Speculative philosophy

“ The men of the thirteenth century had it. The men of the tenth century lacked it. In between there lay three centuries of speculative philosophy. The story is told to perfection in Henry Osborn Taylor’s book, The Mediaeval Mind. What scholasticism gave to the European world, was penetration in the handling of ideas.
All things work between limits. This law applies even to the speculative Reason. The understanding of a civilization is the understanding of its limits. ”

“ This leads to the belief that speculative philosophy wishes to neglect reality and facts and to build, as the saying is, upon clouds. But we have here an ambiguity and a sophism with which we must not allow ourselves to be deceived. Not only does speculative philosophy also base itself upon facts and have the phenomenal world as its point of departure; but speculative philosophy truly founds itself upon facts and empiricism does not. The first considers facts in their infinite variety and in their continuous development ”

“ The speculative systems seek after an absolute beginning, an indubitably self-supporting starting point, from which they may determine the absolutely indubitable. The speculative systems are thus by their own mentality perfectly complete and selfsufficient systems. Every speculative system found its end in the subsequent knowledge that its totality, its selfsufficiency, its absoluteness, was imaginary, that it could be determined empirically and externally like all other knowledge, that it was not a philosophical system, but a relative and empirical attempt at understanding. ”

“ We have confined our discussion to the settlement of the preliminaries of one great question. We think, however, that we have indicated the true foundations upon which modern philosophy must build, that we have described the vital crisis in which speculative thought is at present labouring, while old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. ”

“ From the point of view of theory, therefore, it is incorrect to attach so little importance to the function of speculation; in practice it is impossible to deal intelligently with the evils of the speculative system without first recognizing its real relation to business. ”

“ Thus the speculations to which we were first driven in the hungry teeth of savage facts by the slender hope of profit, by the overpowering fear of the ruin which stared us in the face, have slowly ceased to be speculative and become the foundations of the ordinary everyday business of life. Our postulates have grown respectable, and are now entitled axioms. ”

“ These and other specialties escape, and not unaccountably, the view and the calculation of the speculative economist, who is so often astounded to find how a principle, or a theory, of unquestionable truth abstractedly, and apparently of general application, comes practically to be controlled by circumstances beyond his appreciation, or even to be negatived altogether. ”

“ Should the industrial and intellectual workers remain in individual isolation; should they not centralize and organize their scattered forces and become speculative in a cooperative way, the antagonism between labor and speculation will, of necessity, remain stationary.
The final theoretical antagonism which can in some measure be overcome, namely, that between philosophy and the experimental sciences, between materialism and idealism, is nothing but the theoretical expression of the practical antagonism in social life. ”

“ All, to be sure, as yet exists in promise; but the believer in promises calculates the aggregate as solid capital, and falls back in amazement at the amount of public wealth, "the unexampled state of public prosperity!"
Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation ”

“ The weakness of the speculative propensity in mankind generally has not, therefore, prevented the progress of speculation from governing that of society at large; it has only, and too often, prevented progress altogether, where the intellectual progression has come to an early stand for want of sufficiently favorable circumstances. ”

“ But whilst the business of the speculative philosopher is solely with the phenomena that have been unintended, the business of the practical sociologist is solely with the phenomena that have been intended. ”

“ And the Chicago man's letter, in substance, reads: "No!"
"Outsider" Has No Chance.
Speculation, for the most part, as in the case of this young man, means for the average intelligence a possibility for placing money in a side line where quick and profitable returns may be expected, wholly independent of the person's occupation. To the man who knows what the best of the speculative market is, the necessity for all of the time and attention and best judgment of the speculator is imperative. It is a business in which only the best business methods succeed. ”

“ His call to speculation has been widely responded to; but, if we turn to the most important product of this speculative movement, we have to extract what enlightenment we can from the dictum that, in the only sense in which the Absolute is good, it "manifests itself in various degrees of goodness and badness." ”

“ In our problem the desiderated solution is the means, the end is the development, or, we should rather say, the creation of speculative thought—a kind of thought different altogether from ordinary popular thinking. ”

“ It seems to us entirely incorrect to confound under one title (that of "economic science") two things as different as the study of real facts and the search for the ideal. For even when it is thought that the ideal is to let things follow their natural course, there is still a radical difference between the speculative interest which attaches itself to the real and the practical interest which seeks for the better. ”

“ It is a notorious, yet unappreciated fact, that speculative enterprises lie at the foundation of all financial disorder, for which, if a remedy can be provided, the very considerable talent and time which is now devoted to it would be turned into channels of general usefulness and productiveness. Production is the foundation of all wealth, and, consequently, to increase wealth, production must be increased. Speculation is that spirit which constantly saps the vitality of wealth, and, therefore, society has no greater nor more debasing enemy than speculation. ”

“ The intelligence of the people increases by leaps and bounds, and goes peering curiously into all the little nooks and crannies of the world for opportunities of gain—the apotheosis of speculative enterprise.
All forms of human endeavor in material things are, or were at their beginning, speculations. Every ship that goes to sea carries with it a speculation, and leaves another one behind it at Lloyds. Every man who insures his life or his house buys a speculation, and every company that insures him sells one. ”

“ Any one who was inclined to be hypercritical might object, and object with justice, that the practical application of knowledge often lags behind the speculative attainment, and that material progress therefore, at certain times, depends on {134} some new state of the practical rather than of the speculative faculties ”

“ Now, sir, but for some speculation that had been entered into before they were, the one would have neither had the silver spoon in his teeth, nor the other the hot joint. Without speculation, commerce could not exist. In the community where its spirit is not felt, they must be dull as horses in a ring; moving round and round as regularly and as monotonously as the wheels of a machine, to procure the every-day bread and cheese of existence. I have been a speculator all my life—I am a speculator still. ”

“ I carefully separate from the business of life all which belong to the visionary realm of speculative conjecture. From the world of action I hold it imperatively safe to banish the ideas which exhibit the cloud-land of metaphysical doubts and mystical beliefs. ”

“ It is worth remarking that, while the only efficient mode of cultivating speculative science was missed from an undue contempt of manual operations, the false speculative views thus engendered gave in their turn a false direction to such practical and mechanical aims as were suffered to exist. ”

“ Thus speculative activity, just like artistic creation, in exact proportion as it connects itself with the ordinary processes of wealth-production, ceases to find its motive in the desire of self-realisation, and claims to be rewarded by the possession of the objective results produced by it. ”

“ Thus, in order that speculative truths may be connected with productive effort, they must pass out of the hands of the men who first discovered them, and be made over to men whose motive in acquiring them will emphatically not be desire of the mere pleasure of intellectual acquisition, but the desire of some marketable products with a calculable pecuniary value, in the production of which a knowledge of the truths in question will help them. ”

“ And how can we argue and draw conclusions if the superior intellectual powers are not improved by frequent exercise in speculative researches? Half a dozen experiments made with judgment by a person who reasons well are worth a thousand random observations of insignificant matters of fact. But setting aside the very obvious consequences of improved faculties, the subjects of mere speculative knowledge are of the highest concern to those who love wisdom. ”

“ The most prosperous period in the industrial and commercial history of the United States begot an epidemic of speculative madness such as was never before known, and probably never again will be. Everybody had money in abundance, and the desire for speculation in superabundance. ”

“ It being thus shown that perfect beatitude lies in the action of the speculative intelligence, Thomas next shows that it cannot consist in consideration of the speculative sciences—
“for the consideration of a science does not reach beyond the potency (virtus) of the principles of that science, seeing that the whole science is contained potentially (virtualiter) in its principles. But the principles of speculative sciences are received through the senses, as the Philosopher makes clear. ”

“ It is this speculative tendency which brings to light the difference of common Notions and scientific Ideas, of which we have spoken. The mind analyzes such Notions, reasons upon them, combines and connects them; for it feels assured that intellectual things ought to be able to bear such handling. Even practical knowledge, we see clearly, is not possible without the use of the reason; and the speculative reason is only the reason satisfying itself of its own consistency. The speculative faculty cannot be controlled from acting. ”

“ Ibid. "By which means, and not by any difference in speculative matters, they are more rich and populous." As if ever any body thought that a difference in speculative opinions made men richer or poorer ”

“ Reader! put no faith in those who preach to you about the limited nature of the human faculties, and of the things which lie beyond their bounds. For one instance in which this kind of modesty keeps people right in speculative matters, there are a thousand in which it puts them wrong ”

“ The speculative desire for wealth, common to all human beings, is converted into this practical craving by two causes, which act and re-act upon each other. One of them is an exceptionally powerful imagination; the other is the belief on the part of any given individual that wealth is a thing which he actually may acquire if he will only make certain {363} efforts, of which he believes himself to be capable. ”

“ On the contrary, the speculative element represents for the most part men of uncommon shrewdness and foresight; men of studious and analytical minds; men who are, or have been, masters of every situation in their own professions or commercial vocations, even though most of them act like children when they get tangled up in the meshes of stock speculation.
Nor should it be imagined that the stock market is primarily a guessing game, or a game of chance ”

“ If these terms and maxims are understood with tolerable clearness, they carry the influence of truth to those who have no direct access to its sources. Many an extravagant project in practical machinery, and many a wild hypothesis in speculative physics, has been repressed by the general currency of such maxims as we have just quoted. ”

“ Of course there are some speculations that are fair and honest— speculations made with our own money, and which do not involve in their success the loss, by others, of what we gain. But generally modern speculation involves much risk to others, with chance of profit only to ourselves: even in its best conditions it is merely one of the forms of gambling or treasure hunting; it is either leaving the steady plough and the steady pilgrimage of life, to look for silver mines beside the way ”

“ A possible rapidity in the acquisition of wealth inflames the speculative temper. We mean by the speculative temper, purchase and sale, not in reference to production but with the hope of making large profits independently of production. Speculation is an expression of a venturesome spirit which, in its impatience, lays light emphasis on the usually slow methods of increase, and promises itself a rapid road to success. This hope is often disappointed, and when disappointed carries with it a more or less extended retardation of business. ”

“ In other words, great speculative thinkers are great as agents of mental civilisation and enlightenment only because, and only in so far as, they settle for others what these others shall believe and think.
And now let us pass from mental progress to material—that is to say, from speculative knowledge to applied knowledge; and the truth that is being here insisted on will become clearer still. The master of knowledge, as applied to production, is the inventor. ”