Philosophy and Specific Problems [pp. 208-232]

PHILOSOPHY AND ITS SPECIFIC PROBLEMS.
with the history of British speculation in its most conspicuous
movements as anything but novel. The rather they will seem
like the reappearance of "old, familiar faces." To what thoughtful reader of English are not the outlines of the philosophy of
Mr. Herbert Spencer already like a twice-told tale? And who
does not know that this philosophy is but the repetition, in principle, of the wisdom, of Britain's philosophic sages (with few exceptions) from the time of Francis Bacon down to this day?
The dress is modern. It sparkles with ornaments drawn in profuse abundance from the curiosity-shop of modern science. But
the form within is old-older than Bacon, and existing in the
history of European thought as far back as the pre-Socratic
philosophers and the Sophists of Greece. According to this
philosophy, then, as according to our German author, philosophy, on its positive side, is identical with the largest generalizations of physical science, and, in its application to the explanation of particular facts or realms of existence, consists in the
demonstration that such facts or realms at once conform to
and confirm these generalizations. What is knowable is sensible phenomena, and these are, as more particularly described,
phenomena of the "redistribution of matter and motion." This
redistribution, again, takes place according to a law of periodic
evolution and dissolution, or of cosmic ebb and flow-the
process of the universe being conceived to consist in the successive recurrence at regular but protracted intervals of periods
of absolute homogeneity and of extreme heterogeneity. It is
particularly interesting to note that this conception, which in
kind is perfectly scientific, dates, in the history of European
thought, almost from the very earliest beginnings of Grecian
speculation. But what it more specially concerns us here to
notice is that this notion, this ostensibly all-comprehensive generalization, which may be perfectly valid, and in application has
shown itself abundantly fruitful, as a law of the redistribution of
(the phenomena of) matter and motion, is held by Mr. Spencer
to include, and to contain for us the final explanation of, all that
man knows or can know. Knowledge itself, intelligence, will,
purpose, the pursuit and realization of ideals, in society, the
state, art, religion, all of these are regarded as knowable only so
far as they can be reduced to phenomena of the redistribution
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