PHILOSOPHY. This term may be properly used objectively in a wider and in a more restricted sense. In the former it is nearly synonymous with science, and embraces all departments of human knowledge capable of being scientifically classified —that is, where the facts are presented in their causes, where phenomena are referred to principles, and arranged under laws. In the latter it is con fined to speculative knowledge, that which the mind has of its own operations and laws, or which [t acquires by reasoning from its own thoughts. We have no evidence that philosophy in the strictet tense was cultivated by the ancient Hebrews ; nor have we much reason to consider that scientific study, even as regards external phenomena, was much followed by them. Forming our estimate From what of their literature has been preserved to us in the Bible, we must conclude that the ancient Hebrew mind was not specially characterised by those tendencies, nor largely endowed with those Faculties which give birth to speculative research. The analytical and the logical are but slightly per ceptible in their mental products, while the imagi native, the synthetic, and the historical largely predominate. We should be led to infer that they delighted rather in putting things together accord ng to their analogies, than in distributing them according to their differences. They were careful observers of phenomena, and their minds sought ;cope in bold flights of imagination, or reposed in calm, protracted, and profound reflection ; but it was as historians and poets rather than as philoso phers that they looked on the world both of being and event.
The Hebrew theory of the world was so simple that little occasion was given to them for specula tion on the mysteries of existence. Their concep tion of it was essentially and wholly monotheistic. They held the existence of one God, besides whom there was no other ; and as the world had come into being by his simple fiat, so it was kept in being by his will, governed by his immediate agency, and to the fulfilment of his designs. No trace is discoverable in the Bible of those Panthe istic notions in which the thinkers and writers of other ancient nations seem so generally to have taken refuge from the perplexities arising out of the relations of the finite to the infinite, and which at a later period took such hold of the Jewish mind, as is attested by their Kabbalistic books (Freystadt, Pkilosophth Cabbalistica et Pantheismus, Sp). The world and the things in the world were regarded by them not as emanations from God, nor as in any sense God ; they are all the work of his hands pro ceeding from him, but as distinct from him as the work is distinct from the workman. By the word of Jehovah all things were created, and by his word they are upheld. They all belong to him as his property, and Ile doth with them as he wills. They are his, but not in any sense He. As little do they seem to have realised the idea of an order of nature distinct from the will and power of God. The phenomena of being and event they referred alike to the immediate agency of the Almighty. Causation was with them simply God acting. They thus removed the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, not as some modern spe culatists propose, by reducing all phenomena under natural laws, but by the reverse process, re solving all into the immediate operation of God. Man, as part of God's creation, is equally sub ject with the rest to his control. His times and ways are all in God's hand. By God's power and wisdom he has been fashioned ; by God's goodness he is upheld and guided ; by God's law his entire activity is to be regulated ; at God's command he retires from this active sphere and passes into the unseen world where his spirit returns to him who gave it.
But though this simple and childlike theory of the universe gave little scope for speculative think ing and inquiry, and though the Bible presents us with but little that indicates the existence of philo sophic study among the ancient Hebrews, we are I not entitled to conclude from such data that such I pursuits had no existence among them. It is to be
borne in mind that it was foreign to the design and pretensions of the sacred writers to discuss speculatively points on which they were commis sioned to speak authoritatively in the name of God; nor must it be forgotten that we have not in the Bible the entire literature of the Hebrew people, and that as philosophic writings would, because not addressed to the popular mind, be precisely those most likely to be allowed to perish, it is possible that much may have been lost which, had it been preserved, would have showed how and to what extent scientific research flourished among the Hebrews. This suggestion acquires force, not only from the fact that we know that certain utter ances by Solomon of a scientific kind, ,Probably committed to writing, have perished (I Kings iv. 33), but also from the statement in Eccles. xii. I2, which, besides indicating that the literature of the Hebrews was more copious than we now possess, leads, from its connection, to the conclusion that part of it at least was devoted to philosophic in quiry. The book of Ecclesiastes itself, as well as that of Job, may be held as proving that the Hebrew mind did not acquiesce wholly in simple faith, but had, like mind elsewhere, its seasons of doubt, question, and speculation on matters re lating to man's condition and destiny. We may also point to Ps. xlix. lxxiii., and to many pas-. sages in the book of Proverbs, as indicating the same thing. Nor must we overlook the fact, that the Hebrew is rich in terms which are appropriate to philosophic inquiry, and indicate habits of ana lytic research among those by whom they were used. Of these may be mentioned wisdom, often used as we use philosophy (comp. Eccles. i. 13, where rit;:n2 -nn might almost be rendered to losophise); p from between, to separate, to dis cern, to understand, i. e., to analyse perceptions into their component elements, so as to arrive at just notions of them, whence ;inn, insight, intelli gence, judgment; thl and lPn, to investigate, to examine; man, to think, to reflect; , to ponder; to know, whence nvi knowledge. To these may be added their names for the mental part of man, nr, rver,p,a; ; nyv?, anima; nap&a, cpp.O.
It is further to be observed, that though the Bible does not present philosophic truth in a speculative form, it presents abundantly the materials out of which philosophies may be constructed. Philo sophy thus exists in it as it exists in nature, not (to use the scholastic phraseology) in a manifest and evolute, but in a concrete and involute state ; and it needs only a patient collection of its statements, and the arrangement of these according to their meaning and relations, to enable us to construct sys tematic developments of them. We may thus ioi m not only a theology from the Bible, but an anthro pology, including psychology and a system of ethics. [Roos, Fundamenta Psychologia. ex Sac. Script. Collecta, 1769 ; Beck, Umriss der Bib lischen Seelenlehre, 1843; Haussmann, Die Bibl. Lehre vom Illensthen,184S; von Schubert, Gesch. der Seele, 185o, 4th ed. ; Delitzsch, System der Bibl. Psychologie, 1861, zd ed. ; Taylor, Doctor Dubitantium, 166° ; Buddeus, Instil. Theolog. Moralis, 1715 ; Staeudlin. Lehrbuch der Moral fiir Theologen, 1817, zd ed. ; Schleiermacher, Die Christliche Sitte, 1843; Harless, Christi/eke Ethik, 1849, 4th ed. ; Wuttke, Hdb. der Christ!. Sittenlehre, 2 vols.] For the natural science of the Hebrews, see ASTRONOMY, BOTANY, ZOOI.OGY, PHYSIC, and the articles on subjects of natural history in this work. For the exact sciences, see the articles CHRONOLOGY and NUMBER.
Of the Gentile philosophies, there are two which have a bearing on the due understanding of Scrip ture, and of which, therefore, some account may properly be given here. These are the Chaldman and the Greek.--W. L. A.