In closing, a remark forces itself upon us with reference to the comparative merits of Raphael and Michael Angelo.
Raphael is the perfection of Romantic Art. Michael Angelo is almost a Greek. His paintings all seem to be pictures of statuary. In his grandest—The Last Judgment—we have the visible presence as the highest. Art with him could represent the Absolute. With Raphael it could only, in its loftiest flights, express its own impotence.
Whether we are to consider Raphael or Michael Angelo as the higher artist, must be decided by an investigation of the merits of the “Last Judgment.”
INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
The object of this series is to furnish, in as popular a form as possible, a course of discipline for those who are beginning the study of philosophy. Strictly popular, in the sense the word is used—i. e. signifying that which holds fast to the ordinary consciousness of men, and does not take flights beyond—I am well aware, no philosophy can be. The nearest approach to it that can be made, consists in starting from the common external views, and drawing them into the speculative, step by step. For this purpose the method of definitions and axioms, with deductions therefrom, as employed by Spinoza, is more appropriate at first, and afterwards a gradual approach to the Dialectic, or true philosophic method. In the mathematical method (that of Spinoza just alluded to) the content may be speculative, but its form, never. Hence the student of philosophy needs only to turn his attention to the content at first; when that becomes in a measure familiar, he can then the more readily pass over to the true form of the speculative content, and thus achieve complete insight. A course of discipline in the speculative content, though under an inadequate form, would make a grand preparation for the study of Hegel or Plato; while a study of these, or, in short, of any writers who employ speculative methods in treating speculative content—a study of these without previous acquaintance with the content is well nigh fruitless. One needs only to read the comments of translators of Plato upon his speculative passages, or the prevailing verdicts upon Hegel, to be satisfied on this point.
The course that I shall here present will embody my own experience, to a great extent, in the chronological order of its development. Each lesson will endeavor to present an aperçu derived from some great philosopher. Those coming later will presuppose the earlier ones, and frequently throw new light upon them.
As one who undertakes the manufacture of an elegant piece of furniture needs carefully elaborated tools for that end, so must the thinker who wishes to comprehend the universe be equipped with the tools of thought, or else he will come off as poorly as he who should undertake to make a carved mahogany chair with no tools except his teeth and finger nails. What complicated machinery is required to transmute the rough ores into an American watch! And yet how common is the delusion that no elaboration of tools of thought is required to enable the commonest mind to manipulate the highest subjects of investigation. The alchemy that turned base metal into gold is only a symbol of that cunning alchemy of thought that by means of the philosopher’s stone (scientific method) dissolves the base facts of experience into universal truths.
The uninitiated regards the philosophic treatment of a theme as difficult solely by reason of its technical terms. “If I only understood your use of words, I think I should find no difficulty in your thought.” He supposes that under those bizarre terms there lurks only the meaning that he and others put into ordinary phrases. He does not seem to think that the concepts likewise are new. It is just as though an Indian were to say to the carpenter, “I could make as good work as you, if I only had the secret of using my finger-nails and teeth as you do the plane and saw.” Speculative philosophy—it cannot be too early inculcated—does not “conceal under cumbrous terminology views which men ordinarily hold.” The ordinary reflection would say that Being is the ground of thought, while speculative philosophy would say that thought is the ground of Being; whether of other being, or of itself as being—for it is causa sui.
Let us now address ourselves to the task of elaborating our technique—the tools of thought—and see what new worlds become accessible through our mental telescopes and microscopes, our analytical scalpels and psychological plummets.