History of Modern Philosophy | Page 5

from abstract thinking than from the
fancy, the heart, and the character of the individual, and even more
directly from the disposition of the people; and which to a certain
degree may be divorced from logical reasoning and the scientific
treatment of particular questions. These may be summed up under the
phrase, views of the world. The necessity for constant reconsideration
of them is from this standpoint at once evident. The Greek view of the
world is as classic as the plastic art of Phidias and the epic of Homer;
the Christian, as eternally valid as the architecture of the Middle Ages;
the modern, as irrefutable as Goethe's poetry and the music of
Beethoven. The views of the world which proceed from the spirits of
different ages, as products of the general development of culture, are
not so much thoughts as rhythms in thinking, not theories but modes of
intuition saturated with feelings of worth. We may dispute about them,
it is true; we may argue against them or in their defense; but they can
neither be established nor overthrown by cogent proofs. It is not only
optimism and pessimism, determinism and indeterminism, that have
their ultimate roots in the affective side of our nature, but pantheism
and individualism, also idealism and materialism, even rationalism and
sensationalism. Even though they operate with the instruments of
thought, they remain in the last analysis matters of faith, of feeling, and
of resolution. The aesthetic view of the world held by the Greeks, the

transcendental-religious view of Christianity, the intellectual view of
Leibnitz and Hegel, the panthelistic views of Fichte I and
Schopenhauer are vital forces, not doctrines, postulates, not results of
thought. One view of the world is forced to yield its pre-eminence to
another, which it has itself helped to produce by its own one-sidedness;
only to reconquer its opponent later, when it has learned from her,
when it has been purified, corrected, and deepened by the struggle. But
the elder contestant is no more confuted by the younger than the drama
of Sophocles by the drama of Shakespeare, than youth by age or spring
by autumn.
If it is thus indubitable that the views of the world held in earlier times
deserve to live on in the memory of man, and to live as something
better than mere reminders of the past--the history of philosophy is not
a cabinet of antiquities, but a museum of typical products of the
mind--the value and interest of the historical study of the past in
relation to the exact scientific side of philosophical inquiry is not less
evident. In every science it is useful to trace the origin and growth of
problems and theories, and doubly so in philosophy. With her it is by
no means the universal rule that progress shows itself by the result; the
statement of the question is often more important than the answer. The
problem is more sharply defined in a given direction; or it becomes
more comprehensive, is analyzed and refined; or if now it threatens to
break up into subtle details, some genius appears to simplify it and
force our thoughts back to the fundamental question. This advance in
problems, which happily is everywhere manifested by unmistakable
signs, is, in the case of many of the questions which irresistibly force
themselves upon the human heart, the only certain gain from centuries
of endeavor. The labor here is of more value than the result.
In treating the history of philosophy, two extremes must be avoided,
lawless individualism and abstract logical formalism. The history of
philosophy is neither a disconnected succession of arbitrary individual
opinions and clever guesses, nor a mechanically developed series of
typical standpoints and problems, which imply one another in just the
form and order historically assumed. The former supposition does
violence to the regularity of philosophical development, the latter to its

vitality. In the one case, the connection is conceived too loosely, in the
other, too rigidly and simply. One view underestimates the power of
the logical Idea, the other overestimates it. It is not easy to support the
principle that chance rules the destiny of philosophy, but it is more
difficult to avoid the opposite conviction of the one-sidedness of
formalistic construction, and to define the nature and limits of
philosophical necessity. The development of philosophy is, perhaps,
one chief aim of the world-process, but it is certainly not the only one;
it is a part of the universal aim, and it is not surprising that the
instruments of its realization do not work exclusively in its behalf, that
their activity brings about results, which seem unessential for
philosophical ends or obstacles in their way. Philosophical ideas do not
think themselves, but are thought by living spirits, which are something
other and better than mere thought