Index
INDEX The interrogations indicate places where a view is discussed, not asserted [To use this index divide the sought page number by the number of pages in the book, 160, and scroll down that fraction. Example: "Phenomenon" is on page 86. 86/160=53%. Scroll down 53% into the file and there you are. (Or just use the search function.)] Absolute idea, 142 Acquaintance, 43 ff., 60, 108, 109, 119, 136 with Self? 50 Act, mental, 41 Analytic, 82 Appearance, 9, 16 A priori, 74-7, 80, 82 ff., 103 ff. mental? 88 Arithmetic, 84 Association, 62 63 65 Being, 100 Belief, 119 ff., instinctive, 24 25 Berkeley, George (Bishop), 12, 13, 15, 16, 36, 38 ff., 73, 95, 97 Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 54-8 Bradley, Francis Herbert, 95 Cantor, Georg, 147 Causality, 63, 69, 83 China, Emperor of, 44, 75 C...

Bibliographic Note
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The student who wishes to acquire an elementary knowledge of philosophy will find it both easier and more profitable to read some of the works of the great philosophers than to attempt to derive an all-round view from handbooks. The following are specially recommended: PLATO: Republic, especially Books VI and VII. DESCARTES: Meditations. SPINOZA: Ethics. LEIBNIZ: The Monadology. BERKELEY: Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. HUME: Inquiry concerning Human Understanding. KANT: Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic.

Chapter 15 : The Value of Philosophy
CHAPTER XV THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY HAVING now come to the end of our brief and very incomplete review of the problems of philosophy, it will be well to consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many men, under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hairsplitting distinctions, and controversies on matters concerning which knowledge is impossible. This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life, partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or p...

Chapter 14 : The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge
CHAPTER XIV THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE IN all that we have said hitherto concerning philosophy, we have scarcely touched on many matters that occupy a great space in the writings of most philosophers. Most philosophers -- or, at any rate, very many -- profess to be able to prove, by a priori metaphysical reasoning, such things as the fundamental dogmas of religion, the essential rationality of the universe, the illusoriness of matter, the unreality of all evil, and so on. There can be no doubt that the hope of finding reason to believe such theses as these has been the chief inspiration of many lifelong students of philosophy. This hope, I believe, is vain. It would seem that knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be obtained by metaphysics, and that the proposed proofs that, in virtue of the laws of logic such and such things must exist and such and such others cannot, are not capable of surviving a...

Chapter 13 : On Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion
CHAPTER XIII KNOWLEDGE, ERROR, AND PROBABLE OPINION THE question as to what we mean by truth and falsehood, which we considered in the preceding chapter, is of much less interest than the question as to how we can know what is true and what is false. This question will occupy us in the present chapter. There can be no doubt that some of our beliefs are erroneous; thus we are led to inquire what certainty we can ever have that such and such a belief is not erroneous. In other words, can we ever know anything at all, or do we merely sometimes by good luck believe what is true? Before we can attack this question, we must, however, first decide what we mean by 'knowing', and this question is not so easy as might be supposed. At first sight we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as 'true belief'. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would...

The World of Universals
CHAPTER IX THE WORLD OF UNIVERSALS AT the end of the preceding chapter we saw that such entities as relations appear to have a being which is in some way different from that of physical objects, and also different from that of minds and from that of sense-data. In the present chapter we have to consider what is the nature of this kind of being, and also what objects there are that have this kind of being. We will begin with the latter question. The problem with which we are now concerned is a very old one, since it was brought into philosophy by Plato. Plato's 'theory of ideas' is an attempt to solve this very problem, and in my opinion it is one of the most successful attempts hitherto made. The theory to be advocated in what follows is la...

On Intuitive Knowledge
CHAPTER XI ON INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE THERE is a common impression that everything that we believe ought to be capable of proof, or at least of being shown to be highly probable. It is felt by many that a belief for which no reason can be given is an unreasonable belief. In the main, this view is just. Almost all our common beliefs are either inferred, or capable of being inferred, from other beliefs which may be regarded as giving the reason for them. As a rule, the reason has been forgotten, or has even never been consciously present to our minds. Few of us ever ask ourselves, for example, what reason there is to suppose the food we are just going to eat will not turn out to be poison. Yet we feel, when challenged, that a perfectly good reaso...

Appearance and Reality
CHAPTER I APPEARANCE AND REALITY IS there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy -- for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas. In daily life, we assume as certain many thin...

The Existence of Matter
CHAPTER II THE EXISTENCE OF MATTER IN this chapter we have to ask ourselves whether, in any sense at all, there is such a thing as matter. Is there a table which has a certain intrinsic nature, and continues to exist when I am not looking, or is the table merely a product of my imagination, a dream-table in a very prolonged dream? This question is of the greatest importance. For if we cannot be sure of the independent existence of objects, we cannot be sure of the independent existence of other people's bodies, and therefore still less of other people's minds, since we have no grounds for believing in their minds except such as are derived from observing their bodies. Thus if we cannot be sure of the independent existence of objects, we sha...

On Our Knowledge of General Principles
CHAPTER VII ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES WE saw in the preceding chapter that the principle of Induction, while necessary to the validity of all arguments based on experience, is itself not capable of being proved by experience, and yet is unhesitatingly believed by every one, at least in all its concrete applications. In these characteristics the principle of induction does not stand alone. There are a number of other principles which cannot be proved or disproved by experience, but are used in arguments which start from what is experienced. Some of these principles have even greater evidence than the principle of induction, and the knowledge of them has the same degree of certainty as the knowledge of the existence of sense-data...