ticular sciences in their general significance, and harmonising them into a comprehensive knowledge of the world, we have as the result peculiarly complex relations· in the first place, a dependence of philosophy upon the existing condition of insight reached in the particular disciplines—a dependence which expresses itself principally in the furtherance of philosophy by the prominent advances made by individual sciences;[1] in the next place, an influence in the opposite direction, when philosophy takes part in the work of the particular sciences. This action is felt as help or as hindrance, according as the philosophical treatment of the questions embraced under the particular disciplines sometimes contributes valuable factors for their solution, by means of its wider range of vision and its tendency toward unity,[2] but at other times presents itself only as a duplication which, if it leads to like results, appears useless, or if it wishes to furnish other results, dangerous.[3]
Prom what has been said it is evident farther, that the relations of philosophy to the other activities of civilisation are no less close than its relation to the individual sciences. For the conceptions arising from the religious and ethical and artistic life, from the life of the state and of society, force their way everywhere, side by side with the results won from scientific investigation, into the idea of the universe which the philosophy of metaphysical tendencies aims to frame; and the reason's valuations (Werthbestimmungen) and standards of judgment demand their place in that idea the more vigorously, just in proportion as it is to become the basis for the practical significance of philosophy. In this way humanity's convictions and ideals find their expression in philosophy side by side with its intellectual insights; and if these convictions and ideals are regarded, erroneously often, as gaining thereby the form of scientific intelligence, they may receive under certain circumstances valuable clarification and modification by this means. Thus this relation also of philosophy to general culture is not only that of receiving, but also that of giving.
It is not without interest to consider also the mutations in external position and social relations which philosophy has experienced. It may be assumed science was from the first, with perhaps a few exceptions (Socrates), pursued in Greece in closed schools.[4] The fact that those, even at a later time, had the form
- ↑ As the influence of astronomy upon the beginnings of Greek, or that of mechanics upon those of modern, philosophy.
- ↑ The Protestant theology of the nineteenth century stands in this relation to German philosophy.
- ↑ Cf. the opposition of natural science to Schelling's philosophy of nature.
- ↑ H. Diels, Ueber die altesten Philosophenschulen der Griechen in Phllos, Aufsiitze zum Jubiläum E. Zeller's, Leips. 1887, pp. 241 ff.
