Writing in 1860 on the general state of philosophy, Renan pointed out, in his Essay _La Métaphysique el son Avenir_[3] that metaphysical speculation, strictly so-called, had been in abeyance for thirty years, and did not seem inclined to continue the traditions of Kant, Hegel, Hamilton and Cousin. The reasons which he gave for this depression of the philosophical market were, firstly, the feeling of the impossibility of ultimate knowledge, a scepticism of the instrument, so far as the human mind was concerned, and secondly, the rather disdainful attitude adopted by many minds towards philosophy owing to the growing importance of science—in short, the question, “Is there any place left for philosophy; has it any _raison d’être_?”
[3] Essay published later (1876) in his _Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques_. Cf. especially pp. 265-266.
The progress of the positive sciences, and the assertions of many that philosophy was futile and treacherous, led philosophy to give an account of itself by a kind of _apologia pro vita sua_. In the face of remarks akin to that of Newton’s “Physics beware of metaphysics,” the latter had to bestir itself or pass out of existence. It was, indeed, this extinction which the more ardent and devoted scientific spirits heralded, re-iterating the war-cry of Auguste Comte.
It was a crisis, in fact, for philosophy. Was it to become merely a universal science? Was it to abandon the task of solving the problems of the universe by rapid intuitions and a _priori_ constructions and undertake the construction of a science of the whole, built up from the data and results of the science of the parts—_i.e._, the separate sciences of nature? Was there, then, to be no place for metaphysics in this classification of the sciences to which the current of thought was tending with increasing impetuosity? Was a science of primary or ultimate truths a useless chimera, to be rejected entirely by the human mind in favour of an all-sufficing belief in positive science? These were the questions which perplexed the thoughtful minds of that time.
We shall do well, therefore, in our survey of the half century before us, to investigate the two problems which were stressed by Renan in the essay we have quoted, for his acute mind possessed a unique power of sensing the feeling and thought of his time. Our preliminary task will be the examination of the general attitude to knowledge adopted by the various thinkers and schools of thought, following this by an inquiry into the attitude adopted to science itself and its relation to philosophy.