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Nevertheless, the special sciences stand, as we have already seen in
the case of several of them, very near to his own. If he broadens his
view, and deliberately determines to take a survey of the field of
human knowledge as illuminated by the analyses that he has made, he
becomes something more than a _metaphysician_; he becomes a
_philosopher_.

This does not in the least mean that he becomes a storehouse of
miscellaneous information, and an authority on all the sciences.
Sometimes the philosophers have attempted to describe the world of
matter and of mind as though they possessed some mysterious power of
knowing things that absolved them from the duty of traveling the weary
road of observation and experiment that has ended in the sciences as we
have them. When they have done this, they have mistaken the
significance of their calling. A philosopher has no more right than
another man to create information out of nothing.

But it is possible, even for one who is not acquainted with the whole
body of facts presented in a science, to take careful note of the
assumptions upon which that science rests, to analyze the concepts of
which it makes use, to mark the methods which it employs, and to gain a
fair idea of its scope and of its relation to other sciences. Such a
reflection upon our scientific knowledge is philosophical reflection,
and it may result in a classification of the sciences, and in a general
view of human knowledge as a whole. Such a view may be illuminating in
the extreme; it can only be harmful when its significance is
misunderstood.

But, it may be argued, why may not the man of science do all this for
himself? Why should he leave it to the philosopher, who is presumably
less intimately acquainted with the sciences than he is?

To this I answer: The work should, of course, be done by the man who
will do it best. All our subdivision of labor should be dictated by
convenience. But I add, that experience has shown that the workers in
the special sciences have not as a rule been very successful when they
have tried to philosophize.

Science is an imperious mistress; she demands one's utmost efforts; and
when a man turns to philosophical reflection merely "by the way," and
in the scraps of time at his disposal after the day's work is done, his
philosophical work is apt to be rather superficial. Moreover, it does
not follow that, because a man is a good mathematician or chemist or
physicist, he is gifted with the power of reflective analysis. Then,
too, such men are apt to be imperfectly acquainted with what has been
done in the past; and those who are familiar with the history of
philosophy often have occasion to remark that what is laid before them,
in ignorance of the fact that it is neither new nor original, is a
doctrine which has already made its appearance in many forms and has
been discussed at prodigious length in the centuries gone by.

In certain sciences it seems possible to ignore the past, to a great
extent, at least. What is worth keeping has been kept, and there is a
solid foundation on which to build for the future. But with reflective
thought it is not so. There is no accepted body of doctrine which we
have the right to regard as unassailable. We should take it as a safe
maxim that the reflections of men long dead _may_ be profounder and
more worthy of our study than those urged upon our attention by the men
of our day.

And this leads me to make a remark upon the titles given to works on
metaphysics. It seems somewhat misleading to label them: "Outlines of
Metaphysics" or "Elements of Metaphysics." Such titles suggest that we
are dealing with a body of doctrine which has met with general
acceptance, and may be compared with that found in handbooks on the
special sciences. But we should realize that, when we are concerned
with the profounder investigations into the nature of our experience,
we tread upon uncertain ground and many differences of opinion obtain.
We should, if possible, avoid a false semblance of authority.

75. EPISTEMOLOGY.--We hear a great deal at the present day of
Epistemology, or the Theory of Knowledge. I have not classed it as a
distinct philosophical science, for reasons which will appear below.

We have seen in Chapter XVI that it is possible to treat of logic in a
simple way without growing very metaphysical; but we have also seen
that when we go deeply into questions touching the nature of evidence
and what is meant by truth and falsity, we are carried back to
philosophical reflection at once.

We may, for convenience, group together these deeper questions
regarding the nature of knowledge and its scope, and call the subject
of our study "Epistemology."

But it should be remarked, in the first place, that, when we work in
this field, we are exercising a reflective analysis of precisely the
type employed in making the metaphysical analyses contained in the
earlier chapters of this book. We are treating our experience as it is
not treated in common thought and in science.

And it should be remarked, in the second place, that the investigation
of our knowledge inevitably runs together with an investigation into
the nature of things known, of the mind and the world. Suppose that I
give the titles of the chapters in Part III of Mr. Hobhouse's able work
on "The Theory of Knowledge." They are as follows: Validity; the
Validity of Knowledge; the Conception of External Reality; Substance;
the Conception of Self; Reality as a System; Knowledge and Reality; the
Grounds of Knowledge and Belief.

Are not these topics metaphysical? Let us ask ourselves how it would
affect our views of the validity and of the limits of our knowledge, if
we were converted to the metaphysical doctrines of John Locke, or of
Bishop Berkeley, or of David Hume, or of Thomas Reid, or of Immanuel
Kant.

We may, then, regard epistemology as a part of logic--the metaphysical
part--or as a part of metaphysics; it does not much matter which we
call it, since we mean the same thing. But its relation to metaphysics
is such that it does not seem worth while to call it a separate
discipline.

Before leaving this subject there is one more point upon which I should
touch, if only to obviate a possible misunderstanding.

We find in Professor Cornelius's clear little book, "An Introduction to
Philosophy" (Leipzig, 1903; it has unhappily not yet been translated
into English), that metaphysics is repudiated altogether, and
epistemology is set in its place. But this rejection of metaphysics
does not necessarily imply the denial of the value of such an analysis
of our experience as I have in this work called metaphysical.
Metaphysics is taken to mean, not an analysis of experience, but a
groping behind the veil of phenomena for some reality not given in
experience. In other words, what Professor Cornelius condemns is what
many of the rest of us also condemn under another name. What he calls
metaphysics, we call bad metaphysics; and what he calls epistemology,
we call metaphysics. The dispute is really a dispute touching the
proper name to apply to reflective analysis of a certain kind.

As it is the fashion in certain quarters to abuse metaphysics, I set
the reader on his guard. Some kinds of metaphysics certainly ought to
be repudiated under whatever name they may be presented to us.




CHAPTER XX

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

76. RELIGION AND REFLECTION.--A man may be through and through ethical
in his thought and feeling, and yet know nothing of the science of
ethics. He may be possessed of the finest aesthetic taste, and yet may
know nothing of the science of aesthetics. It is one thing to be good,
and another to know clearly what goodness means; it is one thing to
love the beautiful, and another to know how to define it.

Just so a man may be thoroughly religious, and may, nevertheless, have
reflected very little upon his religious belief and the foundations
upon which it rests. This does not mean that his belief is without
foundation. It may have a firm basis or it may not. But whatever the
case may be, he is not in a position to say much about it. He _feels_
that he is right, but he cannot prove it. The man is, I think we must
admit, rather blind as to the full significance of his position, and he
is, in consequence, rather helpless.

Such a man is menaced by certain dangers. We have seen in the chapter
on ethics that men are by no means at one in their judgments as to the
rightness or wrongness of given actions. And it requires a very little
reflection to teach us that men are not at one in their religious
notions. God and His nature, the relation of God to man, what the
religious life should be, these things are the subject of much dispute;
and some men hold opinions regarded by others as not merely erroneous
but highly pernicious in their influence.

Shall a man simply assume that the opinions which he happens to hold
are correct, and that all who differ with him are in error? He has not
framed his opinions quite independently for himself. We are all
influenced by what we have inherited from the past, and what we inherit
may be partly erroneous, even if we be right in the main. Moreover, we
are all liable to prejudices, and he who has no means of distinguishing
such from sober truths may admit into his creed many errors. The
lesson of history is very instructive upon this point. The fact is
that a man's religious notions reflect the position which he occupies
in the development of civilization very much as do his ethical notions.

Again. Even supposing that a man has enlightened notions and is living
a religious life that the most instructed must approve; if he has never
reflected, and has never tried to make clear to himself just what he
really does believe and upon what grounds he believes it, how will it
be with him when his position is attacked by another? Men are, as I
have said, not at one in these matters, and there are few or none of
the doctrines put forward as religions that have not been attacked
again and again.

Now, those who depend only upon an instinctive feeling may be placed in
the very painful position of seeing no answer to the objections brought
against them. What is said may seem plausible; it may even seem true,
and is it right for a man to oppose what appears to be the truth? One
may be shocked and pained, and may feel that he who makes the assault
_cannot_ be right, and yet may be forced to admit that a relentless
logic, or what presents itself as such, has every appearance of
establishing the repellent truth that robs one of one's dearest
possession. The situation is an unendurable one; it is that of the man
who guards a treasure and recognizes that there is no lock on the door.

Surely, if there is error mixed with truth in our religious beliefs, it
is desirable that we should have some way of distinguishing between the
truth and the error. And if our beliefs really have a foundation, it
is desirable that we should know what that foundation is, and should
not be at the mercy of every passer-by who takes the notion to throw a
stone at us. But these desirable ends, it seems clear, cannot be
attained without reflection.

77. THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.--The reflection that busies itself with
these things results in what is called the philosophy of religion. To
show that the name is an appropriate one and that we are concerned with
a philosophical discipline, I shall take up for a moment the idea of
God, which most men will admit has a very important place in our
conception of religion.

Does God exist? We may feel very sure that He does, and yet be forced
to admit that the evidence of His existence is not so clear and
undeniable as to compel the assent of every one. We do not try to
prove the existence of the men we meet and who talk to us. No one
thinks of denying their existence; it is taken for granted. Even the
metaphysician, when he takes up and discusses the question whether we
can prove the existence of any mind beyond our own, does not seriously
doubt whether there are other minds or not. It is not so much what we
know, as how we know it, that interests him.

But with the existence of God it is different. That men do not think
that an examination of the evidence can be dispensed with is evident
from the books that are written and lectures that are delivered year
after year. There seem to be honest differences of opinion, and we
feel compelled to offer men proofs--to show that belief is reasonable.

How shall we determine whether this world in which we live is such a
world that we may take it as a revelation of God? And of what sort of
a Being are we speaking when we use the word "God"? The question is
not an idle one, for men's conceptions have differed widely. There is
the savage, with a conception that strikes the modern civilized man as
altogether inadequate; there is the thoughtful man of our day, who has
inherited the reflections of those who have lived in the ages gone by.

And there is the philosopher, or, perhaps, I should rather say, there
are the philosophers. Have they not conceived of God as a group of
abstract notions, or as a something that may best be described as the
Unknowable, or as the Substance which is the identity of thought and
extension, or as the external world itself? All have not sinned in
this way, but some have, and they are not men whom we can ignore.

If we turn from all such notions and, in harmony with the faith of the
great body of religious men in the ages past, some of whom were
philosophers but most of whom were not, cling close to the notion that
God is a mind or spirit, and must be conceived according to the
analogy, at least, of the human mind, the mind we most directly
know--if we do this, we are still confronted by problems to which the
thoughtful man cannot refuse attention.

What do we mean by a mind? This is a question to which one can
scarcely give an intelligent answer unless one has exercised one's
faculty of philosophic reflection. And upon what sort of evidence does
one depend in establishing the existence of minds other than one's own?
This has been discussed at length in Chapter X, and the problem is
certainly a metaphysical one. And if we believe that the Divine Mind
is not subject to the limitations which confine the human, how shall we
conceive it? The question is an important one. Some of the
philosophers and theologians who have tried to free the Divine Mind
from such limitations have taken away every positive mark by which we
recognize a mind to be such, and have left us a naked "Absolute" which
is no better than a labeled vacuum.

Moreover, we cannot refuse to consider the question of God's relation
to the world. This seems to lead back to the broader question: How are
we to conceive of any mind as related to the world? What is the
relation between mind and matter? If any subject of inquiry may
properly be called metaphysical, surely this may be.

We see, then, that there is little wonder that the thoughtful
consideration of the facts and doctrines of religion has taken its
place among the philosophical sciences. Aesthetics has been called
applied psychology; and I think it is scarcely too much to say that we
are here concerned with applied metaphysics, with the attempt to obtain
a clear understanding of the significance of the facts of religion in
the light of those ultimate analyses which reveal to us the real nature
of the world of matter and of minds.




CHAPTER XXI

PHILOSOPHY AND THE OTHER SCIENCES

78. THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND NON-PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES.--We have seen in
the preceding chapters that certain of the sciences can scarcely be
cultivated successfully in complete separation from philosophy. It has
also been indicated in various places that the relation of other
sciences to philosophy is not so close.

Thus, the sciences of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry may be
successfully prosecuted by a man who has reflected little upon the
nature of numbers and who has never asked himself seriously what he
means by space. The assumptions which he is justified in making, and
the kind of operations which he has the right to perform, do not seem,
as a rule, to be in doubt.

So it is also in the sciences of chemistry and physics. There is
nothing to prevent the chemist or the physicist from being a
philosopher, but he is not compelled to be one. He may push forward
the investigations proper to his profession regardless of the type of
philosophy which it pleases him to adopt. Whether he be a realist or
an idealist, a dualist or a monist, he should, as chemist or physicist,
treat the same sort of facts in the same sort of a way. His path
appears to be laid out for him, and he can do work the value of which
is undisputed by traveling quietly along it, and without stopping to
consider consciously what kind of a path it is. There are many who
work in this way, and they succeed in making important contributions to
human knowledge.

Such sciences as these I call the non-philosophical sciences to
distinguish them from the group of sciences I have been discussing at
length. What marks them out is, that the facts with which the
investigator has to deal are known by him with sufficient clearness to
leave him usually in little doubt as to the use which he can make of
them. His knowledge is clear enough for the purpose in hand, and his
work is justified by its results. What is the relation of such
sciences as these to philosophy?

79. THE STUDY OF SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AND METHODS.--It is one thing to
have the instinct of the investigator and to be able to feel one's way
along the road that leads to new knowledge of a given kind, and it is
another thing to have the reflective turn of mind that makes one
clearly conscious of just what one has been doing and how one has been
doing it. Men reasoned before there was a science of logic, and the
sciences made their appearance before what may be called the logic of
the sciences had its birth.

"It may be truly asserted," writes Professor Jevons,[1] "that the rapid
progress of the physical sciences during the last three centuries has
not been accompanied by a corresponding advance in the theory of
reasoning. Physicists speak familiarly of Scientific Method, but they
could not readily describe what they mean by that expression.
Profoundly engaged in the study of particular classes of natural
phenomena, they are usually too much engrossed in the immense and ever
accumulating details of their special sciences to generalize upon the
methods of reasoning which they unconsciously employ. Yet few will
deny that these methods of reasoning ought to be studied, especially by
those who endeavor to introduce scientific order into less successful
and methodical branches of knowledge."

Professor Jevons suggests that it is lack of time and attention that
prevents the scientific investigator from attaining to a clear
conception of what is meant by scientific method. This has something
to do with it, but I think we may also maintain that the work of the
investigator and that of the critic are somewhat different in kind, and
require somewhat different powers of mind. We find a parallel to this
elsewhere. Both in literature and in art men may be in the best sense
productive, and yet may be poor critics. We are often wofully
disappointed when we attend a lecture on poetry by a poet, or one on
painting by an artist.

It may be said: If what is maintained above regarding the possibility
of prosecuting scientific researches without having recourse to
reflective thought is true, why should the man of science care whether
the principles and methods of the non-philosophical sciences are
investigated or are merely taken for granted?

I answer: It should be observed that the statements made in the last
section were somewhat guarded. I have used the expressions "as a rule"
and "usually." I have spoken thus because one can work in the way
described, without danger of error, only where a beaten track has been
attained and is followed. In Chapter XVI it was pointed out that even
in the mathematical sciences one may be forced to reflect upon the
significance of one's symbols. As I write this, a pamphlet comes to
hand which is concerned to prove that "every cause is potentially
capable of producing several effects," and proves it by claiming that
the square root of four ([square root symbol]4) is a _cause_ which may
have as _effect_ either two (2) or minus two (-2).

Is this mathematical reasoning? Are mathematical relations ever those
of cause and effect? And may one on the basis of such reasonings claim
that in nature the relation of cause and effect is not a fixed and
invariable one?

Even where there is a beaten track, there is some danger that men may
wander from it. And on the confines of our knowledge there are fields
in which the accepted road is yet to be established. Science makes
constant use of hypotheses as an aid to investigation. What hypotheses
may one frame, and what are inadmissible? How important an
investigation of this question may be to the worker in certain branches
of science will be clear to one who will read with attention Professor
Poincare's brilliant little work on "Science and Hypothesis." [2]

There is no field in art, literature, or science in which the work of
the critic is wholly superfluous. "There are periods in the growth of
science," writes Professor Pearson in his deservedly popular work, "The
Grammar of Science," [3] "when it is well to turn our attention from
its imposing superstructure and to examine carefully its foundations.
The present book is primarily intended as a criticism of the
fundamental concepts of modern science, and as such finds its
justification in the motto placed upon its title-page." The motto in
question is a quotation from the French philosopher Cousin: "Criticism
is the life of science."

We have seen in Chapter XVI that a work on logic may be a comparatively
simple thing. It may describe the ways in which men reason when they
reason correctly, and may not go deep into metaphysical questions. On
the other hand, it may be deeply metaphysical.

When we approach the part of logic which deals with the principles and
methods of the sciences, this difference is forced upon our attention.
One may set forth the assumptions upon which a science rests, and may
describe the methods of investigation employed, without going much
below the plane of common thought. As a type of such works I may
mention the useful treatise by Professor Jevons cited earlier in this
chapter.

On the other hand, our investigations may be more profound, and we may
scrutinize the very foundations upon which a science rests. Both the
other works referred to illustrate this method of procedure.

For example, in "The Grammar of Science," we find our author
discussing, under the title "The Facts of Science," such problems as
the following: the Reality of Things; Sense-impressions and
Consciousness; the Nature of Thought; the External Universe; Sensations
as the Ultimate Source of the Materials of Knowledge; and the Futility
of "Things-in-themselves." The philosophical character of such
discussions does not need to be pointed out at length.


[1] "The Principles Of Science," London, 1874, Preface.

[2] English translation, New York, 1905.

[3] Second edition, London, 1900.




VI. ON THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY


CHAPTER XXII

THE VALUE OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY

80. THE QUESTION OF PRACTICAL UTILITY.--Why should men study
philosophy? The question is a natural one, for man is a rational
being, and when the worth of a thing is not at once evident to him, he
usually calls for proof of its worth. Our professional schools, with
the exception of schools of theology, usually pay little attention to
philosophical studies; but such studies occupy a strong position in our
colleges, and a vast number of persons not students in the technical
sense think it worth while to occupy themselves with them more or less.
Wherever liberal studies are prosecuted they have their place, and it
is an honored place. Is this as it should be?

Before we ask whether any given study is of practical value, it is wise
to determine what the word "practical" shall be taken to mean. Shall
we say that we may call practical only such learning as can be turned
to direct account in earning money later? If we restrict the meaning
of the word in this way, we seem to strike a blow at liberal studies in
general.

Thus, no one would think of maintaining that the study of mathematics
is not of practical value--sometimes and to some persons. The
physicist and the engineer need to know a good deal about mathematics.
But how is it with the merchant, the lawyer, the clergyman, the
physician? How much of their algebra, geometry, and trigonometry do
these remember after they have become absorbed in the practice of their
several callings, and how often do they find it necessary to use
anything beyond certain simple rules of arithmetic?

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