An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X. RELATION OF THE PHILOSOPHY TO THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. rTlHE relation of the Philosophy of Religion to its History may be determined by the general consideration that all Philosophy is simply the intelligent study and apprehension of human experience. For this implies, on the one hand, that philosophy neither neglects experience, nor attempts by any a priori method to reach truth independently of experience; and on the other hand, that philosophy has a function of its own for which the observation and recording of empirical facts is only preparatory. In religion as elsewhere, philosophy is based on experience, but it is something more than a mere result of empirical induction. It enables us to put intelligent questions to experience, and it furnishes the principles by means of which these questions can be answered. The truth of this statement will be made obvious by looking at the subject from the opposite points of view, first, of experience, and secondly, of philosophy; in other words, by considering what elements are contributed (1) by history to philosophy, and (2) by philosophy to history, in the Philosophy of Religion. I. There are certain branches of knowledge in the study of which we are independent of the history of the past, others into which a historical element necessarily enters. In some cases the laws which science unfolds are relations of phenomena which are immediately before us, the results which it reaches are generalisations from present observation and experience, and the means of verifying these results are ever ready to our hand. The Astronomical and Chemical student deals with objects the knowledge of which is independent, or all but independent, of the history of their genesis. The order of the...