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Transcriber's Notes: Some typographical errors have been corrected. A
complete list follows the text. Words in Greek in the original are
transliterated and placed between +plus signs+. In the transliterations
e: and o: represent the vowel with a circumflex. Words italicized in
the original are surrounded by _underscores_.




THE
APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY


BY PROF. RALPH BARTON PERRY

  THE FREE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
  THE MORAL ECONOMY
  THE APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY


CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS




THE APPROACH TO
PHILOSOPHY


BY

RALPH BARTON PERRY, PH.D.
  ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY


CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
  NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON


COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Printed in the United States of America
F




THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO

MY FATHER

AS A TOKEN OF MY LOVE AND ESTEEM




PREFACE


In an essay on "The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time,"
Professor Edward Caird says that "philosophy is not a first venture into
a new field of thought, but the rethinking of a secular and religious
consciousness which has been developed, in the main, independently of
philosophy."[vii:A] If there be any inspiration and originality in this
book, they are due to my great desire that philosophy should appear in
its vital relations to more familiar experiences. If philosophy is, as
is commonly assumed, appropriate to a phase in the development of every
individual, it should _grow out_ of interests to which he is already
alive. And if the great philosophers are indeed never dead, this fact
should manifest itself in their classic or historical representation of
a perennial outlook upon the world. I am not seeking to attach to
philosophy a fictitious liveliness, wherewith to insinuate it into the
good graces of the student. I hope rather to be true to the meaning of
philosophy. For there is that in its stand-point and its problem which
makes it universally significant entirely apart from dialectic and
erudition. These are derived interests, indispensable to the scholar,
but quite separable from that modicum of philosophy which helps to make
the man. The present book is written for the sake of elucidating the
inevitable philosophy. It seeks to make the reader more solicitously
aware of the philosophy that is in him, or to provoke him to philosophy
in his own interests. To this end I have sacrificed all else to the task
of mediating between the tradition and technicalities of the academic
discipline and the more common terms of life.

The purpose of the book will in part account for those shortcomings that
immediately reveal themselves to the eye of the scholar. In Part I
various great human interests have been selected as points of departure.
I have sought to introduce the general stand-point and problem of
philosophy through its implication in practical life, poetry, religion,
and science. But in so doing it has been necessary for me to deal
shortly with topics of great independent importance, and so risk the
disfavor of those better skilled in these several matters. This is
evidently true of the chapter which deals with natural science. But the
problem which I there faced differed radically from those of the
foregoing chapters, and the method of treatment is correspondingly
different. In the case of natural science one has to deal with a body of
knowledge which is frequently regarded as the only knowledge. To write a
chapter about science from a philosophical stand-point is, in the
present state of opinion, to undertake a polemic against exclusive
naturalism, an attitude which is itself philosophical, and as such is
well known in the history of philosophy as _positivism_ or
_agnosticism_. I have avoided the polemical spirit and method so far as
possible, but have, nevertheless, here taken sides against a definite
philosophical position. This chapter, together with the Conclusion, is
therefore an exception to the purely introductory and expository
representation which I have, on the whole, sought to give. The
relatively great space accorded to the