PHILOSOPHY is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over
another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains
when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or
emphasis in the realm of speculative thought. The mission of philosophy a priori is to establish the
relation of manifested things to their invisible ultimate cause or nature.
"Philosophy," writes Sir William Hamilton, "has been defined [as]: The science of things divine and
human, and of the causes in which they are contained [Cicero]; The science of effects by their causes
[Hobbes]; The science of sufficient reasons [Leibnitz]; The science of things possible, inasmuch as they
are possible [Wolf]; The science of things evidently deduced from first principles [Descartes]; The
science of truths, sensible and abstract [de Condillac]; The application of reason to its legitimate objects
[Tennemann]; The science of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason
[Kant];The science of the original form of the ego or mental self [Krug]; The science of sciences
[Fichte]; The science of the absolute [von Schelling]; The science of the absolute indifference of the
ideal and real [von Schelling]--or, The identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel]." (See Lectures on
Metaphysics and Logic.)
The six headings under which the disciplines of philosophy are commonly classified are: metaphysics,
which deals with such abstract subjects as cosmology, theology, and the nature of being; logic, which
deals with the laws governing rational thinking, or, as it has been called, "the doctrine of fallacies";
ethics, which is the science of morality, individual responsibility, and character--concerned chiefly with
an effort to determine the nature of good; psychology, which is devoted to investigation and
classification of those forms of phenomena referable to a mental origin; epistemology, which is the
science concerned primarily with the nature of knowledge itself and the question of whether it may exist
in an absolute form; and æsthetics, which is the science of the nature of and the reactions awakened by
the beautiful, the harmonious, the elegant, and the noble.
Plato regarded philosophy as the greatest good ever imparted by Divinity to man. In the twentieth
century, however, it has become a ponderous and complicated structure of arbitrary and irreconcilable
notions--yet each substantiated by almost incontestible logic. The lofty theorems of the old Academy
which Iamblichus likened to the nectar and ambrosia of the gods have been so adulterated by opinion--
which Heraclitus declared to be a falling sickness of the mind--that the heavenly mead would now be
quite unrecognizable to this great Neo-Platonist. Convincing evidence of the increasing superficiality of
modern scientific and philosophic thought is its persistent drift towards materialism. When the great
astronomer Laplace was asked by Napoleon why he had not mentioned God in his Traité de la
Mécanique Céleste, the mathematician naively replied: "Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis!"
In his treatise on Atheism, Sir Francis Bacon tersely summarizes the situation thus: "A little philosophy
inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." The
Metaphysics of Aristotle opens with these words: "All men naturally desire to know." To satisfy this
common urge the unfolding human intellect has explored the extremities of imaginable space without
and the extremities of imaginable self within, seeking to estimate the relationship between the one and
the all; the effect and the cause; Nature and the groundwork of Nature; the mind and the source of the
mind; the spirit and the substance of the spirit; the illusion and the reality.
An ancient philosopher once said: "He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute
among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone is a man among brutes. But he
who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy, is a God among men." Man's status in the
natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking. He whose mind is enslaved to his
bestial instincts is philosophically not superior to the brute-, he whose rational faculties ponder human
affairs is a man; and he whose intellect is elevated to the consideration of divine realities is already a
demigod, for his being partakes of the luminosity with which his reason has brought him into proximity.
In his encomium of "the science of sciences" Cicero is led to exclaim: "O philosophy, life's guide! O
searcher--out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without
thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life."
In this age the word philosophy has little meaning unless accompanied by some other qualifying term.
The body of philosophy has been broken up into numerous isms more or less antagonistic, which have
become so concerned with the effort to disprove each other's fallacies that the sublimer issues of divine
order and human destiny have suffered deplorable neglect. The ideal function of philosophy is to serve
as the stabilizing influence in human thought. By virtue of its intrinsic nature it should prevent man from
ever establishing unreasonable codes of life. Philosophers themselves, however, have frustrated the ends
of philosophy by exceeding in their woolgathering those untrained minds whom they are supposed to
lead in the straight and narrow path of rational thinking. To list and classify any but the more important
of the now recognized schools of philosophy is beyond the space limitations of this volume. The vast
area of speculation covered by philosophy will be appreciated best after a brief consideration of a few of
the outstanding systems of philosophic discipline which have swayed the world of thought during the
last twenty-six centuries. The Greek school of philosophy had its inception with the seven immortalized
thinkers upon whom was first conferred the appellation of Sophos, "the wise." According to Diogenes
Laertius, these were Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, and Periander. Water was
conceived by Thales to be the primal principle or element, upon which the earth floated like a ship, and
earthquakes were the result of disturbances in this universal sea. Since Thales was an Ionian, the school
perpetuating his tenets became known as the Ionic. He died in 546 B.C., and was succeeded by
Anaximander, who in turn was followed by Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Archelaus, with whom the
Ionic school ended. Anaximander, differing from his master Thales, declared measureless and
indefinable infinity to be the principle from which all things were generated. Anaximenes asserted air to
be the first element of the universe; that souls and even the Deity itself were composed of it.
Anaxagoras (whose doctrine savors of atomism) held God to be an infinite self-moving mind; that this
divine infinite Mind.
another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains
when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or
emphasis in the realm of speculative thought. The mission of philosophy a priori is to establish the
relation of manifested things to their invisible ultimate cause or nature.
"Philosophy," writes Sir William Hamilton, "has been defined [as]: The science of things divine and
human, and of the causes in which they are contained [Cicero]; The science of effects by their causes
[Hobbes]; The science of sufficient reasons [Leibnitz]; The science of things possible, inasmuch as they
are possible [Wolf]; The science of things evidently deduced from first principles [Descartes]; The
science of truths, sensible and abstract [de Condillac]; The application of reason to its legitimate objects
[Tennemann]; The science of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason
[Kant];The science of the original form of the ego or mental self [Krug]; The science of sciences
[Fichte]; The science of the absolute [von Schelling]; The science of the absolute indifference of the
ideal and real [von Schelling]--or, The identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel]." (See Lectures on
Metaphysics and Logic.)
The six headings under which the disciplines of philosophy are commonly classified are: metaphysics,
which deals with such abstract subjects as cosmology, theology, and the nature of being; logic, which
deals with the laws governing rational thinking, or, as it has been called, "the doctrine of fallacies";
ethics, which is the science of morality, individual responsibility, and character--concerned chiefly with
an effort to determine the nature of good; psychology, which is devoted to investigation and
classification of those forms of phenomena referable to a mental origin; epistemology, which is the
science concerned primarily with the nature of knowledge itself and the question of whether it may exist
in an absolute form; and æsthetics, which is the science of the nature of and the reactions awakened by
the beautiful, the harmonious, the elegant, and the noble.
Plato regarded philosophy as the greatest good ever imparted by Divinity to man. In the twentieth
century, however, it has become a ponderous and complicated structure of arbitrary and irreconcilable
notions--yet each substantiated by almost incontestible logic. The lofty theorems of the old Academy
which Iamblichus likened to the nectar and ambrosia of the gods have been so adulterated by opinion--
which Heraclitus declared to be a falling sickness of the mind--that the heavenly mead would now be
quite unrecognizable to this great Neo-Platonist. Convincing evidence of the increasing superficiality of
modern scientific and philosophic thought is its persistent drift towards materialism. When the great
astronomer Laplace was asked by Napoleon why he had not mentioned God in his Traité de la
Mécanique Céleste, the mathematician naively replied: "Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis!"
In his treatise on Atheism, Sir Francis Bacon tersely summarizes the situation thus: "A little philosophy
inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." The
Metaphysics of Aristotle opens with these words: "All men naturally desire to know." To satisfy this
common urge the unfolding human intellect has explored the extremities of imaginable space without
and the extremities of imaginable self within, seeking to estimate the relationship between the one and
the all; the effect and the cause; Nature and the groundwork of Nature; the mind and the source of the
mind; the spirit and the substance of the spirit; the illusion and the reality.
An ancient philosopher once said: "He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute
among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone is a man among brutes. But he
who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy, is a God among men." Man's status in the
natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of his thinking. He whose mind is enslaved to his
bestial instincts is philosophically not superior to the brute-, he whose rational faculties ponder human
affairs is a man; and he whose intellect is elevated to the consideration of divine realities is already a
demigod, for his being partakes of the luminosity with which his reason has brought him into proximity.
In his encomium of "the science of sciences" Cicero is led to exclaim: "O philosophy, life's guide! O
searcher--out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without
thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life."
In this age the word philosophy has little meaning unless accompanied by some other qualifying term.
The body of philosophy has been broken up into numerous isms more or less antagonistic, which have
become so concerned with the effort to disprove each other's fallacies that the sublimer issues of divine
order and human destiny have suffered deplorable neglect. The ideal function of philosophy is to serve
as the stabilizing influence in human thought. By virtue of its intrinsic nature it should prevent man from
ever establishing unreasonable codes of life. Philosophers themselves, however, have frustrated the ends
of philosophy by exceeding in their woolgathering those untrained minds whom they are supposed to
lead in the straight and narrow path of rational thinking. To list and classify any but the more important
of the now recognized schools of philosophy is beyond the space limitations of this volume. The vast
area of speculation covered by philosophy will be appreciated best after a brief consideration of a few of
the outstanding systems of philosophic discipline which have swayed the world of thought during the
last twenty-six centuries. The Greek school of philosophy had its inception with the seven immortalized
thinkers upon whom was first conferred the appellation of Sophos, "the wise." According to Diogenes
Laertius, these were Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, and Periander. Water was
conceived by Thales to be the primal principle or element, upon which the earth floated like a ship, and
earthquakes were the result of disturbances in this universal sea. Since Thales was an Ionian, the school
perpetuating his tenets became known as the Ionic. He died in 546 B.C., and was succeeded by
Anaximander, who in turn was followed by Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Archelaus, with whom the
Ionic school ended. Anaximander, differing from his master Thales, declared measureless and
indefinable infinity to be the principle from which all things were generated. Anaximenes asserted air to
be the first element of the universe; that souls and even the Deity itself were composed of it.
Anaxagoras (whose doctrine savors of atomism) held God to be an infinite self-moving mind; that this
divine infinite Mind.
