to understand in a general way what these words mean, even if we do not accept the theories for which they stand. These concepts, then, or notions which we frame to serve as shorthand expressions for certain facts, or aspects of reality, come to us with so little labor on our part, that we often are tempted to regard them as self-evident, and certain to present themselves as the manifest points of view whenever men stop to think. But a little examination will show that this is a mistake. We are the heir of all the ages in our intellectual life, and so can utilize the results of those who have gone before us. In their origin, however, these results were reached in no such simple way as their obviousness to us would seem to suggest, but were wrought laboriously with pain and travail. It is a common experience, after we have arrived at the solution of some problem that has been engaging us, to be struck with wonder that we should so long have been baffled by it, when in reality the matter is so plain; yet, as a matter of fact, it did baffle us. Now every point of view from which man regards the world, is thus at some period of his history a hard-won acquisition. It may stand for a truth an obvious truth even-when it comes to be recognized. But the mere existence of a truth is nothing to us, until we have brought it into connection with the current of our own experience and knowledge; and this requires special circumstances and conditions. The History of Philosophy attempts to give an account of the more important and comprehensive of these conceptions, in terms of which we are accustomed to think of the world, and to trace the mental and social conditions out of which they took their rise. It is an account of the growth of man's power to formulate the universe. To give some connected view of this growth is the object of the present volume. But now, when we consider the field which it covers, it will not be strange if there are to be found in the History of Philosophy no such clearly visible lines of development as certain other branches of human knowledge seem to reveal. When the subject-matter of investigation is so enormous, we can only expect to approach the goal by zigzag courses, hitting now upon one aspect of the world, now upon another. In two obvious ways, nevertheless, we may look for an advance. It may consist simply in bringing to light some new point of view which before had been neglected, in abstracting some aspect of things which had not hitherto been clearly isolated from the rest of experience. Or, instead of striking out such a new conception, we may try to combine more organically those which the past history of philosophy has already succeeded in elaborating. Now, while progress in philosophy follows no single well-marked path, and we are very likely to lose our way on account of the infinite complexity of the material, yet in both these directions it is possible to discover a real development. The very confusion of many points of view, which makes the introduction of order and unity so hard a task, is itself evidence of the fact that a real development has taken place. Each of these standpoints represents some significant feature which the world presents; and it is not till all the manifoldness of the world has been distinguished, and grasped in an intellectual form, that we are in a position to sum up our knowledge so that it shall fairly represent the truth. And in the other way, also, philosophy has progressed. Ideas get a richer and more adequate content, systems become more comprehensive, as thought proceeds; and while they may go by the same names as former systems, in reality they mean something very different. In spite of its being so frequently asserted, it is untrue that nothing definitive has been the result of so much pains and labor. Many opinions which were once dominant are now finally superseded, and no one but the amateur in philosophy would think of going back to them. They are superseded, however, not in the sense that they have been proved entirely false, and rejected, but in that they have taken their place as a subordinate factor in a larger conception, and have been interpreted in accordance with this. 2. If, now, we throw off the prejudices which we have inherited from a long past of intellectual effort, and attempt to look at life through the eyes of one who comes fresh to its problems, we shall find ourselves in a new and strange world. We get some notion of what this would be, when we look at uncivilized man as he exists at the present day. The sharp lines of cleavage into which, for us, the universe divides, melt away into a vague whole of indistinctness and intermixture. That fundamental separation of the universe into dead matter, and living, conscious soul, has not yet been brought about, and this alone makes necessary an entire reconstruction of our notions. What the primitive man is conscious of is not a material body, and an immaterial mind, but rather an acting, feeling, thinking body. And if such phenomena as dreams and ghost-seeing made him conceive the possibility of a separation of himself from his earthly body, yet this conception never took the form of anything we should call immaterial. The inner self, the soul or ghost, is still only a thinner and more tenuous body. And as no clear separation was made between the man's own body, and the life and consciousness which inform it, so neither could this separation be carried over into the outer world. Knowing his own body as a living thing, which acts according to desires and purposes, other things also are interpreted by him after the same pattern. Stones, trees, and streams are living creatures, animated by the same vital impulses that dwell in men and animals. This animistic view of things is universal among primitive peoples. Of course it carries with it an absence of that conception of the reign of law, which is so familiar at the present day. The world is an anarchic world, a world of miracles, in which anything whatever may be expected to happen. Gods, spirits, and demons inhabit it. These act after their own arbitrary will, which can never be predicted with certainty; and they must, therefore, be won over with bribes, or forced into acquiescence by charms and magic. This indistinctness in the lines of objective nature is, however, counterbalanced by a sufficiently exact marking out of the limits within which man's own personal and social life moves. Here there is little of the freedom which is sometimes attributed to the savage life, but an all-pervading spirit of regulation. From birth to death, the life of the savage is ordered for him by custom and tradition. There is no free play of the mind about the sanctions of conduct, no sense of proportion in it, and of the relative importance of things. In every department of life, custom attaches to itself the sanction of a religious rite, and any deviation from it carries the stigma alike of religious impiety, and social treason. Of course there is a reason for this. Savage customs are, normally, survivals which become fixed because they stand in some utilitarian relation to the needs of economic life or tribal organization. And since men are not yet in a position where they can be trusted freely to use their reason, and to discriminate and choose, their habits have to be riveted upon them mechanically and irrevocably for their own salvation. Of course, in such an atmosphere, there can be none of that sense of individuality, or personality, which marks the modern conception of selfhood. The man is swallowed up in the tribe. So, also, the intellectual side of his life, as represented in his beliefs about the world, and his religious conceptions, is bound down so closely to the lowest and most pressing needs of his nature, that it lacks entirely the freedom and disinterestedness of spirit, the largeness of view, which the acquisition of solid truth demands. There is in it, morever, no possibility of self-directed growth. This cannot come about until the individual is emancipated from his bondage to custom and tradition, and recognizes himself as a free agent, with rights and a value of his own, who can freely question accepted dogmas, and freely modify his social actions to meet new de mands. This, then, will suggest the general course which the history of civilization is to follow. Things can be changed for the better, only as man ceases passively to acquiesce in the dogmas and institutions that come to him from without, on authority external to him. He must become himself the centre of initiative, who can trace all these objective crystallizations of thought and conduct back to their source in his own nature, and control and modify them accordingly. This, however, necessitates an intervening period of stress and change. Existing beliefs and social forms have to be disintegrated to give room for the expanding spirit; and for a time there will be chaos and anarchy, until man has learned how to use his new-found liberty. Of this progress of civilization, the history of philosophic thought is one aspect; and this is the third and more ultimate way in which we can look to find a unity in it. Thought is but an instrument by which man attempts to bring himself into harmony with life; and therefore the inner spring of thought's movement will be found in that underlying process of life, which we know as history. The final goal, on the philosophic side, is such a statement of the world as shall enable man to feel at home in it, and see himself as a unified and harmonious being in all the expressions of his nature. On the side of life itself, or history, the goal consists in realizing this unity practically, — a unity, not of mere confused feeling, as in the beginning, but of clear and conscious knowledge, which grasps the principles of its own action, and so can direct it freely to rational ends. WHOLE PERIOD: GENERAL LITERATURE Erdmann, History of Philosophy, 3 vols. |