Initiation into Philosophy | Page 2

CHAPTER III
THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY.
Locke: His Ideas on Human Liberty, Morality, General Politics, and
Religious Politics.


CHAPTER IV
THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
Berkeley: A Highly Idealist Philosophy which Regarded Matter as
Non-existent. David Hume: Sceptical Philosophy. The Scottish School:
Philosophy of Common Sense.


CHAPTER V
THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
Voltaire a Disciple of Locke. Rousseau a Free-thinking Christian, but
deeply Imbued with Religious Sentiments. Diderot a Capricious
Materialist. D'Holbach and Helvetius Avowed Materialists. Condillac a
Philosopher of Sensations.


CHAPTER VI
KANT
Kant Reconstructed all Philosophy by Supporting it on Morality.

CHAPTER VII
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GERMANY
The Great Reconstructors of the World, Analogous to the First
Philosophers of Antiquity. Great General Systems, Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel, etc.


CHAPTER VIII
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: ENGLAND
The Doctrines of Evolution and of Transformism: Lamarck (French),
Darwin, Spencer.


CHAPTER IX
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: FRANCE
The Eclectic School: Victor Cousin. The Positivist School: Auguste
Comte. The Kantist School: Renouvier. Independent and Complex
Positivists: Taine, Renan.
INDEX

INITIATION INTO PHILOSOPHY


PART I
ANTIQUITY


CHAPTER I

BEFORE SOCRATES
Philosophical Interpreters of the Universe, of the Creation and
Constitution of the World.
PHILOSOPHY.--The aim of philosophy is to seek the explanation of
all things: the quest is for the first causes of everything, and also how
all things are, and finally why, with what design, with a view to what,
things are. That is why, taking "principle" in all the senses of the word,
it has been called the science of first principles.
Philosophy has always existed. Religions--all religions--are
philosophies. They are indeed the most complete. But, apart from
religions, men have sought the causes and principles of everything and
endeavoured to acquire general ideas. These researches apart from
religious dogmas in pagan antiquity are the only ones with which we
are here to be concerned.
THE IONIAN SCHOOL: THALES.--The Ionian School is the most
ancient school of philosophy known. It dates back to the seventh
century before Christ. Thales of Miletus, a natural philosopher and
astronomer, as we should describe him, believed matter--namely, that
of which all things and all beings are made--to be in perpetual
transformation, and that these transformations are produced by
powerful beings attached to every portion of matter. These powerful
beings were gods. Everything, therefore, was full of gods. His
philosophy was a mythology. He also thought that the essential element
of matter was water, and that it was water, under the influence of the
gods, which transformed itself into earth, air, and fire, whilst from
water, earth, air, and fire came everything that is in nature.
ANAXIMANDER; HERACLITUS.--Anaximander of Miletus, an
astronomer also, and a geographer, believed that the principle of all
things is _indeterminate_--a kind of chaos wherein nothing has form or
shape; that from chaos come things and beings, and that they return
thither in order to emerge again. One of his particular theories was that
fish were the most ancient of animals, and that all animals had issued
from them through successive transformations. This theory was revived

for a while about fifty years ago.
Heraclitus of Ephesus (very obscure, and with this epithet attached
permanently to his name) saw all things as a perpetual growth--in an
indefinite state of becoming. Nothing is; all things grow and are
destined to eternal growth. Behind them, nevertheless, there is an
eternal master who does not change. It is our duty to resemble him as
much as we can; that is to say, as much as an ape can resemble a man.
Calmness is imperative: to be as motionless as transient beings can.
The popular legend runs that Heraclitus "always wept"; what is known
of him only tends to prove that he was grave, and did not favour
emotionalism.
ANAXAGORAS; EMPEDOCLES.--Anaxagoras of Clazomenae,
above all else a natural philosopher, settled at Athens about 470 B.C.;
was the master and friend of Pericles; was on the point of being put to
death, as Socrates was later on, for the crime of indifference towards
the religion of the Athenians, and had to take refuge at Lampsacus,
where he died. Like Anaximander, he believed that everything emerged
from something indeterminate and confused; but he added that what
caused the emergence from that state was the organizing intelligence,
the Mind, just as in man, it is the intelligence which draws thought
from cerebral undulations, and forms a clear idea out of a confused idea.
Anaxagoras exerted an almost incomparable influence over Greek
philosophy of the classical times.
Empedocles of Agrigentum, a sort of magician and high-priest, almost
a deity, whose life and death are but little known, appears to have
possessed an encyclopaedic brain. From him is derived the doctrine of
the four