MALEBRANCHE'S STAND-POINT, LIFE, AND WORKS. I. THE INTUITION OF THE WORLD IN GOD II. CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY 1. The Divine Will as the Law of Nature HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER I. THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AS SCIENCE. THE subject of this work is modern philosophy. How ever peculiar the conditions of life which this philosophy implies, however natural and plain its problems, proposed through its own insight, it is still conditioned in its origin by the history of the philosophy which precedes it. To be sure, it arises in a thoroughly conscious break with the past. It has the distinct and outspoken certainty that an entirely new beginning must be made, and declares at the start that it intends to be free from all presuppositions, perfectly independent of all traditional doctrines, of all the authorities of the past. And it actually realizes this ideal as it conceives it. But this freedom of mind is itself an historical event: this freedom from presuppositions has historical conditions. The path that leads to it is gradually broken, and preparations are made for it by a further and further departure from the principles of the earlier philosophy. There are definite crises in which the human mind, weary of that which is, falls back upon its original powers, and, from its inexhaustible sources, renews its culture. The foundations of such crises are laid deep in the progress of humanity: they are dependent upon a long series of historical conditions, and, therefore, they are rare. They never appear except in the fulness of time. Such a fulness of time, modern philosophy required for its origin. Hence, this philosophy, with all its independence of thought, with all the originality of its foundations, remains in constant intercourse with its historical presuppositions. It contradicts them in its first period, and sharpens this contradiction to a complete contrast; as it progresses, it inclines to them, and feels a kinship with them; and, in its most recent period, it renews this antagonism and this relationship. Thus, modern philosophy always sustains a definite relation to the philosophy of ancient times, and never permits it to vanish from its horizon. We must, therefore, in the introduction to this work, become clear as to the historical conditions from which modern philosophy proceeds, and as to the connection of its first period with the great march of human development. In the very concept of the history of philosophy, certain difficulties are contained which might make the possibility of such a history doubtful. For a concept is difficult when its characteristics cannot be at once combined, and impossible when they cannot be combined at all. Now, between the concept of history and that of philosophy, such an opposition seems indeed to exist. History is inconceivable without a succession of events in time; philosophy, without the knowledge of truth. Now, only that concept is true which completely corresponds to its object. There are, therefore, but two possibilities, either this correspondence between a concept and its object exists, or it does not: in the first case, the concept is true; in the second, it is false. Truth is a unit: it has no series or succession of cases, and, therefore, as it seems, no history. And so a history of philosophy, a succession of different systems, often in the most direct contradiction, and never in perfect harmony with each other, appears as the manifest contradiction of philosophy itself, and the plainest testimony to its impossibility. Therefore the contradictions of philosophers, the multiplicity and diversity of their systems, have always been urged by |