Philosophy Butlrich

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LIBRARYOF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.Class


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PHILOSOPHYA LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITYIN THE SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND ARTMARCH 4, 1908


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COLUMBIAUNIVERSITY PRESSSALES AGENTSNEW YORK:LEMCKE & BUECHNER

80-82 WEST 27TH STEEETLONDON :HENRY FROWDE

AMEN COKNEE, E.G.TORONTO :HENRY FROWDE

25 RICHMOND ST., W.


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PH I LOSOPHYBY

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLERPRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTSAND LETTERS

THIRD THOUSAND

gorfeTHE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

1911All Rights Reserved


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COPYRIGHT, 1908,BY THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Set up and electrotyped. Printed May, 19x1.

J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co.Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.


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PREFACETHIS lecture was delivered as one of

a series, the purpose of which was topresent in summary and compact forma view of each of several sciences andof philosophy as these exist at the presentday. In outlining philosophy, its sub-ject-matter and its method, it was thepurpose of the lecture clearly to differen-tiate philosophy from science, and tocut away the odd and unfitting scientificgarments in which some contemporarywriters have sought to clothe philosophy.Some of the passing forms of so-calledphilosophic thought are wholly belowthe plane on which philosophy moves.They are not philosophy, nor yet philoso-phies ; they are travesties of both.

HU


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vi PREFACENo one who has not grasped the dis-tinction between the three orders of

thinking, or ways of knowing, can hope,I think, to understand what philosophyis or what the word philosophy means.To call something philosophy is not tomake it so.


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SYLLABUSThe desire of knowledge and the wonder of man, iThe

mythologies, 3 Beginnings of critical inquiry, 6The significance of Socrates, 7.The three stages or orders of thinking : common knowl-edge, science, philosophy, n Characteristics of commonknowledge, 12 Characteristics of scientific knowing, 13

Characteristics of philosophic knowing, 16 Objec-tions to philosophy, 18 The limitations of science, 21Science and philosophy, 22.Conditions of philosophic knowing, 24. Images andConcepts, 25 The world is in and for consciousness, 28

Interpretation of energy in terms of will, 30 Philoso-phy and theology, 31.

Significant movements in the history of philosophy, 33Greek thought from Thales to Socrates, 33 Phi-losophy of the Church Fathers, 34 The meaning of theMiddle Ages, 36.The history of philosophy, 37 The Greek and theGerman contributions to philosophy, 38 Immanuel Kan,t,39 The study of the great masters of philosophy, 42.Some teachings and aims of philosophy, 45 Thephilosophic mind, 49.

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PHILOSOPHYONE of the most famous books ever

written, and one of the most influential-the Metaphysics of Aristotle openswith this sentence, All men by natureare actuated with the desire of knowl-edge. This desire of knowledge andthe wonder which it hopes to satisfy arethe driving power behind all the changesthat we, with careless, question-begginginference, call progress. They and theirreactions upon man's other wants andneeds have, since history began, whollyaltered the appearance of the dwelling-place of man as well as man's relationto his dwelling-place. Yet the physicalchanges are insignificant, great and nu-merous as they are. The Alps that triedthe endurance of Hannibal are the same


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2 PHILOSOPHYmountains that tested the skill of Napo-leon. The sea that was beaten by thebanked oars of the triremes of Carthage,presents the same surface and the sameshores to the fast-going, steam-drivenvessel of to-day. But the air, once onlya zephyr or a hurricane, is now the bearerof man's silent message to his distantfellow. The crude ore once deeply hid-den in the earth, has been dug and drawnand fashioned into Puck's girdle. Thewords that bore the deathless verse ofHomer from bard to a group of fascinatedhearers, and with whose fading soundsthe poems passed beyond recall, are fixedon the printed page in a hundred tongues.They carry to a million eyes what oncecould reach but a hundred ears. Humanaspiration has cast itself, chameleon-like,into the form of noblest verse, of sweetestmusic, of most moving oratory, of grand-est painting, of most splendid architec-


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PHILOSOPHY 3ture, of serenest reflection, of freest gov-ernment. And the end is not yet.The forces the desire for knowledgeand wonder - - that have so moved man'sworld, and are so moving it, must betreated with at least the respect due toage and to great achievement.

The naive consciousness of man hasalways told him that the existence ofthat consciousness and its forms werethe necessary framework for his pictureof himself and his world. Long beforeKant proved that macht zwar Verstanddie Natur aber er schafft sie nicht, manhad acted instinctively on the principle.The world that poured into his conscious-ness through the senses, Locke's windowsof the soul, was accepted as he found it,and for what the senses did not revealman fashioned explanations in the forgeof his imagination.


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4 PHILOSOPHYThe unseen powers of heaven andearth, of air and water, of earthquake and

thunderbolt, were like himself, but greater,grander. They had human loves andhates, human jealousies and ambitions.Behind the curtain of events they playedtheir game of superhuman life. Offeringsand gifts won their aid and their blessing;neglect or disdain brought down theirantagonism and their curses. So it wasthat the desire for knowledge and thewonder of man made the mythologies ;each mythology bearing the image ofthat racial facet of humanity's whole bywhich it was reflected. The Theogony,ascribed to Hesiod, shows the orderlycompleteness to which these mythologiesattained.The mythologies represent genuine

reflection and not a little insight. Theyreveal man's simple, naive consciousnessbusying itself with the explanation of


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PHILOSOPHY 5things. The mythologies were genuine,and their gods and their heroes were real,by every test of genuineness and realityknown to the uncritical mental processeswhich fashioned them.Change and decay, growth, life and

death, are the phases of experience thatmost powerfully arouse man's wonderand stimulate his desire to know.Where do men and things come from?How are they made? How do theygrow? What becomes of them aftertheir disappearance or death ? - - theseare the questions for which an answer issought. The far-away Indian in hisUpanishads cried out : Is Brahman thecause ? Whence are we born ? Where-by do we live, and whither do we go ?O, ye who know Brahman, tell us atwhose command we abide, whether inpain or in pleasure To these questionsthe mythologies offered answers which


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6 PHILOSOPHYwere sufficient for long periods of time,and which are to-day sufficient for a greatportion, perhaps by far the greater por-tion, of the human race.An important step, far-reaching in itsconsequences, was taken when man firstsought the cause of change and decay inthings themselves and in the laws whichappeared to govern things, rather than inpowers and forces outside of and beyondthem. When the question was firstasked, What is it that persists amidall changes and that underlies everychange? a new era was about to dawnin the history of man's wonder and hisdesire to know. Thales, who first askedthis question and first offered an answerto it, deserves his place at the head ofthe list of the Seven Wise Men of Greece.After Thales the wise men of Greece leftoff telling tales and busied themselveswith an examination of experience andwith direct reflection upon it.


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PHILOSOPHY 7It is to be noticed, however, that theevidence of the senses is no longer A

accepted at its face value. With Thalessomething new comes into view. It isthe systematic search for the explanationof things that appear, with the assump-tion that the explanation lies behind theappearances themselves and is concealedby them. But as yet, man's gaze waswholly outward. The relation of thenature that he observed to his own con-sciousness was implied, but unques-tioned. Consciousness itself and theknowing process remained to be exam-ined. To turn man's gaze from outward] (5)to inward, to change the center of gravityof his desire to know, of his wonder,from nature to man himself, was theIservice of Socrates. That man is a

;

reasoning animal, that knowledge mustbe examined and tested by standards ofits own, and that conduct must be


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8 PHILOSOPHYfounded on rational principles, are theimmortal teachings of Socrates, as muchneeded now as when he first unfoldedthem. They mark him forever as thediscoverer of the intellectual life. OfSocrates it may truly be said, in thestately verse of ^Eschylus :

I brought to earth the spark of heavenly fire,Concealed at first, and small, but spreading soonAmong the sons of men, and burning on,Teacher of art and use, and fount of power.(Prometheus Vinctus, 109.)

The maxim, An unexamined life isnot worth living/' is the priceless legacyof Socrates to the generations of menwho have followed him upon this earth.The beings who have stood on human-ity's summit are those, and only those,who have heard the voice of Socratesacross the centuries. The others area superior kind of cattle.


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PHILOSOPHY 9The intellectual life, once discovered,

was eagerly pursued by the two menwho have done most to shape thethought of the Western World. Fortwo generations the brilliant insight andnoble imagery of Plato and the persist-ently accurate analytic and syntheticpowers of Aristotle poured out for theuse of men the rapid results of wideobservation, profound reflection, andsubtlest intellectual sympathy. Fornearly two thousand years the scholarsof the world could find little else tooccupy them than the problems whichPlato and Aristotle had proposed and thesolutions which they had offered. Theweight of their authority was so greatthat it prevented the spirit of new inquiryfrom rising to its feet for a period longerthan half of all recorded history.

In a general way, different types ofproblem were marked off from each other


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io PHILOSOPHYduring the whole of this long period ofdevelopment and study, but the lines ofdistinction that seem clear to-day werenot often noticed or followed. Questionsas to an unseen and superior power, asto logical processes, and as to naturalobjects and laws were curiously inter-mingled. Astronomy, mathematics, me-chanics,* and medicine broke off one byone from the parent stem, but it was along time before the other separatesciences that we moderns know, wereable to follow them. Both Plato andAristotle had indicated the distinctionbetween the different orders of humanthinking which is all-controlling, butneither they nor their most influentialsuccessors maintained the distinctionconsistently by any means. I So it hap-pened that what we call science, what wecall philosophy, and what we call theology Jwere for a long time inextricably mixed.


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PHILOSOPHY iiTo no inconsiderable extent they remainso to-day. To disentangle them is thefirst step toward comprehending whatphilosophy is and what part it has toplay in the intellectual life.

There are three separate stages ororders of thinking manifested by man.At the first stage, the human mind seesonly a world of separate and independentobjects. These objects are grouped incertain roughly marked visible andaudible ways, or by the pleasure or pain,the comfort or discomfort, that theycause; but their likenesses and unlike-nesses and their possible interrelation-ships are of very subordinate importance.These in no wise limit, alter, or interferewith the separateness of the objectsthemselves or with what is called theirreality. Each elm tree seems a realobject, an integer, an independent thing.

*


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12 PHILOSOPHYA falling apple suggests not a universallaw of nature, but a means of gratifyingan individual appetite. Such relationsas one of these separate things appearsto have, are looked upon as quite secon-dary, even if they are apprehended at all.This is the stage of naive, uncriticalknowledge. It lies below the horizon ofthe intellectual life. It is characteristicof the child and of the countless millionsof unreflecting adults. It has beendignified by the name common-sense,but its proper designation is commonignorance. This common-sense is not,of course, the good, sound judgmentwhich is often characterized by thatname; it is merely the unreflecting andunanalyzed opinion of the ordinary man.The intellectual life begins when this 7kind of common-sense is left behind.At the second stage or order of think-ing the world appears as something quite


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PHILOSOPHY 13different. Instead of a world of fixedand definite objects whose interrelationsare unimportant, the mind now sees thateverything is in relation to every otherthing and that relations are of massivesignificance; indeed, that they are controll-ing. The elm tree, far from being a sim-ple and single unit, is now recognized asan organic form of being, a congeries ofcells, of atoms of carbon, of oxygen, ofhydrogen, no one of which the unaidedhuman eye can see, much less the untu-tored human mind grasp. A fallingapple no longer suggests merely thegratification of an appetite ; it illustratesthe laws which bind the universe into co-herent unity. So-called common-senseis staggered by the revelations that thishigher form of knowing presses upon itand insists that it accept, with or withoutcomprehension It is now seen that noobject is independent. Each depends on


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i4 PHILOSOPHYevery other, and dependence, relativity, isthe controlling principle of the universe.Under the'guidance of Newton, reenforcedby the discoveries of a Helmholtz and aKelvin, this stage or order of knowingnow goes so far as to say that depend-ence, relativity, is so absolute, that ifeven tlie slightest of objects be disturbedin position or altered in mass, the outer-most rim of the material universe will beaffected thereby ; and measurably so, ifonly our instruments of precision wereable for the task. The point of view, themethod, and the results of this secondstage or order of knowing are science. ^It can now be seen how little truththere is in -Huxley's much-quoted dictumthat science is organized common-sense.That is precisely what science is notScience is a wholly different kind ofknowledge from common-sense, and itcontradicts common-sense at almost


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PHILOSOPHY 15every point. To common-sense, the sunrevolves about the earth ; to science, thecontrary is established fact. \ To common-sense, a plank is still and stable; toscience it is a huge group of rapidly re-volving centers of energy. JTo common-sense, water is a true element ; to science,it is a compound of atoms of the famil-iar hydrogen and oxygen. To common-sense, the Rosetta stone is a bit of rockcovered with more or less regular mark-ings, probably for a decorative purpose ;to science it is the key to a forgotten lan-guage and the open door to the knowl-edge of a lost civilization. Even whencommon-sense recognizes certain simplerelations of dependence, it has no reali-zation of their meaning, and it is withoutthe power of analysis needed to climb tothe higher plane of science. Here rulethe stern laws that scientific knowing hasdiscovered in its objects. The laws of


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16 PHILOSOPHYcause and effect, of the persistence offorce, of the indestructibility of matter

these and their derivatives bring theknown world of relations and relatedobjects under their sway. Anxiously,eagerly, untiringly, one field of intellec-tual interest after another is added to thedomain of science, familiar facts are ex-plained by strange and unfamiliar laws,the obvious and the apparent are tracedback to hidden and indeed invisiblecauses. The human mind, as intelligent,glows with pride at the glad discoverythat the nature which invites and temptsit is intelligible, that it is made in themind's own image.At the third stage or order of knowing,the world or cosmos appears in still an-other aspect. It is now seen as Totality.When the world is viewed as Totality,there is obviously nothing to which it canbe related, nothing on which it can be de-


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PHILOSOPHY 17pendent, no source from which its energycan be derived. We pass, therefore, atthis stage of knowing, from the plane ofinterdependence, relativity, to the planeof self-dependence, self-relation, self-activ-ity. Self-active Totality is the source ororigin of all the energies and forces andmotions which in one manifestation oranother are observed in their interrela-tions and interdependences by the stage Yor order of knowing which is science.The unrefuted and, I venture to think,the irrefutable arguments of Plato in theTenth Book of the Laws and of Aristotlein the Eleventh Book of the Metaphysics,supported by twenty-five centuries of hu-man experience and the insights of onegreat thinker, poet, and spiritual leaderafter another, are the foundation onwhich this third stage or order of know-ing rests. Its habit of mind, its stand-point, and its insights are philosophy.


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i8 PHILOSOPHYJust as science is marked off fromcommon-sense and raised above it byanalysis and the laws of relativity, sophilosophy is marked off from scienceand raised above it by further analysisand the laws of self-relation. In proceed-ing from common-sense to science weexchange a chaos of separate units foran ordered whole of interdependent parts ;in proceeding from science to philosophywe exchange the working hypotheses ofthe understanding for the guiding in-sights of the reason.There are those, however, who offer

stubborn resistance to the proposal topass from the second stage or order ofknowing to the third, from science tophilosophy. They protest that they areinvited to pass from clear daylight intoa fog, from accurate and easily testedknowledge to participation in a mockbattle with meaningless words. They


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PHILOSOPHY 19recall the sterility of science until obser-vation and experiment were set free fromthe trammels of authority and tradition,and they are fearful lest new and stillmore irksome bonds will somehow beput upon them. Yet these objectors arenot worried about the InfinitesimalAnalysis or the Calculus of the Infinite.They allow the mathematician to speakunmolested of the^ eyeless observationof his sense-transcending world/' Theyview without alarm the statement of thephysicist that the ether, electricity, force,energy, molecule, atom, electron, are butthe symbols of our groping thoughts,created by an inborn necessity of thehuman mind which strives to make allthings reasonable/' To this the studentof philosophy says Amen and restshis case.That inborn necessity of the humanmind which strives to make all things


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20 PHILOSOPHYreasonable creates both science and phi- jlosophy. To think the world as Totalityis a necessity of clear and adequate think-ing about anything. To deny this, doesnot escape from philosophy. It is onlyto substitute a certainly bad philosophyfor a possibly good one. To refuse toadmit Totality is merely to adhere to aconcept of Totality which is negative.

It is also urged that science is false toitself if it admits a region or realm intowhich it does not or may not penetrate,that to exclude science is to enthronemystery. Just so the naive human con-sciousness might urge, for the finality ofits point of view, that the elm tree is areal unit, that the sun does move aroundthe earth, that water is a genuine element,for the senses tell it so, and that to refuseto believe the evidence of the senses is tothrow down the one sure barrier betweenthe real and the unreal. The answer of


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PHILOSOPHY 21science is simple enough. It replies thatit does not deny the evidence of thesenses, but only inquires what is really/involved in that which the senses reportj/So philosophy, far from being at warwith science, accepts its point of viewand its results, and only asks what these//involve and imply. There is certainlyno region or realm into which sciencedoes not or ought not to aim to pene-trate on theplane in which science moves.Its error is when it imitates the protestof the naive consciousness against itself,and appeals from a higher court to alower one. Science will grow in powerand in influence over the minds of men,and clear thinking will be greatly ad-vanced, as full realization is had of themeaning of the profoundly impressivewords of Lotze : The true source of thelife of science is to be found ... inshowing how absolutely universal is the


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22 PHILOSOPHYextent, and at the same time how com-pletely subordinate the significance, ofthe mission which mechanism has tofulfil in the structure of the world/'

In other words, science is a subordi-jnate category. When science offers it-self as the final stage or form of knowing,it is guilty of a false quantity, in that itputs the accent, which belongs elsewhere,upon the penultimate.The history of man's intellectual de-

velopment is in no small part a recordof the relations and interrelations be-tween scientific and philosophic know-ing, between science and philosophy.Both had a common historic origin,both had received massive contributionsfrom the same minds. Each has triedin vain to supplant and to dispossess theother. No exercises of the human un-derstanding are so futile as those todeduce or construct an explanation of


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PHILOSOPHY 23natural phenomena as interrelated, witheyes and mind alike tight-closed to ob-servation and experiment. This is themeaning of Bacon's much-quoted apho-rism : Natura enim non nisi parendomncitur. On the other hand, no exer-cises of the human understanding areso pathetically incompetent as those tomake the laws governing the interrelatedparts serve for self-related Totality.The fact that the heavy hand of au-

thority made use of philosophy as aweapon to combat science and its pre-tensions, as science began to grow intoself-consciousness, explains much of theantagonism between science and philoso-%phy which has marked the past five hun-dred years. The fact that men of sciencehave not infrequently regarded philosophyas an outworn form of human supersti-tion, gives ground for an understandingof the contempt for science which repre-


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24 PHILOSOPHYsentatives of philosophy have sometimespermitted themselves to express.

To-day, however, he who wishes maysee clearly that each, science and phi-losophy, has a field of its own, that both\are necessary to the completeness of the \intellectual life, that the sure advance |of either is a source of strength to theother, and that the more stupendous theirachievements the more impressive therationality of the universe is seen to be.

Philosophic thinking presents difficul-V ties peculiar to itself, because by its very1i nature it must dispense with the aid of

1 images or mental pictures. It deals with[concepts. Much irrational criticism of' philosophy and not a little bad philosophyare directly traceable to the confusion ofimages and concepts, of imagination andconception. The statement that a giventhing is inconceivable, that it cannot be


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PHILOSOPHY 25grasped in thought, will usually be foundto mean that it is unimaginable, thatit cannot be pictured. Herbert 'Spencerfalls into this error at a critical pointin his argument This initial error andhis unquestioning acceptance, throughlack of knowledge of Kant, of Ham-ilton's and Mansel's grotesque applica-tion of a portion of Kant's teachings,cause Herbert Spencer's splendid workfor the coordination and synthesis ofthe sciences to fall short of being phi-losophy at all. The more acute-mindedBishop Berkeley made the same errorin regard to images and concepts, andthereby failed to advance philosophy ashis great natural powers so well quali-fied him to do.The beginner in the study of geometry

is taught the distinction between theconcept of a triangle and its image orpicture. He uses in his demonstration


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26 PHILOSOPHYof the properties of a triangle only thosecharacteristics of the particular figurethat he draws or makes, which are com-mon to all triangles. Neither the lengthof the sides nor the size of the angles istaken into account. His demonstrationwould hold good if a triangular figure ofany other sort or size were substitutedfor that which he is using. The particu-lar figure or image is only a symbol ofthe concept triangle; it has no significanceof its own. The concept, triangle, is theessential thing. It is the rule or definitionaccording to which all particular triangles,or images of triangles, are made, what-ever the length or disposition of theirsides or the size of their angles. Tograsp this distinction between conceptsand images and to comprehend the re-lation between them, is essential to philo-sophic thinking of any sort. . For example,the image, water, is a mental picture of


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PHILOSOPHY 27some particular appearance of water. Itmay perhaps be the rolling and turbulentocean, a placid lake, or a tumbling moun-tain brook. The concept, water, includesthe rising of moisture from earth or sea,its gathering into clouds, its condensationinto falling rain, its pools, its streams, itsgreat lakes and seas; its hardening intoice at one temperature, its passing off insteam at another; its composition ofhydrogen and oxygen; its every mani-festation and characteristic. The conceptbrings to mind that process, that trans-forming energy, which restlessly revealsitself now in one form or mass of water,now in another. It deals with that whichpersists when any given form or mani-festation of water passes away. The con-cept represents the process, the energy,which is at hand whenever and whereverwater appears ; the image represents aparticular and transitory appearance.


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28 PHILOSOPHYWhen this point is reached, the studentof philosophy is really beginning to think.He has laid the foundation for a standard

of values, for judgments of worth asdistinguished from judgments of fact.He has caught sight of the real differencebetween the permanent and the transitory.

Philosophic knowing, like scientificknowing and the uncritical knowledge ofthe child, is compassed about by the formsof consciousness, and its results, like thoseof science, are cast in these forms. Aboveand outside of these forms no knowingcan by any possibility go. The sug-gestion is sometimes made in seriousfashion that before consciousness wasdeveloped, the nature and appearance ofthe world were of a certain kind. Thestatement is not only unimaginable, butinconceivable as well. The words meannothing. An instant's reflection shows


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PHILOSOPHY 29that consciousness, which had supposedlynot yet been developed, is peeping frombehind a curtain in yonder cloud to seehow the world is getting on without it.The world is in and for consciousness,and no possible juggling with words canshake this final foundation on which allour knowing, of every kind, is built. Putconsciousness out of the door and it isinstantly back through the window. Thisexplains why philosophy interprets interms of will the name for the onlyenergy that consciousness knows directly-the energy which so abundantly and somarvelously manifests itself on everyhand in nature and in history. The con-scious effort of moving the hand, thehead, the eye, is the type and norm bywhich we interpret, as the results ofenergy, the changes of position and ofmass which we so incessantly observe.The concepts of force and energy are


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30 PHILOSOPHYof necessity referred to the concept of willas their explanation. Moreover, in thecourse of the development of the formsof life we find irritability, a form of energywhich we must interpret in terms of will,long before we find anything approachinga manifestation of intelligence. Intelli-gence appears either as a later develop-ment out of will, or as a graft upon it.A weighty group of modern physicistsbelieve that matter itself, in its ultimatestate, may be analyzed into energy, whichagain is only humanly explainable as will.A strong, and, in myview,the dominant,tendency in philosophy, powerfully sup-ported by the results of scientific know-ing, is that which sees Totality as energy,which is will. Perpetual motion is clearlyimpossible, from a mechanical point ofview, at the scientific stage of knowing.Just because of this fact, all mechanicalmotion can only be explained as having


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PHILOSOPHY 31originated as will-force. This will-forceis self-active Totality. The ethical andthe metaphysical,as well as the theologicalresults and implications of this conclu-sion, are of the first order of importance.

There is, I venture to think, no groundfor the ordinarily accepted statement ofthe relation of philosophy to theology andreligion. It is usually said that whilephilosophy is the creation of an individualmind, theology or religion is, like folk-lore and language, the product of thecollective mind of a people or a race.This is to confuse philosophy with phi-losophies, a common and, it must beadmitted, a not unnatural confusion. Butwhile a philosophy is the creation of aPlato, an Aristotle, a Spinoza, a Kant,or a Hegel, philosophy itself is, likereligion, folk-lore and language, a productof the collective mind of humanity. It


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32 PHILOSOPHYis advanced, as these are, by individualadditions, interpretations, and syntheses,but it is none the less quite distinct fromsuch individual contributions. Philoso-phy is humanity's hold on Totality, andit becomes richer and more helpful asman's intellectual horizon widens, ashis intellectual vision grows clearer, andas his insights become more numerousand more sure. Theology is philosophyof a particular type. It is an interpreta-tion of Totality in terms of God and Hisactivities. In the impressive words ofPrincipal Caird, that philosophy which istheology seeks

to bind together -objectsand events in the links of necessarythought, and to find their last groundand reason in that which comprehendsand transcends all - - the nature of GodHimself/' Religion is the apprehensionand the adoration of the God Whomtheology postulates.


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PHILOSOPHY 33If the whole history of philosophy besearched for material with which to in-

struct the beginner in what philosophyreally is and in its relation to theologyand religion, the two periods or epochsthat stand out above all others as usefulfor this purpose are Greek thought from $Thales to Socrates, and that interpreta-tion of the teachings of Christ by philos-'ophy which gave rise, at the hands ofthe Church Fathers, to Christian the-ology. In the first period we see thesimple, clear-cut steps by which the mindof Europe was led from explanationsthat were

fairy-talesto a natural, well-

analyzed, and increasingly profound inter-pretation of the observed phenomenaof Nature. The process is so orderlyand so easily grasped that it is an invalu-able introduction to the study of philo-sophic thinking. In the second periodwe see philosophy, now enriched by the


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34 PHILOSOPHYliterally huge contributions of Plato, Aris-totle, and the Stoics, intertwining itselfabout the simple Christian tenets andbuilding the great system of creeds andthoughtwhich has immortalized the namesof Athanasius and Hilary, Basil and Greg-ory, Jerome and Augustine, and which hasgiven color and form to the intellectuallife of Europe for nearly two thousandyears. For the student of to-day thesedevelopments have great practical value,and the astonishing neglect and ignoranceof them both are most discreditable.The student of philosophy is more

fortunate than some of his contempora-ries in his attitude toward the periodcalled the Middle Ages.The very use of the name MiddleAges to describe a group of ten centuriesis sufficient evidence that those centuriesare neither understood nor appreciated.The modern world at the time of its


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PHILOSOPHY 35beginnings reacted so sharply and soemphatically against the methods andideals which had guided the civilizationof the centuries that went before, thatfor the time being the laws of evolutionwere forgotten and the attempt was madeto break completely with the past and tobegin the history of civilization anew.The student of philosophy, however, findsin the so-called Middle Ages a rich fieldfor study and contemplation. He seesthere the mind of modern Europe atschool. It is learning to think and touse the tools of thought. It is sharp-ening and refining language, and thenations that are to be are making each alanguage of its own. The view of lifewhich Christian theology then taughtwith marvelous uniformity was workingits way into the consciousness of thoseNorthern peoples who had both over-thrown the Roman civilization and been


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36 PHILOSOPHYoverwhelmed by it, and was the control-ling power in their lives.To suppose that such an age as thiscan be properly described as dark, is onlyto invite attention to the limitations ofone's own knowledge and sympathy.No age was dark in any true sense thatwitnessed the assembling of scholars atthe feet of Alcuin and Hrabanus Maurus;that saw the rise of universities, of guildsand of cities; that was fired by the enthu-siasm and the zeal of St. Dominic andSt. Francis ; that gave birth to the storyof the Cid, of the Holy Grail, of the Nibe-lungenlied, and the divine comedy ofDante; that witnessed those triumphs ofGothic architecture that still delight eacheye that rests upon them ; or that knew theConstitutions of Clarendon, the MagnaCharta, and the legal Commentaries ofBracton. Such an age as this is per-haps not one with which any century


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PHILOSOPHY 37since the seventeenth stands in closesympathy, but it is neither a dark age nora middle age. It has significance andvalue of its own. It witnessed the prep-aration of the mind of Europe for whatwas to come, and it is not poor, but rich,in evidences of culture and reflection.This is particularly true in the domainsof philosophy and of literature. Thestudent of philosophy does not overlookthis fact.

Any study of philosophy that is worthwhile will lay strong emphasis on aknowledge of the historical developmentof philosophic thought. It will dwellupon the influence of philosophy uponthe activities of men, from the time of itscrude beginnings by the shores of Virgil's

Sails placidi vultum fluctusque quietosto the crowded, hastening, electric-boundworld of to-day. For the history of


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38 PHILOSOPHYphilosophy is, in fact, as Professor Ferrieronce said it was, philosophy itselftaking its time, and seen through amagnifying glass. Against the back-ground of the centuries man's efforts tograsp and to explain Totality, of whichhe is a part, stand out in splendid illu-mination. The two greatest and mostenduring achievements are easily seen tohave been the work of the Greek andthe German minds. The cosmologicalmethod of the one and the psychologicalmethod of the other, when broughttogether in synthesis, offer us the deepestinsights of which humanity has yet beencapable. The Greek and the Germanlanguages are the most adequate to theexpression of philosophic thinking, forthe reason that these languages mirrorthe powers and characteristics of theracial groups that brought them intobeing. In making their weighty con-


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PHILOSOPHY 39tributions to philosophy, the Greek andthe German peoples evolved language-forms competent to give expression totheir profoundest thoughts. Their fourchief representatives - - Plato, Aristotle,Kant, Hegel tower, like mountainpeaks above the plain, over all otherswho have given voice, in systematic form,to man's highest intellectual aspirations.St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas,Spinoza, and perhaps also Descartes,follow a little distance behind. Noothers have climbed so far up the HillDifficulty as these.

To grasp in fullest significance the move-ment of contemporary thought, and topass judgment upon it with some ap-proach to a proper sense of proportion,the student must know his Kant. MaxM tiller's phrase was a good one : Kant'slanguage is the lingua franca of modern


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40 PHILOSOPHYphilosophy. It is not too much to saythat without an understanding of Kantthe door to a just appreciation of modernthought is closed. The reason for thisjudgment is that the adequacy of mostmodern thinking is to be tested primarilyby the method* it pursues, and Kant isthe great reformer of philosophicalmethod. One may watch the justly em-phatic Empiricism of Bacon marchstraight forward to its logical conclusionin the almost unlimited Skepticism ofHume. On the other hand, one may seeclearly enough how the rationalisticmethod which commended itself to Des-cartes developed of necessity into thefull-fledged and all-inclusive Dogmatismof Christian Wolff. The two conflictingmethods, Empiricism and Rationalism,resulted, at the end of something morethan a hundred years, in two mutuallycontradictory sets of conclusions, Skepti-


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PHILOSOPHY 41cism and Dogmatism. Each mightabuse the other, but neither could refutethe other. An absolute deadlock waspresented by the thought of the eighteenthcentury as it found expression on theone hand chiefly in England, and on theother hand chiefly in Germany. To breakthis deadlock there was need of somenew method which could mediate, so tospeak, between the extremes of Empiri- \cism and Rationalism. | That method isthe critical method of Immanuel KantThe story of his own intellectual devel-opment, the steps by which he climbedup from one point of view in philosophyto a higher and more inclusive one, untilfinally he produced the Kritik der reinenVernunft, is one of the most instructiveand illuminating in the whole history ofhuman thinking. The student who hasreally come to an understanding of Kant,his method, and his contribution to


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42 PHILOSOPHYphilosophy, is ready for any task thatreflection can put upon him.

It is said of Kant that he used to tellhis students at Konigsberg that he soughtto teach them, not philosophy, but howto think philosophically. This view ofthe teaching of philosophy, which I holdto be the correct one, is the reason whystudents of philosophy, particularly be-ginners, should concern themselves withthe works of the genuine masters ofphilosophic thinking, and not waste theirtime and dissipate their energies uponthe quasi-philosophical and the frivo-lously-philosophical writing, chiefly mod-ern and largely contemporary, which maybe not inappropriately described as in-volving Great Journeys to the Homesof Little ThoughtsThe clever intellectual posing and atti-tudinizing of Nietzsche, whose body and


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PHILOSOPHY 43mind alike were sorely stricken with ill-ness, is only a travesty upon philosophy.The curiously barren efforts of Haeckel,when he leaves the field of science inwhich he is an adept, are but little better.Even the form of philosophy called Prag-matism, for which the great names ofOxford, Harvard, and Columbia are aca-demic sponsors, and which when unfoldedto the man in the street leads him tohowl with delight because he at last un-derstands things, should come late andnot early in a student's philosophicalreading. A background of considerablephilosophical knowledge will aid in giv-ing to it a just appreciation. There arecritics who have the fear that Pragmatism,in its attempt to be both profound andpopular, may, forgetful of the ancientwarning of Plautus, suffer from attempt-ing to blow and to swallow at the sametime.


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44 PHILOSOPHYThe English and American student of

philosophy is in no small measure handi-capped by the fact that there is so littlegenuinely first-class philosophical writingin the English language. The Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic people haveexpressed themselves in much noblepoetry and in political institutions of thegreatest value and importance, but theirpositive contributions to constructive phil-osophical thinking have been meager.They have at times offered the obstacleof sharp criticism and unsatisfied skep-ticism to the progress of obscure, ex-treme, and unsound tendencies in phil-osophic thinking, but the stones thatthey have laid upon the permanent struc-ture of philosophy are few. Of writersin English during the last decades of thenineteenth century, the twoCairds, thetwoWallaces, Green, and Harris stand almostalone in their ability to reach really ex-


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PHILOSOPHY 45ceptional heights in the task of philo-sophic criticism and interpretation. Theyhave all enjoyed the advantages of whatis so conspicuously lacking in most con-temporary writing on philosophy, namely,broad and deep philosophical scholarship.After the human race has been at workon its chief problem for thousands ofyears, the man who ignores all that hasbeen accomplished and is consumed withan ambition to be original, is pretty cer-tain to end by being simply queer.

It would be a grateful task, did oppor-tunity offer, to point to some of the con-clusions of philosophy

which seem to meto be the surest: to show that nothingless than an eternal moral order will sat-isfy our deepest human needs or our lof-tiest human aspirations, an eternal moralorder which is the final test of all theo-ries and explanations; to urge the sig-nificance of the testimony of the human


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PHILOSOPHY 47phy is nothing but the study of specificforms or types of unity, and to illus-trate the principle of Spinoza that athing has only so much reality as it pos-sesses power ; to bring evidence to provethe fact that philosophy does for thethought which combines and unifies |things what science does for the factsor things combined and unified ; to tracethe hand of philosophy in architecture,in painting, and sculpture, in poetry andin the political and religious institutionsthat mankind has made ; to follow downthe course of events in the WesternWorld and to illustrate how true is thesaying of Thucydides that history isphilosophy learned from examples; toindicate the close relations between phi-losophy and the logic which is mathe-matics, relations felt or suspected byPythagoras and Plato, by Descartes andSpinoza, by Leibnitz and Kant, and to


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48 PHILOSOPHYsuggest ways in which mathematics canand does lead from science to philoso-phy and binds them together; to re-veal the laws of evolution as significantand vital principles in philosophy longbefore the sciences of nature discov-ered and proved the existence of thesame or similar laws in their ownsphere ; to throw light upon the deepestcleavage known to history - - that be-tween Orient and Occident - - by con-trasting the civilization based upon aphilosophy that cannot account for or ex-plain independent individuals, that holdsany appearance of such to be Maya, illu-sion, and that longs for return to, and ab-sorption in, Nirvana, with that civilizationwhich is based upon a philosophy thatdoes account for and explain indepen-dent individuals, and that calls on themto exert and develop themselves to theutmost in order to approach nearer to


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PHILOSOPHY 49intellectual and moral perfection. Allthis, and much more, philosophy en-deavors to teach.More than seventy years ago De

Tocqueville expressed the opinion thatin no country in the civilized world isless attention paid to philosophy than inthe United States. At that time he wasright, but, fortunately, he is right nolonger. Philosophy is now vigorouslyprosecuted among us. Wordsworth's years that bring the philosophic mind,are bringing it in some measure to us.We must cultivate and encourage thatphilosophic mind, for we are sorely inneed of it to bring unity into our knowl-|edge, to install securely principle in thejudgment-seat before which conflictingpractices are the contentious litigants, togain a sense of proportion and a point of Iview in the study of history and of na-ture, and to set final foot on the head of


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50 PHILOSOPHYthe dragon Philistinism that everywhereassails worth in the name of that whichworks/' Perhaps we may venture evento cherish the hope that, in Victor Hugo'swell-known

phrase,Ceci tuera cela We need philosophy, too, to aid us to

gain that even mind in things severethat Horace counsels, and to help us tosee life steadily and see it whole, as\Matthew Arnold sang of Sophocles.The modern world has sat at the feet ofthe ancient world for a long time, but ithas not yet learned all that the ancientworld has to teach.

To carry into science and philosophythe presuppositions of uncritical knowl-edge is to lead ourselves into curiousvagaries and contradictions, unless wecan rise above or outgrow such presup-positions. Education is in no smallmeasure preparing the way for the intel-


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PHILOSOPHY 51lectual life and pointing to it. Thosewho cannot enter in at its gates aredoomed, in Leonardo da Vinci's words,to possess neither the profit nor thebeauty of the world/' For them lifemust be short, however manyitsyears, andbarren, however plentiful its acts. Theirears are deaf to the call of the indwellingReason, and their eyes are blind to all themeanings and the values of human ex-perience. Where there is no vision, thepeople and the university perish


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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The American As He IsThird ThousandCloth, I2mo, A + 164 pages ; price, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.08

THE AMERICAN AS A POLITICAL TYPE THE AMERICAN APART FROMHIS GOVERNMENT THE AMERICAN AND THE

INTELLECTUAL LIFE We commend this little volume as a really precious contribution tocurrent public opinion. Toronto (Canada) Daily Star.No one who would draw a political horoscope can afford to missreading this little book a masterpiece of easy learning, orderly in-formation, and well compacted argument. The Economist (London). President Butler's book contains more sound and sane Americanismthan any similar discussion of recent years. Its patriotic optimism andits emphasis of the highest ideals constitute the message it contains.

Pittsburg (Pa.) Gazette-Times. The four lectures are good for home as well as foreign consumption,and are deservedly published for that purpose. They will serve to cor-rect both a provincial and a pessimistic view of our domestic condi-tions. There is hardly a sentence that needs correction. The Out-look (New York). It is one of the best analyses ever written of our national life andcharacter. Living Church (Philadelphia). Dans une langue a la fois elegante et precise, dont la belle traductionde Mme. Boutroux rend bien la nerveuse precision, M. Butler exposetour a tour la vie politique, la vie des Americains en dehors de leurgouvernement et leur vie intellectuelle. Revue Universitaire (Paris) .

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS


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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Meaning of EducationFourteenth Thousand

Cloth, ismo, xii + 230 pages ; price, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.10THE MEANING OF EDUCATION WHAT KNOWLEDGE Is OF MOSTWORTH Is THERE A NEW EDUCATION DEMOCRACY AND ED-

UCATION THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AND THE AMERICANUNIVERSITY THE FUNCTION OF THE SECONDARY

SCHOOL THE REFORM OF SECONDARYEDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

* Dr. Butler's unfoldment of his views and theories is marked by clear-ness of statement, a lucid style, and deep thoughtfulness and logic.The book is suggestive and inspiring. Detroit (Mich.) Free Press.Since the discovery of evolution no more vital work on educationhas appeared than this volume of essays. Oakland (Cal.) Enquirer.It is a pleasure to commend this book as a standard-bearer in theceaseless struggle going on for the betterment of the American systemof education. The late WILLIAM T. HARRIS, in Book Reviews (NewYork). The power of this volume resides in its sincerity, its intelligence, andits delightful clarity ; for Dr. Butler is a master of the art of lucid andpersuasive presentation. The Outlook (New York).We can confidently assure the reader that it will serve more thanany other treatise with which we are acquainted to expand and clarifyhis views on education and related topics. As a specimen of manly,direct, piquant, and perspicuous writing it will also repay perusal.Brooklyn (N.Y.) Citizen.A singularly luminous plea for the great social unity, as it may becalled, of education and life. HENRY JAMES. Philosophic depth, wide sympathies, and literary distinction of stylesuch a rare combination cannot fail to command a hearing, eventhough the theme be education. Journal of Education (London). Ce livre est Poeuvre tres interessante d'un esprit singulierement avise,ires renseigne et d'une veritable elevation. Revue Internationalede I}Enseignement (Paris).


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BY THE SAME AUTHOR

True and False DemocracyThird ThousandCloth, ismo, xii + in pages ; price, $1.00 net; by mail, $r.o8

TRUE AND FALSE DEMOCRACY EDUCATION OF PUBLIC OPINIONDEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

In these three scholarly essays there is food for thought for everywide-awake American citizen. They represent a striving toward ahigh ideal. Washington (D.C.) Herald. Candor and liberality mark the book throughout. Buffalo (N.Y.)Times.These essays constitute a fine, close study of modern politics.Columbus (Ohio) State Journal. Dr. Butler presents the case against socialism in a clear and forcefulyet temperate manner. Springfield (Conn.) Daily Republican. This is a book full of sound sense from beginning to end. TheSpectator (London).The interpretation of democracy that is here presented to Englishreaders on both sides of the Atlantic is not one that will satisfy thedemagogue. Dr. Butler is careful in letting us know that when he em-ploys the word democracy, he is appealing not to the mob, but to thepeople. Montreal (Canada) Gazette.The book is well written and shows deep thought on the part of theauthor. His words are clear and there can be no mistake about hisstatements. St. Louis (Mo.) Republic. The little book is a most elevating one, and will be helpful to anyperson troubled with doubts of the efficiency of a democratic system ofgovernment. Philadelphia (Pa.) Telegraph.


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