1 i THE LIBRARIES COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY General Library f f fc" a f PHILOSOPHY A LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND ART MARCH 4, 1908 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SALES AGENTS NEW YORK : LEMCKE & BUECHNER 80-82 West 2Tth Street LONDON : HENRY FROWDE Amen Cornee, E.O. TORONTO : HENRY FROWDE 26 Richmond St., "W. PH I LOSO PHY BY NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS THIRD THOUSAND T$eio gorft THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1911 All Rights Reserved b if- c <3 Copyright, 1908, By THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS. Set up and electrotyped. Printed May, igxi. J. 8. Cushlng Co. — Berwick <& Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE This lecture was delivered as one of a series, the purpose of which was to present in summary and compact form a view of each of several sciences and of philosophy as these exist at the present day. In outlining philosophy, its sub- ject-matter and its method, it was the purpose of the lecture clearly to differen- tiate philosophy from science, and to cut away the odd and unfitting scientific garments in which some contemporary writers have sought to clothe philosophy. Some of the passing forms of so-called philosophic thought are wholly below the plane on which philosophy moves. They are not philosophy, nor yet philoso- phies ; they are travesties of both. vi PREFACE No 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 philosophy- is or what the word philosophy means. To call something philosophy is not to make it so. SYLLABUS The desire of knowledge and the wonder of man, i — The mythologies, 3 — Beginnings of critical inquiry, 6 — The significance of Socrates, 7. The three stages or orders of thinking : common knowl- edge, science, philosophy, 11 — Characteristics of common knowledge, 12 — Characteristics of scientific knowing, 13 — Characteristics of philosophic knowing, 16 — Objec- tions to philosophy, 18 — The limitations of science, 21 — Science and philosophy, 22. Conditions of philosophic knowing, 24. — Images and Concepts, 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, 33 — Greek thought from Thales to Socrates, 33 — Phi- losophy of the Church Fathers, 34 — The meaning of the Middle Ages, 36. The history of philosophy, 37 — The Greek and the German contributions to philosophy, 38 — Immanuel Kant, 39 — The study of the great masters of philosophy, 42. Some teachings and aims of philosophy, 45 — The philosophic mind, 49. vii PHILOSOPHY One of the most famous books ever written, and one of the most influential — the Metaphysics of Aristotle — opens with this sentence, " All men by nature are actuated with the desire of knowl- edge." This desire of knowledge and the wonder which it hopes to satisfy are the driving power behind all the changes that we, with careless, question-begging inference, call progress. They and their reactions upon man's other wants and needs have, since history began, wholly altered the appearance of the dwelling- place of man as well as man's relation to his dwelling-place. Yet the physical changes are insignificant, great and nu- merous as they are. The Alps that tried the endurance of Hannibal are the same B • X 2 PHILOSOPHY mountains that tested the skill of Napo- leon. The sea that was beaten by the banked oars of the triremes of Carthage, presents the same surface and the same shores to the fast-going, steam-driven vessel of to-day. But the air, once only a zephyr or a hurricane, is now the bearer of man's silent message to his distant fellow. The crude ore once deeply hid- den in the earth, has been dug and drawn and fashioned into Puck's girdle. The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears. Human aspiration has cast itself, chameleon-like, into the form of noblest verse, of sweetest music, of most moving oratory, of grand- est painting, of most splendid architec- PHILOSOPHY 3 ture, of serenest reflection, of freest gov- ernment. And the end is not yet. The forces — the desire for knowledge and wonder — that have so moved man's world, and are so moving it, must be treated with at least the respect due to age and to great achievement. The naive consciousness of man has always told him that the existence of that consciousness and its forms were the necessary framework for his picture of himself and his world. Long before Kant proved that macht zwar Verstand die Natur aber er schafft sie nicht, man had acted instinctively on the principle. The world that poured into his conscious- ness through the senses, Locke's windows of the soul, was accepted as he found it, and for what the senses did not reveal man fashioned explanations in the forge of his imagination. 4 PHILOSOPHY The unseen powers of heaven and earth, of air and water, of earthquake and thunderbolt, were like himself, but greater, grander. They had human loves and hates, human jealousies and ambitions. Behind the curtain of events they played their game of superhuman life. Offerings and gifts won their aid and their blessing; neglect or disdain brought down their antagonism and their curses. So it was that the desire for knowledge and the wonder of man made the mythologies ; each mythology bearing the image of that racial facet of humanity's whole by which it was reflected. The Theogony, ascribed to Hesiod, shows the orderly completeness to which these mythologies attained. The mythologies represent genuine reflection and not a little insight. They reveal man's simple, naive consciousness busying itself with the explanation of PHILOSOPHY 5 things. The mythologies were genuine, and their gods and their heroes were real, by every test of genuineness and reality known to the uncritical mental processes which fashioned them. Change and decay, growth, life and death, are the phases of experience that most powerfully arouse man's wonder and stimulate his desire to know. Where do men and things come from ? How are they made? How do they grow? What becomes of them after their disappearance or death? — these are the questions for which an answer is sought. The far-away Indian in his Upanishads cried out : " Is Brahman the cause ? Whence are we born ? Where- by do we live, and whither do we go ? O, ye who know Brahman, tell us at whose command we abide, whether in pain or in pleasure! " To these questions the mythologies offered answers which 6 PHILOSOPHY were sufficient for long periods of time, and which are to-day sufficient for a great portion, perhaps by far the greater por- tion, of the human race. An important step, far-reaching in its consequences, was taken when man first sought the cause of change and decay in things themselves and in the laws which appeared to govern things, rather than in powers and forces outside of and beyond them. When the question was first asked, What is it that persists amid all changes and that underlies every change? a new era was about to dawn in the history of man's wonder and his desire to know. Thales, who first asked this question and first offered an answer to it, deserves his place at the head of the list of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. After Thales the wise men of Greece left off telling tales and busied themselves with an examination of experience and with direct reflection upon it. PHILOSOPHY 7 It is to be noticed, however, that the evidence of the senses is no longer accepted at its face value. With Thales something new comes into view. It is the systematic search for the explanation of things that appear, with the assump- tion that the explanation lies behind the appearances themselves and is concealed by them. But as yet, man's gaze was wholly outward. The relation of the nature that he observed to his own con- sciousness was implied, but unques- tioned. Consciousness itself and the knowing process remained to be exam- ined. To turn man's gaze from outward to inward, to change the center of gravity of his desire to know, of his wonder, from nature to man himself, was the service of Socrates. That man is a reasoning animal, that knowledge must be examined and tested by standards of its own, and that conduct must be 8 PHILOSOPHY founded on rational principles, are the immortal teachings of Socrates, as much needed now as when he first unfolded them. They mark him forever as the discoverer of the intellectual life. Of Socrates it may truly be said, in the stately verse of ^schylus : — I brought to earth the spark of heavenly fire, Concealed at first, and small, but spreading soon Among the sons of men, and burning on, Teacher of art and use, and fount of power. {Prometheus Vinctus, 109.) The maxim, " An unexamined life is not worth living," is the priceless legacy of Socrates to the generations of men who 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 Socrates across the centuries. The others are a superior kind of cattle. PHILOSOPHY 9 The intellectual life, once discovered, was eagerly pursued by the two men who have done most to shape the thought of the Western World. For two generations the brilliant insight and noble imagery of Plato and the persist- ently accurate analytic and synthetic powers of Aristotle poured out for the use of men the rapid results of wide observation, profound reflection, and subtlest intellectual sympathy. For nearly two thousand years the scholars of the world could find little else to occupy them than the problems which Plato and Aristotle had proposed and the solutions which they had offered. The weight of their authority was so great that it prevented the spirit of new inquiry from rising to its feet for a period longer than half of all recorded history. In a general way, different types of problem were marked off from each other io PHILOSOPHY during the whole of this long period of development and study, but the lines of distinction that seem clear to-day were not often noticed or followed. Questions as to an unseen and superior power, as to logical processes, and as to natural objects and laws were curiously inter- mingled. Astronomy, mathematics, me- chanics, and medicine broke off one by one from the parent stem, but it was a long time before the other separate sciences that we moderns know, were able to follow them. Both Plato and Aristotle had indicated the distinction between the different orders of human thinking which is all-controlling, but neither they nor their most influential successors maintained the distinction consistently by any means. So it hap- pened that what we call science, what we call philosophy, and what we call theology were for a long time inextricably mixed. PHILOSOPHY ii To no inconsiderable extent they remain so to-day. To disentangle them is the first step toward comprehending what philosophy is and what part it has to play in the intellectual life. There are three separate stages or orders of thinking manifested by man. At the first stage, the human mind sees only a world of separate and independent objects. These objects are grouped in certain roughly marked visible and audible ways, or by the pleasure or pain, the comfort or discomfort, that they cause; but their likenesses and unlike- nesses and their possible interrelation- ships are of very subordinate importance. These in no wise limit, alter, or interfere with the separateness of the objects themselves or with what is called their reality. Each elm tree seems a real object, an integer, an independent thing. 12 PHILOSOPHY A falling apple suggests not a universal law of nature, but a means of gratifying an individual appetite. Such relations as one of these separate things appears to have, are looked upon as quite secon- dary, even if they are apprehended at all. This is the stage of naive, uncritical knowledge. It lies below the horizon of the intellectual life.. It is characteristic of the child and of the countless millions of unreflecting adults. It has been dignified by the name common-sense, but its proper designation is common ignorance. This common-sense is not, of course, the good, sound judgment which is often characterized by that name; it is merely the unreflecting and unanalyzed opinion of the ordinary man. The intellectual life begins when this kind of common-sense is left behind. At the second stage or order of think- ing the world appears as something quite PHILOSOPHY i3 different. Instead of a world of fixed and definite objects whose interrelations are unimportant, the mind now sees that everything is in relation to every other thing and that relations are of massive significance; indeed, that they are controll- ing. The elm tree, far from being a sim- ple and single unit, is now recognized as an organic form of being, a congeries of cells, of atoms of carbon, of oxygen, of hydrogen, no one of which the unaided human eye can see, much less the untu- tored human mind grasp. A falling apple no longer suggests merely the gratification of an appetite ; it illustrates the laws which bind the universe into co- herent unity. So-called common-sense is staggered by the revelations that this higher form of knowing presses upon it and insists that it accept, with or without comprehension It is now seen that no object is independent. Each depends on 14 PHILOSOPHY every other, and dependence, relativity, is the controlling principle of the universe. Under the guidance of Newton, reenforced by the discoveries of a Helmholtz and a Kelvin, this stage or order of knowing now goes so far as to say that depend- ence, relativity, is so absolute, that if even the slightest of objects be disturbed in position or altered in mass, the outer- most rim of the material universe will be affected thereby; and measurably so, if only our instruments of precision were able for the task. The point of view, the method, and the results of this second stage or order of knowing are science. It can now be seen how little truth there is in Huxley's much-quoted dictum that science is organized common-sense. That is precisely what science is not. Science is a wholly different kind of knowledge from common-sense, and it contradicts common-sense at almost PHILOSOPHY , 15 every point. To common-sense, the sun revolves about the earth ; to science, the contrary is established fact. To common- sense, a plank is still and stable ; to science it is a huge group of rapidly re- volving centers of energy. To 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 rock covered 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 when common-sense recognizes certain simple relations of dependence, it has no reali- zation of their meaning, and it is without the power of analysis needed to climb to the higher plane of science. Here rule the stern laws that scientific knowing has discovered in its objects. The laws of 1 6 PHILOSOPHY cause and effect, of the persistence of force, of the indestructibility of matter — these and their derivatives bring the known world of relations and related objects under their sway. Anxiously, eagerly, untiringly, one field of intellec- tual interest after another is added to the domain of science, familiar facts are ex- plained by strange and unfamiliar laws, the obvious and the apparent are traced back to hidden and indeed invisible causes. The human mind, as intelligent, glows with pride at the glad discovery that the nature which invites and tempts it is intelligible, that it is made in the mind'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 can be related, nothing on which it can be de- PHILOSOPHY 17 pendent, no source from which its energy can be derived. We pass, therefore, at this stage of knowing, from the plane of interdependence, relativity, to the plane of self-dependence, self-relation, self-activ- ity. Self-active Totality is the source or origin of all the energies and forces and motions which in one manifestation or another are observed in their interrela- tions and interdependences by the stage or order of knowing which is science. The unrefuted and, I venture to think, the irrefutable arguments of Plato in the Tenth Book of the Laws and of Aristotle in the Eleventh Book of the Metaphysics, supported by twenty-five centuries of hu- man experience and the insights of one great thinker, poet, and spiritual leader after another, are the foundation on which this third stage or order of know- ing rests. Its habit of mind, its stand- point, and its insights are philosophy. 0 i8 PHILOSOPHY Just as science is marked off from common-sense and raised above it by analysis and the laws of relativity, so philosophy is marked off from science and raised above it by further analysis and the laws of self-relation. In proceed- ing from common-sense to science we exchange a chaos of separate units for an ordered whole of interdependent parts ; in proceeding from science to philosophy we exchange the working hypotheses of the understanding for the guiding in- sights of the reason. There are those, however, who offer stubborn resistance to the proposal to pass from the second stage or order of knowing to the third, from science to philosophy. They protest that they are invited to pass from clear daylight into a fog, from accurate and easily tested knowledge to participation in a mock battle with meaningless words. They PHILOSOPHY 19 recall the sterility of science until obser- vation and experiment were set free from the trammels of authority and tradition, and they are fearful lest new and still more irksome bonds will somehow be put upon them. Yet these objectors are not worried about the Infinitesimal Analysis or the Calculus of the Infinite. They allow the mathematician to speak unmolested of the " eyeless observation of his sense-transcending world." They view without alarm the statement of the physicist that " the ether, electricity, force, energy, molecule, atom, electron, are but the symbols of our groping thoughts, created by an inborn necessity of the human mind which strives to make all things reasonable." To this the student of philosophy says Amen ! — and rests his case. That inborn necessity of the human mind which strives to make all things 20 PHILOSOPHY reasonable creates both science and phi- losophy. To think the world as Totality- is a necessity of clear and adequate think- ing about anything. To deny this, does not escape from philosophy. It is only to substitute a certainly bad philosophy for a possibly good one. To refuse to admit Totality is merely to adhere to a concept of Totality which is negative. It is also urged that science is false to itself if it admits a region or realm into which it does not or may not penetrate, that to exclude science is to enthrone mystery. Just so the naive human con- sciousness might urge, for the finality of its point of view, that the elm tree is a real unit, that the sun does move around the earth, that water is a genuine element, for the senses tell it so, and that to refuse to believe the evidence of the senses is to throw down the one sure barrier between the real and the unreal. The answer of PHILOSOPHY 21 science is simple enough. It replies that it does not deny the evidence of the senses, but only inquires what is really involved in that which the senses report. So philosophy, far from being at war with science, accepts its point of view and its results, and only asks what these involve and imply. There is certainly no region or realm into which science does not or ought not to aim to pene- trate on the plane in which science moves. Its error is when it imitates the protest of the naive consciousness against itself, and appeals from a higher court to a lower one. Science will grow in power and in influence over the minds of men, and clear thinking will be greatly ad- vanced, as full realization is had of the meaning of the profoundly impressive words of Lotze : " The true source of the life of science is to be found ... in showing how absolutely universal is the 22 PHILOSOPHY extent, and at the same time how com- pletely subordinate the significance, of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world." In other words, science is a subordi- nate category. When science offers it- self as the final stage or form of knowing, it is guilty of a false quantity, in that it puts the accent, which belongs elsewhere, upon the penultimate. The history of man's intellectual de- velopment is in no small part a record of 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 contributions from the same minds. Each has tried in vain to supplant and to dispossess the other. No exercises of the human un- derstanding are so futile as those to deduce or construct an explanation of PHILOSOPHY 23 natural phenomena as interrelated, with eyes and mind alike tight-closed to ob- servation and experiment. This is the meaning of Bacon's much-quoted apho- rism : Natura enim non nisi parendo vincitur. On the other hand, no exer- cises of the human understanding are so pathetically incompetent as those to make the laws governing the interrelated parts serve for self-related Totality. The fact that the heavy hand of au- thority made use of philosophy as a weapon to combat science and its pre- tensions, as science began to grow into self-consciousness, explains much of the antagonism between science and philoso- phy which has marked the past five hun- dred years. The fact that men of science have not infrequently regarded philosophy as an outworn form of human supersti- tion, gives ground for an understanding of the contempt for science which repre- 2 4 PHILOSOPHY sentatives of philosophy have sometimes permitted themselves to express. To-day, however, he who wishes may see 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 the other, and that the more stupendous their achievements the more impressive the rationality of the universe is seen to be. Philosophic thinking presents difficul- ties peculiar to itself, because by its very nature it must dispense with the aid of images or mental pictures. It deals with concepts. Much irrational criticism of philosophy and not a little bad philosophy are directly traceable to the confusion of images and concepts, of imagination and conception. The statement that a given thing is inconceivable, that it cannot be PHILOSOPHY 25 grasped in thought, will usually be found to mean that it is unimaginable, that it cannot be pictured. Herbert Spencer falls into this error at a critical point in his argument. This initial error and his unquestioning acceptance, through lack 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 work for the coordination and synthesis of the sciences to fall short of being phi- losophy at all. The more acute-minded Bishop Berkeley made the same error in regard to images and concepts, and thereby failed to advance philosophy as his great natural powers so well quali- fied him to do. The beginner in the study of geometry is taught the distinction between the concept of a triangle and its image or picture. He uses in his demonstration 26 PHILOSOPHY of the properties of a triangle only those characteristics of the particular figure that he draws or makes, which are com- mon to all triangles. Neither the length of the sides nor the size of the angles is taken into account. His demonstration would hold good if a triangular figure of any other sort or size were substituted for that which he is using. The particu- lar figure or image is only a symbol of the concept triangle; it has no significance of its own. The concept, triangle, is the essential thing. It is the rule or definition according to which all particular triangles, or images of triangles, are made, what- ever the length or disposition of their sides or the size of their angles. To grasp this distinction between concepts and 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 PHILOSOPHY 27 some particular appearance of water. It may perhaps be the rolling and turbulent ocean, a placid lake, or a tumbling moun- tain brook. The concept, water, includes the rising of moisture from earth or sea, its gathering into clouds, its condensation into falling rain, its pools, its streams, its great lakes and seas; its hardening into ice at one temperature, its passing off in steam at another; its composition of hydrogen and oxygen; its every mani- festation and characteristic. The concept brings to mind that process, that trans- forming energy, which restlessly reveals itself now in one form or mass of water, now in another. It deals with that which persists 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 wherever water appears ; the image represents a particular and transitory appearance. 28 PHILOSOPHY When this point is reached, the student of philosophy is really beginning to think. He has laid the foundation for a standard of values, for judgments of worth as distinguished from judgments of fact. He has caught sight of the real difference between the permanent and the transitory. Philosophic knowing, like scientific knowing and the uncritical knowledge of the child, is compassed about by the forms of consciousness, and its results, like those of science, are cast in these forms. Above and outside of these forms no knowing can by any possibility go. The sug- gestion is sometimes made in serious fashion that before consciousness was developed, the nature and appearance of the world were of a certain kind. The statement is not only unimaginable, but inconceivable as well. The words mean nothing. An instant's reflection shows PHILOSOPHY 29 that consciousness, which had supposedly not yet been developed, is peeping from behind a curtain in yonder cloud to see how the world is getting on without it. The world is in and for consciousness, and no possible juggling with words can shake this final foundation on which all our knowing, of every kind, is built. Put consciousness out of the door and it is instantly back through the window. This explains why philosophy interprets in terms of will — the name for the only energy that consciousness knows directly — the energy which so abundantly and so marvelously manifests itself on every hand in nature and in history. The con- scious effort of moving the hand, the head, the eye, is the type and norm by which we interpret, as the results of energy, the changes of position and of mass which we so incessantly observe. The concepts of force and energy are 30 PHILOSOPHY of necessity referred to the concept of will as their explanation. Moreover, in the course of the development of the forms of life we find irritability, a form of energy which we must interpret in terms of will, long before we find anything approaching a 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 physicists believe that matter itself, in its ultimate state, may be analyzed into energy, which again is only humanly explainable as will. A strong, and, in my view, 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 clearly impossible, from a mechanical point of view, at the scientific stage of knowing. Just because of this fact, all mechanical motion can only be explained as having PHILOSOPHY 3i originated as will-force. This will-force is self-active Totality. The ethical and the metaphysical, as well as the theological results and implications of this conclu- sion, are of the first order of importance. There is, I venture to think, no ground for the ordinarily accepted statement of the relation of philosophy to theology and religion. It is usually said that while philosophy is the creation of an individual mind, theology or religion is, like folk- lore and language, the product of the collective mind of a people or a race. This is to confuse philosophy with phi- losophies, a common and, it must be admitted, a not unnatural confusion. But while a philosophy is the creation of a Plato, an Aristotle, a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel, philosophy itself is, like religion, folk-lore and language, a product of the collective mind of humanity. It 3 2 PHILOSOPHY is advanced, as these are, by individual additions, interpretations, and syntheses, but it is none the less quite distinct from such individual contributions. Philoso- phy is humanity's hold on Totality, and it becomes richer and more helpful as man's intellectual horizon widens, as his intellectual vision grows clearer, and as his insights become more numerous and more sure. Theology is philosophy of a particular type. It is an interpreta- tion of Totality in terms of God and His activities. In the impressive words of Principal Caird, that philosophy which is theology seeks " to bind together objects and events in the links of necessary thought, and to find their last ground and reason in that which comprehends and transcends all — the nature of God Himself." Religion is the apprehension and the adoration of the God Whom theology postulates. PHILOSOPHY 33 If the whole history of philosophy be searched for material with which to in- struct the beginner in what philosophy really is and in its relation to theology and religion, the two periods or epochs that stand out above all others as useful for 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 of the Church Fathers, to Christian the- ology. In the first period we see the simple, clear-cut steps by which the mind of Europe was led from explanations that were fairy-tales to a natural, well- analyzed, and increasingly profound inter- pretation of the observed phenomena of Nature. The process is so orderly and so easily grasped that it is an invalu- able introduction to the study of philo- sophic thinking. In the second period we see philosophy, now enriched by the D 34 PHILOSOPHY literally huge contributions of Plato, Aris- totle, and the Stoics, intertwining itself about the simple Christian tenets and building the great system of creeds and thought which has immortalized the names of Athanasius and Hilary, Basil and Greg- ory, Jerome and Augustine, and which has given color and form to the intellectual life of Europe for nearly two thousand years. For the student of to-day these developments have great practical value, and the astonishing neglect and ignorance of them both are most discreditable. The student of philosophy is more fortunate than some of his contempora- ries in his attitude toward the period called the Middle Ages. The very use of the name Middle Ages to describe a group of ten centuries is sufficient evidence that those centuries are neither understood nor appreciated. The modern world at the time of its PHILOSOPHY 35 beginnings reacted so sharply and so emphatically against the methods and ideals which had guided the civilization of the centuries that went before, that for the time being the laws of evolution were forgotten and the attempt was made to break completely with the past and to begin the history of civilization anew. The student of philosophy, however, finds in the so-called Middle Ages a rich field for study and contemplation. He sees there the mind of modern Europe at school. It is learning to think and to use the tools of thought. It is sharp- ening and refining language, and the nations that are to be are making each a language of its own. The view of life which Christian theology then taught with marvelous uniformity was working its way into the consciousness of those Northern peoples who had both over- thrown the Roman civilization and been 36 PHILOSOPHY overwhelmed by it, and was the control- ling power in their lives. To suppose that such an age as this can be properly described as dark, is only to invite attention to the limitations of one's own knowledge and sympathy. No age was dark in any true sense that witnessed the assembling of scholars at the feet of Alcuin and Hrabanus Maurus; that saw the rise of universities, of guilds and of cities; that was fired by the enthu- siasm and the zeal of St. Dominic and St. Francis ; that gave birth to the story of the Cid, of the Holy Grail, of the Nibe- lungenlied, and the divine comedy of Dante; that witnessed those triumphs of Gothic architecture that still delight each eye that rests upon them ; or that knew the Constitutions of Clarendon, the Magna Charta, and the legal Commentaries of Bracton. Such an age as this is per- haps not one with which any century PHILOSOPHY 37 since the seventeenth stands in close sympathy, but it is neither a dark age nor a middle age. It has significance and value of its own. It witnessed the prep- aration of the mind of Europe for what was to come, and it is not poor, but rich, in evidences of culture and reflection. This is particularly true in the domains of philosophy and of literature. The student of philosophy does not overlook this fact. Any study of philosophy that is worth while will lay strong emphasis on a knowledge of the historical development of philosophic thought. It will dwell upon the influence of philosophy upon the activities of men, from the time of its crude beginnings by the shores of Virgil's Salts placidi vultum fluctusqtie quietos to the crowded, hastening, electric-bound world of to-day. For the history of 38 PHILOSOPHY philosophy is, in fact, as Professor Ferrier once said it was, " philosophy itself taking its time, and seen through a magnifying glass." Against the back- ground of the centuries man's efforts to grasp and to explain Totality, of which he is a part, stand out in splendid illu- mination. The two greatest and most enduring achievements are easily seen to have been the work of the Greek and the German minds. The cosmological method of the one and the psychological method of the other, when brought together in synthesis, offer us the deepest insights of which humanity has yet been capable. The Greek and the German languages are the most adequate to the expression of philosophic thinking, for the reason that these languages mirror the powers and characteristics of the racial groups that brought them into being. In making their weighty con- PHILOSOPHY 39 tributions to philosophy, the Greek and the German peoples evolved language- forms competent to give expression to their profoundest thoughts. Their four chief representatives — Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel — tower, like mountain peaks above the plain, over all others who 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. No others have climbed so far up the Hill Difficulty as these. To grasp in fullest significance the move- ment of contemporary thought, and to pass judgment upon it with some ap- proach to a proper sense of proportion, the student must know his Kant. Max Miiller's phrase was a good one : " Kant's language is the lingua franca of modern 4° PHILOSOPHY philosophy." It is not too much to say that without an understanding of Kant the door to a just appreciation of modern thought is closed. The reason for this judgment is that the adequacy of most modern thinking is to be tested primarily by the method it pursues, and Kant is the great reformer of philosophical method. One may watch the justly em- phatic Empiricism of Bacon march straight forward to its logical conclusion in the almost unlimited Skepticism of Hume. On the other hand, one may see clearly enough how the rationalistic method which commended itself to Des- cartes developed of necessity into the full-fledged and all-inclusive Dogmatism of Christian Wolff. The two conflicting methods, Empiricism and Rationalism, resulted, at the end of something more than a hundred years, in two mutually contradictory sets of conclusions, Skepti- PHILOSOPHY 4i cism and Dogmatism. Each might abuse the other, but neither could refute the other. An absolute deadlock was presented by the thought of the eighteenth century as it found expression on the one hand chiefly in England, and on the other hand chiefly in Germany. To break this deadlock there was need of some new method which could mediate, so to speak, between the extremes of Empiri- cism and Rationalism. That method is the critical method of Immanuel Kant. The story of his own intellectual devel- opment, the steps by which he climbed up from one point of view in philosophy to a higher and more inclusive one, until finally he produced the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, is one of the most instructive and illuminating in the whole history of human thinking. The student who has really come to an understanding of Kant, his method, and his contribution to 42 PHILOSOPHY philosophy, is ready for any task that reflection can put upon him. It is said of Kant that he used to tell his students at Konigsberg that he sought to teach them, not philosophy, but how to think philosophically. This view of the teaching of philosophy, which I hold to be the correct one, is the reason why students of philosophy, particularly be- ginners, should concern themselves with the works of the genuine masters of philosophic thinking, and not waste their time and dissipate their energies upon the quasi-philosophical and the frivo- lously-philosophical writing, chiefly mod- ern and largely contemporary, which may be not inappropriately described as in- volving Great Journeys to the Homes of Little Thoughts ! The clever intellectual posing and atti- tudinizing of Nietzsche, whose body and PHILOSOPHY 43 mind 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 in which he is an adept, are but little better. Even the form of philosophy called Prag- matism, for which the great names of Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia are aca- demic sponsors, and which when unfolded to the man in the street leads him to howl with delight because he at last un- derstands things, should come late and not early in a student's philosophical reading. A background of considerable philosophical knowledge will aid in giv- ing to it a just appreciation. There are critics who have the fear that Pragmatism, in its attempt to be both profound and popular, may, forgetful of the ancient warning of Plautus, suffer from attempt- ing to blow and to swallow at the same time. 44 PHILOSOPHY The English and American student of philosophy is in no small measure handi- capped by the fact that there is so little genuinely first-class philosophical writing in the English language. The Anglo- Saxon and Anglo-Celtic people have expressed themselves in much noble poetry and in political institutions of the greatest value and importance, but their positive contributions to constructive phil- osophical thinking have been meager. They have at times offered the obstacle of sharp criticism and unsatisfied skep- ticism to the progress of obscure, ex- treme, and unsound tendencies in phil- osophic thinking, but the stones that they have laid upon the permanent struc- ture of philosophy are few. Of writers in English during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the twoCairds, thetwo Wallaces, Green, and Harris stand almost alone in their ability to reach really ex- PHILOSOPHY 45 ceptional heights in the task of philo- sophic criticism and interpretation. They have all enjoyed the advantages of what is so conspicuously lacking in most con- temporary writing on philosophy, namely, broad and deep philosophical scholarship. After the human race has been at work on its chief problem for thousands of years, the man who ignores all that has been accomplished and is consumed with an 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 me to be the surest : to show that nothing less than an eternal moral order will sat- isfy our deepest human needs or our lof- tiest human aspirations, an eternal moral order which is the final test of all theo- ries and explanations; to urge the sig- nificance of the testimony of the human 4 6 PHILOSOPHY heart to our dependence on a higher power, testimony voiced alike in the opening verses of the poem of Lucre- tius written while Caesar lived and Tully spoke, and in the sweet and ten- der music of Cardinal Newman's Lead, Kindly Light, of Lord Tennyson's Cross- ing the Bar, and of Rudyard Kipling's Recessional, testimony recorded boldly and ineffaceably in the countless sainted lives that have been lived on this earth ; to read the lesson of man's unconquer- able optimism, his — trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill which, despite all temptations, has thus far kept him from framing any scheme for education, politics, or society upon the hypothesis that the influences making for evil in the world will finally conquer ; to make plain the full meaning of the dictum of Hegel that " the whole philoso- PHILOSOPHY 47 phy is nothing but the study of specific forms or types of unity," and to illus- trate the principle of Spinoza that " a thing has only so much reality as it pos- sesses power " ; to bring evidence to prove the fact that philosophy does for the thought which combines and unifies things what science does for the facts or things combined and unified ; to trace the hand of philosophy in architecture, in painting, and sculpture, in poetry and in the political and religious institutions that mankind has made ; to follow down the course of events in the Western World and to illustrate how true is the saying of Thucydides that history is philosophy learned from examples ; to indicate the close relations between phi- losophy and the logic which is mathe- matics, relations felt or suspected by Pythagoras and Plato, by Descartes and Spinoza, by Leibnitz and Kant, and to 4 8 PHILOSOPHY suggest ways in which mathematics can and does lead from science to philoso- phy and binds them together; to re- veal the laws of evolution as significant and vital principles in philosophy long before the sciences of nature discov- ered and proved the existence of the same or similar laws in their own sphere ; to throw light upon the deepest cleavage known to history — that be- tween Orient and Occident — by con- trasting the civilization based upon a philosophy that cannot account for or ex- plain independent individuals, that holds any appearance of such to be Maya, illu- sion, and that longs for return to, and ab- sorption in, Nirvana, with that civilization which is based upon a philosophy that does account for and explain indepen- dent individuals, and that calls on them to exert and develop themselves to the utmost in order to approach nearer to PHILOSOPHY 49 intellectual and moral perfection. All this, and much more, philosophy en- deavors to teach. More than seventy years ago De Tocqueville expressed the opinion that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States. At that time he was right, but, fortunately, he is right no longer. Philosophy is now vigorously prosecuted among us. Wordsworth's " years that bring the philosophic mind," are bringing it in some measure to us. We must cultivate and encourage that philosophic mind, for we are sorely in need of it to bring unity into our knowl- edge, to install securely principle in the judgment-seat before which conflicting practices are the contentious litigants, to gain a sense of proportion and a point of view in the study of history and of na- ture, and to set final foot on the head of 50 PHILOSOPHY the dragon Philistinism that everywhere assails worth in the name of " that which works." Perhaps we may venture even to cherish the hope that, in Victor Hugo's well-known phrase, Ceci tueva cela ! We need philosophy, too, to aid us to gain that even mind in things severe that Horace counsels, and to help us to see life steadily and see it whole, as Matthew Arnold sang of Sophocles. The modern world has sat at the feet of the ancient world for a long time, but it has not yet learned all that the ancient world has to teach. To carry into science and philosophy the presuppositions of uncritical knowl- edge is to lead ourselves into curious vagaries and contradictions, unless we can rise above or outgrow such presup- positions. Education is in no small measure preparing the way for the intel- PHILOSOPHY 5i lectual life and pointing to it. Those who cannot enter in at its gates are doomed, in Leonardo da Vinci's words, to " possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world." For them life must be short, however many its years, and barren, however plentiful its acts. Their ears are deaf to the call of the indwelling Reason, and their eyes are blind to all the meanings and the values of human ex- perience. Where there is no vision, the people — and the university — perish ! BY THE SAME AUTHOR The American As He Is Third Thousand Cloth, i2mo, X + 164 pages ; price, $1.00 net ; by mail, $1.08 The American as a Political Type — The American Apart from his Government — The American and the Intellectual Life " We comiaend this little volume as a really precious contribution to current public opinion." — Toronto (Canada) Daily Star. "No one who would draw a political horoscope can afford to miss reading 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 Americanism than any similar discussion of recent years. Its patriotic optimism and its 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 and character." — Living Church (Philadelphia). " Dans une langue a la fois elegante et precise, dont la belle traduction de Mme. Boutroux rend bien la nerveuse precision, M. Butler expose tour a tour la vie politique, la vie des Americains en dehors de leur gouvernement et leur vie intellectuelle." — Revtie Universitaire (Paris) . COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Meaning of Education Fourteenth Thousand Cloth, i2tno, xii + 230 pages ; price, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.10 The Meaning of Education — What Knowledge Is of Most Worth — Is There a New Education — Democracy and Ed- ucation — The American College and the American University — The Function of the Secondary School — The Reform of Secondary Education 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 education has appeared than this volume of essays." — Oakland (Cal.) Enquirer. " It is a pleasure to commend this book as a standard-bearer in the ceaseless struggle going on for the betterment of the American system of education." — The late William T. Harris, in Book Reviews (New York). " The power of this volume resides in its sincerity, its intelligence, and its delightful clarity ; for Dr. Butler is a master of the art of lucid and persuasive presentation." — The Outlook (New York). " We can confidently assure the reader that it will serve more than any other treatise with which we are acquainted to expand and clarify his 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 be called, of education and life." — Henry James. " Philosophic depth, wide sympathies, and literary distinction of style — such a rare combination cannot fail to command a hearing, even though the theme be education." — Journal of Education (London). " Ce livre est l'ceuvre tres interessante d'un esprit singulierement avise, tres renseigne et d'une veritable elevation." — Revue Internationale de I ' Enseigncmcnt (Paris). BY THE SAME AUTHOR True and False Democracy Third Thousand Cloth, i2mo, xii + /// pages ; price, $1.00 net; by mail, $1.08 True and False Democracy — Education of Public Opinion — Democracy and Education " In these three scholarly essays there is food for thought for every wide-awake American citizen. They represent a striving toward a high 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 forceful yet temperate manner." — Springfield (Conn.) Daily Republican. " This is a book full of sound sense from beginning to end." — The Spectator (London). "The interpretation of democracy that is here presented to English readers on both sides of the Atlantic is not one that will satisfy the demagogue. 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 the people." — Montreal (Canada) Gazette. "The book is well written and shows deep thought on the part of the author. His words are clear and there can be no mistake about his statements." — St. Louis (Mo.) Republic. "The little book is a most elevating one, and will be helpful to any person troubled with doubts of the efficiency of a democratic system of government." — Philadelphia (Pa.) Telegraph.