as ever been made, but no one will
pretend that it is possible to understand it without a thorough
knowledge of all previous systems, a knowledge, in fact, of the
separate factors of the truth before they are thus combined into a
total result. Besides, that attempt, too, is now part of the history
of philosophy!

Hence any philosophical thinking which is not founded {ix} upon a
thorough study of the systems of the past will necessarily be shallow
and worthless. And the notions that we can dispense with this study,
and do everything out of our own heads, that everyone is to be his own
philosopher, and is competent to construct his own system in his own
way--such ideas are utterly empty and hollow. Of these truths, indeed,
we see a notable example in what the writer just quoted styles his
"metaphysic." This so-called metaphysic is wholly based upon the
assumption that knowledge and its object exist, each on its own
account, external to one another, the one here, the other there over
against it, and that knowledge is an "instrument" which in this
external manner takes hold of its object and makes it its own. The
very moment the word "instrument" is used here, all the rest,
including the invalidity of knowledge, follows as a matter of course.
Such assumption then--that knowledge is an "instrument"--our writer
makes, wholly uncritically, and without a shadow of right. He gives no
sign that it has ever even occurred to him that this is an assumption,
that it needs any enquiry, or that it is possible for anyone to think
otherwise. Yet anyone who will take the trouble, not merely
superficially to dip into the history of philosophy, but thoroughly to
submit himself to its discipline, will at least learn that this is an
assumption, a very doubtful assumption, too, which no one now has the
right to foist upon the public without discussion as if it were an
axiomatic truth. He might even learn that it is a false assumption.
And he will note, as an ominous sign, that the subjectivism which
permeates and directs the whole course of Mr. Wells's thinking is
identical in character with that {x} subjectivism which was the
essential feature of the decay and _downfall_ of the Greek philosophic
spirit, and was the cause of its final _ruin_ and _dissolution_.

I would counsel the young, therefore, to pay no attention to plausible
and shallow words such as those quoted, but, before forming their own
philosophic opinions, most thoroughly and