The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

In the following course of lectures I shall try to suggest, in a fashion suited to the general student, something about the men, the problems, and the issues that seem to me most interesting in a limited, but highly representative portion of the history of modern philosophy. I undertake this work with a keen sense of the limitations of my time and my powers. I plead as excuse only my desire to interest some of my fellow-students in the great concerns of philosophy.

The assumption upon which these lectures are based is one that I may as well set forth at the very beginning. It is the assumption that Philosophy, in the proper sense of the term, is not a presumptuous effort to explain the mysteries of the world by means of any superhuman insight or extraordinary cunning, but has its origin and value in an attempt to give a reasonable account of our own personal attitude towards the more serious business of life. You philosophize when you reflect critically upon what you are actually doing in your world. What you are doing is of course, in the first place, living. And life involves passions, faiths, doubts, and courage. The critical inquiry into what all these things mean and imply is philosophy. We have our faith in life; we want reflectively to estimate tliis faith. We feel ourselves in a world of law and of significance. Yet why we feel this homelike sense of the reality and the worth of our world is a matter for criticism. Such a criticism of life, made elaborate and thorough-going, is a philosophy.