XV CONCLUSION
The philosopher Herbart declares: "If the meaning of a word were determined by the use to which it is put by this or that person, then the term metaphysics would be ambiguous and scarcely comprehensible. If one wishes to know what meaning of this term has been handed down to us by tradition, he should read the ancient metaphysicians and their followers, from Aristotle to Wolff and his school. It will then be found that the concepts of being, of its quality, of cause and effect, of space and time, have been the objects of this science everywhere ... that it has been attempted to analyze them logically and that this has led to all sorts of disputes. These disputes ... determined the concept of metaphysics."
Such a declaration is right enough to furnish, by the help of a little criticism on our part, a sketch of the positive outcome of philosophy.
Metaphysics has always been the principal part of philosophy. In the first sentence of his "Handbook for the Elements of Philosophy," Herbart defines philosophy as the "analysis of ideas." According to this, metaphysics would have to analyze the special ideas of being, etc. Now it must be remembered that the idea of being is not so much a special concept as the general idea which comprises all ideas and all things. Everything belongs to being, and to understand that is too much for metaphysics. Hence it came into difficulties. Now our authority has just explained to us that the concept of metaphysics was not so much determined by the work it accomplished as by disputes. It did not work, but only made the logical attempt to analyze the concept of being. In so doing it led to disputes and did not distinguish itself very much as a science. The latter, Kant has told us in his preface to his "Critique of Pure Reason," is recognized by its agreements, not by its disputes.
The metaphysical disputes were overcome by philosophic science, which is the study of ideas or understanding, by arriving at a clear and plain theory of understanding, the demonstration of which I have here attempted.
The faculty of understanding had been transmitted to us by our superstitious ancestors as a thing of another world. But the illusion of another world is a metaphysical one and led to disputes about the idea of being.
The positive outcome of philosophy assures us and demonstrates that there is only one world, that this world is the essence of all being, that there are many modes of being, but that they all belong to the same common nature. Thus philosophy has unified the concept of being and overcome metaphysics and its disputes.
Universal being has only one quality, the natural one of general existence. At the same time this quality is the essence of all special qualities. Just as the concept of herbs includes all herbs, even weeds, so the concept of being comprises not only that which is, but also that which is not, which was once upon a time and which will be in the future.
To free the concept of being from its metaphysical disputes, is a very difficult thing for those who attribute an extravagant meaning to the first principle of logic which says: "Any subject can have only one of two radically different predicates, because it cannot be at the same time A and not-A."
All previous science of understanding has really revolved around this statement. It is based on something plausible, but still more on misunderstanding. Only when we have become aware of what has finally been the outcome of the science of understanding, only when this statement is backed up by the positive product of philosophy, does this stubbornly maintained and much contested statement receive a lasting value by its just modification.