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

  • Henry Longueville Mansel
Date:
1860
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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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    principles and causes of things by means of this or that fundamental assumption. Hence it is,*that while the history of Philosophy in its widest sense opens with inquiries identical in their aim with those afterwards pursued by the metaphysician, the history of Metaphy- sics proper can hardly he said to have commenced until the progress of thought and the failure of previous speculations led men to attempt the solution of the general problem of philosophy in a particular manner. Philosophy in general may he defined, as nearly as a conception so vague admits of definition, as an in- quiry into the principles and causes of things.* Meta- physics has been defined by Aristotle (and the definition may be for the present provisionally accepted), as the science which contemplates being as being, and the attributes which belong to it as such.f The latter definition, while verbally resembling the former, ex- hibits, in fact, an important modification of it; for it implies that the progress of philosophy had necessitated the division of things in general into beings, or things as they are, and phenomena, or things as they appear. The material principles assumed by the Ionians, and the mathematical relations of the Pythagoreans, were * Arist. MetapJl. i. 1. ovo/xa^o/xsvnv ffotpiuv to, vgara, ulna, xee.) rug a.^yp/.g v'ToXct/^.fia.vouffi -raws?. See also Hobbes, Computatio sive Logica. chap. 1, sect. 2. -f- Metaph. iii. 1. Etrnv iorie'rrifjw rig n 0icu/)St to ov y ov xa.) to. To-jrcp i)<Tece%ovTX xa.0 uuro.
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