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798
Presidential Address
I
The first thing that strikes an observer as he casts his eye upon the philosophy of the new century is the growing share which Science is taking in the problems of Philosophy. To understand the full significance of this attitude, we have to trace the pathwhich we can do here only very briefly-through which the human mind has travelled in the matter of this eternal question. As is well-known, with the ancient Greeks Philosophy was the only science, from which special sciences gradually emerged. Later, "( Away, haunt not thou me Thou vain Philosophy. Little hast thou bestead
Save to perplex the head."
-These lines of the poet Clough express the attitude of the average Christian towards Philosophy; and yet to the great glory and benefit both of the Christian religion and Greek philosophy, Pauline Christianity in its beginning as well as further development was philosophy brought to bear upon religion, so that Dean Inge is today perfectly justified in speaking of "Platonic tradition in English religious thought." Paradoxical as it may appear, Bacon, the father of English empirical philosophy was hardly a philosopher himself, and took little interest in what we now understand by Philosophy. However, with the practical common sense characteristic of the Englishman, he separated the provinces of Reason and Faith, Science and Religion. In the next two centuries Science was too much absorbed in its own activities to think of its relationship with Philosophy; and the
