CONTENTS PAGE I § 5. The Eleatic School. Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno. 3. The Nature of Knowledge. The Theory of Ideas § 12. Aristotle. The Peripatetics § 22. The First Period. Scotus Erigena, Anselm, Abelard § 34. The English Enlightenment. Deism. The Ethical Devel- 365 § 35. The French Enlightenment. Voltaire and the Encyclo- A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY INTRODUCTION § 1. The Nature of the History of Philosophy. Primitive Conceptions of the World 1. WHEN We at the present time first begin to think about the world in a conscious and systematic way, we discover that our thought already has a tendency to follow certain general lines, which seem to us natural, and sometimes almost inevitable. We find ourselves familiar, e.g., with the conception of a world of nature—a world wherein lifeless and unconscious bits of matter group themselves according to unvarying laws. There are a multitude of words which we use in speaking of this material world -thing or substance, cause and effect, force, law, mechanism, necessity; and we suppose, ordinarily, that these words convey a well-defined and obvious meaning. In like manner, there is the very different world of the mental or conscious life, described by such terms as will, intellect, feeling, sensation. This also has laws which it follows; only they are what we call psychological, or logical, or ethical laws, in opposition to the physical laws of the outer world. Finally, while there is no general agreement in our ultimate religious or philosophical attempts to sum up the facts of reality, here too there are a few main attitudes, or types of theory, within which our choice is confined, and which go by such names as dualism, theism, idealism, materialism, pantheism, agnosticism. We do not find it very difficult |