Metaphysics, or, the philosophy of consciousness, phenomenal and real / by Henry Longueville Mansel.

  • Henry Longueville Mansel
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metaphysics, or, the philosophy of consciousness, phenomenal and real / by Henry Longueville Mansel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Essay, in the meaning of the word Metaphysics—a word formerly appropriated to the ontology and pneumato- logy of the schools, but now understood as equally applicable to all those inquiries which have for their object to trace the various branches of human know- ledge to their first principles in the constitution of our nature” “This change,” he continues, “can be ac- counted for only by a change in the philosophical pursuits of Locke’s successors—a change from the idle abstractions and subtleties of the dark ages, to studies subservient to the culture of the understanding; to the successful exercise of its faculties and powers; and to a knowledge of the great ends and purposes of our being. It may be regarded, therefore, as a palpable and incontrovertible proof of a corresponding progress of reason in this part of the world.” This change in the pursuits, and consequently in the language, of philosophy had been noticed shortly before by a philosopher of -another country in a very different spirit. Hegel, in 1816, introduced his lectures on the history of philosophy in the following words :—“ In the other countries of Europe, in which the sciences and the cultivation of the understanding have been prosecuted with zeal and credit, every remembrance and trace of philosophy, the name only excepted, has perished and disappeared. Among the Germans alone, it has main- tained itself as a national possession. We have received
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