assert the right of individual judgment and the privilege of man to investigate and criticize everything, irrespective of external authority. In short, individual reason is set up as the final court of appeal. Placing absolute confidence in the power of reason, it was held capable of solving all the riddles of the universe, and of discovering its ultimate secrets. This is the current of thought upon which the great metaphysical systems of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz float along. It is Rationalism.

§ 11. Gradually, however, this very tendency of submitting everything to the test of reason, led to the calling of reason itself in question. Not only the material world but the mind itself is subject to observation and intelligent examination. Again, as in Greece, so in modern times, the cosmological period of natural science was followed by one of an anthropological character. The investigations were transferred to the origin of human knowledge, and the current of thought turned into a psychological channel. What is the origin and source of knowledge and cognition? Is it reason or experience? Such is the inquiry instituted by John Locke, who took up the lines of Descartes. Like his predecessor, Bacon, Locke finds the source of knowledge not in reason but in experience. Whilst, however, Empiricism, or the theory that knowledge is derived from experience, is prevalent in Britain, Rationalism, or the doctrine that reason is the source of cognition, remains in power on the Continent. Comparing the mental characteristics of the three great nations which participated in the works of Philosophy during the period between Descartes and Kant, Falckenberg (.c., p. 81) expresses himself as follows: "The Frenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, the Englishman to clearness and simplicity, the German to profundity and thought. France is the land of mathematical, England of practical, Germany of speculative thinkers; the first is the home of the sceptics, though of the enthusiasts as well; the second of the realists; the third of the idealists."

Locke's Empiricism was developed by David Hume, one of the most consistent and deepest representatives of English thought, to Positivism and Scepticism. Again,

this phase of thought finds an analogy in the intellectual life of Greece. Whilst Hume's Scepticism roused in the "Scottish School" a reaction of common

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sense, it helped to wake in Germany a kindred but greater spirit from the bonds of dogmatic slumbers, and to fortify him for his critical achievements." This refers to Immanuel Kant.

We have seen that modern Philosophy evolved on the same lines as thought in ancient Greece. Greek Philosophy in its infancy was naturalistic. Its object was the world of nature. Then it turned its gaze to man and his inward life. First cosmological, Philosophy afterwards became anthropological, and through the movement of Sophistry it gradually led up to Scepticism. The stream of modern thought followed exactly the same current. It was characterized by its naturalism when it left its source in the Renaissance, it became anthropological as it traversed Holland, Germany, and France, and developed into a theory of knowledge on reaching England, where it finally fell into Scepticism. And just as the Scepticism of the Sophists had prepared the way for the Socratic reform and the Idealistic system of Plato, so Hume's scepticism paved the way for the Kantian reform, which developed into later German Idealism. Hume had shaken Locke's Empiricism to its foundations.

To escape the influence of Hume, who "had struck a spark at which a flame might have been kindled had it fallen on material susceptible of ignition, and had its burning been carefully maintained, and fanned to greater intensity," Kant "roused himself from his dogmatical slumber." Rationalism and Empiricism had thus continued their course on parallel lines, and were still waging war, making claims and falling into self-contradiction, when Kant attempted a reconciliation. He was a destroyer in the realm of thought, yet he was not "a spirit that denies." He tried to vindicate the contradictions by relegating reason and experience within their boundaries, and by estimating them according to their participation in knowledge of reality. The Rationalist and the Empiricist had discussed the origin of knowledge without raising the question of the possibility of knowledge,

had placed a naïve and full confidence in the human mind as capable of cognizing things; Kant now directed his investigations to knowledge itself. He raised the question of a possibility of knowledge, and subjected human intelligence itself to a searching investigation. In contradistinction to the previous assertion which Kant terms dogmatic (if it denies the validity of knowledge it is sceptic), the sage of Koenigsberg called his system criticism. Kant inquired into, the origin and extent of knowledge, into its sources and limits, into the grounds of its existence and its legitimacy. (Cf. Wundt, l.c., p. 246, and Falckenberg, l.c., p. 221.) But only after having investigated the sources of knowledge and established its conditions, can one attempt to determine its sphere and scope. Such is the turn which Kant gave to modern Philosophy, and it has since continued in the same direction up to the present_time. The German Idealism of Fichte, of Schelling and Hegel has its roots in Kant's doctrine of reason. Recent advances in natural science have, however, added to the legacy of Kant and German Idealism the wealth of new problems. German Idealism concerned itself almost exclusively with the spiritual facts of experience till attention, especially in England, was again turned to the study of the history of humanity, to external nature and to the natural sciences. The most important theory of this new scientific epoch is the theory of Evolution, which now is claiming almost general attention.

PART II

THE PROBLEMS AND SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER X

INTRODUCTORY

§ 1. THE questions with which philosophical inquiry occupies itself and the problems it endeavours to solve are many. They embrace everything that is of a purely scientific or of a practical interest to man. We can, however, briefly classify them as replies to the three great questions: What? How? and Why?

What exists? and how does it exist? are riddles to which Metaphysics tries to find a solution. What do we know of the existence of things? and how do we know it? are questions with which the Philosophy of Knowledge concerns itself. What are we to do? and why do we act in this way and not in another? are questions belonging to the domain of Ethics. The answers shaped out to these replies gave rise to the various philosophical schools and systems. Every man, every philosopher, has replied according to his opinion or his character, and, we might add, his surroundings, education, and the spirit of his time. Fichte quite truly remarked that the kind of Philosophy a man chooses depends on the kind of man he is. It also depends, it must be added, on the spirit of the time.

Philosophers had no time to approach all questions: life is so short, and the human mind, even the most brilliant, even the most universal, is limited and finite. Hence that variety of systems in the history of Philosophy.

Not only do the methods and replies to one and the same question vary, but even the subject-matter to which philosophers devoted their powers of subtle analysis is not always the same. I therefore divide all the philoso

phical problems into three groups: 1. The metaphysical or ontological, 2. The ethical, and

3. The epistemological problems.