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Updated: June 23, 2025
Historical and literary criticism was altogether unknown, and a number of works were ascribed to Aristotle which did not belong to him, and which were foreign in spirit to his mode of thinking. They emanated from a different school of thought with different presuppositions. I am referring to the treatise called the "Theology of Aristotle," and that known as the "Liber de Causis."
It should, however, not be surprising to us who are acquainted with the philosophical presuppositions of alchemy, that in addition to the chemical and mechanical side of alchemy a philosophical and religious side also received consideration and care.
I think, then, that by a slight re-arrangement of Locke's pronouncements in natural philosophy, they could be made inwardly consistent, and still faithful to the first presuppositions of common sense, although certainly far more chastened and sceptical than impulsive opinion is likely to be in the first instance.
The human nature at the incarnation was absorbed into the divine. It no more has substantive existence than has the world in a pantheistic system. This is monism in terms of personality. Its presuppositions are those of a mind imbued with an all-powerful feeling for unity. It is faced with the problem of reconciling God and the world in the person of Jesus Christ.
What we need is a higher synthesis, if such be possible for the human mind, or else a frank admission that faith, in some sense or other, is a necessary complement of every philosophy. One thing is clear, that reconciliation can be effected, if at all, only by a fair-minded admission of difficulties inseparable from either system, and by a conscientious criticism of presuppositions.
There were other presuppositions in the philosophy of Locke besides his fundamental naturalism; and in his private mind probably the most important was his Christian faith, which was not only confident and sincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation.
Very gradually only did peculiarly free and audacious individual thinkers escape from this or that mediaeval belief, until in our own day some few have come to reject practically all the presuppositions on which the Scholastic system was reared.
The symbolism of religious doctrine and rite is full of images of introversion, which is, in short, one of the most important presuppositions of mysticism. The descent of Faust to the mothers is an introversion symbol. The hermetics often urge retirement, prayer and meditation, as prerequisites for the work; it is treated of still more in the hieroglyphic pictures themselves.
Yet "the rest" is not irrelevant; the whole situation in which character grows and operates is concretely conceived. There is a basis of what we should call Psychology, sketched in firm outlines, the deeper presuppositions and the wider issues of human character and conduct are not ignored, and there is no little of what we should call Metaphysics.
Teachers are rarely able or inclined to explain our social life and its presuppositions with sufficient insight and honesty to produce any very important results. Even if they are tempted to tell the essential facts they dare not do so, for fear of losing their places, amid the applause of all the righteously minded.
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