I.
I. Philosophy literally means the love of Wisdom. That is the love of a hidden treasure, so it comes to mean a search after Wisdom.
II. All have admitted that this hidden treasure cannot be seen, handled, weighed or measured. Yet it may be sought among things that can be: among things that are produced and grow, that is, among Physical things.
III. The philosopher asks whether Wisdom is in these things and of the same kind as they are, or of a different kind: fixed, constant, unproduced. One who seeks an object not of the same kind as the things around him is called a Metaphysical philosopher.
IV. But how has he learned to dream of an object different in kind from these things? Is he different from them? How does he come to desire this Wisdom, this hidden treasure? Must it not have more to do with him than with them? If he knew himself, and the ways, habits and manners of his race, might he not be nearer to what he seeks? These ways, habits and manners are the concern of the Moral philosopher.
V. This sketch aims to show how men have been led into these inquiries, how they have been pursued in different countries and ages, and what has come of them.
VI. Moral inquiries are suggested by our daily acts, our ordinary speech and our necessary relations. Metaphysical inquiries are suggested by our discovery of powers in ourselves that we do not find in other creatures. The moral therefore concern us most, and in a history will come first. But we shall find that they cannot be separated from the metaphysical. Physical inquiries pursued merely to learn the order and constitution of the world around us I shall not report. But insofar as they were prompted by the desire to find Wisdom, they are too bound up with moral inquiries, and too plainly assumed in the word metaphysical, to be passed over. The philosopher seeks for Wisdom everywhere so that he may know where it is not.
VII. All nations have engaged in this search, and those that have left the most records in the History of the World have done so most actively. Buildings, poems, pictures, mechanical arts, and above all polities, show the direction that different periods, countries and individuals have taken in it. But the name “Philosopher” has generally, and rightly, been kept for one who has searched deliberately and traced out a method. Such a man interprets the less conscious striving of his contemporaries.
VIII. It would be a fatal mistake to make even the most rapid sketch of philosophical inquiry merely a record of the conclusions different Schools reached. These are generally premature attempts to end the search for Wisdom and to confine its results to a few meagre propositions. It is far more interesting, and far more the historian’s proper work, to trace the thoughts at work in the minds of the founders of Schools. He should discover how they were affected by their characters, teachers, disciples, opponents, and personal and political conflicts, and watch how those thoughts were expanded, completed or narrowed. Those who busy themselves with the speculations and contradictions of Schools are likely to begin with extravagant expectations and end in despondency. Earnest, sympathetic meditation on men’s actual efforts to discover the secret of their life and the ends they live for offers equal encouragement to humility and to hope.
IX. The sketch will have two parts: Philosophy before and after the coming of Christ. The first part will treat of: 1st, the Hebrew Philosophy; 2nd, the Hindoo; 3rd, the Chinese; 4th, the Persian; 5th, the Greek; 6th, the Roman; 7th, the Græco-Hebraic or Alexandrian. The second part will treat of: 1, the Philosophy of the first six centuries; 2, the Philosophy of the Middle Ages; 3, the Philosophy of the centuries from the thirteenth to our own time.