Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/831

 PHILOSOPHY 795 and as organically related to the rest of existence. If self-consciousness be treated in this objective fashion, then we pass naturally from epistemology to metaphysics or ontology. (For, although the term &quot;ontology&quot; has been as &quot;ood as disused, it still remains true that the aim of philo- O J- sophy must be to furnish us with an ontology or a coherent and adequate theory of the nature of the existent.) But if, on the other hand, knowledge and existence be ab initio opposed to one another if consciousness be set on one side as over against existence, and merely holding up a mirror to it then it follows with equal naturalness that the truly objective must be something which lurks un- revealed behind the subject s representation of it. Hence come the different varieties of a so-called phenomenalism. The upholders of such a theory would, in general, deride the term &quot;metaphysics&quot; or &quot;ontology&quot;; but it is evident, none the less, that their position itself implies a certain theory of the universe and of our own place in it, and philosophy with them will consist, therefore, in the estab lishment of this theory. Without prejudice, then, to the claims of epistemology to constitute the central philosophic discipline, we may simply note its liability to be misused. The exclusive preoccupation of men s minds with the question of know ledge during the last quarter of a century or more drew from Lotze the caustic criticism that &quot; the continual sharpening of the knife becomes tiresome, if, after all, we have nothing to cut with it.&quot; Stillingfleet s complaint against Locke was that he was &quot;one of the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning that have almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world.&quot; The same may be said with greater truth of the devotees of the theory of knowledge ; they seem to have no need of so old-fashioned a commodity as reality. Yet, after all, Fichte s dictum holds good that knowledge as knowledge i.e., so long as it is looked at as knowledge is, ipso facto, not reality. The result of the foregoing, however, is to show that, as soon as epistemology draws its conclusion, it becomes metaphysics ; the theory of knowledge passes into a theory of being. The ontological conclusion, moreover, is not to be regarded as something added ly an external process ; it is an immediate implication. The metaphysic is the epistemology from another point of view regarded as completing itself, and explaining in the course of its exposition that relative or practical separation of the indi vidual known from the knowable world which it is a sheer assumption to take as absolute. This, not the so-called assumption of the implicit unity of being and thought, is the really unwarrantable postulate ; for it is an assumption which we are obliged to retract bit by bit, while the other offers the whole doctrine of knowledge as its voucher. Logic, ^Esthetics, and Ethics. If the theory of know ledge thus takes upon itself the functions discharged of old by metaphysics, it becomes somewhat difficult to assign a distinct sphere to logic. It has already been seen how the theory of knowledge, when it passed out of Kant s hands, and tried to make itself (a) complete and (6) pre- suppositionless, became for Hegel a logic that was in reality a metaphysic. This is the comprehensive sense given to logical science in the article LOGIC (q.v.) in this work; and it is there contended that no other definition can be made consistent with itself. It is, of course, admitted that this is not the traditional use of the term (see vol. xiv. p. 802). Ueberweg s definition of logic as &quot;the science of the regu lative laws of thought&quot; (or &quot;the normative science of thought &quot;) comes near enough to the old sense to enable us to compare profitably the usual subject-matter of the science with the definition and end of philosophy. The introduction of the term &quot;regulative&quot; or &quot;normative&quot; is intended to differentiate the science from psychology as the science of mental events. In this reference logic does not tell us how our intellections connect themselves as mental phenomena, but how we ought to connect our thoughts if they are to realize truth (either as consistency with what we thought before or as agreement with observed facts). Logic, therefore, agrees with epistemology (and differs from psychology) in treating thought not as mental fact but as knowledge, as idea, as having meaning in relation to an objective world. To this extent it must inevitably form a part of the theory of knowledge. But, if we desire to keep by older landmarks and maintain a distinction between the two disciplines, a ground for doing so may be found in the fact that all the main definitions of logic point to the investigation of the laws of thought in a subjective reference, with a view, that is, by an analysis of the operation, to ensure its more correct performance. According to the old phrase, logic is the art of thinking. Moreover, the fact that ordinary logic investigates its laws primarily in this reference, and not disinterestedly as immanent laws of knowledge or of the connexion of con ceptions, brings in its train a limitation of the sphere of the science as compared with the theory of knowledge. We find the logician uniformly assuming that the process of thought has advanced a certain length before his exami nation of it begins; he takes his material full-formed from perception, without, as a rule, inquiring into the nature of the conceptions which are involved in our perceptive ex perience. Occupying a position, therefore, within the wider sphere of the general theory of knowledge, ordinary logic consists in an analysis of the nature of general state ment, and of the conditions under which we pass validly from one general statement to another. But the logic of the schools is eked out by contributions from a variety of sources (e.g., from grammar on one side and from psychology on another), and cannot claim the unity of an independent science. ^ESTHETICS (q.v.) may be treated as a department of psy chology or physiology, and in England this is the mode of treatment that has been most general. To what peculiar ex citation of our bodily or mental organism, it is asked, are the emotions due which make us declare an object beautiful or sublime &quot;? And, the question being put in this form, the attempt has been made in some cases to explain away any peculiarity in the emotions by analysing them into simpler elements, such as primitive organic pleasures and prolonged associations of usefulness or fitness. But, just as psychology in general can in no sense do duty for a theory of knowledge, so it holds true of this particular application of psychology that a mere reference of these emotions to the mechanism and interactive play of our faculties cannot be regarded as an account of the nature of the beautiful. The substitution of the one inquiry for the other may doubtless be traced in part to the latent assumption standing very much in need of proof that our faculties are constructed on some arbitrary plan, with out reference to the general nature of things. Perhaps by talking of &quot; emotions &quot; we tend to give an unduly sub jective colour to the investigation ; it would be better to speak of the perception of the beautiful. Pleasure in itself is unqualified, and affords no differentia. In the case of a beautiful object the resultant pleasure borrows its specific quality from the presence of determinations essentially intellectual in their nature, though not reducible to the categories of science. We have a prima facie right, there fore, to treat beauty as an objective determination of things. The question of aesthetics would then be formu lated What is it in things that makes them beautiful, and what is the relation of this aspect of the universe to its ultimate nature, as that is expounded in metaphysics 1 The answer constitutes the substance of aesthetics, con-