Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 48:190 (Apr 1891)
Article: The Data And Method Of Philosophy
Author: E. H. Merrell

BSac 48:190 (April 1891) p. 230

The Data And Method Of Philosophy

Rev. E. H. Merrell

1. It is within bounds to say that Philosophy in the general mind is viewed with distrust. It is not exactly the dismal science, as Carlyle esteemed Political Economy to be, but rather an attempt, from the nature of the case futile, to construct a science out of visions in the air or phantasms of the brain. This is declared to be the reason why Philosophy is so congenial to the German mind; for according to a saying of Richter’s, “to the English belongs the empire of the sea, to the French of the land,-and to the Germans of the air.”

And there are good reasons for the popular prejudice and distrust. The contradictions among philosophers themselves, the mutually exclusive hypotheses and even doctrines that have been seriously believed and defended, the antipodal extremes that have been concurrently accepted and expounded, are nothing less than surprising. Kant, who declared that Philosophy cannot transcend experience, supposed that he had proved a Philosophy of the Absolute to be impossible. But “four Philosophies of the Absolute, each of great method and importance, and numbering a great crowd of disciples in its day, arose within forty years” from his solemn declaration of impossibility. And these four Philosophies are irreconcilable with one another. With Fichte the Absolute is the Ego; with Schelling it is the unity of the Ego and Non-Ego; with Hegel it is pure Thought— thought and being are identical; and with Schopenhauer it is Will. At the foundation, these systems are mutually exclusive. They are the standing illustration of great quanti-

BSac 48:190 (April 1891) p. 231

ties of this German thinking, which, as a matter of fact, are mere system-mongering, in which magnificent schemes are woven from the filmy product of their own spinnerets, in complacent indifference to the facts of being, and with surprising incomprehensibility. Hegel is said to have declared when on his dying bed, “I shall leave behind me in all Europe but one man who understands my philosophy, and he doesn’t.” These uncertainties in Philosophy have given eccentric thinkers their opportunity, and their following has often been large in proportion to the absurdity of their pretensions. Wilford Hall leads clerical sciolists in troops, and theologians with twists in their minds are on that account secure of admiration from materialistic scientists.

2. Nevertheless, to philosophize is an ordinance of the human mind. It is difficult to conceive of an intellect so feeble that it never asks the question, Why? and to ask why a thing is, as distinct from the affirmation that it is, is to heed the philosophic impulse. Aristotle long ago remarked that we ar...