f error is the first step to its
cure.

In another point of view, independently of the value of the line of
inquiry generally, and the special suitability of it to individual minds,
there is a further use, which in the present day belongs to it in common
with all inquiries into the history of thought.

It is hard to persuade the students of a past generation that the historic
mode of approaching any problem is the first step toward its successful
solution. Yet a little reflection may at least make the meaning of the
assertion understood. If we view the literary characteristic of the
present, in comparison with that of past ages, we are perhaps right in
stating, that its peculiar feature is the prevalence of the method of
historical criticism. If the four centuries since the Renaissance be
considered, the critical peculiarity of the sixteenth and seventeenth will
be found to be the investigation of ancient literature; in the former
directed to _words_, in the latter to _things_. The eighteenth century
broke away from the past, and, emancipating itself from authority, tried
to rebuild truth from its foundations from present materials, independent
of the judgment formed by past ages. The nineteenth century unites both
methods. It ventures not to explore the universe, unguided by the
experience of the past; but, while reuniting itself to the past, it does
not bow to it. It accepts it as a fact, not as an authority. The
seventeenth century worshipped the past; the eighteenth despised it: the
nineteenth mediates, by means of criticism. Accordingly, in literary
investigations at present, each question is approached from the historic
side, with the belief that the historico-critical inquiry not only
gratifies curiosity, but actually contributes to the solution of the
problem. Some indeed assert(21) this, because they think that the historic
study of philosophy is the whole of philosophy; and, believing that all
truth is relative to its age, are hopeless of attaining the absolute and
unaltering solution of any problem. We, on the other hand, are content to
believe that the history of philosophy is only the entrance to philosophy.
But in either case, truth is sought by means of a philosophical history of
the past; which, tracking the progress of truth and error in any
particular department, lays bare the natural as well as the literary
history; the causes of the past, as well as its form. Truth and error are
thus discovered, not