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 22 D. G. EITCHIE : their contemporaries may be interesting as survivals or as precursors, but they do not help us to trace the main currents of human thought. If it is objected that 'we may indeed detect the links of causal connexion in the rise and fall of particular opinions, but that that gives us no warrant for seeing any progress towards truth or any development of one eternal philosophy amid the changes and chances of mortal speculations to this objection the only answer can be that all knowledge rests upon faith, in the sense that a faith in the ultimate rationality of the universe is the presupposition (however unacknowledged) of all serious science and of all strenuous conduct ; and that the very task of philosophy, however difficult it may be, however unsatisfactory our best attain- ments, is to make this "faith in Providence" intelligible. 1 Credo ut intelligam is a double-edged motto. And if we can hope to find a meaning in the course of events in any part of the universe, most surely it ought to be in the movement of thought from one clear consciousness to another. A blind faith and some of those who call attention to our dependence on faith seem to take for their motto Credo ne intelligam may be more convenient for ecclesiastical author- ity, but can only be recognised by philosophy as a sceptical or ironical device for keeping science free from theological interference. Another objection sometimes made to the Hegelian treat- ment of the history of philosophy is this, that on Hegel's own principles that method must now be superseded, and yet if Hegel was right his philosophy is the final truth. The argument makes a plausible dilemma ; but both horns may be evaded. In the first place, I do not think that any one, however much he may feel the debt of the world to Hegel, will now be found to set up Hegel as a final authority, a new St. Thomas Aquinas, on whom we must be content to write commentaries. Hegel's " Encyclopaedic " method of exposition, like the mathematical form adopted by Spinoza, has injured his reputation and prevented him being rightly understood ; but it was due to the influences of his surround- ings. He lived in a time of audacious system-building. Moreover he was a professor of philosophy, and had been for seven years a tutor in private families and for eight years 1 Cf. Hegel, History of Philosophy, Engl. transl., i., p. 35 (Werke, xiii., p. 49). " The great assumption that what has taken place in the world has done so in conformity with reason which is what first gives the history of philosophy its true interest is nothing else than trust in Providence, only in another form."