Philosophy is still militant and has much work before it, but the omens are auspicious, the problems are better understood, and we are coming to a synthesis of the results of past generations of thinking which will be a very distinct progress. Philosophy has already done good service, and never better than in recent times, by destroying pretended knowledge and making room for the higher faiths of humanity. It has also done good service in helping these faiths to better rational form, and thus securing them against the defilements of superstition and the cavilings of hostile critics. With all its aberrations and shortcomings, philosophy deserves well of humanity.

PHILOSOPHY: ITS FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND ITS METHODS

BY GEORGE HOLMES HOWISON

[George Holmes Howison, Mills Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity, University of California. b. Montgomery County, Maryland, 1834. A.B. Marietta College, 1852; M.A. 1855; LL.D. ibid. 1883. Post-graduate, Lane Theological Seminary, University of Berlin, and Oxford. Headmaster High School, Salem, Mass., 1862-64; Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Washington University, St. Louis, 1864-66; Tileston Professor of Political Economy, ibid. 1866-69; Professor of Logic and the Philosophy of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1871-79; Lecturer on Ethics, Harvard University, 1879-80; Lecturer on Logic and Speculative Philosophy, University of Michigan, 1883-84. Member and vice-president St. Louis Philosophical Society; member California Historical Society; American Historical Association; American Association for the Advancement of Science; National Geographic Society, etc. Author of Treatise on Analytic Geometry, 1869; The Limits of Evolution, 1901, 2d edition, 1904; joint author and editor of The Conception of God, 1897, etc. Editor Philosophical Publications of University of California; American Editorial Representative Hibbert Journal, London.]

The duty has been assigned me, honored colleagues, of addressing you on the Fundamental Conceptions and the Methods of our common pursuit—philosophy. In endeavoring to deal with the subject in a way not unworthy of its depth and its extent, I have found it impossible to bring the essential material within less compass than would occupy, in reading, at least four times the period granted by our programme. I have therefore complied with the rule of the Congress which directs that, if a more extended writing be left with the authorities for publication, the reading must be restricted to such a portion of it as will not exceed the allotted time. I will accordingly read to you, first, a brief summary of my entire discussion, by way of introduction, and then an excerpt from the larger document, which may serve for a specimen, as our scholastic predecessors used to say, of the whole inquiry I have carried out. The impression will, of course, be fragmentary, and I must ask beforehand for your most benevolent allowances, to prevent a judgment too unfavorable.

The discussion naturally falls into two main parts: the first dealing with the Fundamental Conceptions; and the second, with the Methods.

In the former, after presenting the conception of philosophy itself, as the consideration of things in the light of the whole, I take up the involved Fundamental Concepts in the following order:—

I.Whole and Part;
II.Subject and Object (Knowing and Being, Mind and Matter; Dualism, Materialism, Idealism);
III.Reality and Appearance (Noumenon and Phenomenon);
IV.Cause and Effect (Ground and Consequence; Causal System);
V.One and Many (Number System; Monism and Pluralism);
VI.Time and Space (their relation to Number; their Origin and Real Meaning);
VII.Unconditioned and Conditioned (Soul, World, God; their Reinterpretation in terms of Pluralism);
VIII.The True, the Beautiful, the Good (their relation to the question between Monism and Pluralism).

These are successively dealt with as they rise one out of the other in the process of interpreting them and applying them in the actual creation of philosophy, as this goes on in the historic schools. The theoretic progress of philosophy is in this way explained by them, in its movement from natural dualism, or realism, through the successive forms of monism, materialistic, agnostic, and idealistic, until it reaches the issue, now coming so strongly forward within the school of idealism, between the adherents of monism and those of pluralism.

The importance of the Fundamental Concepts is shown to increase as we pass along the list, till on reaching Cause and Effect, and entering upon its full interpretation into the complete System of Causes, we arrive at the very significant conception of the Reciprocity of First Causes, and through it come to the Primacy of Final Cause, and the derivative position of the other forms of cause, Material, Formal, Efficient. The philosophic strength of idealism, but especially of idealistic pluralism, comes into clear light as the result of this stage of the inquiry. But it appears yet more decidedly when One and Many, Time and Space, and their interrelations, are subjected to analysis. So the discussion next passes to the higher conceptions, Soul, World, God, by the pathway of the correlation Unconditioned and Conditioned, and its kindred contrasts Absolute and Relative, Necessary and Contingent, Infinite and Finite, corroborating and reinforcing the import of idealism, and, still more decidedly, that of its plural form. Finally, the strong and favorable bearing of this last on the dissolution of agnosticism and the habilitation of the ideals, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, in a heightened meaning, is brought out.