chapter I

shall be expected by no one, I think, to prove that metaphysics is a philosophical discipline. My task will rather be to show how far the words "metaphysics" and "philosophy" have a different meaning.

In Chapters III to XI, I have given a general view of the problems which present themselves to reflective thought, and I have indicated that they are not problems which can conveniently be distributed among the several special sciences. Is there an external world? What is it? What are space and time? What is the mind? How are mind and body related? How do we know that there are other minds than ours? etc. These have been presented as _philosophical_ problems; and when we turn back to the history of speculative thought we find that they are just the problems with which the men whom we agree to call philosophers have chiefly occupied themselves.

But when we turn to our treatises on _metaphysics_, we also find that these are the problems there discussed. Such treatises differ much among themselves, and the problems are not presented in the same form or in the same order; but one who can look beneath the surface will find that the authors are busied with much the same thing--with some or all of the problems above mentioned.

How, then, does metaphysics differ from philosophy? The difference becomes clear to us when we realize that the word philosophy has a broader and looser signification, and that metaphysics is, so to speak, the core, the citadel, of philosophy.

We have seen (