1-18-39 PREFACE. EST the title of this booklet be misunderstood, the author LES must state that he here means by "Primer" a presentation of the subject in the plainest and most lucid form in which he could put it. "The Primer of Philosophy" is not expressly designed to give instruction to beginners in philosophy, but it is, nevertheless, eminently available for that purpose. The uninitiated student will not be bewildered or mystified, in perusing its pages, by highsounding words or unintelligible phrases, but will, despite this lack of learned adornment, find in them the information he desires. The subject is presented with great simplicity so that its leading idea can be gathered by a mere glance at its contents. The most essential technical terms are explained, and the high practical importance of philosophy is never lost sight of. The point of view adopted in this, as in other publications of the author, is new to the extent that it cannot be classified among any of the various schools of recent thought. It represents, rather, a critical reconciliation of rival philosophies of the type of Kantian apriorism and John Stuart Mill's empiricism. The reconciliation reached disposes for good of a number of fundamental problems, and, particularly, of that old crux philosophorum, the question of the nature of reason, and will, thus, after a long unsettled period of embarrassments in which all progress has ceased, set the ship of philosophy afloat again. |