and of Man. The
first, however, the philosophy of God, must content itself with the
refutation of atheistic arguments only, because, in revealed theol-
ogy, man has been given the dogmas necessary for his salvation and
these are a matter of faith and not of knowledge.

Hobbes follows Bacon in this regard,1 differing from him, how-
ever, in nearly every other important respect. Particularly are his
observations upon the method of science different from those of
the Lord Chancellor, and they are much more in line with the actual
processes of the sciences. On his third visit to Paris in 1631,
Hobbes came into intimate friendship with Gassendi, Mersenne,
and Des Cartes. The most important result of the visit was the
influence exerted upon him by the geometrical method. Here was
a method which led to conclusions of apparently undeniable valid-
ity. Hobbes was enthusiastic. He came back to England, deter-
mined to apply this geometrical method to other fields of investiga-
tion. Thus he hoped to be able to achieve permanent and indis-
putable results. Now Hobbes saw that the method geometry was
using was different from the processes of scholastic, syllogistic
deduction. By the new method one obtained new knowledge; he
was able to advance. This geometrical method Hobbes saw to be
synthetic as well as analytic, and these characteristics, he held, are
the essential ones of all scientific method. And Hobbes was right,
though, to be sure, he did not fully realize the significance of syn-
thes s in scientific procedures. In the sixth chapter of his De Cor-
pore and the first paragraph, Hobbes says as follows: — " Philosophy
(or science, for he uses the word, philosophy, in its generic sense) is
the knowledge we acquire, by true ratiocination of appearances, or

1 De Corpore, Ch. I, Par. 8.

73

apparent effects, from the knowledge we have of some possible
production or generation of the same; and of such production, as
has been or may be, from the knowledge we have of the effects.
Method, therefore, in the study of philosophy, is the shortest way
of finding out effects by their known causes or of causes by their
known effects. . . . The first beginnings, therefore, of knowledge
are the phantasms of sense and imagination; and that there be
such phantasms of sense and imagination we know well enough by
nature; but to know why they be or from what causes they pro-
ceed, is the work of ratiocination; which consists in composition
and division or resolution. There is therefore no method by which
we find out the causes of things, but is either compositive or resolu-
tive, or partly compositive and partly resolutive, and the resolutive
is commonly called analytical method, as the compositive is called
synthetical." The fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs of the same
chapter illustrate what Hobbes meant by this two-fold method.
Seeing that universal things are contained in the nature of singular
things, the knowledge of them is to be acquired by resolution. For
example, a square is a singular thing which may be resolved or
analysed into a plane, terminated with a certain number of equal
and straight lines and right angles. By such a resolution, he says,
there is obtained a number of things universal to all matter, viz.,
line, plane, terminated, angle, straightness, rectitude and equality.
Or again take the individual thing gold. Resolution or analysis
gives one such concepts as solid, visible, heavy and many others
more universal than gold itself. These may again be resolved till
one arrives at such things as are most universal. "And in this
manner, by resolving continually, we may come to know what those
things are, whose causes being first known severally, and after-
wards compounded, bring us to the knowledge of singular things.
I conclude, therefore, that the method of attaining to the universal
knowledge of things is purely analytical."1 But these universals,
having been discovered and defined, then comes the compositive or
synthetic work of science. To quote Hobbes verbatim, "we are to
observe what effect a body moved produceth, when we consider
nothing in it besides its motion; and we see presently that this
makes a line or length; next, what the motion of a long body pro-

1 Op. Cit. Ch. VI, Par. 4.

74

duces, which we find to be superficies; and so forward, till we see
what the effects of simple motion are; and then, in like manner, we
are to observe what proceeds from the addition, multiplication,
subtraction and division of these motions and what effects, what
figures, and what properties they produce; from which kind of con-
templation sprung that part of philosophy which is called geom-
etry."1 After the consideration of what results from simple motions,
science passes to consider the effects of one moving body upon
another, and, likewise, such effects as result from the motion of the
parts of any one body. These two latter investigations Hobbes
subsumes under the name physics. The internal movements of the
human body result in ensible qualities such as light, colour, sound,
odour, etc., but these are appearances only, and, in reality, are
motions. To quote Hobbes again, " whatsoever accidents or qual-
ties our senses make us think there be in the world, they be not
there, but are seeming and apparitions only: the things that really
are in the world without us are those motions by which these seem-
ings are caused."2 After physics, comes civil and moral philosophy
wherein are considered the "motions of the mind ".

The above outline of the general position of Thomas Hobbes
serves a double purpose. It reveals his conception of the scientific
method of his day, as well as showing the great m stake into which
Hobbes fell. The latter consisted in this: he was so nfluenced by
the developments in the special sciences as introduced to him by
Copernicus, Kepler and Galilei, and by the revolutionary work of
Harvey n physiology, that his own science and h s own philosophy
or world-theory are definitely constructed thereon. Hobbe was
right in taking cognizance of the wonderful results of the sc'ences,
but he was wrong in suggesting a world-theory wh ch was biassed
by those results to such an extent that other facts, just as important
and just as obvious, were by him denied or relegated to the realm of
appearance and illusion. And yet, as one criticises Hobbes' work,
he is still filled with admiration for the man who conceived such a
world-scheme and carried it out so fearlessly and consistently.
Hobbes supposed that "the first beginnings of knowledge are the phan-
tasms of sense and imagination . . . that there be such phan-

^p. Cit. Ch. VI, Par. 6.

2 Human Nature Ch. II, Par. 10.

75

tasms we know well enough by nature", but he was led to neglect,
if not to despise the steps by which he had ascended, and he was
induced to predicate as the universal cause of all th ngs, motion,
the truth of which predication was in his eyes "known to nature",
known by the " natural light", self-evident, axiomatic.1 But this
error of Hobbes, one which, by the way, has been made over and
over again, may be more readily overlooked, when one remembers
the keen and careful account wrhich he gives of the method of science.
Science, as denned above in chapter two, is the description and
explanation of facts obtained by observation and experiment. In
the performance of its work, science constantly uses analysis. It is
by means of analysis that description is made, for, in that way,
men obtain the constituents of their different sciences, with the
help of which they describe the complex facts which are presented.
Moreover, had it not been for this analytic method, there could have
been no differentiation into the special sciences without which no
advance would have been made. But not only is the scientific
method analytic, it is also synthetic. As man experiments, whether
in geometry, to use Hobbes' illustration, or in those other sciences
where experiment has played such an important part, — as man
experiments, new complexes are constantly arising; the body of
data to be described and explained is constantly growing. Now
it is this aspect of experience, which, apparently, impressed Hobbes.
Because the geometrician produces certain effects, geometrical
figures, by the operation of certain causes, specific motions, which
effects have new properties, geometry is synthetic. It is quite
right to recognize such a characteristic running throughout all
science, but it must also be agreed that the same characteristic is
evident in ordinary experience as well as in science. A complex is
always more than the mere sum of its constituents. This law of
Psychical Resultants, to use a psychological term, is everywhere
operative, and, for that reason, it helps little, in estimating the
method of science, to call it synthetic in that sense. Yet Hobbes
accomplished much by showing that the scientific method is not
merely analytic. Had he paid more attention to the work of the
different sciences of his day he would have seen that his view of
synthesis was only a part-truth.

1 Cf. De Corpore Ch. VI Par. 5.

76

The synthetic procedure, which is employed to such an extent
by the scientist and which is peculiarly his, is illustrated well by
the work, say, of Darwin. Darwin had before him certain pheno-
mena, which were the result of artificial selection and breeding.
Might net such a process, he argued, have been going on for
millenia on a much wider scale, in nature? But, first, there must
be something to take the place, in this long natural history, of the
hand of man, as evidenced in the artificial selection. Malthus,
working in a more limited realm, gave him the suggestion in the
economic phrase, the survival of the fittest. Thus, led by that
wonderful promoter of discovery, — the "disciplined imagination",
to use Karl Pearson's phrase, — Darwin was able to connect up a
small body of observed fact with a larger body of data. Here, there
is illustrated a process of synthesis, the net result of which was the
Theory of Evolution. Numerous illustrations of a similar character
might be drawn from the sciences of anthropology, astronomy,
physiology and physics. Such a synthetic method is of the highest
value, and none the less so, because the conclusions or theories that
result are not always capable of experimental verification. Of
course Hobbes knew nothing of Darwin's "Origin of Species", but
the theory of evolution has only been used above as a good illustra-
tion. In the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, in the
experiments, say, of Galilei, as he endeavoured to formulate the law
of falling bodies, there were examples of just such a method being
employed.

This synthetic aspect of the method of science is illustrated also
by such work as that of Newton, for example, who was able to
coordinate into one general formula, the law of gravitation, the
uniform movements of all bodies, howsoever diverse, found within
the solar system. Here again, there is a linking up of different
bodies of data, and when men, at different times, have sought to
express all the phenomena, say, of light, — its intensity, velocity,
reflection, refraction, etc., — by one general theory, or when the
theory of light, the theory of electricity, the theory of heat are all
united under one conception, there, too, are illustrations, in an
even wider sense, of the operations of synthesis in the working of
the sciences. Analysis and synthesis constitute then the method,
which science uses in its description and explanation of facts, and

77

to Hobbes must be given the credit of seeing clearly the nature and
necessity of analysis and of suggesting though not fully appreciating
the nature and equal, or even greater necessity of synthesis.

It has already been seen that the mechanistic views advanced
by Hobbes were the result of the influence of the special sciences
of his day. That motion is the universal cause of all things, was,
apparently, for him a self-evident truth. But that motion is the
universal cause of all things did not appear to some to be so self-
evident. There seemed, at any rate, to be certain facts which were
more obviously known than this conclusion. And, in the years
succeeding Hobbes' work, discussion centred around the problem of
knowledge. Indeed, from Hobbes until Kant, the great problem
with which philosophy was concerned was just this problem of
knowledge, and here again the real function of philosophy sank into
the background. Theories of knowledge, strictly speaking, find a
more proper place in the history of psychology than in the history
of philosophy, and it is only because, at this time, psychology, as a
science, had not become separated out from philosophic investiga-
tion and speculation, that Empiricism and Rationalism, as theories
of knowledge, deserve to be included in the history of the philosophy
of this period. Hobbes had laid emphasis upon the "phantasms
of sense and imagination", which, he had said, were the first begin-
nings of knowledge; but he likewise had made frequent use of
ratiocination or reasoning. This latter, he saw, was extremely
important. Without it, science was impossible, for the method of
science consisted in just such ratiocination. The distinction
between the schools that now arose lies mainly in the emphasis
which was placed upon sensation and reason as factors of know-
ledge.

English Empiricism was impressed by the development taking
place in the natural sciences. Its aim was to discover the actual
facts of experience. But there was a growing tendency to interpret
experience as sense experience only. Rationalism, on the other
hand, cared little for the mere facts of sensation, and emphasized
reason as the enunciator of general principles universally valid. The
two schools developed side by side, their conclusions growing more
and more at variance, until, with Hume, on one hand, and Leibniz
and Wolff, on the other, there arose a state of affairs which seemed

78

hopelessly contradictory. Then it was that Kant brought forward
his critiques, in which, by means of a more adequate method, he
was able to suggest both the fallacy and the truth of the two oppos-
ing schools. Before, however, considering the validity of the
attempt at reconciliation which Kant made, it will be well to follow
out the thread of English Empiricism to its ultimate conclusions,
to see how significant was the result attained by this standpoint.

John Locke, the successor in England of Thomas Hobbes, may
be regarded as the formulator of English Empiricism. Perplexed
by certain difficulties in the domain of religious beliefs, Locke found
it necessary, as he thought, to make an examination into the human
understanding in order to discover with what objects it is fitted to
deal. His book "On the Human Understanding" is the result, the
purpose of which is "to inquire into the original, certainty, and
extent of human knowledge together with the grounds and degrees
of belief, opinion, and assent."1 In pursuing this task, he follows a
threefold method2; first, he inquires into the origin of ideas, meaning
thereby "the notions or whatever else you please to call them,
which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his
mind"; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be
furnished with them. Secondly, he endeavours to show what is the
certainty, evidence, and extent of the knowledge so obtained, and
thirdly, he makes some inquiries into the nature and grounds of
faith or opinion. Whence comes the mind then to be furnished
with its ideas? Whence has it all the materials of reason and know-
ledge? To these questions Locke gives the answer, from experience.
In that, all our knowledge is founded and from that it "ultimately
derives itself". "Our observation, employed either about external,
sensible objects or about the internal operation of our minds, per-
ceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our
understandings with all the materials-of thinking."3 In experience,
then, there are two kinds of simple ideas; these he calls ideas of
sensation and ideas of reflection. To express it in the rather crude
language of Locke, the senses convey into the mind from external
objects simple ideas which may be compounded by the mind into
complex ideas. On the other hand, when the mind "turns its view

1 Op. Cit. Book I, Ch. I, Par. 2.

2 Ibid., Par. 3.

1 Book II, Ch. 1, Par. 2.

79

inward upon itself and observes its own actions about those ideas
it has from sense",1 there arise ideas of reflection, such as those of
perception and willing.

Admirable as were the method and aim with which Locke com-
menced, he did not succeed in advancing far without finding him-
self in inextricable difficulties. In trying to arrive at the actual
facts of experience he made certain presuppositions such as those
of external object, mind and the object producing in us simple ideas.
And these assumptions, coming at the first of his work, were bound
to lead to difficulties, and an outstanding example of these is seen in
the following. In the eighth chapter of the second book, Locke
makes a distinction between primary and secondary qualities. The
latter are colours, sounds, tastes, etc., and "are nothing in the
objects themselves but powers to produce various sensations in us
by their primary qualities".2 The primary qualities, however, are
such as are utterly inseparable from every particle of perceived or
unperceived3 matter. These qualities are solidity, extension,
movement, which, Locke claims, "do really exist in the bodies
themselves",4 the ideas which we have of them being resemblances
only, whereas the secondary qualities, which are in us, are not
resemblances at all, being in the bodies only a power to produce
those sensations. Now, when Locke endeavours in the fourth book
to prove the knowledge of particular existences or objects, he reaps
the results of the presuppositions made in the earlier part of his
work. Sensitive knowledge, or knowledge of objects, he is led to
confess, is the least clear and certain of the three degrees of know-
ledge.5 Having assumed that there are objects outside experience
in which reside certain primary qualities, and, having claimed that
all knowledge is derived from experience, it became utterly impos-
sible to prove that we know such external objects. By his very
definition they were placed outside the realm of knowledge. Indeed,
Locke had no right even to say that our ideas of the primary quali-
ties resemble the primary qualities,6 for to predicate resemblance of
any two sets of data implies that both are in experience. Further,
even at the expense of being charged with punctiliousness, one might

1 Book II, Ch. 6, Par. 1.

2 Book II, Ch. 8, Par. 10.

3 Cf. Book II, Ch. 8, Pars. 9 and 13.

4 Book II, Ch. 8, Par. 15.

5 Book IV, Ch. 2, Par. 14.

6 Book II, Ch. 8, Par. 15.

80

point out that, since perception is the operation of the mind about
ideas, there can be no perception of "matter" as having any
properties. By his own assumption, Locke's lips were closed, and,
yet, he endeavoured, inconsistent though the attempt was, to
prove a knowledge of external objects.

Thus, interestingly enough, we have arrived at the point in the
development of so-called theories of knowledge from the standpoint
of empirico-physical science, when the "idea" has become entirely
divorced from the object which is supposed to be its cause. The
naive man unwittingly holds that he has direct experience of sticks
and stones — objects of nature ; but we are here told that the naive
man is mistaken, he only knows ideas, and the utmost that he can
expect is a correspondence between his ideas and natural objects.
But, since correspondence is likewise a relation to be perceived by
the mind and therefore must again be between ideas, it is evident
that of a relation of correspondence between an idea and an extra-
mental object he knows nothing.

This is the penalty theory of knowledge has to pay when it
adopts a view of the world based upon a physical standpoint like
that of Galilei, Gassendi and their contemporaries and successors.
Assuming the world to consist of matter and motion, the attempt has
been made to construe all the furniture of the mind in terms thereof
(Hobbes), or as products thereof (Locke), with the curious result
that our theory of knowledge leaves us toto caelo removed from the
very objects with which science itself claims to deal. All the
attempts of Locke to urge upon us, "resemblance", and that the
objects can be demonstrated, leave us in the same hopeless plight,
since resemblance and demonstration consist in the relation of
ideas. The objects of nature are forever transcendent and of tran-
scendent objects no science can be made. Whether, therefore,
these accounts of the originals of our knowledge are adequate to
the actual operations of science is a question which must give us
serious pause. It is easy for criticism of to-day to call attention to
the inconsistency of Locke, but it is not so easy, perhaps, to recog-
nize the real problem which lay at the basis of his illogical pro-
cedure. That there was such a problem the subsequent history of
English Empiricism was to show, but, first, the logic of Locke's
starting-point was to work itself out to thoroughly consistent con-
clusions and in Berkeley and Hume this process took place.

81

Locke, in the twenty-third chapter of his second book, had
attacked the traditional notion of substance, and had gone so far
as to say that no one has any idea of pure substance in general other
than a "supposition of he knows not what support of such qualities
which are capable of producing simple ideas in us".1 Berkeley
unhesitatingly affirms that there is no knowledge whatsoever of
matter as such a pure substance. Matter is one of those abstract
ideas, which ideas, accordingly to Berkeley, have rendered specu-
lation intricate and perplexed and occasioned innumerable errors
and difficulties. But, if there is no knowledge of matter in general,
neither is there any knowledge of particular bodies supposedly com-
posed of such matter. The objects of human knowledge are ideas,
simple or complex, and when "several of these are observed to
accompany each other they come to be marked by one name and
so to be reputed as one thing".2 It is, however, says Berkeley, an
opinion strangely prevailing among men, that houses, mountains,
rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects have an existence, natural
or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding;
but such an opinion involves a manifest contradiction, for all these
objects are things we perceive by sense and we perceive nothing but
our ideas or sensations, and it is plainly repugnant that any one of
these, or any combination of them should exist unperceived.3
Here is contained the kernel of Berkeley's teaching which may be
expressed in his own phrase "esse est percipi".

"All the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word,
all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have
not any substance without a mind, . . . their being is to be per-
ceived or known, ... so long as they are not actually perceived
by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created
spirit, they must either have no existence at all or else subsist in
the mind of some Eternal Spirit."4 Berkeley goes on to say5, that
Locke was right in claiming that the secondary qualities exist
only in us, but wrong in permitting to so-called primary qualities
an existence external to mind. If bodies themselves exist only in

1 Op. Cit. Par. 2.

2 Rationale of the Principles, Par. 1.
8 Ibid., Cf. Par. 4.

4 Ibid., Par. 6.

5 Ibid., Cf. Pars. 9 and 10.

82

being perceived, then, of course, solidity, extension, movement,
can have no existence apart from perception, and the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities breaks down. If it be
objected that in calling all things ideas, Berkeley is destroying the
reality and substantiality of nature, he answers, — not so. What-
ever we see, feel, hear, or any wise conceive or understand, remains
as secure as ever and is as real as ever. To apply the word, idea, to
that which we eat and to that with which we are clothed, in no way
alters these, and, if it were not for the traditionary use of the word,
thing, as denoting something existing without the mind, the same
word, thing, might still be retained and applied. The objects of
science, on such a view, are not transcendent objects, -as they must
be on Locke's view. Science is concerned, Berkeley would hold,
with ideas or things which are known. Another objection might
be urged against this "idealistic theory", viz., that since objects
exist only when they are perceived, therefore, at almost every
moment, they must be annihilated and created anew; the trees
in the garden, the chairs in the parlour, are no longer existent when
there is no individual to perceive them. But Berkeley does not
hold any such view. He believes that trees and chairs have an
existence apart from his own particular mind, apart, indeed, from
all finite minds, but this apparently independent existence is not
an existence apart from mind after all, for the world of nature
exists, then, he believes in the mind of God. To be is to be perceived.
There is no existence apart from perceiving spirit, though that spirit
may be finite or infinite.

To the teaching of Berkeley, as outlined above, modern philos-
ophy "and modern psychology are greatly indebted. And yet
Berkeley is not without his mistakes, though the one that is most
commonly urged against him does not seem to be at all well-sub-
stantiated. Locke held explicitly that simple ideas come into the
mind and are then compounded by it into complex ideas. That
Berkeley and Hume, likewise, accepted the simple-idea theory of
Locke has generally been supposed, but a careful reading of each
by no means bears out any such criticism. They both classify ideas
into simple and complex, but nowhere do they say that simple
ideas enter the mind and are afterwards combined into complex
ideas. Berkeley clearly holds no such doctrine. He says in the

83

very introduction to his principles, "It is agreed on all hands that
the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them
apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it
were, and blended together, several in the same object"1; and
again in the same paragraph, "there is perceived by sight an object
extended, coloured and moved". Words could hardly be plainer
in denying that there are given to the mind simple ideas, which are
by it combined. His whole argument against the possibility of per-
ceiving abstract ideas, including, of course, the abstract ideas of
qualities, serves only to substantiate this interpretation of Berke-
ley's words. That Hume held a similar doctrine can hardly be
doubted2 and, until those who think otherwise are better able to
support their theory from the writings of the men themselves, we
prefer to accept the above interpretation, believing it to be more
in accord with the facts of the case. Even if it were granted that
Berkeley and Hume did not fully realize that particular objects or
things are themselves, like the simple ideas, results of abstraction
from the given whole of experience, yet such a mistake on their part
would not leave them open to the criticism referred to above, viz.,
that they, like Locke, committed the simple-idea error.

But Berkeley did make the mistake however of assuming that
ideas, though not given to the mind simple and uncompounded, are
dependent upon a spirit, in which they subsist. For he says that
ideas are "inert, fleeting or dependent beings, which subsist not by
themselves, but are supported by, or exist in, minds or spiritual
substances".3 Hume, however, saw no reason for assuming the
dependence of ideas upon an immaterial substance. The very
arguments Berkeley used to disprove a material substance, Hume
claimed, disprove also an immaterial substance. Since matter is
not perceived, for, if it were, it would be an idea, it is therefore non-
existent; similarly, since spirit is not perceived, it likewise is non-
existent. This argument of Hume is especially cogent on account
of the manner in which Berkeley had given an account of the per-
ceiving spirit for, having identified existence with perceived things,
that is ideas, spirit was not among any of the ideas and therefore
lay outside the realm of existence. There are in the understanding

» Par. 7.

1 Cf. A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part 1, Sec. 7.

* Consequences of the Principles, Par. 89.

84

ideas only, or, rather, to use Hume's own terminology, there are
impressions and ideas. Impressions denote the data received
through sense, including, however, pains and pleasures, and the
ideas are the faint images of impressions which arise in thinking
and reasoning. All knowledge is originally derived through sense.1
The soul is not an immaterial substance but a bundle of percep-
tions. Hume fearlessly and consistently applied his argument not
only to substance but also to certain other principles, chief of which
was causality, and, in holding that causality is a relation among
ideas and that the necessity usually attributed to it is due only to
constant conjunction and habitual or customary association of
ideas, he came into direct opposition with the rationalistic philos-
ophy which had been developing on the continent, and was con-
temporaneous also with him in England, and which held to a univer-
sality and necessity in experience other than that which Hume con-
ceded. In his unambiguous statement that "the independent
existence of our sensible perceptions is contrary to the plainest
experience",2 Hume is quite at one with Berkeley. But since,
unlike Berkeley, Hume did not hold to the necessity of a perceiving
spirit, one might be led to suppose that he would deny existence to
unperceived objects or things; but this is just what Hume does not.
He holds firmly to a belief in, though no knowledge of, a continued
existence. Referring to the popular but false view that perceptions
continue to exist, he says, "The imagination naturally runs on in
this train of thinking. Our perceptions are our only objects;
resembling perceptions are the same, however broken or uninter-
rupted in their appearance: this appearing interruption is con-
trary to the identity: the interruption consequently extends not
beyond the appearance, and the perception or object really con-
tinues to exist, even when absent from us ; our sensible perceptions
have, therefore, a continued and uninterrupted existence. But as a
little reflection destroys this conclusion, that our perceptions have
a continued existeance, by showing that they have a dependent one,
it would naturally be expected that we must altogether reject the
opinion that there is such a thing in nature as a continued existence,
which is preserved even when it no longer appears to the senses.
The case, however, is otherwise." And then Hume goes on to say,

1 Cf. A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part 2, Sec. 1.

2 A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part 4, Sec. 2. (P. 210 Selby-Bigge's
Edn.).

85

"Philosophers are so far from rejecting the opinion of a continued
existence upon rejecting that of the independence and continuance
of our sensible perceptions, that though all sects agree in the latter
sentiment, the former, which is, in a manner, its necessary con-
sequence, has been peculiar to a few extravagant sceptics; who
after all maintained that opinion in words only, and were never
able to bring themselves sincerely to believe it".1 The belief in
an independent and continued existence is one that has taken such
deep root "that it is impossible", Hume declares, "ever to eradi-
cate it, nor will any strained metaphysical conviction of the depend-
ence of our perceptions be sufficient for that purpose".2 All that
reason can do is to ascertain what causes induce us to believe in the
existence of body; that we do entertain such a belief is for Hume
an undeniable fact.

Now it has been shown above that John Locke commenced his
'nvestigations into the human understanding with a similar belief.
That Berkeley, too, held to a continuous existence independent of
finite minds is demonstrated by his doctrine of the Eternal Spirit.
But Locke tried to do two things each of which was impossible.
He tried to prove knowledge of these independent existents and he
tried likewise to make them the cause of the actually known or
perceived facts. Hume, with clearer understanding, saw the futility
and impossibility of both these attempts. That which is posited as
outside experience3 cannot, at the same time, be within experience;
that which is believed cannot, at the same time, be known. And
since causality is a relation only among impressions and ideas, it
cannot be predicated as a relation between "thing" or "object"
and perception. "The only existences, of which we are certain, are
perceptions. . . . As no beings are ever present to the mind but
perception, it follows that we may observe a conjunction or a rela-
tion of cause and effect between different perceptions, but can
never observe it between perceptions and objects. 'Tis impossible,
therefore, that from the existence or any of th£ qualities of the
former, we can ever form any conclusion concerning the existence
of the latter, or ever satisfy our reason in this particular."4 No
causal relation can be predicated between the known and the
unknown. We are left, then, with no knowledge of but a belief in,-—

1 Selby-Bigge's Edn. Pp. 213-4.

2 Ibid. P. 214.

1 The word, experience, is used here of course in the sense then given to it.
4 Selby-Bigge's Edn. P. 212.

86

an ineradicable belief in the existence of objects apart from per-
ception. Here, in Hume, is a doctrine of knowledge by which,
evidently, Kant was greatly influenced. The great English thinker
and the great German thinker, generally supposed to be so much at
variance, are, at this important point and in many others as well,
quite in agreement. But the wonderful significance of Hume's posi-
tion for philosophy and science and religion was not appreciated by
the English and Scotch thinkers who succeeded him. His influence
upon empirical psychology in England was, however, enduring and
lasting, but to men like Reid and Stewart the great task and duty of
philosophy were to refute in the supposed interest of common-
sense and morals the "sceptical" arguments of David Hume.
That they failed is due to two reasons; first, they did not under-
stand Hume's so-called scepticism, and secondly, they failed criti-
cally to consider their own presuppositions.

This final conclusion of the English empirical standpoint of
Hobbes and Locke, a standpoint taken from the tremendous move-
ment of natural science just preceding and contemporaneous with
them, became now in the hands of Hume reduced to its ultimate
logical result. And, no doubt, the import of such an examination
of the empirical Theory of Knowledge was far-reaching enough to
be revolutionary in the current conceptions of morals and religion.
The implication of such an issue, especially for religion, whether
natural or revealed, did not escape the keen eye of Hume, as his
analysis of the data of morals and religion shows. But the very
thing which Empiricism had shown to be unknown was claimed by
the rationalists not only to be known but to be most surely known,
for the operations of Reason were supposed to have a far greater
certainty than the operations of mere sense. Thus the world of
science and philosophy, represented by Empiricism and Rational-
ism, became divided into two utterly hostile camps. Thus arose
the necessity for a critical examination of the claims of both. Such
examination has been styled the Critical philosophy, of which
Immanuel Kant is supposed to have been the first great modern
representative. But whether Kant has really answered the position
of Hume we must now endeavour to investigate. In order to do
that, however, it will be necessary first to trace, briefly, the devel-
opment of Rationalism, prior to Kant, through its main advocates
Des Cartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wolff.

87

CHAPTER VI.
RATIONALISM.

The characteristic feature of Empiricism is the important func-
tion assigned by it to sense-experience, from which source, it held,
all knowledge is originally derived. But there were some who were
not content thus to limit knowledge in its origin. There are other
factors inexperience, it was claimed, the origin of which is" Reason".
Reason supplements with higher and truer knowledge the empirical
facts given in sense. The men who are representative of this latter
view were Des Cartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wolff. The two
former were greatly influenced by the method which mathematics,
especially geometry, was using with so much success, and the
philosophy of each cannot be understood without bearing this in
mind.

Des Cartes was an admirer of Gassendi, Galilei and Newton,
and deserves an important place in the history of mathematics and
physics as well as in the history of philosophy. His high regard for
the method of geometry may be illustrated by the following
quotations. He says, "above all I was delighted with the mathe-
matics on account of the certainty and evidence of their demonstra-
tions, but I had not as yet found out their true use, and, although
I supposed that they were of service only in the mechanic arts, I
was surprised that upon foundations so solid and stable no loftier
structure had been raised".1 And again "those long chains of
reasoning quite simple and easy, which geometers are wont to
employ in the accomplishment of their most difficult demonstrations,
led me to think that everything which might fall under the cog-
nizance of the human mind might be connected together in the

same manner

2

It becomes the aim of Des Cartes to produce a philosophy the
conclusions of which will be just as certain as those of geometry.

1 Discours de la Methode, (Torrey's transl.) Pt. I, Par. 10.

2 Ibid. Pt. 2, Par. 11.

88

In the "Principles of Philosophy", he has presented his results,
and, in his "Meditations", he gives a more detailed account of the
means whereby he attained those results. It is well known that
Des Cartes, like Augustine many centuries before, commenced with
a method of doubt, which, however, was a means only to rid himself
of certain opinions he had previously unquestioningly accepted, his
final aim being to build upon solid foundations "a firm and abiding
superstructure in the sciences".1 As a result, then, of this method
of doubt, Des Cartes finds that there is one thing itself indubitable,
viz., the fact that he doubts. Here, in the immediate facts of
doubt, Des Cartes finds the foundation upon which he may base
his arguments. But Des Cartes misunderstood the significance
of his own conclusions. Running throughout the Meditations and
becoming quite explicit in the Principles is the unfortunate division
he made between matter with its principal attribute of extension,
and mind, with its principal attribute of thinking. Having assumed
that mind and matter were thus disparate, it became an impossible
task to prove knowledge of material objects, and yet this is the
attempt to which Des Cartes, like Locke, was unwittingly driven.
It was to be only by forsaking the method with which he had com-
menced and by making certain further dogmatic assumptions that
Des Cartes was to bring into any kind of relation the two sub-
stances, mind and matter, supposed to be so different. And here
it is that his rationalism becomes apparent. The senses alone,
Des Cartes affirms, can never give clear and distinct knowledge of
external objects. As he himself says, " it is now manifest to me that
bodies themselves are not properly perceived by the senses nor by
the faculty of imagination but by the intellect alone, . . . they are
not perceived because they are seen and touched, but only because
they are understood, or rightly comprehended by thought."2
Furthermore, not even then would there be a sure knowledge of
external things, for man would still be liable to err in his judgments,
were it not for the fact that there is implanted in him an idea, an
innate idea of God, from which Des Cartes proceeds to the proof of
His existence. Knowing thus that there is a God, that He is no
deceiver and that all things depend on Him, Des Cartes thence
infers that all which he clearly and distinctly perceives is neces-

1 Meditations I, P. 21. The Open Court Edn.
1 Ibid. P. 41.

89

sarily true. But such an account of knowledge and such a dualistic
view of the world, though for a time it met with immense success,
could not remain for long unchallenged. The problem of succeed-
ing thinkers was to centre, mainly, around the relation of mind and
matter as denned by Des Cartes.

Of greater importance in regard to this problem than the
Occasionalists, Geulinx and Malebranche, was the so-called Mate-
rialistic school that arose. La Mattrie, one of the most outspoken
of these in France, endeavoured to overcome the dualism of Des
Cartes by denying the necessity for any substance called mind.
If animals are automata, and Des Cartes had affirmed this, then
man, too, may be called a machine, though, to be sure, a very com-
plicated one. This tendency ran a varied course in the teachings of
Diderot, Holbach, Helvetius and Cabanis, but the refutation to all
such materialism lies in the method which Des Cartes himself had
suggested, a method which leads one to see, or should lead one to
see the indubitable character and the actual nature of the imme-
diate facts of his experience. A more interesting and important
successor of Des Cartes than any of the Occasionalists or Material-
ists was Spinoza, who endeavoured to overcome the dualism of
Des Cartes by working out the logical consequences of his defini-
tion of substance, showing that there can really be but one sub-
stance. This substance Spinoza called God. It has infinite attri-
butes of which the human intellect knows but two, extension and
thought. Matter and mind, then, are not two opposite substances,
they are two different ways of conceiving one and the same sub-
stance. Particular bodies and particular minds are modes of
extension and of thought respectively. This, in brief, is the essence
of Spinoza's advance, if advance it be, upon the dualistic position
of Des Cartes. He endeavours to follow the method of geometry
closely throughout, commencing with certain definitions and
axioms, which are, he claims, clear and distinct to the reason.
But in the starting point of Spinoza lay his mistake, for his defini-
tions were not matters-of-fact or statements thereof; they were
merely verbal, and so, while the dualism of Des Cartes was avoided,
not to say overcome, his dogmatism was perpetuated.

The work of Leibnitz, however different in form as well as in
matter from that of Spinoza, still illustrates the same rationalistic

90

tendency evidenced in the latter 's appeal to reason. Leibnitz
claimed that our reasonings are founded on two great principles,
that of contradiction and that of sufficient reason. "There are also
two kinds of truths, — those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths
of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those
of fact are contingent, and their opposite is possible."1 But, though
Leibnitz made this distinction in favour of rationalism, yet he held
very firmly to what he termed the law of continuity.2 This belief
of his, itself a deduction from his investigations in mathematics,
influenced all his thinking. It is seen operating in his Theory of
Knowledge. Locke, Leibnitz claimed, was wrong in holding that
the mind was originally like a tabula rasa. His error, Leibnitz con-
tended, consisted in his overlooking the fact that there are in the
mind what Leibnitz called "perceptions petites".3 These minute
perceptions constitute the lowest stage of knowledge. The highest
stage of knowledge is that of apperception where ideas are clear
and distinct. Moreover, even at the lowest stage, the mind is
active, making use involuntarily, instinctively as he claims, of cer-
tain principles, which virtually are in the mind always. From these
conclusions he argued that nihil est in intellectu quid non fuerit in
sensu, nisi ipse intellectus. This rationalistic position of Leibnitz,
coupled with the influence of the natural science of his day, influ-
enced wonderfully the metaphysical views which he held.

Des Cartes had treated matter as inert and lifeless. Leibnitz
claimed that it is the power of resistance that constitutes the
essence of matter and the power of resistance is force. This it is
which really exists. There are as many simple, indivisible forces as
there are things, and these forces he called monads. Corresponding
to the different degrees of knowledge, there is a hierarchy of monads
culminating with God the perfect monad. Each monad differs
from and excludes all the rest. There are no windows by which
anything can enter or depart, but each monad in some degree repre-
sents or reflects the universe. But the question arises how can all
these monads, each unique in itself, become a universe? By means
of the hypothesis of pre-established harmony, Leibnitz asserts a
unity in a world which otherwise would appear to be composed of
atomic individuals.

1 The Monadology Par. 33.

2 Cf. Nouveau Essais IV, 16.

3 Ibid. Preface.

91

The different writings of Leibnitz do not contain any systema-
tized philosophy. They are, however, especially helpful in sug-
gesting solutions of problems and in presenting half-truths which
a later age was to develop more fully. It was Wolff, who, with less
insight but a greater love of precise definition and classification,
endeavoured to put into a system the results of the Leibnitzian
teaching. Wolff became exceedingly popular, partly because he
delivered his lectures in the German tongue, and partly because he
presented a system which seemed to commend itself at once by its
completeness and definite terminology. But his teaching was
nevertheless too rationalistic, too dogmatic to satisfy the clearer
thinkers of the day, and the opposition to such a standpoint, as
evidenced in the empiricism of Hume, led to controversy and
antagonism, which, however, became fortunately the prelude
to a new era in the history of thought, the era known, generally, as
that of the critical philosophy. The work of Wolff is mainly sig-
nificant for the fact that in the critical discussions of Kant the
terminology of Wolff is everywhere applied, and it is the under-
standing of the classificatory system of Wolff which in large measure
gives intelligibility to the argument of Kant.

But before the work of Kant, the great representative of this
critical philosophy, is delineated, it will be well to pause here
in order to ask wherein lies the exact significance of these theories
of knowledge for philosophy as a Weltanschauung or world-view.
Though it is true that philosophy does not find its essential task
in developing a theory of knowledge, yet it is not, by any means,
the case that such theories have no relation to the general view
of the world which philosophy aims at constructing. Theories
of knowledge have been in the history of thought necessary pre-
parations for views of the world. By means of their theories of
knowledge men have been endeavouring to understand the actual
processes which constitute all their experience. Such an investi-
gation is a necessary propaedeutic for any comprehensive view
of the world, for, without a proper conception of what are the
actual determinations of knowledge, no philosophy can hope to
be adequate. Empiricism, in approaching this task, was more
painstaking and patient than rationalism. The latter seemed
anxious to complete its work and tended to leap to conclusions

92

too rapidly. For that reason, there grew from out the rationalistic
tendency a number of philosophic theories which, just because
they were not broad-based upon an adequate view of knowledge,
a later age was to call dogmatic. Such theories did not take
cognizance of all the known facts, being mostly concerned with
those regarded as universal and necessary, and, for that reason,
were onesided and unsatisfactory.

Among the world-views, which were held in this period, were
some which were dominantly theological in their interests. The
consequences of such a condition history had already revealed,
but here again, in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the mistake was made of subordinating philosophical
interests, — interests which should be all inclusive and, therefore,
subordinate to none, — to theological speculation. The result, as
evidenced in the deistic, theistic, pantheistic and atheistic beliefs
of the time, was satisfactory neither to theology nor to philosophy.
Again, philosophy, with some, was unduly handicapped by certain
scientific theories. On the one hand, there arose and flourished
for a time the materialism already mentioned, a materialism
which was influenced by the discoveries in physics and physiology,
a materialism which made mind, at times, an attribute of matter,
at times, an effect of matter, and again, exactly the same as matter,
but which never stopped to face honestly the inconsistencies of
its too simple philosophy or to ask itself just what mind and matter
actually are from the standpoint of content of knowledge. On
the other hand, because of the influence of mathematical and
•mechanical theory upon his general speculations, Leibnitz suggested
a philosophy which has generally been termed a monistic spiritual-
ism. All the monads mirror the universe, though not all with an
equal degree of clearness. Force he takes to be but another name
for self-activity, consciousness, or spirit, and so things, generally
regarded as extended and corporeal, are, for Leibnitz, to some
degree at least, spirit. Though the Leibnitzian philosophy seems
so far removed from that of Des Cartes, who was influenced in
his conclusions by both theology and the sciences, yet, after all,
it finds its true home in one aspect of his dualism, and the material-
ism depicted above may likewise trace its origin back to the other
aspect of the self-same source.

93

Resembling somewhat the spiritualism of the Monadology is
the teaching of the empiricist, Berkeley. The likeness between
the two, however, is superficial and consists mainly in the opposi-
tion of each to materialism. As already seen, Berkeley has had
great influence in regard to theory of knowledge, but he likewise
enunciated a Weltanschauung, and it should not be overlooked
that he has wonderfully affected modern philosophy and especially
that type known as Idealism. Too frequently, modern writers
have taken Berkeley to task for exhibiting what they call a Sub-
jective Idealism. But the function which he assigned to the Eternal
Spirit and his belief in the existence of things outside the percep-
tion of the individual are clear enough refutations of all ascrip-
tions to him of any such theory. The world of thought owes
much to English empiricism, and, though Locke, Berkeley and
Hume did not develop philosophical systems to the same extent
as did the rationalists, yet they assisted towards the building of
a philosophy by emphasizing the necessity of investigating experience
as a preliminary to any world-theory. This emphasis upon ex-
perience, as well as the emphasis upon the belief in that which
transcended experience, was to have its effect, through Kant,
upon subsequent thought.

Immanuel Kant was born at Konigsberg, Prussia, in 1724.
At the age of eight years, he was sent to Frederick's College in
his native town. Here under the influence, mainly, of the cele-
brated Pietist, Schulz, the religious views, inculcated by his
mother, were fostered and developed. Then in 1740 Kant entered
the University of Konigsberg, and there studied philosophy,
mathematics and theology. Fifteen years later he commenced to
lecture in his home university; in 1770 he was made full professor
of logic and metaphysics, which position he held till in 1797 in-
creasing infirmities of age led him to give up lecturing. The uniform
course of the great but modest scholar's life was disturbed neither
by the brilliancy of the fame that came to him nor by the opposition
of theological orthodoxy, exhibited towards him in his closing days.
He died in Konigsberg in the year 1804.

The writings, by which Kant is best known, are chiefly the
three critiques, — the Critique of the Pure Reason published first
in 1781 and then in a second edition in 1787, the Critique of the

94

Practical Reason published in 1788 and the Critique of the Faculty
of Judgment written in 1790. In 1766 Kant had published an
essay entitled On the Dreams of a Ghost-Seer, as illustrated by
the Dreams of Metaphysics, and in 1770 there had come from his
pen a Dissertation on the Form and Principles of the Sensible
and Intelligible World. These earlier writings foreshadowed, to
an extent, the teachings which the critiques embody, but it is in
these latter that there are to be found the views which constitute
Kant's importance in the history of philosophy.

Reference has already been made to the conditions prevailing
in the realm of metaphysics towards the close of the eighteenth
century. Kant himself describes the situation in his Critique of
Pure Reason. He pictures metaphysics as a queen whose rule
has become dogmatic and despotic. Intestine wars, however, and
finally complete anarchy break out. Among the rebels are the
sceptics, who, like nomads, despise all settled culture of the land
and endeavour to prevent others from cultivating the ground
afresh. The result of this state of affairs is that "at present,
after everything has been tried, as they say, and tried in vain,
there reign in philosophy weariness and complete indifferentism".1
Metaphysics, he says, has hitherto not been so fortunate as to
enter on the secure path of a science, and has been for that reason
"an arena, specially destined, it would seem, for those who wish
to exercise themselves in mock fights, and where no combatant has,
as yet, succeeded in gaining an inch of ground that he could call
permanently his own".2 But such conditions are, Kant holds,
the result of wrong method and may be overcome. He has a firm
belief in the necessity for and the value of metaphysics, but it
must be a thoroughly scientific system of metaphysics, and his
critique is written as a necessary preparation for such a system.
Such a metaphysics will not be based upon assumptions accepted
without criticism, it will not be a dogmatic philosophy like that
which resulted from the rationalistic school. In a foot-note con-
tained in the preface to the first edition of his Critique of Pure
Reason, Kant says, — "Our age is, in every sense of the word, the
age of criticism, and everything must submit to it. Religion, on
the strength of its sanctity, and law, on the strength of its majesty,

1 Max Muller's Edn. P. XIX.

2 Ibid. P. 692.

95

try to withdraw themselves from it, but by so doing they arouse
just suspicions, and cannot claim that sincere respect which reason
pays to those only who have been able to stand its free and open
examination".1

Now an adequate system of philosophy will be based, Kant
holds, upon criticism, but a criticism more consistent and thorough-
going than that implied in scepticism, which contents itself with
being merely destructive and tends always to a fresh dogmatism,
a criticism which implies an analysis of the human understanding
including what Kant called the pure reason. By such a criticism
the inadequacy of scepticism, based upon empiricism, and of dog-
matism, based upon rationalism, will be shown and the way pre-
pared for a more consistent and more secure philosophy. Then
weariness and indifferentism will no more prevail but philosophy,
as a true science, will occupy its proper place and perform its
true function.

But the critical insight of the keen-minded Kant was directed
not only to the confusing and contradictory conditions in the
realm of philosophy; he turned his attention, likewise, to the
natural sciences of his day, and, there, he saw two things which
impressed him strongly. He saw first, that, because of a proper
method, the sciences were building, upon a secure and firm founda-
tion, a vast edifice of knowledge; but he saw, secondly, that, in
the realms of physics and mathematics, there was prevalent
amongst the special scientists a problematic view of the nature of
space. Before dealing with the Kantian analysis of the method
of science, it will be wrell to trace briefly the history of this view
of space as it was held from the time of Galilei on. This will be
especially appropriate in as much as it will serve to show the sig-
nificance of Kant's own doctrine of space and will also exhibit a
very close relation between the developments in the natural
sciences and in certain of the philosophical investigations of the
time.

The theory that there is an objective, absolute space is one
which finds its more modern expression, first, in the writings of
Galilei, Hobbes and Des Cartes. These men all accepted what is
generally known as the theory of the subjectivity of the sense-

1 Max Muller's Edn. P. XIX.

96

qualities. Galilei, writing as early as 1623 in II Saggiatore, a
polemical work on astronomy, makes the claim that the sensa-
tions of taste, smell, colour, etc. are not, as have been formerly
held, qualities of things but that they have their seat in the sensi-
tive body. An object is called red not because it itself is red but
because it excites that sensation in us, that is, in the physiological
organism. On the other hand, however, there are certain first
and real qualities (primi e reali accidenti), which are inseparable
from things. These are figure, magnitude and motion or rest.
By these qualities of things, that is by motions in space, Galilei
thought to explain all other qualities. In his famous Dialogue he
clearly expresses the view that it is only possible to understand
the qualitative changes in nature when these can be traced back
to quantitative changes. Now such a view, implying that there is
an objective, absolute and realistic space, in which occur certain
movements which give rise to sensations, lies at the root of nearly
all the mechanical views of nature that have been advanced since
the time of Galilei. Gassendi, in his writings, and Newton, in his
Principia and Opticks, held essentially this same theory in regard
to space, while, in recent times, physical science, with but few
exceptions, presupposes an absolute space which it claims to be
independently real.

But this theory of space has been dominant not only in physical
science; its influence is also to be clearly seen in philosophical circles.
The mechanistic and materialistic world-views, which have been
advanced from time to time, rest upon this assumption in regard
to space, and the fact that the same theory of space has been held
so generally in the special sciences has often helped to validate
in the eyes of many these incorrect and inadequate philosophical
theories.

If one turns to the centuries immediately preceding the work
of Kant, he finds that these views in regard to space were preva-
lent in nearly all of the philosophical writings of that time. Hobbes
held that "a body is that, which having no dependence upon our
thought, is coincident or coextended with some part of space".1
Space, that is for Hobbes, real space and not imaginary space,
for he distinguishes these two, is a characteristic common to all

1 De Corpora, Ch. VIII, Par. 1.

97

bodies. It is synonymous with extension or magnitude and "does
not depend upon our cogitation".1 It "is an accident ... of a
body existing out of the mind".2 Des Cartes, of course, as has
been already seen, held a quite similar view, and the influence of
this same doctrine is apparent upon the English philosophers,
Locke, Berkeley and Hume. But it is in this last trend of thought
that this conception of space as absolute and independent is seen
to be erroneous, when regarded in any other way than as a more
or less arbitrary assumption. Locke, in distinguishing the primary
from the secondary qualities, followed Galilei very closely, adopt-
ing even his terminology, but, by so doing, he got into difficulties
which, on that basis, were insuperable. Berkeley and Hume, as
has been indicated, found certain difficulties in this view from the
standpoint of what they called knowledge obtained through ideas,
and were able to make valuable suggestions towards its solution.
But, notwithstanding their efforts, the older theory of space re-
mained firmly established in the mathematics and physics of the
day, and this made it necessary for Kant to approach this problem.
The question all the more imperatively demanded attention
because the view of space, advanced by Hume, as well as that
held by Leibnitz, which made space a confused idea of the rela-
tion of monads themselves non-spacial, was thought to be irrecon-
cilable with the actual results of the special sciences. On the
former view, that of the physical sciences, the world of space and
motion, abstracted from all supposed subjective content, seemed
to present a field of operation for the "rational and universal"
procedure of mathematics. On the empirtcal view, if all our know-
ledge results from experience and experience consists in con-
tinued perceptions or the succession of impressions and ideas,
then there are no universality and necessity, but only the observed
uniformities, which may be disarranged by the appearance of a
totally different and unexpected event. This dilemma or this
opposition naturally brings forward the question as to the validity
of the claim of the rationalistic or mathematical side for univer-
sality, and, in a word, produces the query, how are such universal
and necessary judgments at all possible ? This was exactly the
question which Kant faced.

1 De Corpore, Ch. VIII, Par. 4.

2 Ibid.

98

But, in seeking a solution of this problem, Kant was led to
investigate the nature of the method which the sciences were
using. And here a state of affairs presented itself, which, to an
acute thinker like Kant, could not have been otherwise than very
significant. In philosophy, deduction and induction, as methods,
had become so opposed one to the other, that the era, so far as
philosophy was concerned, could well be described as the age of
the battle of world-views. But, in the natural sciences, conditions
were quite otherwise. There, both methods of investigation,
though differentiated to a degree, were to be seen working har-
moniously side by side in the treatment of different data or in
the different treatment of the same data. Indeed, frequently,
induction and deduction were both exhibited in the work of one
single investigator. Between the work of Galilei, obtaining the
law of falling bodies, and that of Newton, obtaining fthe law of
gravitation, there is no question of opposition, and yet one em-
ployed, mainly, a process of deduction and the other, mainly, a
process of induction. Furthermore, as Wundt1 points out, it is
quite conceivable that these laws might just as easily have been
determined, in each case, by the reverse process. Moreover, though
it is generally said that Galilei used the method of deduction in
discovering the law of falling bodies, yet it must be recognized that
he used, too, the method of induction. Certain facts were observed,
certain experiments made and then certain hypotheses or induc-
tions made. Galilei first assumed that the speed of fall of any
object is proportional to the distance through which the object
has fallen. But by deduction, that is, by determining by experi-
ment or otherwise the consequences of the general law assumed
for the time being as valid, he found that this theory was in-
correct. Galilei then tried the supposition that the speed of falling
bodies varies proportionately to the time of fall and, this time,
experimental verification of the supposition resulted, so that the
law of falling bodies became formulated. The law, it is generally
said, is a result of deduction, but it can be seen that in this ex-
periment deduction followed induction and that both were mutually
complementary.

It is interesting to note that Galilei not only made use of both
induction and deduction in his scientific work, but that he, likewise,

, II Bd., P. 30.

99

was quite well aware of the mutual relation and dependence of the
two. In induction, he says, the most characteristic cases are
investigated and an inference or hypothesis made in regard to
others. But these inferences, or the consequences thereof, must
be confirmed by trial in particular cases. Galilei has no sympathy
with merely formal, deductive logic, and the appeal, in special
cases to the Divine, as a cause, he unhesitatingly condemns; such
a method explains nothing just because it explains everything
equally easily.

Now when Kant saw in the sciences of mathematics and
physics indisputable results of the harmonious combination of
scientific method, results which from the time of Galilei were
becoming more and more valuable, he realized the necessity of
inquiring more carefully just what that method was and of asking
himself how the supposed necessary and universal knowledge
in these sciences was possible. And so Kant commenced his first
critique by asking the question, how are synthetic judgments a
priori possible ? Now what is the significance of this question?
Judgments, which merely explicate what is already contained/ in
any given concept, are analytic judgments, and, because purely
formal, are always necessary and universal, that is, in Kant's
terminology, a priori. Such judgments as, for example, all bodies
are extended do not, however, add anything to knowledge. But,
if there is added to the concept of the subject a predicate not
conceived as existing within it, and not to be extracted from it by
any process of mere analysis, then a synthetic judgment results.
For example, the judgment, all bodies are heavy, is a synthetic
judgment, if heaviness be not conceived as a necessary part of
the connotation of the subject, bodies. But such a judgment is
not necessary or universal. It expands knowledge, but, since it
is. based on sense-experience, it is not a priori. It is a posteriori,
a synthetic a posteriori judgment. But there are, according to
Kant, judgments other than the analytic a priori and synthetic a
posteriori. There are judgments which serve to expand knowledge
and which likewise are necessary and universal. There are syn-
thetic a priori judgments. Mathematics, for example, affords
illustrations of such synthetic a priori judgments. All which
happens has its cause, is another example of such a judgment. Now

100

how are these judgments, which are actually operating in science,
possible? This is Kant's question. There is no difficulty about
the possibility of the analytic judgment. It is simply a making
clearer that which is already known. There is no difficulty about
the possibility of synthetic a posteriori judgments. Sense-experi-
ence supplies the ground of such judgments. But the statement,
every effect must have its cause, is not, for Kant, analytical.
The concept, cause, is not included in that of effect. Neither is
the judgment based upon sense-experience. Sense-experience can
never supply the generality and necessity implied in such a judg-
ment. How then are these judgments possible? This is tanta-
mount to saying, how is science itself possible. Kant bases his
reply upon his view of knowledge as consisting of two factors,
sensibility, by which objects are given, and understanding, by
which thought is given, and it is the understanding which supplies
the concepts by means of which the synthetic a priori judgments
are made.

Those empiricists who would make sensations the only con-
stituents of knowledge, who would identify knowledge with sense-
experience are then incorrect. There are other factors than sen-
sations. Even in sensibility there are space and time. These
two pure forms of sense-perception, as Kant calls them, are not
derived from sensations but are rather conditions of sensations,
and should be thought of as brought to experience by the mind.
But knowledge consists not only of sensibility, there is likewise
the understanding with its categories. These categories twelve
in number, according to Kant, consisting of those of quality,
quantity, relation and modality, are pure concepts of synthesis
and necessarily belong to the understanding, and it is because of
these, as said above, that synthetic a priori judgments are possible.
But, though Kant has made this division of knowledge into sensi-
bility and understanding, he is careful to emphasize the fact that
these two stems of human knowledge are mutually complementary.
As he himself puts it, "Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschau-
ungen ohne Begriffe sind blind. . . . Der Verstand vermag nichts
anzuschauen, und die Sinne vermogen nichts zu denken. Nur
daraus, dasz sie sich vereinigen, kann Erkenntnisz entspringen".1

1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Transc. Logik., Einleitung. I.

t

101

It iollows from this position that there can be no knowledge
of things outside possible experience, that is sense-experience.
The categories of the understanding are empty when there is no
content provided by sensibility, and so, knowledge of the super-
sensuous is a contradiction in terms. All knowledge implies the
sense-content with the pure forms of space and time and likewise
the categories of the understanding. In this way, Kant deprives
speculative reason of its pretensions to transcendent insights,
showing that a knowledge of the transcendent would be inherently
inconsistent. But the work of the Konigsberg philosopher does
not end here. He sees that an account of knowledge such as he
has given is not a completely adequate account of all man's ex-
perience. In his Dialectic, Kant, recalling the work of the great
Greek philosopher, says, " Plato knew very well that our faculty
of knowledge was filled with a much higher craving than merely
to spell out phenomena according to a synthetical unity, and
thus to read and understand them as experience. He knew that
our reason, if left to itself, tries to soar up to knowledge to which
no object that experience may give can ever correspond; but
which nevertheless is real, and by no means a mere cobweb of the
brain".1

This "higher craving" manifests itself especially in the prac-
tical or moral realm, and, because of the demands of the Practical
Reason, there are posited or affirmed certain Ideas of the Reason.
Here, Kant adopts the Platonic term and insists most strenuously
that these Ideas must not be confused with the concepts of the
understanding. To do that, leads to the endeavour to know that
which, on the Kantian basis, it is impossible to know. It is to
commit the mistake of rationalism, which, in its psychology,
cosmology and theology has been led into error and inconsistency
by just such an attempt. The Ideas of Reason are such that they
can never be denied by theoretical knowledge, and experience,
especially in its practical aspect, demands that such Ideas be
posited as completions of actual human knowledge and human
morals.

Knowledge, from the standpoint of the critique of Pure Reason,
becomes entangled in inevitable antinomies if it attempts to trans-
cend the limits set by Sensibility. And so, as Kant said, he "had

1 The Critique of Pure Reason, Max Muller's Edn. Pp. 255-6.

102

therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief".1
It is in the critique of Practical Reason that Kant argues for the
necessity and validity of making assumptions which theoretical
knowledge cannot disprove and which moral life demands. For
example, Practical Reason demands the freedom of the will. Man,
in the capacity of moral agent, as a member of the noumenal
world, gives laws to himself as a member of the realm of sense or
the phenomenal world. "Thou oughtest" implies "thou canst".
Because Kant separates so completely the rational and the sense
realms he seems to see no difficulty in positing the freedom of the
will. Freedom of the will is that autonomy, which constitutes the
will a law to itself, and it is possible because "Man, considering
himself ... as an intelligence, places himself in a different order
of things and in a relation to determining grounds of a wholly
different kind when on the one hand he thinks of himself as an
intelligence endowed with a will, and consequently with causality,
and when on the other he perceives himself as a phenomenon in
the world of sense (as he really is also) , and affirms that his causality
is subject to external determination according to laws of nature."2
In theoretical knowledge the law of cause and effect has universal
applicability but it is a demand of the moral law that the will be
free. It is this freedom which makes possible obedience to the
Categorical Imperative, an imperative which the will is led to
utter because man is member not only of the rational world but
also of the sensible world.

On the same basis, Kant goes on to show how man's practical
reason demands, likewise, two other Ideas, Immortality and God.
"The perfect accordance of the mind with the moral law is the
supreme condition of the summum bonum."3 But such a condition
no rational being of the sensible world can attain at any moment
of his existence. It is therefore necessary to assume an infinite
progress towards that perfect accordance which again is possible,
Kant holds, only "on the supposition of an endless duration of
the existence and personality of the same rational being (which
is called the immortality of the soul)."4 Therefore the immor-
tality of the soul is a second postulate of the Pure Practical Reason.

1 The Critique of Pure Reason, Max Muller's Edn., P. 700.

2 The Meta. of Morals, Abbott's tr., P. 77.

3 Cr. of Pr. Reason, Abbott's tr., P. 218.

4 Ibid. Pp. 218-9.

103

But, since there is demanded another element within the summum
bonum viz., happiness proportioned to the first and principal
element, i.e. the morality resulting from the perfect accordance
above mentioned, there arises a third postulate of the Pure Prac-
tical Reason, and this is the existence of a cause adequate to this
effect, or the existence of God. These three postulates are the
result of man's practical, or moral, nature; they all proceed, as
Kant says, from the principle of morality. Yet they do not extend
in any way man's theoretical knowledge, for we do not know the
nature of our souls, nor of the intelligible world (where, neverthe-
less, freedom is possible), nor of the Supreme Being.

It must not, however, be supposed that these Ideas are mere
phantoms of reason, which tend to lure one away from the true
path of knowledge. To be sure, their true function has been
often misunderstood and so has resulted that Illusion to the dis-
sipation of which Kant devotes his keen intellect. But these un-
conditioned Ideas, Ideas of the soul, the world and God, and moral
postulates of freedom, immortality and God, which carry us be-
yond the sensible objects, perform, in the Kantian philosophy,
their true function, so far as theoretical knowledge is concerned,
as regulative but not constitutive Ideals for knowledge and as
suggestive of a system wherein the data of the understanding and
the Ideas of the reason have each a place.

Such a theory of knowledge and such a philosophic system,
even though this latter be but suggested in the critiques, had a
wonderful effect upon the existing conditions in the realm of
philosophy. By showing the fallacy of giving a sense-content to
those objects Kant called Ideas of Reason and by exhibiting the
inutility of a merely analytic method, Kant indisputably proved
that the rationalism of his day, as theory of knowledge, and dog-
matism, as a philosophic theory based thereon, were not only
inadequate but were also incorrect. Kant, himself a rationalist,
has been, nevertheless, one of the greatest critics of rationalism.
His conclusions likewise showed that empiricism, as he under-
stood it, needed to be supplemented, and the scepticism, which
was based thereon, needed to be corrected by a more careful
investigation of human experience. But, notwithstanding his
insight, Kant himself was, to a very serious extent, dependent
upon and influenced by the errors and presuppositions of his time.

104

CHAPTER VII.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.

The critical investigation which Kant undertook, though it
showed the onesidedness of both rationalism and empiricism was
based, nevertheless, upon a view of the nature of knowledge which
may well be called in question. Kant commenced his first critique
with the statement that "there are two stems of human knowledge,
which perhaps may spring from a common root unknown to us,
viz. sensibility and the understanding, objects being given by the
former and thought by the latter".1 This statement of Kant is
very significant. It shows at once the influence of empiricism on
the one hand, and of rationalism on the other, and it suggests the
means whereby Kant intended to attempt the reconciliation of
the two hostile camps. There are two stems of human knowledge,
sensibility and understanding. Each of these, Kant goes on to
claim, depends upon the other and without both there is no (theo-
retical) knowledge at all possible. But, though Kant may be able
to show the inadequacy of the two antithetical tendencies, ration-
alisfn and empiricism, yet it becomes necessary to ask whether his
own view of the nature of knowledge was correct. In order to do
that we must inquire whether knowledge actually reveals two such
stems as Kant mentions.

Now such a problem, to be solved adequately, lends itself to
but one method, and that is the method of analysis or abstraction.
The actual matters-of-fact must be investigated, must be analysed,
and if, as a result of analysis, there are revealed two " stems"
of knowledge such as Kant emphasized, then the statement above
quoted will be proved correct. To follow any other plan will lead
only to uncertainty; to begin with presupposition and theory
instead of with the actual facts will avail nothing. Commencing
then with that which is immediately present in experience, using
this word in the broadest sense possible and not in the Kantian
sense, analysis may separate out from the complexity of the whole

1 Op. Cit. P. 12.

105

experience certain less complex constituent parts. These may be
subjected again to analysis and so on, until, finally, having com-
menced with the original unitary experience, we come jat last
to those constituents which appear to resist further analysis.
These may be designated as elements.

But Kant's view seems to rely not on any such analysis. It
is his endeavour apparently to get back of the actual facts which
constitute knowledge, and find out their origin or cause. Sensi-
bility and understanding, instead of being class-names to denote
the products of analysis, he tends to make the origin of the two
classes of facts. This seems all the more a correct interpretation of
Kant, because of the parenthetical clause in the above statement,
which suggests that the two stems may spring from a common
root unknown to us. Behind sensibility and understanding there
may stand a common origin which then would account for all
human knowledge. Now such a procedure, as Kant himself was
ready at times to point out, leads away from knowledge and into
insuperable difficulties. A system of philosophy which would be
adequate must build upon an investigation of the facts. Kant
claimed to have produced in his Critique of Pure Reason an intro-
duction to such a system. His preliminary suppositions however
were bound to lead him astray and to vitiate his conclusions.

That there are under the general head, knowledge, two classes
of facts corresponding, on the one hand, to the facts attributed
by Kant to sensibility, and, on the other, to those attributed to
understanding might be true. The results of the analysis can
alone determine that. But to assume that there are two origins
of knowledge by one of which "objects" are given while by the
other "thought" is given is purely hypothetical and clearly arbi-
trary. It was because Kant made this assumption that he was led
to regard sensibility and understanding as being disparate, and
as needing in some way to be united. It was a similar oversight
that led Kant to sever so completely theoretical and practical
knowledge, and which caused his fundamental distinction between
knowledge and belief. Had the writer of the critiques been true
to his own critical method, and commenced with an unprejudiced
investigation of the unitary experience, he would have found
that, after his analysis, he had certain abstracted constituents of

106

human experience, which were originally given in one complex
whole, which were therefore neither fundamentally diverse, nor,
on the other hand, in need of any artificial schematism or arbitrary
synthesis. That the theoretical and practical are other than ab-
stracted parts of the unitary human experience, that the knowing
man is so different from the believing man, that the sensible man
is other than the rationa' man, — these are assumptions which the
analysis of the facts can never substantiate. There may be and,
of course, are different classes of facts which go to make up know-
edge, but the common origin of all these is the originally occurring
unitary human experience.

Had Kant realized the truth of this position he would never
have advanced the arguments which he did to prove that space
and time are pure forms of perception. Space, Kant said, is not
an empirical concept which has been derived from external experi-
ence. It is rather a necessary, a priori idea forming the very foun-
dation of all external perceptions. The matter (sensations) of
all phenomena is a posteriori', the form, or the order of the arrange-
ment of sensations, (space and time), is a priori. In other words,
space and time cannot be obtained by an analysis of experience,
they are on the contrary in the mind, and, as pure perceptions,
exist in the mind as mere forms of sensibility, even when no object
is present to the senses.1 Now what can Kant mean by thus
claiming that space and time are pure forms of perception ?
That he was quite right in holding that sensational qualities per
se cannot explain their order of arrangement must be agreed by
all. Sensation plus sensation never can give us space, never can
give us time, unless these are already presupposed. But it by no
means follows that space and time must belong to a mind to which
sensations do not belong. On the contrary, spacial ideas and
temporal ideas, or, in other words, spacial and temporal arrange-
ments of sensations are found as constituents of a unitary experi-
ence. It is by analysis from such an experience and from such
constituents of experience that not only sensation but also space
and time are finally obtained. So then space and time are not
perceptions at all. They are concepts obtained by the analytic
investigation of the complex facts of experience. Space as space,

1 Op. Cit. Cf. Pp. 16-17.

107

time as time, are never immediately given either as matter or as
form.

Kant, when arguing for his view of space, claims that "it is
impossible to imagine that there should be no space, though one
might very well imagine that there should be space without objects
to fill it".1 Apparently Kant would hold that it is possible to
have a knowledge of space without sensational content. It may
be pointed out that this not only runs counter to the tenour of his
own argument in the transcendental Logic, where Kant claims
that by the union only of the understanding and the senses can
knowledge be produced,2 but, likewise, contradicts all experience.
The imagination of even a vacuum does not rid one of sensations.
Such an experience must have a sense content simply because the
space, whether void of objects or not, is conceived as bounded.
Space, Kant contends again, is an a priori perception which neces-
sarily precedes all external phenomena. Grant that this necessary
preceding is logical only, the statement still is untrue because
sensations are equally necessary. No logical priority can be granted
to either. If space be " a condition of the possibility of phenomena",
sensations likewise are a condition of the possibility of phenomena.
The argument which makes one a posteriori, makes the other a
posteriori, that makes one a priori, makes the other a priori. In
other words, the distinction between a posteriori and a priori as
used by Kant breaks down. Kant's contrary declaration is due
to his assumption of the possibility of mere space. Similarly with
Kant's arguments with regard to time. Space and time, contrary
to Kant's view, are both concepts derived from experience. Sen-
sation, likewise, is a concept derived in the same way, and it is
the analysis of the actually given complex facts which enables us
to obtain such concepts.

Kant advances in the aesthetic another statement which must
be called in question, He affirms that space is a pure perception
because there is only one space. If we speak of many spaces we
mean parts only of one and the same space. Now, if it were granted
that space is one, by which Kant apparently meant that it is
qualitatively the same throughout all experience, it cannot there-

1 Op. Cit. P. 19.

2 Op. Cit. P. 41.

108

fore he contended that space is a perception. It must still be ob-
tained from the analysis of experience; it still would be a concept
arising in the same way as the concept sensation. But, further-
more, though, to be sure, space seems relatively to be one when
contrasted with the multitudinous sensational qualities, it is a
big assumption on the part of Kant to claim that the space of our
perceptions and the space of the geometer, the space of our memories
and of our imaginations and of our dreams, visual space and tactual
space are all homogeneous. This is a problem the solution of which
can come only after careful investigation. Under any circum-
stances, it is by no means a self-evident fact that space is one.
No doubt it was easier for Kant to assume the unity of space
because of his distinction between the inner and outer senses.
Space is the form of the external sense only. By means of our
external sense, a property of our mind (Gemuth), we represent to
ourselves, he says, objects as external and outside ourselves,
and all of these in space. Though time is a condition of all pheno-
mena, space is a condition of external phenomena only. This
doctrine of Kant, since it apparently denies spacial characteristics
to our memories and imaginations, is quite untenable. Further-
more, Kant seemed not to have realized that only certain of our
so-called external sensations, viz. visual and tactual sensations,
have spacial extension.

The transcendental argument, which Kant has also used to
establish his view of space, is of course no direct proof that space
is a pure perception. If his theory of space did make possible the
apodictic certainty of geometry, one would still have to ask the
question, — is the theory correct, can it be proved by the facts ?
Since the theory does not stand the test of fact, we must look
elsewhere to understand the supposed necessity and universality
of geometry.

It appears then that Kant, in the very beginning of his critical
work; has fallen into no small error. The unwarranted assumption
that there are two stems of human knowledge which are different
sources of human knowledge manifests itself in the transcendental
aesthetic in the kind of differentiation made between sensations
on the one hand, and space and time on the other. The conclu-
sions of the aesthetic are incorrect. Kant gives us, instead of a

109

critical and analytical account of the nature of sensations and
space and time, a theory of sensations and space and time which,
for the reasons stated, cannot be accepted. If the original assump-
tion, which he made, manifested itself in the aesthetic, it manifests
itself a fortiori in his analytic, where he proceeds to deduce, sup-
posedly from the nature of the understanding, the so-called cate-
gories of the understanding. It is a common criticism urged against
Kant that the twelve categories, which, he affirmed, belong to the
understanding, were chosen somewhat arbitrarily, and based
mainly upon the conclusions of formal logic. This criticism is
quite true, and the subsequent development of philosophy soon
undertook to give what was thought to be a more adequate treat-
ment of these categories. There is, however, another point of
which any critical consideration of Kant's deduction of the cate-
gories must take account. It is here that his original assumption
once more blinds Kant's eyes to the facts, and so leads him into
further error. The table of twelve categories which Kant sets
down constitutes, he claims, "all original pure concepts of syn-
thesis, which belong to the understandings priori".1 These cate-
gories or concepts of synthesis are, in their unity, what Kant
calls the Original Synthetical Unity of Apperception, and, just
as the highest principle of the possibility of perception in relation
to sensibility was that it should be subject to the formal conditions
of space and time, so again "the highest principle of the same
possibility in relation to the understanding is, that all the manifold
in intuition (perception) must be subject to the conditionsvof the
original synthetical unity of apperception".2 Because these con-
cepts are a priori, and originally in the understanding, the claim
of science to universality and necessity is, Kant believes, validated.
But why must the Konigsberg philosopher treat these concepts
or categories as originating in a source different from that which
gives rise to sensations? Why must these concepts be attributed
to an understanding which is fundamentally different from sensi-
bility? There is no answer to this question in the critiques of Kant,
simply because he did not realise the nature of the mistaken assump-
tion with which his work commenced. Knowledge, he held,
implies both sensibility and understanding, but these are not for

1 Op. Cit. P. 67.

2 Op. Cit. P. 748.

110

Kant two abstracted parts of human experience. Within man's
unitary experience there are found certain processes which might
possibly be subsumed under a general term like that of understand-
ing. Voluntary combinations of less complex constituents of
-experience into more complex processes1 are generally called,
nowadays, apperceptive combinations. Such combinations include
those of relating and comparing with the still more complex pro-
cesses growing out of these of synthesis and analysis. It is in this
connection that the word, understanding, may receive a con-
notation which is based on the actual facts. We need not limit
the meaning of the word to the " perception of agreements and
differences and other derived logical relations between contents
of experience",2 it may possibly be made to include also certain
more synthetic functions akin to those illustrated by the activity
of the imagination, but, under any circumstances, the facts denoted
by the word show, in certain salient respects, a startling lack of
agreement with those denoted in the Kantian use of the word.
Indeed, Kant's categories of the understanding seem, after all, to
be little more than modes of predication. They constitute a number
of ways in which assertions may be made in regard to a given
subject. Dr. Kirschmann has illustrated this particular point in
the following way. His own words are given, "Man betrachte
die folgenden beiden Satze: (1) Wenn in einem Dreieck zwei
Seiten gleich sind, so sind auch die diesen Seiten gegeniiber liegenden
Winkel nicht verschieden. (2) Alle Dreiecke, welche .zwe gleiche
Seiten haben, mussen auch zwei diesen gegeniiberliegende gleiche
Winkel aufweisen. Das erste dieser Urtheile ist ein besonderes,
verneinend, hypothetisch und assertorisch ; das zweite ist allge-
mein, bejahend, kategorisch und apodictisch. Trotzdem aber
bedeuten beide Urtheile genau dasselbe."3 The categories, it
would then appear evident, represent different forms of predica-
tion and not different functions of thought.4 For Kant himself,
however, they certainly meant more than merely modes of predi-
cation, in as much as he considered them suggestive, indeed illus-

1 Cf. Wundt: Outlines of Psychology, 3rd Eng. Edn., Par. 17.

2 Ibid. P. 301.

Philosophische Studien Vol. XIX, P. 387, footnote.

4 For a further criticism, though from a different standpoint, of the categories
of Kant, cf. Am. J. of Psy. Vol. 23— Why Kant is Passing: G. Stanley Hall,
Pp. 374-380.

Ill

trative of an original synthetic activity. But Kant failed to
adduce an abiding account of the understanding because a proper
investigation was inhibited by his fundamental presupposition.
To assume certain " stems of knowledge", instead of ascertaining
by analysis the classes of knowledge, inevitably invites failure.

It was this very same mistake which forced Kant to seek some
nexus or link between sensibility and the understanding, in other
words, which made necessary the schematism of the categories.
Because of his unfortunate mode of procedure, Kant is face to
face with what is really, on his basis, an insuperable difficulty.
No one, says Kant can hold that causality, to instance one of his
categories, can be seen through the senses or that it is contained
in the phenomena. The "pure concepts of the understanding, as
compared with empirical or sensuous impressions in general, are
entirely heterogeneous".1 But since knowledge is possible only
through the union of categories, or concepts of the understanding,
and empirical or sensuous impressions, there must be some way
of bringing these two heterogeneous stems' of knowledge into
relation. How is this to be done? Kant attempts the reconcilia-
tion by making use of one of the pure forms of perception, viz. time.
Time, as the formal condition of all phenomena is homogeneous,
on the one side, with the categories, and, on the other, with the
phenomena, and so, Kant claims, it renders possible the applica-
tion of the former to the latter. But such a solution is really no
solution at all. Phenomena and the categories are heterogeneous.
This Kant has assumed. Phenomena he says are composed of
matter, sensations, and form, space and time. By what right,
now, can a part of phenomena, time, be said to be homogeneous
with the categories when such a homogeneity is denied to the
whole? It is only by ignoring his first assumption that Kant, in
this latter assumption, effects a union of sensibility and under-
standing. Furthermore, why single out time to perform this
unifying function? True, on Kant's basis, space does not apply
so generally as time, since the latter is the formal condition of
both outer and inner sense. But is there any possible reason
why the categories might not be mediated to external, though
not to internal, phenomena through the schema of space as well

^p. Cit. P. 112.

112

as, or instead of, that of time? To this question Kant's argument
can hardly supply any answer, and yet he assumes time to be the
only means of uniting sensibility and understanding.

This union of sensibility and understanding, obtained as Kant
thought by means of the pure form of sensibility, time, constituted
for him knowledge. "The understanding cannot see, the senses
cannot think. By their union only can knowledge be produced."1
Because of this Standpoint there arose that distinction between
phenomena and noumena which Kant has emphasized to such a
great degree. But Kant was not the first to draw such a dis-
tinction. It will be remembered that in the brief space devoted
above to David Hume his discussion of the problem of "continued
existence" was emphasized as of great importance. Of such a
continued existence we have no knowledge whatsoever, declared
Hume, but our belief in an independent and continued existence
it is impossible, he claims, ever to eradicate. In almost the same
words the philosopher of Konigsberg sets bounds to knowledge.
All knowledge is confined to phenomena. It can never apply to
things by themselves. In thus limiting knowledge, Kant made
room, he claimed, for belief.

It is important to note, before passing to a consideration of
this view of the limits of knowledge, that between the conclusions
of Hume and those of Kant there is very little real opposition.
That there was a fundamental difference between rationalism and
Hume is manifest. The rationalists claimed to have sure and
certain knowledge of those things of which Hume considered it
necessary to deny knowledge. Kant, in his criticism, "removed"
the knowledge of rational cosmology, psychology and theology,
and, in showing the con tradictori ness of giving a sense content to
the Ideas, corroborated the very position which Hume had held.
If Kant held to a phenomenal world of which there was knowledge
and to a noumenal world of which there could l>e none, so Hume,
with as much definiteness, though with less elaboration, laid empha-
sis upon a similar distinction. If Hume was a sceptic, then was
Kant likewise a sceptic. In like manner, it might be pointed out
that Hume, an empiricist as history has classed him, laid almost
as much emphasis upon reasoning processes in, for example, his

1 Op. Cit. P. 41.

113

discussion of "philosophical relations", as did Kant himself. If
Kant was, in this sense, a rationalist, then was Hume likewise a
rationalist. It is seldom possible to fit men into the artificial
classes which have been devised. Such classifications show only
general tendencies, and sometimes not even those. But it is the
Kantian doctrine of knowledge and its limitations with which we
are here especially concerned, and to that attention must now be
directed.

It is Kant's contention that we know only phenomena, and, in
the dialectic, especially, he argues repeatedly against the extension
of human knowledge beyond the limits of (sense) -experience.
"The critique of the pure understanding does not therefore allow
us to create a new sphere of objects beyond those which can come
before it as phenomena."1 But man, so Kant saw, is not content
with such knowledge; 'there are also in his consciousness certain
necessary concepts of reason to which the senses can supply no
corresponding object. These concepts must be distinguished from
those of the understanding, and Kant chooses to designate them
by the Platonic word, Idea. Such Ideas "are not mere fancies,
but supplied to us by the very nature of reason, and refer by
necessity to the whole use of the understanding".2 They are classi-
fied by Kant under the heads of Ideas of the soul, the world, and
God. The significance which these Ideas have is of the utmost
importance. They have a most admirable and indispensably
necessary regulative function to perform, for they serve as a canon
or rule to the understanding for its extended and consistent use.
Of themselves these Ideas of Reason can never give rise to decep-
tion or illusion,3 it is only when man, who is most prone to such
an error, misemploys them making them constitutive rather than
regulative, it is then, as Kant says, when they are thus "misunder-
stood and mistaken for constitutive principles of transcendent
knowledge, they produce, by a brilliant but deceptive illusion, some
kind of persuasion and imaginary knowledge, but, at the same
time, constant contradictions and disputes."4 There are then
within consciousness, within experience as we would say to-day,

1 Op. Cit. P. 235.

2 Op. Cit. P. 266.

1 Op. Cit. Cf. P. 537.
4 Op. Cit. P. 562.

114

certain principles which transcend sense-experience. The Ideas
of Reason, however, because of his assumption in regard to and
therefore limitation of the nature of knowledge are claimed by
Kant to be unknown. They have no sense content. Now this
conclusion to which Kant arrived is very significant. That there
are spacial and temporal relations of sensations within the complex
of experience no one can deny. That- there are other factors as
well, factors that have no sense content whatsoever, is a claim
that not only Kant but many others have made. That the objects,
which are in experience, when we state a general law or give utter-
ance to a universal judgment are sensational objects is doubted
by not a few, and it is claimed that experimental evidence can be
adduced to prove that there are in experience what might be
called objects of thought. That such non-sensuous thinking is
possible further and more careful analysis alone must determine.

Under any circumstances, for Kant there are, as factors of
mental operations, sense, understanding and reason. The first
two of these are the stems of knowledge. The Ideas, which reason
supplies, are not constitutive of knowledge in that strict sense in
which the word is employed by Kant. But there were certain
problems still to be faced. Kant must ask himself wherein lies
the objective validity of knowledge; what, in other words, is to
distinguish true scientific knowledge from the mere fancies of
imagination ? Now the critique of pure reason claims that the
objects of which science has knowledge are phenomena only.
They are not unknown and unknowable things-in-themselves,
nor, on the other hand are they merely subjective. That which is
material or real is not independent of consciousness but "pre-
supposes necessarily perception, and cannot be fancied or pro-
duced by means of imagination without that perception, which
indicates the reality of something in space".1 "All external per-
ception proves immediately something real in space, or rather
is that real itself."2 The objects then with which science deals
are not transcendent x's; they cannot be such if for no other reason
than that they are in space and time and these are, according to
the aesthetic, forms of perception within the mind. Nor are the
objects of science merely subjective phantasies, for these objects

1 Op. Cit. P. 303.
» Op. Cit. P. 304.

115

of science, of true knowledge, are so Kant claims objectively
real. Now what does Kant mean by this objective reality? In
other words wherein lies the distinction between subjectivity and
objectivity? In the transcendental dialectic, he says that, in
order to escape from the "false appearances", or the deceptions,
due to illusions of imagination or to faulty judgments, "one has
to follow the rule that, whatever is connected according to em-
pirical laws with a perception, is real".1 It is in such a connection
that objectivity is to be found. In imaginations, where errors
may arise, objects may be represented without their presence in
perception,2 but when we follow the rule just stated we escape
error and illusion. It is, then, a connection of objects according to
empirical laws with a perception which constitutes the reality and
objectivity that distinguish knowledge from imaginations, these
latter being purely subjective. Such a connection, however, is
not imposed by extra-experiential things upon consciousness,
but is, on the contrary, the essential function of the understanding
itself. All connecting, all synthesis is an act of the understanding,
and "can never enter into us through the senses".3 "Connection
. . . does never lie in the objects . . . but is always an act of the
understanding, which itself is ... a faculty of connecting a priori,
and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the
unity of apperception."4 It was in this respect that Kant sug-
gested that his work meant a Copernican revolution in the history
of thought. Knowledge does not conform to things-in-themselves,
but "objects, or what is the same, the experience in which alone
they are known (as given objects), must conform to those con-
cepts"5 which are referred by Kant to the understanding. It
is these concepts which, according to the critique, make experience
possible, as we have seen, and, because they possess objective
validity,6 they give to real knowledge its objectivity. In imagin-
ation, on the contrary, there may be no object given in perception,
and we have merely subjective and not objective validity. Thus

1 Op. Cit. P. 305.

2 Op. Cit. Cf. P. 757.

3 Op. Cit. P. 744.

4 Op. Cit. P. 747.
6 Op. Cit. P. 693.

6 Op. Cit. Cf. P. 78.

116

Kant distinguishes imagination wherein error may arise from
scientific knowledge.

It was this position which enabled Kant to see so clearly the
fallacies of rational psychology, cosmology and theology. The
Ideas of Reason were claimed by current rationalism to give sure
and certain knowledge of the soul, the world and God. But Kant
saw that when such Ideas were made constitutive the rationalist
was misunderstanding the true purpose of the Ideas. True know-
ledge arises when the understanding, through its categories and
through space and time, gives a necessary connection to objects
presented in perception. But the Ideas of Reason are given to
us by reason, and there are no objects, corresponding to these,
presented in perception. If imaginations have no objective vali-
dity, neither have these Ideas. Therefore no such knowledge, as
the rationalists claim, is at all possible. In the transcendental
dialectic, Kant proceeds to show the inconsistencies, which neces-
sarily result when the Ideas of Reason are treated in any other way
than regulative. To make them constitutive, i.e. to suppose that
they give us knowledge of transcendent objects, is to misunderstand
their significance. We can never know objects corresponding to
the Ideas. We can have problematic concepts1 only. Speaking of
one of the Ideas, that of God, Kant says what may equally well
be applied to the other Ideas, i.e. the Ideas of the world and of
the soul. "We misapprehend at once the true meaning of that
Idea, if we accept it as the assertion, or even as the hypothesis of
a real thing to which the ground of the systematical construction
of the world should be ascribed. What we ought to do is to leave
it entirely uncertain what that ground which escapes all our con-
cepts may be by itself, and to use the Idea only as a point of view
from which alone we may expand that unity which is as essential
to reason as beneficial to the understanding."

Now, in this view of Kant in regard to knowledge and in his
conception of the function of the Ideas, we have a tremendous
step in advance. The placing of an artificial gulf between matter
and mind, thing and idea — that metaphysical presupposition which
had dominated all of the earlier development in rationalism — Kant

1 Op. Cit. Cf. P. 275.

2 Op. Cit. P. 547.

117

here sees to be an arbitrary and invalid procedure. His theory
of knowledge is so far free from that barren metaphysical dogma.
To get from the idea to the transcendent object, or to get from
such an object to the idea — both are equally impossible. To
require that knowledge obtains its validity as knowledge only
when it corresponds to such objects is to set up an impossible
criterion of knowledge. The objects themselves can never be
known, and correspondence can never be affirmed. Furthermore,
when Kant called attention to the fact that scientific knowledge
was not merely subjective but had objective validity, he likewise was
emphasizing a distinction of great importance. Theories or im-
aginations, according to Kant's view, are subjective and are not
part of scientific knowledge in the strict Kantian use of that
phrase. As he himself says, the reproductive imagination "is
subject to empirical laws only, namely, those of association,"
and "is of no help for the explanation of the possibility of know-
ledge a priori, belonging, therefore, to psychology, and not to
transcendental philosophy ".l In emphasizing the objective validity
of scientific knowledge as against any theories of knowledge,
empirico-idealistic or otherwise, which would throw doubt upon
this, Kant accomplished much. It needs, however, to be remem-
bered that though theories in science may be without the objective
validity which Kant claimed for connected perceptions, they
nevertheless play an important role in science. It was because,
no doubt, Kant was so close to the mathematical work of his day
and because, at that time, the importance of theory in physics
and chemistry and biology was not so generally recognized as to-day
that he laid little importance upon this aspect of science.

Notwithstanding the splendid work of this critical philosophy,
notwithstanding the arguments, so conclusively cogent, urged by
Kant against the current rationalism, Kant himself was still a
rationalist. To realize the truth of this we have only to attend to
his view of the nature of the understanding and of reason. We find
that these words are not used to designate certain classes of facts
or certain conscious processes, but are used to designate the facul-
ties which, in some way, produce the concepts and Ideas attributed
to each. Kant assumes, for example, that "as every phenomenon

1 Op. Cit. P. 758.

118

contains a manifold, and different perceptions are found in the
mind singly and scattered, a connection of them is necessary, such
as they cannot have in the senses by themselves".1 It is the active
power for the synthesis of this manifold, attributed finally to the
understanding, that constitutes the essential nature of the under-
standing which accomplishes this synthesizing work through the
categories. But, instead of commencing with the unitary complex
consciousness or experience, and proceeding by analysis to obtain
the "different perceptions", which are never given, as Kant sup-
posed, "singly and scattered", but are always abstracted products,
instead of commencing with that complex experience and finding
in a similar way what are the actual processes which might be
subsumed under the head of understanding and reason, Kant
postulated these as faculties which unite perceptions assumed
single, and which provide by their own spontaneity the concepts
and Ideas of which Kant speaks. In other words, the objects
of science in Kant's view, are constructed and not given. This
was a great mistake, but one which is easily accounted for on the
ground that the only psychology of which he took cognizance was
the faculty psychology of Wolff. It was a mistake which later
idealists have by no means succeeded in overcoming, and any
present-day theory of knowledge, if it follow the Kantian pro-
cedure in this respect, may, to that extent, be likewise termed
rationalistic. It is from the given whole of experience that one
must obtain by analysis the single perceptions as well as the con-
cepts and the Ideas of which Kant speaks.

Before closing this critical estimate of the work of Kant, it is
necessary to recall the fact that the Ideas of Reason, which, from
the standpoint of the first critique, are regulative only, become in
the second critique constitutive. Now this, at first glance, seems
passing strange. Has Kant found it necessary to contradict his
original position? Does he argue that, after all, the Ideas of
Reason do give us knowledge of objects? The key to the solution
of this apparent difficulty lies of course in the distinction which
Kant drew between theoretical knowledge and practical know-
ledge. From the standpoint of science, i.e. of theoretical know-
ledge, the objects corresponding to the Ideas of Reason are prob-

1 Op. Cit. P. 98.

119

lematic objects only. The Ideas must not be taken as assertions
or even as hypotheses of real objective things. But, from the
standpoint of morals, i.e. of practical reason, what was heretofore
a problem now becomes an assertion. The Ideas, formerly only
regulative, now become constitutive. "Every employment of
reason in respect of an object requires pure concepts of the under-
standing (categories), without which no object can be conceived.
These can be applied to the theoretical employment of reason,
i.e. to that kind of knowledge, only in case an intuition (which is
always sensible) is taken as a basis, and therefore merely in order
to conceive by means of them an object of possible experience.
Now here what have to be thought by means of the categories, in
order to be known, are Ideas of Reason, which cannot be given in
any experience. Only we are not here concerned with the theo-
retical knowledge of the objects of these Ideas, but only with this,
whether they have objects at all. This reality is supplied by pure
practical reason, and theoretical reason has nothing further to
do in this but to think those objects by means of the categories. . . .
Now when the categories are to be applied to these Ideas, it is not
possible to give them any object in intuition; but that such an
object actually exists, and consequently that the category as a
mere form of thought is here not empty but has significance, this
is sufficiently assured them by an object which practical reason
presents beyond doubt in the concept of the summum bonum,
namely, the reality of the conceptions which are required for the
possibility of the summum bonum, without, however, effecting
by this accession the least extension of our knowledge on theoretical
principles." l

So then theoretical reason is limited in the critiques by practical
reason. By the latter we are enabled to have knowledge — practical
knowledge — of the objects corresponding to the Ideas. Man, as
a moral being, asserts the reality and objective validity of objects
which, for theoretical reason, are problematic only, for, in no
other way, can the demands of the practical reason be satisfied.
But it must not be supposed that by this means theoretical know-
ledge is in any way extended. The practical knowledge which
we have of God, for example, is not a knowledge given in sensible

1 Cr. of Pr. R., Abbott's trans. Pp. 233-4.

120

perception or feeling, such a supposed knowledge, Kant claims, is
anthropomorphism and the source of superstition, nor is it a know-
ledge given in any supersensible perception or feeling which leads
only to fanaticism.1 The predicates, by which we may legiti-
mately determine God "are no others than understanding and will,
considered too in the relation to each other in which they must
be conceived in the moral law, and therefore only so far as a pure
practical use is made of them".2 "There is then a knowledge of
God indeed, but only for practical purposes, and if we attempt to
extend it to a theoretical knowledge we find an understanding
that has intuitions, not thoughts, a will that is directed to objects
on the existence of which its satisfaction does not in the least
depend."3

But, notwithstanding his argument, Kant has, in this regard,
placed himself in a strange position. The critical philosophy has
secured for man's moral and religious nature inalienable rights,
but it has done so at the expense of the unity of man's experience.
To divorce so completely as Kant has done the theoretical and
the practical is to overlook that fundamental unity of which
knowledge and action, science and morals, are only different
aspects. When one makes this mistake a sure and certain Nemesis
is bound to follow. The difficulties of the second critique reveal
the result of this incorrect procedure. The objects of practical
reason, so far as they are objects at all, must be given a content,
and the predicates by which this is done cannot be other than
those or certain of those which apply, likewise, in the realm of
theoretical knowledge. Otherwise, morals must dwell in a region
of negations only, or of merely formal principles, which can never
apply to concrete experience. Kant posits the existence of objects
corresponding to the Ideas of Reason. But, if theoretical know-
ledge and practical knowledge be so disparate, what can existence
mean? Kant allows to man, as moral, freedom, and claims for the
soul an immortality, but what positive significance, after all, can
there be to such a freedom and such an immortality? It would
seem that Kant himself realized, in part, the mistake, for the sum-
mum bonum, or final goal of man's practical life, is conceived by

1 Cr. of Pr. R.f P. 233.

2 Ibid. P. 234.
8 Ibid. P. 235.

121

Kant, however illogically, to contain two elements — perfect
morality and happiness proportioned thereto,1 perfect morality,
which implies, on Kant's basis, that man is a member no longer of
the world of sense, and happiness proportioned thereto, which
assuredly is, nevertheless, a characteristic of this world of sense.
It is in this summum bonum or this "Kingdom of God", that,
according to Kant, "Nature and morality are brought into a
harmony foreign to each of itself, by a holy Author who makes
the derived summum bonum possible".2 If, finally, the recon-
ciliation is effected, why need we assume that there is here and
now such an antipathy? We may and must recognize the possi-
bility of serious errors arising within our reasonings, and of grave
inconsistencies among our actions and among our motives, but
that the intelligible world and the sense world, the world of morals
and the world of knowledge, are so diverse as Kant considered
them is a different matter entirely, and one which the facts will
by no means substantiate.

Had the Konigsberg philosopher commenced with the con-
crete whole of experience instead of with an abstracted part,
assumed to be concrete, his error might have been overcome. He
would then have seen in a clearer light the significance of con-
cepts and Ideas, — to retain his distinction. The Ideas of Reason,
that is the Ideas of the soul, of the world and of God, should never
be taken as giving us sense knowledge of objects to which they are
supposed to correspond. Those Ideas should never become, in
that sense, constitutive. Kant was admirably correct in regard to
that point. But the Ideas of Reason and the moral demands for
freedom, immortality and God, — these, as Ideas and demands, are
among the facts of man's experience, and, as such, may and should
be described and explained in a scientific manner. Analysis must
show whether these different complexes of facts contain sensational
or emotional data, or both, or neither. Under any circumstances
we are trying to understand the actually given facts, and, in so
doing, will not be called upon to attempt the impossible task to
which Kant, because of his unfortunate method, was led, — the
task of describing the nature and relation of empty concepts and

1 Cr. of Pr. R., Cf. P. 220.

2 Ibid. Pp. 225-6.

122

Ideas, produced by the spontaneity of understanding and reason.
Whether there are objects, or things-in-themselves, not given in
but supposed to correspond to our imaginations and moral demands,
remains a matter of no moment to philosophy or science. About
such supposed objects, transcending all thought, nothing what-
ever can be said. That they exist, that they affect our lives, —
these statements can mean for us absolutely nothing. To the
importance of our imaginations and moral demands, however,
sufficient attention has seldom been given.

So then, although Kant pointed the way to the solution of this
object-idea fallacy, he was unable, entirely, to throw off the shackles
of the past. The dogma of rationalism, that there are real objects
different from the objects given in experience, sense or otherwise,
still persisted. That dogma still persists, and he who would criticize
the work of Immanuel Kant, whether such a one be natural scientist
or philosopher, should see to it that he himself is free from any
such metaphysical presupposition.

123

CHAPTER VIII.
THE PROGRAM FOR PHILOSOPHY.

The significance of the critical philosophy of Kant in regard
to the problems of knowledge and morals, and in regard to the
relation of science and philosophy cannot easily be overemphasized.
This is all the more true because the investigations embodied in the
critiques form in a very true sense a focus in which the tendencies
of the past converge and from which arise likewise new and diverg-
ing lines of thought. One of the most outstanding of these post-
Kantian developments is the so-called idealistic tendency, the main
representatives of which were Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

Kant, it will be remembered, had emphasized two stems of
human knowledge, sensibility and understanding, behind which, he
suggested, there may be a common root unknown to us. It was
this suggestion which engaged the attention of Fichte, and the
result was his denial of any thing-in-itself behind the phenomenal
world other than the noumenal subject, — the Ego, as he called it.
Schelling, however, in his "System of Transcendental Idealism",
was not content, like Fichte, to take his stand upon one of the
transcendents of Kant, and claimed that there are an Ego and a
Non-Ego, a transcendent subject and a transcendent object, but
behind these two, again, there is a common source of both, wherein
all opposition of Ego and Non-Ego disappear. This is the Abso-
lute, the synthesis of all contraries. Philosophy is the science of
this Absolute which manifests itself in a double manner as Nature
and as Mind. Hegel, however, modified this Kantian-Spinozistic
world-view of Schelling, by claiming that the common source of the
Ego and the Non-Ego does not transcend mind and nature These
latter are not rnanifestations of a hidden and unchanging Absolute,
but the Absolute is mind and nature. It is no longer transcendent;
it is no longer unchanging. The Absolute is the process itself.

In this way, Hegel endeavoured to break down the dualism,
which, because of the retention of the thing-in-itself, was to be

124

found within the philosophy of Kant. In the system of Absolute
Idealism the objects of science are not merely phenomena for us but
are phenomena by their very nature, that is things have the ground
of their being not in themselves but in an Absolute Reason. The
categories of this Absolute Reason are at once the categories of
thought and of all existence, and must not be deduced in the arbi-
trary and inadequate way by which Kant proceeded, but are to be
discovered in the great movement of reason through history. The
science which performs this task is called, by Hegel, Logic. But,
since such a science is the science of that which not only conceives
but also produces and explains all things Hegel's Logic is also a
metaphysic or a philosophy. In his own system, however, Hegel
considers philosophy to have three divisions. The philosophy of
nature and the philosophy of spirit, the second and third divisions
of philosophy, are, however, implicitly contained in his Logic,
which, according to his scheme, is the first division of philosophy.
The Absolute Reason, in the development which constitutes its
self-unfolding, externalizes itself, becomes the "other" of itself in
nature, and returns from this otherness or self-estrangement into
itself as spirit. Herein lies the great example of that dialectical
method of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which Hegel believed
he saw at work in various movements within the great process of
development.

Now Hegelianism, which the above paragraph has outlined in
but the briefest way, is one of the most comprehensive and com-
plete systems which the history of thought reveals. Its effect has
been felt in many directions, though in history and theology its
influence has been perhaps most pronounced. But absolute
idealism has failed to give to the natural sciences an equal place
with the intellectual sciences. The "philosophy of nature" was
made subordinate to the "philosophy of spirit", and this was no
doubt the result of the rationalistic presupposition upon which the
system was based. A priori speculation tends to take precedence
over observation and experiment. Reason is still considered as an
activity which produces and therefore explains all facts. But the
facts of man's complex experience must be investigated without
prejudice and without presupposition. Reason, to be sure, will
have its place, but alongside of it or alongside of the processes

125

denoted by that word will be other processes just as important and
just as essential. Modern experimental psychology, since the days
of Hegel, has vindicated its right to be the propaedeutic to philoso-
phy, and it is mainly because Hegel was not able to enter the domain
of philosophy through the gateway of an adequate psychology that
the system of absolute idealism does not to-day occupy the same
high pedestal that it once had.

That this idealistic development finds its main source in Kant's
" work is evident. That there are other tendencies, which may, like-
wise, claim to be, in a measure at least, the result of the critical
philosophy is also true. Positivism, as taught by Auguste Comte,
and furthered in England by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer,
emphasizes the positive sciences, which are placed over against a
philosophy or a metaphysics considered as mere speculation. The
first critique of Kant had shown the necessity of confining scientific
knowledge to phenomena, and, although it was certainly not the
author's final purpose, it had seemed, for the most part, to deny the
possibility of any further knowledge. Under any circumstances,
it was just this aspect of Kant's work that Comte emphasized.
True positive knowledge is to be had of phenomena only. To
observe the facts given in sense-experience, to determine by the
help of experiment the relations of these and therewith to discover
the laws of nature, — this becomes, practically, the sole task of all
proper investigation. Such a work the different sciences are under-
taking. Metaphysics has had its day. Its importance is now only
historical, and, in its place, are the different positive sciences.
Still, since the different sciences themselves have certain relations,
it is possible to classify these, and this work a positive philosophy
may undertake. Comte's classification commences with the most
abstract science, and ascends to the most concrete. In this way we
pass from mathematics, which is most general and most abstract,
to astronomy, to physics, to chemistry, to biology, and, finally to
the most concrete of all, sociology. Each of these depends upon the
truths of all the preceding sciences. Certain of the sciences, the
more concrete, have not developed so rapidly as others. The more
complex and concrete a science is the longer it takes it to pass from
a theological phase through a metaphysical to the positive. In
the first of these phases, phenomena are supposed to be governed

126

and directed by gods. In the liberation of human thought from
this anthropomorphic, theological stage, man passes next to the
metaphysical, where, instead of gods, hypostasized abstractions are
supposed to be the explanation of phenomena. The divinities are
repudiated, but replaced by souls, essences, tendencies In modern
times, however, the positive explanation of facts — the ascertainment
of their actual relations — is gradually superseding the theological and
metaphysical explanations.

Now these views of Comte, and those of Mill and Spencer which
show the same tendency, have much to be said on their behalf.
Perhaps the most important influence which positivism has had may
be seen in the fact that philosophy, as a world-view, has been led to
see more clearly than ever that it must not only take cognizance of,
but must be based upon the results and procedure of the different
special sciences. A philosophy, which is purely speculative, is not a
true philosophy. A world- view must endeavour to explain the
world, otherwise it soars among the clouds and is bound to prove
inadequate.

The positivism of Comte, however, would deny the possibility of
a world-view. Science deals only with the observed facts, philoso-
phy is limited to the classification of the different sciences. But
such a position overlooks part of the procedure of the special
disciplines themselves. For, as we have seen, and as the history
of the sciences is showing more and more clearly, theories or hypo-
theses are indispensable to the special sciences. The content of
science includes the data which are perceived, but also in its ex-
planations there are advanced theories and these, though they may
and do change, are, nevertheless, part and an important part of
science. This Comte's positivism tacitly ignored. When one
remembers this, he is enabled to see that positivism does not give an
adequate account of philosophy. The very attempt to classify the
sciences presupposes a system in which these sciences are. The
task of a positive philosophy, as advanced by Comte, is one part
on y, therefore, of the work of a true philosophy, a philosophy which
cannot properly be limited as Comte would limit it. There is a
task to be performed other than that of the mere c'assification of
the positive sciences. It is a task which attempts to coordinate all
the facts of experience into a system, into a world-view. ./

127

It is not difficult to see that idealism and positivism differ much
in their aims. There is an even greater difference, however, be-
tween idealism and the New Realism, as it has been called. But
here the contrast moves upon a different plane. It is based mainly
upon the question of knowledge, and the crux of the situation lies
in the distinction between the different conceptions held by each as
to the relation of mind to its object. It is an old, old problem, one
that has vexed mankind for centuries, and one which, if it is to be
solved, must be approached by a path different from that which has
generally been followed. It has been seen how idealism, in pretty
close line after all with Berkeley, still claims that esse est percipi.
The percipi of more recent idealists, however, must be extended to
include all the activities of reason or spirit. Objects exist because
there is mind. As T. H. Green, one of the recent Hegelian idealists
would say, — It is the spiritual principle in knowledge and the
spiritual principle in nature by which knowledge and nature are
made possible.1

Now realism, whether English or American, is opposed to any
such theory. Professor S. Alexander of Manchester University, in
advancing his anti-idealistic doctrine says, "What is certain is that
he who has any experience experiences two things. One is the ob-
ject he is concerned with, and that is not his mind; the other is his
act of experiencing, which ... he comes to know as an act of that

continuous tissue of mental events which is called his mind

When I am judging, I am together with some real, i.e., non-mental
connection of things, some fact of the world. Strip your mind of
the prepossession that what you apprehend must be something
dependent on your mind, . . . and you see that to have an experience
is the compresence of the two things named".2 "The table and I
are together in precisely the same sense as the table and chair are
together. . . Instead of the chair there happens to be I, who am a
mass of experiencings. My perception of the table is thus the fact
that there is a thing which can perceive and a thing which so pro-
vokes it as to perceive in a manner appropriate for perceiving a
table."3

1 T. H. Green: Prol. to Ethics. Cf. Bk. I, Ch. I.

2 Mind, N. S. 21 (1912), P. 2.

3 Ibid. P. 3.

128

A very similar doctrine is held by a growing number of American
writers. That this new realism is opposed to idealism is obvious.
In an article published recently in the Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods, Walter T. Marvin of Rutgers
College claims that "the long and undisputed reign of idealism is
about to enter upon troublous times". And this because "such a
movement as neo-realism has already shown enough symptoms to
make evident that it is opposed to idealism of every form and
variety".1 The agreement between English neo-realism, as
represented mainly by Professor Alexander and Bertrand Russell,
and the American neo-realism is, generally speaking, very close.
The main point of difference seems to be that the former makes
consciousness a "thing" among other things, a term among other
terms, whereas the latter makes consciousness a relation dependent
upon the terms related. According to Professor Perry, for exam-
ple, "when an entity is known or otherwise experienced it is related
to a complex".2 The "complex" is the "knower", of which or of
whom the new realism has little apparently to say; consciousness or
knowing is not, as in the English writings, on a level with the thing
known but is the relation between the knower and the thing known.3

In opposing idealism this recent teaching claims to be more in
line with the natural sciences and common sense. There is, it
claims, a real independent world which may become known but
which is not produced or constructed or made possible by mind or
consciousness. This extra-mental world is, of course, not the phy-
sical world of primary qualities of which Locke spoke. It includes
both primary and secondary qualities, or, rather, no such distinc-
tion as Locke made is here possible. The real world is a world of
colours, sounds, smells as well as of solidity, extension and move-
ment. Blue, for example, is an aspect of this real independent
world, and is there, in space, over against mind, or, for the American
realist, over against the knower.

It seems evident that the philosophic system %hich the neo-
realist will construct from such a standpoint must be much different

!Op. Cit. Vol. IX (1912), Pp. 309-10.

2 The New Realism: Cooperative Studies in Philosophy, by E. B. Holt, etc.
P. 126.

•Journal of Philosdphy, Psychology etc., Vol. II, P. 309, The Relational
Theory of Consciousness by W. P. Montague. Also Ibid. Vol. IX, P. 684, A Point
of Difference between American and English Realism by M. T. McClure.

129

from that which is found in idealism. The idealistic tendency has
treated mind as a spontaneous activity, a synthetic unity of apper-
ception, a synthetic principle the function of which is to make
knowledge and nature possible. The word is not used to stand for
all the facts or certain abstracted facts of experience. Now the
realist advises the idealist to strip himself of such a "prepossession",
but, if the realist himself, instead of advancing a new theory of what
the mind is or, at least, tacitly assuming a different view thereof,
had commenced by an analysis of actual facts, and then had clearly
stated to just what facts he was going to apply the word mind or
the word knower, many misunderstandings and much argument
might be obviated.

Surely neo-realism, English or American, as well as idealism
needs to examine more critically the actually occurring experience,
and, for this reason, the importance of experimental psychology,
as a preliminary study, should be more fully recognized by both
schools. To neglect such a preliminary study is to reverse the
proper order ; it is to begin construction by theory and supposition
rather than by the sharp and clear-cut analysis of given data.

The neo-realist assumes that there is a "pre-existing and inde-
pendHltly existing" world, which forms an "environment" for
consciousness.1 He thinks that only thus can the work of the
natural scientist be understood. Such a real world is not one of
space and time and movement only. Realising the impossibility
of explaining by these, colours and sounds and smells, the neO-
realist goes the whole way and posits independently existing objects
to which belong the so-called secondary qualities as well as space
and time and movement. Some of these objects under certain
conditions may become known, but their becoming known is to them
but an incident or happening. Now by what procedure does the
neo-realist come to this position? What are the processes which
precede and make necessary such a doctrine? These processes the
neo-realist has not attempted to delineate. His assumption of an
independently existing world is a preliminary assumption, and does
not arise from any analysis of the actual operations of knowledge.
Nor can it be in any way the result of immediate observation, for,
even if it were certain as Alexander holds that he who has any ex-

1 Cf. Present Philosophical Tendencies: R. B. Perry, P. 322.

130

perience experiences two things, one of which is a non-mental ob-
ject, it would yet be utterly impossible for him to observe likewise
that the non-mental object exists as perceived, or in any other
supposed manner, by itself before and after it is known. Such an
hypothesis can never in any way be proved, and yet, upon that
hypothesis, the whole fabric of neo-realism rests.

If it be said that it is only by such an assumption that the nature
of our scientific knowledge can be explained, then all one asks is
that that statement be proved. And to do that requires that the
operations of knowledge be first thoroughly investigated without
assumption or presupposition. After such an investigation, one
may then, if necessary, legitimately make use of theory or hypo-
thesis without incurring the danger of having one's whole investiga-
tion vitiated by preliminary suppositions. Even before this analy-
sis is made and at the risk, therefore, of being himself charged with
dogmatism, one may, nevertheless, venture the statement that
the neo-realistic conception of an independently existing real world
can never be a tenable theory simply because such a world must
itself be a product of thinking, and, as such, can never transcend
all thought. It may nevertheless be necessary for the complete
understanding of the facts of science and morals and religion to
posit objects which transcend sense experience, and such objects
might then quite properly be called transcendent; but it must not be
supposed that they would transcend all experience, all thought.
They would be in no sense extra-mental, whatever that can mean,
and it would become a genuine problem to determine more fully
the nature and relations of such transcendents.

The history of these recent developments, and indeed the whole
history of philosophy teaches us this important lesson, — any system
of philosophy to be adequate and to be scientific must build upon
the solid foundation of fact. And this recalls the conception of
philosophy which, in an earlier chapter, resulted from our survey of
the first great philosophers. Philosophy was there defined as the
scientific attempt to form a world-view which gives a rightful place
to all the known facts. It Is the attempt to give a view of the world,
but a view which has as its task that of coordinating into a system
the stock-in-trade of the sciences, i.e., their data, as well as the
operations of the sciences. Such a system must have within it the

131

minimum of contradiction, and philosophy must ever strive to get
rid of even this minimum.

Now all the sciences proceed by the investigation of some de-
finite phenomena usually expressed by the phrase matters-of-fact.
This investigation and these matters-of-fact must, therefore, be
more closely delineated, and in the first place, reserving for a moment
our account of the matters-of-fact, we may attempt to show the
nature of the investigation which science pursues. This investiga-
tion exhibits two main general characteristics, which may be
designated as processes of relating and comparing.1 Of these two,
relating is the wider and more abstract term, since there is no com-
paring possible without relating, though there may very well be a
relating wherein no comparing finds a place. One may say, for
example, that two processes within experience are related when it is
seen that one follows the other in temporal sequence. But com-
parison takes place when the agreements and differences of the two
processes, one with the other, are singled out. When these simple
processes of relating and comparing are repeated and combined
there arise certain more complex processes which have been named
synthesis and analysis. Between these there is no strict line of
demarcation. The former however is more closely dependent
upon the relating function, and the latter upon the comparing
function. Upon a given complexity analysis operates and by
determining the agreements and differences within the complex
there are obtained as the product of the analysis the elements of
the complex which are generally termed concepts. The process
itself is called a judgment, and judgments find expression in sen-
tences.

Now, because it is necessary to commence first of all with the
originally occurring complexity of experience, the first process must
be analytic in form. By analysis there is separated out, in thought,
what was originally united. It must not be supposed however that
by such an analysis the unity of experience is in any way destroyed.
Thought always presupposes such a unity, and the conceptual
objects that result are abstract objects, which, though never found
as abstract in the original experience, are, nevertheless, derived
therefrom. Synthesis is exhibited in the conjoining of these -analy-

1 Cf. Wundt: Outlines of Psychology, III Rev'd Engl. Edn., Par. 17

132

tic products into greater complexities. To these processes of com-
paring and relating, of analysing and synthesizing the general term,
thinking, is frequently applied.

In such propositions as "the sun shines", "sugar is sweet",
there are to be seen the simplest kind of judgments; these are based
upon the immediate unity of perception, whereas in such judgments
as " the sun is a heavenly body", "sugar is a chemical compound ",
judgments have arisen which are based not upon such a unity but
upon a conceptual unity. The first class of judgments does not
presuppose already formed concepts of the sun and its brightness, of
sugar and its sweetness, but the immediate perception of the shining
sun or the sweet sugar has secured the focus of attention and thus
the judgment occurs. In the second class of judgments, concepts
of objects are related, concepts which have been previously de-
termined by the examination of different judgments of the first
class. In such operations of thought there are obtained three
kinds of concepts, concepts of objects, concepts of attributes, con-
cepts of states, and, corresponding to these are the three gramma-
tical forms of substantive, adjective and verb. The various rela-
tions in which these concepts stand to one another in the judgment
constitute the different forms of judgment. These latter may
undergo many transformations, and may have various connections
all of which will still be varieties of judgment so that the whole
procedure is really an interconnection of judgments. We thus have
new relations arising between such judgments, and it is with these
relations, common to all science, that logic is concerned.

Now the relations expressed by the different forms of judgment
are reducible to two basic relations, that of identity which may be
total or partial and that of dependence which may involve the
dependence of one concept upon another or may involve, possibly,
the mutual dependence of concepts. Before one can predicate
identity or equality between any two concepts, he must first dis-
cover the agreements and differences which are present. In such a
process of comparison concepts are declared to be equal if, for the
prevailing purpose in hand, the agreements outweigh the differences.
There is, of course, no such thing as absolute identity, since the
concepts are always at least two. If again, on the other hand, the
differences are emphasized, then the concepts are declared to be

133

opposed. So then there develops immediately out of these two
operations of thought, i.e., the detecting of agreements and the
detecting of differences, two of the so-called laws of thought, viz.,
the law of identity and the law of contradiction, including, likewise,
a third which may best be considered as subordinate to and resting
upon the other two. The first of these states that throughout the
various differences of any concept there remains a certain agreement
or a certain constant. The second emphasizes the fact that the
differences are so great that the concept can no longer be regarded
as the same concept. The first is expressed symbolically as follows:
A = A1 = A'; the second maybe expressed thus — of the two pro-
positions A is B and A is C, both cannot be true when B and C are
contradictory or contrary. The law of excluded middle, sometimes
considered as a third law, may be represented by the formula A is
either B or C. There is no third possibility, simply because it is
here assumed that B and C are all the possibilities, in other words
they are contradictories. On account of this limitation this law is
seldom operative or helpful in the sciences. The first of these laws
rests upon the ascertaining of agreements, the second upon the
ascertaining of differences, and the third is really a subsidiary law
based upon the other two and so resting finally upon both the as-
certaining of agreements and the ascertaining of differences.

Thus upon these two operations of thought, corresponding to
that relation of identity, total or partial, which is one of the basic
relations of all judgment forms, rest the above-mentioned laws of
thought.

But not all concepts can be said to stand in a connection of
total or partial identity one with the other; there is also a relation
of dependence between concepts. We do not predicate identity of
any kind between the length of the radius of a circle and its circum-
ference, or between the raising of a body to a certain height and the
falling of the same, yet there is, we say, a relation of a special kind.
This relation grows out of the spacial juxtapositions and temporal
sequences which we observe, and, as a result of these, there is formu-
lated the law of dependence, or law of sufficient reason or cause and
effect, as it is sometimes called. According to this law concepts are
united in a relation of dependence.1

1 For a more detailed discussion of the psychological origin of the laws of
thought, cf. Wundt: Logik, Vol. I, Pp. 548-565, and also his System der Philo-
sophie, Pp. 58-75.

134

This abbreviated presentation of the so-called fundamental laws
of thought is not so much a prescribed form, obtained in some ex
cathedra way, and imposed upon scientific procedure in a manner
somewhat analogous to the way in which the categories of Kant
have been supposed to be imposed upon sense-data, but rather it is a
presentation of what occurs in every single scientific procedure
regarding any matters-of-fact whatsoever. The task of logic is
simply to represent this procedure, that which actually occurs
in the progress of science, in a schematic or symbolical form. It is
to be regretted that too often logic has been regarded as providing
a canon which scientific knowledge should and must follow, where-
as, in fact, logic can only obtain such a canon from the actual course
of scientific knowledge itself. These laws of thought then are sim-
ply that which is common to all sciences however diverse may seem
to be the matter with which they are concerned. And philosophy,
when once it exhibits such common principles, has already made a
step, and a great step, toward a unified view of the world.

Of course this is only what might be called a splendid beginning,
for we have still to do with — to follow an ancient usage — what is
called the matter of science, in other words, its content, as dis-
tinguished from the principles of thought outlined above. Here we
have the question, what are, then, the contents of the various
sciences. In other words what are the matters-of-fact with which
they deal.

But still further, there arises out of the foregoing another
question, viz., whether or not human thinking, investigating
matters-of-fact according to the laws of thought, can predicate
anything not found in such a content nor in such laws but to which
both that content and those laws are supposed to be somehow
related. This is the question of the transcendent, The articula-
tion of these three questions into a system constitutes the task of
philosophy.

To work out in detail anything like an answer to these would
be entirely beyond the projected task of this thesis, since such a
working out would be the presentation, in detail, of a system of
philosophy. Such an attempt would be presumptuous within the
limits of a work which has regarded as its main purpose the attempt to
discover what, in the history and present stage of human know-

135

ledge, should be taken as the content of philosophy and the nature
of its task. It is, therefore, only necessary now to outline the way
in which philosophy ought to set about its task.

In searching for an answer regarding the content of the sciences
there is really involved the problem of the classification of the
sciences. This problem philosophy will best solve by an historical
retrospect of the way in which the scientific disciplines have been
ramified and elaborated. The historical survey already sketched
shows this much, at least, that the individual sciences have all
arisen from the observation, classification and explanation of
definite matters-of-fact, in the general use of that term. No one
would be so absurd as to maintain that the sciences begin e vacua;
they all arise from the consideration of observed phenomena.
And since, as has just been seen, all sciences follow certain common
modes of procedure, the delineation and systematization of which
constitute the work of logic, there will be general agreement in
regard to what constitutes the starting-point of the sciences and
their mode of operation.

The next stage in the development of science is manifestly the
explanation of observed phenomena physical, chemical, biological,
etc. Here, wherever possible, resort is made to experiments where-
in data may be observed under definitely known conditions. By
such experiments, whether they be themselves "natural" opera-
tions, or whether they are considered as analogies or epitomes of
what occurs in the greater laboratory of nature, the cause of the
phenomenon in question is regarded as ascertained. In this pro-
cedure, the close relation of the various sciences becomes apparent,
for, when they come to the last stages of explanation, it is seen
that they use concepts which have much in common. It is the
formation and use of such concepts which are of extreme importance
for a philosophical inquiry, for the unification of scientific results
into a world-view. The point to be insisted on, however, is that
such concepts are the specific product of human thinking. They
are not among the origina1 data which formed the starting-point
of the special sciences, but are end-results, termini, which are not
absolutely final but always capable of modification and finer defin-
ition. The rise and operation of these concepts, concepts like
matter, force, energy, atom, void, etc., must be carefully and pro-

136

perly scrutinized by philosophy. For it is the business of philoso-
phy, including herein the scientist's critique of his own progress,
not stupidly to deny these nor dogmatically to assert these but to
understand them. And furthermore, philosophy must try to com-
prehend what the empirical scientist is doing when he takes such
concepts — the products of his own thinking — and posits them as
existing independently of his own thinking, a positing which, itself,
is still the scientist's own operation.

In this regard the operation of science has produced a curious
puzzle. For, aside from the fact that it often tries to explain the
data of its own original start'ng-point as the effects of the action of
these hypostasized concepts upon a sensitive organism, i e., the
human body, as for example, when it tries to explain sensations
and ideas by reference to hypothetical physical and physiological
processes — aside from this fact, there is this still further one, that
science has postulated entities or "realities" as existing indepen-
dently of and absolutely different from all human thought. This
leads at once to the intricate problem of the idea and the object.
If it be granted that such independent realities are totally different
from sensations and ideas, then the former can never be known by
the latter. It is of course possible to say that such realities are
still known be'ng cognized somehow by other processes than those
consisting of sensational and ideational categories. It must be
freely admitted that this is a view which has generally been held.
The rationalistic movement of scholasticism and, specifically, that
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries advanced just such a
claim, a claim which Kant however endeavoured to show to be
utterly unjustified. But even if such realities could be apprehended
in this way by thought, the reply of thousands of idealists, whose
views are not to be contemptuously set aside, would be that such
realities, therefore, cannot be entirely foreign to thought. Whether
such an argument be cogent or not, it is quite manifest that here
we have a problem to solve, and, if the solution should turn out to be
vain as it has in the attempts t)f the past, we shall then be driven
back to the inquiry, how in the first place in the history of scientific
thinking we came to predicate such a contraposition of idea and
object, a contraposition which, in effect, was an opposition, for idea
and object were regarded as utterly different from each other except

137

that the former was supposed to be in some mysterious fashion
a copy of the latter. It is at any rate clear that science and philoso-
phy have made such a predication. How they have come to do so is
a profoundly interesting historical investigation, an investigation
which will show that in the formation of the problem philosophy has
had as great a share as science, if indeed not a greater.

In all the forms in which this puzzle has been presented, whether
of matter and mind, physical and psychical, body and soul, there has
remained the unbridged and, we venture to say, unbridgeable gulf of
dualism, — unbridgeable, because of the antithetic way in which the
two have been denned. For when each is supposed to be totally
different from the other, as in the philosophical views of Des Cartes
and thousands of his modern successors, there is no way as yet
known to man by which they can become united. Under any
circumstances it is clear that the content of the sciences includes
the observed data, with which they commence, as well as intellectual
interpretations or conceptual constructions based upon these data.

But in these conceptual explanations of observed data there is
often the resort to the predication of that which is neither found
among any perceived data, that is among any matters of perceived
fact, nor regarded as being in any way perceptible, the predication
of that which cannot possibly be known, — to use Kant's phrase.
This is the scientific use of the transcendent, a use which philosophy
should patiently examine.

For when, in the work of philosophy or science, we speak of the
infinity of the universe in space and time, and connected therewith
of course the Ideas of unlimited matter and unceasing causality, we
make use of terms which do not designate anything perceptual
or conceptual. Hence such terms as those just mentioned are
considered as transcending the observed data as well as the con-
cepts derived therefrom, though, to be sure, they are supposed also
to be in some kind of relation to them. Following the Platonic and
Kantian usage, these transcendents may aptly be called Ideas, to
distinguish them from concepts. By these Ideas science is able to
make some completion to its treatment of the facts investigated.
And it is part of the task of philosophy to make a scrutiny of these
Ideas in order to see how they arise and what function they perform.
Here it may be seen how these different sciences approach a position

138

similar, in some respects, to that which characterizes another in-
vestigation, viz., the religious inquiry, which philosophy must also
consider. For among the sciences the results of which an adequate
system of philosophy must synthesize is the science o religion.
And in the religious facts observed and classified and explained by
this science there are those which refer to that which is considered
divine, and this is, like the infinity of the universe in space and time,
as predicated by mathematician and physicist, usually considered
as transcendent to, though at the same time related to sense-ex-
perience.

Because of such ultimate approaches among the different
sciences, natural and intellectual, the task of philosophy to con-
struct a system in which the operations and results of all the sciences
are coordinated is much facilitated. But such a system of philoso-
phy need never expect to be entirely final and ultimate, simply
because the sciences upon which it must be built should and no
doubt will develop.

In conclusion, therefore, it may again be pointed out that the
aim of this thesis has been merely to indicate wherein philosophy
and the sciences are definitely related, and to base the claim for
such a relation upon an historical survey of both. To perform such
a synthesis as that wherein the task of philosophy has been found
to consist would be naturally a sequel to this thesis and lies beyond
its present limits. It is, however, here sufficient, finally, to affirm
that philosophy, if it be true to its task in the sense assigned, can
be neither stagnant, dogmatic, biassed nor eclectic, but must keep
pace with the scientific attainments in the intellectual development
of the race.

139

VITA.

I, Roy Balmer Liddy, son of Rev. James J. Liddy, M.A.,
Methodist minister now of Brantford, and his wife Kate Frances,
was born in Bradford, Ontario, in the year 1885." My High School
training was obtained in Oshawa and Harriston, and my early
teachers, especially Principal Lyman C. Smith, B.A., and Mr. E. T.
Slemon, B.A., I shall always hold in appreciative remembrance.
After a few months spent in teaching, I entered The Dominion
Bank, in which institution I remained for some four years, leaving
that work in the fall of 1908 to enter the University of Toronto as
a student in the second year in the honour course of philosophy.
After graduating in Arts in 1911, I was made Fellow in psychology,
and during the sessions of 1912-13 and 1913-14, I held the position
of Demonstrator in the psychological laboratory. During a period
covering about four years I have taken the examinations in the
subjects constituting the Bachelor of Divinity course in Victoria
College, and in April of this year was given the degree of B.D.

My registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy dates
from the fall of 1911. My first minor has been Banking, taken in
the Department of Political Economy. For the suggestive and
helpful lectures given on that subject by Mr. S. A. Cudmore, B.A.,
I am very grateful. My second minor has been the general topic,
History of Philosophy, while my major has been The Relation of
Science and Philosophy, taken under Professor W. G. Smith, of the
Department of Philosophy. Work in this last subject was com-
menced in the session 1911-12, and in May, 1912, I submitted for
the M.A. degree a thesis entitled: Some Considerations of the
Relation of Science and Philosophy. Throughout the three years
which have been spent pursuing the study of the major subject
my work has been under the direction of Professor Smith, and,
though I owe much to the other members of the staff in philosophy,
I shall ever be deeply indebted to his keen yet sympathetic criticism
as well as to his constant supervision and encouragement.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book j-|T>TIE nn thrJjfTniiiirrl below.

DEC 4 1954 LU

t 196& JS

SEP 2 '68 -2PM

^Mfai/V?3fuJ

'«K 0^||/W

MAY 2 ^

LD 21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476

Pamphlet
Binder

Ga>"ord Bros., Inc.
Stockton, Calif
M-ReB-U.S.Pat.iff.

3/

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY