he
distinction between the rational and the empirical or historical method of
treatment. The latter concerns itself with the actual, the former with the
possible and necessary, or the grounds of the actual; the one observes and
describes, the other deduces. The antithesis of cognition and appetition
gives the basis for the division into theoretical and practical philosophy.
The former, called metaphysics, is divided into a general part, which
treats of being in general whether it be of a corporeal or a spiritual
nature, and three special parts, according to their principal subjects, the
world, the soul, and God,--hence into ontology, cosmology, psychology, and
theology. The science which establishes rules for action and regards man as
an individual being, as a citizen, and as the head or member of a family,
is divided (after Aristotle) into ethics, politics, and economics, which
are preceded by practical philosophy in general, and by natural law. The
introduction to the two principal parts is furnished by formal logic.

Philosophy is the science of the possible, _i.e._, of that which contains
no contradiction; it is science from concepts, its principle, the law of
identity, its form, demonstration, and its instrument, analysis, which in
the predicate explicates the determinations contained in the concept of the
subject. In order to confirm that which has been deduced from pure concepts
by the facts of experience, _psychologia rationalis_ is supplemented by
_psychologia empirica_, rational cosmology by empirical physics, and
speculative theology by an experimental doctrine of God (teleology). Wolff
gives no explanation how it comes about that the deliverances of the
reason agree so beautifully with the facts of experience; in his naive,
unquestioning belief in the infallibility of the reason he is a typical
dogmatist.

A closer examination of the Wolffian philosophy seems unnecessary, since
its most essential portions have already been discussed under Leibnitz and
since it will be necessary to recur to certain points in our chapter on
Kant. Therefore, referring the reader to the detailed accounts in Erdmann
and Zeller, we shall only note that Wolff's ethics opposes the principle
of perfection to the English principle of happiness (that is good which
perfects man's condition, and this is life in conformity with nature or
reason, with which happiness is necessarily connected); that he makes the
will determined by the under