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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