Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/215

 204 H. SIDGWICK : or more limited in its application, and should thus either impair its claim to be called prevalent, or diminish its claim to be called philosophical. From a philosophical point of view, the characteristic that concerns us most in the pre- valent belief in the Historical Method is that it is held to have, in some sense and some degree, a universal applica- tion that, as its admirers say, it has " invaded and trans- formed all departments of thought ". It is undeniable that in every department of thought either the objects of our pre- sent thought or oar thoughts about them, or both, are con- ceived by us as a present that has had a past different from it ; and it is therefore a primd facie tenable view that in all cases, in order to understand rightly this present, the essential thing is to study the past that has led up to it and contemplate the present in the light furnished by this study ; and it is on the general and eager if inevitably somewhat indefinite acceptance of this view that the deepest influence of the Historical Method depends, and its deepest interest for students of philosophy. For if this breadth of scope and this height of pretension be admitted, the Historical Method cannot, I conceive, really leave room for any important and effective philosophical method distinct and apart from it. It is true that some of the most eager advocates of the Historical Method take pains to explain that they not only leave room for Philosophy, but even concede the first rank to it, as the more dignified and profound inquiry : they confine themselves merely to the relative and phenomenal, and with the utmost formal courtesy and humility leave the whole sphere of absolute being for philosophy to study. But this humility and courtesy is, I need hardly say, ironical : the absolute thus left is known to be unknowable ; the egg thus offered for simple-minded philosophy to brood over is known to be addled. If we are to admit the claims of the Historical Method, in all the breadth and fulness with which they are widely asserted, we must admit that it is or includes the only available philosophical method, in the present state of our knowledge. It is this largest conception of the scope and aims of his- torical study which I propose to begin by examining ; for though I shall presently come down to a narrower con- ception which has, I think, still more general acceptance it appears to me that this narrower conception will be most easily and clearly dealt with if we approach it through the wider. Let us take, then, in order the chief departments of