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PHILOSOPHY AND THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHERS. 19 thing as to hold that the stages of historical development correspond to the categories of any metaphysical system. Is it not? If the historical spirit comes to be consciously realised and grasped, then I think it necessarily implies some- thing like what Hegel holds. If our interest in the past is more than the curiosity of the antiquarian, if we really mean what we say when we even put aside the old word " history " which only signified at first investigation and collection of materials for science and if in the current cant of the day we talk about " the development of institutions " and the " evolution of ideas," we must recognise that the institutions and ideas of the present are the outcome of the struggle and conflict that have gone before ; and therefore in our study of the history of philosophy we must hope to see (however diffi- cult we may find it to trace the connecting links through the complex and confused materials) not a mere series of capri- cious speculations of arbitrary individual intellects but a con- tinuous discussion, a dialectic movement running through the ages. And, while we recognise clearly the occurrence of periods of decline and retrogression, so far as we recognise progress in philosophical thought, we must admit something of the nature of a logical process which proceeds from emptier and more abstract to fuller and more adequate concepts. If we have given up that fatal method of grouping all philo- sophers in all ages into two parties, Sensationalists and In- tuitionalists, like the Whigs and Tories of English political life, and if we find, as many do, some indication of a better understanding between different philosophical schools, and look upon them as complementary rather than rival opinions, then we have come to see that progress towards truth con- sists in a reconciliation of opposites and that the truest philosophical system would, as Aristotle held long before Hegel, take up all the others into it as elements of one whole. It must indeed be frankly admitted that, while we have before us this ideal of a history of philosophy which should exhibit all the leading systems as the interconnected members of one organism or the stages in one process of growth (it does not matter which metaphor we use, provided that we take it from no less complex region than the organic), we must nevertheless be very careful that the details of histori- cal fact are not distorted for the convenience of philosophical exposition. In other words, we must fully recognise the his- torical importance of tracing links of connexion and dis- covering the psychological sources of theories which may appear to be merely " accidental " and incapable of being