Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1854-12-30

try diseourses Of spaces and their relations Now
mental philosophy Is science il too must have object
and it only remains to discover what that object
noun really is
With Kant and with Sir william Hamilton, as we un-
derstand him, hold that thought in all its scientific
FORMS is the substantive element Of rational philosophy
In defence Of this view quote paragraph two from
the Scotch thinker to whom have before alluded
and who to have graped this idea with his usual
power:
kind first, the psychological and, second the critical
The psychological the power of man to make
thought itself objective, to study it. classify it, and
SON With it, the ultimate appeal being to the human
scolsness This method is ever open to objection The
inteecualist may post substance and cause and poWer
and appeal for the confirmation Of his doctrine the
seriousness Of mankind The skeptic once asserts the
sacpy Of the concepts and uproots the very possible
ty of proof True he says there substance but that
substance is IN thought and cause, but the cause is in
thoughts and power but the power is in thought And
thus the nelectualis is reduced to the reiteraon
of his Dogma dogma which, long as he confines
himself to the criterion Of consciousness, is than
assertion of his mental experience or conviction
Far otherwise with the crihc The critic takes his
stand on the mmovabe basis Of science, and leaving all
questions OF consciousness Of mental operation, he
makes the whole range OF the sciences objective
The sciences all direct and spontaneous and their Of
fee is to determine what is In geometry for in
stance the axoms are spontaneously true and geometry
does and cam inquire into the objecvity
subectivy of her fundamental propositions They are
true necessarily because effort of can conceive
them otherwise. And when they have been accepted
these terms by geometry they handed over to the
critic whose office is not to determine what axoms are
true but to examine what they consist Of what is their
form, their meaning, and their function. And the
sciences, when completed will involve every substantive
that can enter philosophy and every proposition that
could give rise to question the reality Of knowledge
critical philosophy will thus become the genuine doctrine
of thought; not inquiring into the truth Of the thought
for that is the Office of science, but into its form and
chanism. And thus philosophy would be ut once the
genuine scenta sntiarnm, and the genuine exposition Of
the laws of human thought based the whole range Of
science and appealing ascerained knowledge for the
substantahon of her fundamental truths"
1t is not until the world Of science has been accurately
explored and the boundaries of its separate continents
curatey defined thatthe realm of human thought will
reach its ultimate expansion As oil the truths Of geome-
try would be impossible Of discovery if knew only of
such spaces right gles and circles SO it is mpos
BILE for mental philosophy to post its final conclusions in
the science of thought until all the forms Of thought have
been discovered and logically classified Hence the pro-
priety of what Presd0 WAYLASD says his recent work
on Intellectual Philosophy. Speaking of FIRST truths, he
marks:
On these all resonngs ultimately depend They
rarely stated in LANGUAGE because every instinc
lively takes them for gEnted and he knows that all other
men do the same 1t wuld however, be very valuable
service to science if the irs truths Of all knowledge in
general and of the separe sciences in particular could
be plainly stated and accurately classified In this
large amount Of useless discussion would be pre-
vented and truth arrived with greater facility.
Whenever shall be done the labor of intellectual
search viii be greatly diminished and its results more
easily verified"
1t would have been more ccurate as think, to say
that until this is done the or Of intellectual research
must inevitably conduct to partial however valuable,
Suits and until then these reslts cannot be defntivey
verified at ALL for it will be then, and only then, that
the funess Of time for philosophy will have to say
her last word the summation Of all human knowledge
As yet there is only for t rudments of philoso
ply in this Of the terma critical philosophy Of
scientific thought Rutta will confer service npon the
cause Of philosophel progress rho shall make
beginning in the rt direction do this woudrequire
knowledge Of the Ultimate rut1as and verified genera
cations Of all true sance wle knowledge Of philoso
phisms which have tbs occupied the schools Nigh
still be useful in DOLBY sense-as discipline Of tn
thinking faculties and as warning against attemptr
too much The shattered and exploded systems Of phil
sophy which lie in the path of the student might tea
him to direct his steps longer by the perous ledge
ranscendentasm and across the quagmre Of metap by
steal skepticsm, but into the wide and solid plain of
certaned fact and scientific discovery Psychology oul
then confne itself to he natural histor y Of the min -
that is the classification Of its facu t,esand raj iona
philosophy would discourse the avs relations
forms Of all true thought in the spheI Of knessled ye.