Varia Author:William Angus Knight 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: Ill OUR PRESENT PHILOSOPHICAL OUTLOOK The problem of the present Outlook in Philosophy may be dealt with in several different ways. It might be prefaced b... more »y a historical sketch of former tendencies in Philosophy, our anticipations of the future being based upon our knowledge of the past—in which case the discussion might be described as in another paper in this volume, " Prospects, in the light of Retrospects"—or, it might be merely a review of existing tendencies at work, amongst us and around us, the " outlooker" noting what forces are for the time being in the ascendant, and indicating what are dormant ; or, it might be a combination of these two methods of treatment, the entire survey bringing out both our losses and our gains, and indicating some desiderata in the Philosophy of the future. In what follows I try to combine these methods, so far as practicable. Looking back then—trying to forecast the future not so much in the light of the present as of the past, and remembering that "the thing thatUNIFORMITY IMPOSSIBLE 45 hath been it is that which shall be"—it does not seem presumptuous to affirm. First, that the attainment of uniformity in philosophical opinion is a Utopian dream. Finality in the speculative doctrines of the world is absolutely impossible ; and, if there is to be no finality, a millennium of uniformity would mean the absolute ossification of belief, as well as the collapse and ruin of Philosophy itself. Just as certainly as that no political party can continue for ever in power, that no nation can direct and control the destinies of the world for ever, that no Religion can monopolize the intellectual assent of the race, no system of Philosophy can ever reign supreme and final. This is, however, one of the commonplaces of the literary and hi...« less