Problems of philosophy - 1905 Author:James Hervey Hyslop Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Let us summarize the result of this introductory analysis. It can be done by briefly characterizing the different stages of human reflection. The three stages in... more »to which we have divided the history that has passed under review had their various problems and interests. The ethical and religious questions were integral elements of their speculations, even though the primary impulse was purely scientific or philosophical. The various interests of life are so articulated that knowledge in any one department of inquiry inevitably influences all others in some degree. Ancient thought began its speculations in cos- mological questions. These concerned the "origin" of the visible and tangible world. It was not the " origin" of it by any process of creation, but its " origin " from elements. Existence as it was known was conceived as a compound made up of simple elements. Efficient causes were not the primary object of inquiry, but mainly material causes. The conclusion of the philosopher was that the sensible world was made out of supersensible elements, but still of matter the same in kind as its compounds. It affected the religious consciousness only when it developed into the denial of the immortality of the soul, as in Epicureanism, which in this issue defined the controversy between Greek and Christian thought in its metaphysical aspects. But on its psychological and ethical sides the controversy in Greek thought was between sensationalism and intellectualism, between the sensuous and the contemplative life, between vulgarity and culture. In Christian periods this antithesis was expressed in the opposition between the carnal and the spiritual life. In modern thought, after having eliminated the problems of metaphysics as understood in mediaeval thought and having concentrated interes...« less