PHILOSOPHY, from the Greek philosophic (0,Aocwina), literally signifies " love of wisdom or knowledge," and a philosopher (oduisecoos), is a "lover of wisdom." Pythagoras (Diog. Laert., Prawns.) is said to have first used the term philosophy, and to have called himself a philosopher, instead of a sophus (copes), or man," for, he added, no one is wise but God. Among the Greeks, philosophy was some times viewed as comprising or consisting of three parts, physic (cposooSs), ethic (You1v), and dialectio (ScaXstrrindv). Physic treated of the universe and that which it contained ; ethic treated of things that concerned human life and man. The term dialectic is explained in the article OROASON.
The terms philosophy, philosophical, philosopher, are often used in our own language apparently with no great precision, though it is not difficult to deduce from the use of these terms the general meaning or notion which is attached to them. We speak of the philosophy of the human mind as being of all philosophies that to which the name philosophy is particularly appropriated ; and when the term philosophy is used absolutely, this seems to be the philosophy that is spoken of. Other philosophies are referred to their several objects by qualifying terms ; thus we speak of natural philosophy, meaning thereby the philosophy (whatever that word may mean) of nature, that is, as the term nature is generally understood, of material objects. We also speak of the philosophy of positive law, understanding thereby the philosophy of those binding rules, properly called laws. The terms philosophy of history, philosophy of manufactures, and other such terms, are also used. AU objects then which can occupy the mind may have something in common, called their philosophy ; which philosophy is nothing else than the general expression for that effort of the mind whereby it strives, pursuant to its laws, to reduce its knowledge to the form of ultimate truths or principles, and to determine the immutable relations which exist between things as it conceives them. The philosophy which comprises within itself all philosophies is that which labours to determine the laws or ultimata principles in obedience to which the mind itself operates ; and both those laws or ultimate truths, which must be considered as constituting the mind what it is, and which are therefore independent of all external impressions, and those laws by which the mind operates upon the sensuous impressions produced by objects which it conceives and can only conceive as being external to itself.
Thus every kind of knowledge, the objects of which are things external, has its philosophy or principles, which, when discovered and systematised, form the science of the things to which they severally belong. But inasmuch as the mind, in striving after this science, must act by its own laws and powers, and as these must in their form, viewed independently of their special objects, always be the same laws and powers (for we cannot conceive the mental powers to vary or differ in their essential qualities merely because they are applied to things that are conceived as different), we therefore assume that the mind has its laws and powers, which may be discovered by observa tion, as we discover by observation the laws or principles which govern the relations of things external to the mind, or conceived as external. Thus the human mind, by the necessity imprinted upon it, seeks to discover the ultimate foundation of all that it knows or conceives ; to discover what itself is, and what is its relation to all things. Accor dingly it strives to form a system out of all such ultimate laws or principles. Such a system may be called a philosophy, in the proper and absolute sense of the term, and the attempt to form such a system is to philosophise. Systems of philosophy have existed in all nations; even in the most uncivilised, in some form, and particularly in the form of a religion ; for the highest aim of philosophy is to ascertain the relation of man to the infinite Being whom he conceives as the end and limit of all his inquiries. In nations which have made further progress in mental culture, the systems of philosophy are not limited td the dogmas of a religion, but those who have leisure, and whose minds have been disciplined, have in all ages ventured to transcend the limits of the religious system of their society or age, and to form what are called philosophical systems. The history of such systems is the history of philosophy, which thus viewed is a history of the progress of the human mind towards the knowledge of itself, a knowledge which, Imperfect as it is, is the accumulation of many centuries, and the work of many contributors.