Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV THE PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY1 'Stern necessity, to others dim With night and terror, has no fears for him.' Schiller. F. Schlegel said that every man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. And we do in fact find throughout philosophy two deeply opposed tendencies, which are as well indicated by Schlegel's terms as by any other. The one is subjective in method, the other objective; the one derives knowledge from inward intuition, the other solely from outward experience: the one starts from spirit, the other from matter: the one culminates in metaphysics, the other in science. At the dawn of philosophy, the differentiation between the two methods was incomplete. Greek 1 For the facts comprised in this chapter I have drawn largely on Lewes's History of Philosophy and Lange's History of Materialism. Part of the chapter has been already published in the Edinburgh Review, and I am indebted to the editor and publishers for kind permission to reprint it. hylozoism represents a fusion of the tendencies, rendering their separate outlines barely discernible. In modern times the antagonism has become excessively acute. On the one hand, we have the 'absolute idealism ' of Hegel, and the whole school of German metaphysics; on the other hand, we have the thorough materialism which underlies modern science--a materialism which may indeed be repudiated as a philosophy by men of science themselves, but which nevertheless lies at the basis of all their efforts. So great is this gulf between science and metaphysics at the present day, that, in fact, it is only with difficulty that the logical weapons of the one can be brought into action against the other. I propose to run rapidly over the history of philosophy, with the view of...
