第46章

The disciples of Schelling and Fichte join the Hegelian in ridiculingthe so-called Philosophy which has been current in England. Not without reason,they laugh on reading of "Philosophical instruments;" and woulddeny that any one of the papers in the Philosophical Transactions has the least claim to come under such a title. Retaliating on their critics,the English may, and most of them do, reject as absurd the imagined Philosophyof the German schools. They hold that whether consciousness does or doesnot vouch for the existence of something beyond itself, it at any rate cannotcomprehend that something; and that hence, in so far as any Philosophy professesto be an Ontology, it is false. These two views cancel one another over largeparts of their areas. The English criticism on the Germans, cuts off fromPhilosophy all that is regarded as absolute knowledge. The German criticismon the English tacitly implies that if Philosophy is limited to the relative,it is at any rate not concerned with those aspects of the relative whichare embodied in mathematical formulae, in accounts of physical researches,in chemical analyses, or in descriptions of species and reports of physiologicalexperiments. Now what has the too-wide German conception in common with theconception current among English men of science; which, narrow and crudeas it is, is not so narrow and crude as their misuse of the word philosophicalindicates? The two have this in common, that neither Germans nor Englishapply the word to unsystematized knowledge -- to knowledge quite un-co-ordinatedwith other knowledge. Even the most limited specialist would not describeas philosophical, an essay which, dealing wholly with details, manifestedno perception of the bearings of those details on wider truths.

The vague idea of Philosophy thus raised may be rendered more definiteby comparing what has been known in England as Natural Philosophy with thatdevelopment of it called Positive Philosophy. Though, as M. Comte admits,the two consist of knowledge essentially the same in kind; yet, by havingput this kind of knowledge into a more coherent form, he has given it moreof that character to which the term philosophical is applied. Without sayinganything about the character of his co-ordination, it must be conceded that,by the fact of its co-ordination, the body of knowledge organized by himhas a better claim to the title Philosophy, than has the comparatively-unorganizedbody of knowledge named Natural Philosophy.

If subdivisions of Philosophy be contrasted with one another or with thewhole, the same implication comes out. Moral Philosophy and Political Philosophy,agree with Philosophy at large in the comprehensiveness of their reasoningsand conclusions. Though under the head Moral Philosophy, we treat of humanactions as right or wrong, we do not include special directions for behaviourin school, at table, or on the Exchange; and though Political Philosophyhas for its topic the conduct of men in their public relations, it does notconcert itself with modes of voting or details of administration. Both ofthese sections of Philosophy contemplate particular instances only as illustratingtruths of wide application. §37. Thus every one of these conceptions implies belief in a possibleway of knowing things more completely than they are known through simpleexperiences, mechanically accumulated in memory or heaped up in cyclopaedias.

Though in the extent of the sphere which they have supposed Philosophy tofill, men have differed and still differ very widely; yet there is a realif unavowed agreement among them in signifying by this title a knowledgewhich transcends ordinary knowledge. That which remains as the common elementin these conceptions of Philosophy, after the elimination of their discordantelements, is -- knowledge of the highest degree of generality. We see thistacitly asserted by the simultaneous inclusion of God, Nature, and Man, withinits scope; or still more distinctly by the division of Philosophy as a wholeinto Theological, Physical, Ethical, etc. For that which characterizes thegenus of which these are species, must be something more general than thatwhich distinguishes any one species.

What must be the shape here given to this conception? Though persistentlyconscious of a Power manifested to us, we have abandoned as futile the attemptto learn anything respecting that Power, and so have shut out Philosophyfrom much of the domain supposed to belong to it. The domain left is thatoccupied by Science. Science concerts itself with the co-existences and sequencesamong phenomena; grouping these at first into generalizations of a simpleor low order, and rising gradually to higher and more extended generalizations.

But if so, where remains any subject-matter for Philosophy?