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That they do this says much for their mood and taste, but not quite so much for their powers of discrimination or for their consistency. It is even more thoughtless than when the empiricists and sensationalists acclaim as their hero, Spinoza, the strict, pure rationalist, the despiser of empiricism and of knowledge acquired through the senses.
During this generation certain branches of the life-saving and life-prolonging art have made great advances out of empiricism onto the solid ground of scientific knowledge. Of course I refer to surgery, and to the discovery of the causes and improvement in the treatment of contagious and epidemic diseases.
If we give to the monistic subspecies the name of philosophy of the absolute, we may give that of radical empiricism to its pluralistic rival, and it may be well to distinguish them occasionally later by these names. As a convenient way of entering into the study of their differences, I may refer to a recent article by Professor Jacks of Manchester College.
What practical proof had he of it amid the miserable alternations of empiricism and magic which made up the pseudo-science of his time; amid the theories and speculations of mankind, which, as he said, were "but a sort of madness useless alike for discovery or for operation."
If Providence is leading the Church through varied experiences in order to teach it greater wisdom, is it not clear that we must not rashly preclude the possibility of future revelation by stereotyping the results of some earlier stage of experience? Thus the empiricism of Newman leads logically to consequences which he would have been among the first to reject.
Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all of us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed. Polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against its best known champion would count as either superficiality or inability.
The principle of happiness represents moral empiricism, the principle of perfection moral rationalism. Kant resolves the antithesis by restricting the theses of the respective parties within their proper limits: "Make thine own perfection and the happiness of others the end of thy actions;" these are the only ends which are at the same time duties.
What a tremendous step from the empiricism of Bacon to the skepticism of Hume, from the innate ideas of Descartes to the potential a priori of Leibnitz! Kant, who dominates the second period of modern philosophy down to the present time, is related to his predecessors in a twofold way.
The doctor had not much to say for himself on this point; but there was found reason to believe that he was acting in the interest of some English claimant of a great estate that was left without an apparent heir by the death of Cyril Norton, and there was even a suspicion that he, with his fantastic science and antiquated empiricism, had been at the bottom of the scheme of poisoning, which was so strangely intertwined with Septimius's notion, in which he went so nearly crazed, of a drink of immortality.
Many of the evils of society have been measurably removed or ameliorated; yet now, as in the days of the Apostle, "the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and although quackery and empiricism abound, is it not possible that a proper application of some of the remedies proposed might ameliorate the general suffering?
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