10. To enable the history of philosophy to satisfy an enlightened curiosity, not merely a vain and idle one, its object ought to be thoroughly to explore, through its continual alternations of improvement and declension, the progress of a philosophic spirit, and the gradual development of philosophy as a science. This end cannot be attained by a mere acquaintance with historic facts, but rather by contemplating their mutual dependence, and connecting their causes and effects.

11. The efforts of philosophic reason are internal to the mind; but by their publication, and the influence they exert on the world without, they assume the character and enter into the combinations of external facts. The facts, therefore, which form a groundwork for the history of philosophy may be regarded as both external and internal; because, 1st. They stand in connection with chronology, as successive or contemporaneous events. 2dly. They have their external effects and causes. 3dly. They have their origin in the constitution of the human mind, developing themselves in a variety of combinations and mutual relations. 4thly. They have reference to an object of the reason.

12. The formal character, therefore, of a history of philosophy will be modified according to the above four-fold relation, and by its proper end, which is to demonstrate at once circumstantially and with a scientific view, the causes of every revolution, and its consequences.

Observation. The circumstantial account does not consist merely in a chronological statement of a series of facts, but assumes such a series as its text and groundwork. It is very compatible with a scientific character in the history of philosophy; at the same time that it must be borne in mind, that a history of philosophy is not philosophy itself. See the work of Grohmann cited above, at the head of § 2.

13. Consequently, the history of philosophy is the science which details the efforts of the human reason to realise the idea of philosophy, by exhibiting them in their mutual dependency: it is a scientific exposition of facts illustrating the gradual development of philosophy, as a science.

Observation. There is a difference to be observed between the history of philosophy, and the history of mankind, the history of the cultivatisn of the human understanding, and the history of the sciences. The biography of philosophers, the examination of their writings, the state

ment of their opinions, and the bibliographical history of philosophy in general, are either preliminary lights and aids, or constituent parts, of the history of philosophy.

II. Comprehensiveness and Commencement of the History of

Philosophy.

See, in addition to the works cited above, at the head of § 2, + BORGE RIISBRIGH, on the Antiquity of Philosophy, and the character of this Science, translated from the Danish into German by J. AMB. MARKUSSEN, Copenh. 1803, 8vo.

14. The history of philosophy does not affect to comprehend all the ideas, hypotheses, and caprices which have found a place in minds addicted to philosophic researches; such an attempt would be equally impracticable and unprofitable. The only philosophic opinions which deserve to be recorded are those which may claim to be so for their originality, their intrinsic worth, or their influence in their own and subsequent epochs.

15. It must be granted that philosophy has had a begin ning, because it is nothing else than a superior degree of energy and activity in the reason, which must have been preceded by an inferior. But it is not necessary that the history of philosophy should embrace all its first efforts, or ascend up to the very cradle of our species. This is, in fact, its point of contact with the history of humanity and of the human understanding. See the so-called Philosophia antediluviana.

16. No sufficient reason has been alleged to induce a belief in the existence of a Primitive Philosophic People, with whom philosophy might be supposed to have commenced, and from whom all philosophic knowledge might have emanated; for an aptness to philosophise is natural to the human mind, and has not been reserved exclusively for any one people. The very hypothesis of such a people would remove only one step farther the question of the origin of philosophy. Nor must we dignify with the name of science the symbolical notions of some of the earlier races, which did not as yet clearly apprehend and grasp their objects with a full consciousness.

Observation. The idea of a Primitive Philosophic People is founded: 1st. On the hypothesis that all instruction came by revelation. 2ndly. In the tendency of the understanding to refer correspondent facts to the

same origin. 3rdly. In the attempt to render certain doctrines more venerable by their high antiquity. The general cause is to be sought in the indolence natural to human nature, and the habit of confounding opinions which have a semblance of philosophy with philosophy itself. The writers who have devoted themselves to the critical examination of history with a theological view, have declared the Hebrews to be the primitive race; others (like Plessing) the Egyptians; and these last have recently (since the writings of Fred. Schlegel), been displaced by the Hindoos.

17. Although we discover in every people the traces of philosophic thinking, nevertheless this general disposition does not appear to have developed itself in all in an equal degree: nor has philosophy among all attained to the character of a science. In general, it seems as if nature employed the mental cultivation of one nation as the means of cultivating others, and accorded only to a few the distinction of originality in philosophizing. Consequently, all nations have not an equal claim to a place in the history of this science. The first belongs to those among whom the spirit of philosophy, originally aided by a slight external impulse, has felt itself sufficiently strong to advance to independent researches, and to gain ground in the paths of science; the second belongs to such as, without possessing so much origi nality and spontaneous exertion, have adopted philosophic ideas from others, have made them their own, and thereby exerted an influence over the destinies of philosophy.

18. The Greeks are the nation whose originality of genius has created an era in the history of this science. In fact, although they were dependent for part of their first civilization on other nations, and have received from foreigners certain materials and incitements to the study of philosophy, we can perceive that they evinced themselves a lively and sincere interest in the investigations of reason, and among them this curiosity assumed a scientific character, and imparted the same to the language itself. It is among the Greeks, then, that we find for the first time a truly philosophic spirit united to literature and good taste, and a a scientific spirit of investigation which centered in the contemplation of the Nature of Man; which direction also was easily able to lead back the spirit of research from its wanderings to the true source of philosophic inquiry--¿vûði To this succeeded the desire of investigating to

σεαυτον.

the end and consolidating these first bases of study (the origin this of scepticism); and at length ensued the forma tion of a philosophic language and method. We have moreover positive and certain testimonies to enable us to follow, on grounds altogether historical, the origin and development of the philosophic literature of this nation. We may add that the philosophy, and in general, the science of the Greeks, naturally combine and form a whole with those of

more recent nations.

19. The Orientals, prior to the Greeks in point of antiquity and the date of their civilization, never attained to the same eminence, at least as far as we are enabled to judge. Their doctrines were constantly invested with the character of Revelation, diversified by the imagination under a thousand different aspects. Even among the Hindoos they wear a form altogether mystical and symbolical. It was the genius of these nations to clothe in the colours of the fancy the convictions of the reason, and a certain number of speculative notions, more or less capriciously conceived, in order to render them perceptible; without troubling themselves to examine the operations of reason and its principles; with its movements progressive and retrograde. The notions respecting the Deity, the world, and mankind, which these nations incontestably entertained, were not, with them, the causes nor the consequences of any true philosophy. Their climate, their political constitution, and despotic governments, with the institution of castes, were often obstacles to the free development of the mind. Besides, the history of these nations continues still to be involved in obscurity; there is a want of positive and certain information; and the relation their intellectual progress bears to the history of philosophy cannot as yet be sufficiently ascertained.

Observation. There are some interesting remarks on the Greek and Oriental characters, and on the causes of their diversity, in the work of J. AUG. EBERHARD, entitled the Spirit of Primitive Christianity, vol. i, p. 63, sqq. What is generally understood by the Barbaric philosophy? See Diog. Laert. I, 1, sqq.

20. The true commencement, therefore, of the history of philosophy must be sought among the Greeks, and particularly at that epoch when, by the progress of imagination

and understanding, the activity of the reason had attained a high degree of development: an epoch when the minds of men, become more independent of religion, poetry, and politics, applied themselves to the investigation of truth, and devoted themselves to rational knowledge. This state of things may be referred to the epoch of Thales. The different directions and forms which, in the course of ages, this spirit of philosophic research assumed, and the effects of every kind which it produced, derived, through different channels, from the Greeks to the moderns, constitute the province of the history of philosophy.

Observation. The definition of the true limits of the history of philosophy has only of late become an object of inquiry; (the system of ethnography, or partial histories of particular nations opposing itself to anything like a precise limitation,) and even yet there is nothing satisfactorily determined on this point; only Tiedemann would exclude the Orientals. The reasons assigned on the other hand by + CARUS, Thoughts on the History of Philosophy, p. 143, and + BACHMANN, On Philosophy and its History, and the same author, Dissert. Philos. de peccatis Tennemanni in historiâ Philosophiæ, Jena, 1814, 4to., fail to prove that they necessarily belong to philosophy. It is true that a great interest attaches to the investigation of their doctrines, but we must distinguish well between this and the proper interest of the history of philosophy. On the whole, it may not be useless to preface the statement of Greek philosophy by a brief review of the philosophic and religious opinions of the principal nations who, in a greater or less degree, have had relations with the Greeks.

III. Method.

Consult, besides the works cited before (§ 2), + CHRIST. GARVE, De ratione scribendi historiam Philosophiæ, Lips. 1768, 4to. and Legen dorum veterum præcepta nonnulla et exemplum, Lips. 1770, 4to. both contained in FULLEBORN's Collection, etc. Fasiculi xi, xii.

GEO. GUST. FULLEBORN, Plan of a History of Philosophy, in the iv. Fasc. of his Collection; and, + What is meant by a representation of the Spirit of Philosophy? Fasc. v.

+ CHRIST. WEISS, On the Method of treating the History of Philosophy in the Universities, Leips, 1800.

21. The Method, determined by the end of the science (§ 10), consists in the rules agreeably to which the materials. ought to be investigated, collected, prepared, and combined to form a whole.

22. The materials for the history of philosophy may be either accidentally met with, or methodically investigated.