ABSTRACT
This introduction chapter discusses about freeing philosophy from bondage towards metaphysics. There was a time when metaphysics dominated the pursuit of knowledge in all its branches. The metaphysics arrested centuries the progress of physical science. It made medicine, which is the meeting ground of many sciences, a murderous instead of a healing art. In medicine, which has in large measure freed itself from its influence, it still lingers in the form of materialistic prejudice. And it froze theology, which in those days held philosophy, psychology and ethics in solution, into the rigidity of orthodox dogma. The metaphysics still has something of a stranglehold on psychology and ethics. There is a third branch of metaphysics which must not be ignored. The intellect may go to popular thought for its premises, and reason deductively from these. In doing so, however abstruse may be its calculations and however far-fetched its conclusions, it will work under the ultimate control of popular thought.
