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 PHILOSOPHY 431 to its special domain, where kindred facts are to be classified or coordinated, asks only what and how. Philosophy, accepting all facts and phenomena, whether as yet scientifically clas- sified or not, passes beyond the sphere of science, asking the why of things, and search- ing out their causes, connections, and conse- quences, with a view to the "interpretation and justification of phenomena to the reason, showing their rational grounds, principles, laws, and ends." Thus resolving the manifold of phenomena into a higher unity, and direct- ing its attention especially to what is most im- portant and fundamental, it cannot be content, as Lord Bacon has said, but with the highest themes God, nature, and man. Divisions. A division of philosophy frequently adopted has been that of pure and applied, or specula- tive and practical. It was adopted by some of the ancient philosophers, by Wolf and Her- bart among moderns, and in a peculiar sense by Kant, but was rejected by Hamilton, on the ground that the distinction is not always ap- plicable, the theoretical being often practical also. ^Esthetics has sometimes been classed with one, sometimes with the other, or with both ; and in regard to other branches of phi- losophy, the same difficulty exists. With the stoics, all philosophy, as ethical, was practical. Plato himself adopted no uniform division of philosophy, although his commentators have endeavored to base one upon his distinctive discussions of the true, the good, and the beautiful, designated respectively as the criti- cal, the practical, and the aesthetic. His sub- jective definition of philosophy as the pursuit of true knowledge led him to class together the most diverse departments, including mathe- matics, ethics, political science, theology, &c., under the same appellation. Aristotle like- wise includes mathematics, physics, ethics, and politics together under the same generic term, reserving his " first philosophy," or science of being, for what is now termed metaphysics. This he made to be the science which treats of the ultimate grounds or prin- ciples of everything that exists, considered in relation to its "four causes:" matter, form, efficient causes, and end. Yet mathematics, physics, and theology are with him the three " theoretical philosophies," while ethics, in the broad sense of the word including politi- cal science, belongs to the practical sphere. It is his "first philosophy" that goes back of all other philosophies, or rather philosophi- cal sciences, which have their special spheres, and investigates what they must accept hypo- thetically, viz. : being as such. If there were only physical beings, physics would be the first and only philosophy. But if there is an im- material and unmoved essence which is the ground of all being, there must be an earlier and therefore universal philosophy. This first ground of all being is God, and therefore Aris- totle sometimes calls his "first philosophy" theology. While sometimes accepting the dis- 658 VOL. xm. 28 tinction of speculative and practical, he is less inclined than some of his commentators to any formal division. At different periods phi- losophy has limited or extended its sphere, and has essayed the solution of diverse problems, inconsistent with any uniform classification'. Subsequent to the revival of learning in Europe, and especially since the time of Descartes, there has been a growing disposition to limit philosophy to metaphysics, and exclude from it much that it once embraced. The result has been that the number of subordinate distinct sciences has been multiplied, some of these ta- king the name of philosophy, as the philoso- phy of history, language, grammar, rhetoric, government, religion, &c. But philosophy proper still retains the superior sphere. Its themes are still, as Bacon held, God, nature, and man. Mental science and physical discov- ery have supplied it new material. Logic, which some would make a part of it, is considered by others as merely its instrument. By Wolf as well as by later German writers, it is con- sidered as propradeutic. He bases his distinc- tion of speculative (metaphysics) and practical philosophy on the faculties of cognition and volition; moral philosophy, economics, and politics falling under the latter, and ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural theology under the former. Herbart expressly isolates the particular philosophical sciences, and rigor- ously separates theoretical and practical phi- losophy. He censures attempts at unity, ascri- bing to them a variety of errors, since logical, metaphysical, and sesthetical forms are in his view disparate. Hegel, with others, makes the distinction between the theoretical spirit (intel- ligence) and the practical spirit (will). Never- theless the attempt boldly essayed by Spinoza to resolve the duality of philosophy (specially illustrated by the theories of Descartes and Kant) into a higher unity has been renewed during the present century by German philos- ophers, asserting the identity of subject and ob- ject (the Ego and the non-Ego), or construct- ing a philosophy of the absolute, which .can find its developed application in all spheres, theoretical and practical. To the sphere of philosophy, however, by general concession, belong ethics (see MORAL PHILOSOPHY), psychol- ogy, ontology, cosmology, and natural theol- ogy, each often so closely connected with the others as to be in some measure dependent upon them. Psychology investigates mental phenomena, the facts and laws of conscious- ness, and the constituent faculties of the soul in themselves and their relations. Ontology covers the ground of Aristotle's "first philos- ophy," and is a synonyme for the science of being. Cosmology treats of questions concern- ing the contingency or necessity of the world, its eternity or its limitations in space and time, and the formal law of its changes, extending also to questions concerning human freedom and the origin of evil. As exhibited by Wolf, it professes to deduce from ontological prin-