I. THE ARCHITECTURE OF THEORIES[1]
Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have
been advanced at different times of the world's history,
perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results
of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidently
occurred to their authors. An idea which has been
found interesting and fruitful has been adopted, developed,
and forced to yield explanations of all sorts of phenomena.
The English have been particularly given to this way of
philosophizing; witness, Hobbes, Hartley, Berkeley, James
Mill. Nor has it been by any means useless labor; it
shows us what the true nature and value of the ideas developed
are, and in that way affords serviceable materials
for philosophy. Just as if a man, being seized with the
conviction that paper was a good material to make things
of, were to go to work to build a papier mâché house, with
roof of roofing-paper, foundations of pasteboard, windows
of paraffined paper, chimneys, bath tubs, locks, etc., all of
different forms of paper, his experiment would probably
afford valuable lessons to builders, while it would certainly
make a detestable house, so those one-idea'd philosophies
are exceedingly interesting and instructive, and yet are quite
unsound.
The remaining systems of philosophy have been of the nature of reforms, sometimes amounting to radical revolutions, suggested by certain difficulties which have been found
- ↑ The Monist, January, 1891.
