PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 215 



of honor ought to be given to France, where so much has been done 

 of late to blend with clearness of style and independence of thought 

 that calm reflective and critical judgment which looks all sides of 

 human experience sympathetically but bravely in the face. In 

 psychology Ribot, and in philosophy, Fouillee, Reriouvier, Secretan, 

 and others, deserve grateful recognition. No friend of philosophy 

 can, I think, fail to recognize the probable benefits to be derived 

 from that movement with which such names as Mach and Ostwald 

 in Germany are connected, and which is sounding the call to the 

 men of science to clear up the really distressing obscurity and con- 

 fusion which has so long clung to their fundamental conceptions; 

 and to examine anew the significance of their assumptions, with 

 a view to the construction of a new and improved doctrine of the 

 Being of the World. And if to these names we add those of the 

 numerous distinguished investigators of psychology as pedagogic 

 to philosophy, and, in philosophy, of Deussen, Eucken, von Hart- 

 mann, Riehl, Wundt, and others, we may well affirm that new light 

 will continue to break forth from that country which so powerfully 

 aroused the whole Western World at the end of the eighteenth and 

 beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In Great Britain the name 

 and works of Thomas Hill Green have influenced the attempts at 

 a reconstruction of systematic philosophy in a manner to satisfy at 

 one and the same time both the facts and laws of science and the 

 sesthetical, ethical, and religious ideals of the age, in a very consider- 

 able degree. And in this attempt, both as it expresses itself in theo- 

 retical psychology and in the various branches of philosophical 

 discipline, writers like Bradley, Fraser, Flint, Hodgson, Seth, Stout, 

 Ward, and others, have taken a conspicuous part. Nor are there 

 wanting in Holland, Italy, and even in Sweden and Russia, thinkers 

 equally worthy of recognition, and recognized, in however limited 

 and unworthy fashion, in their own land. The names of those in 

 America who have labored most faithfully, and succeeded best, in 

 this enormous task of reconstructing philosophy in a systematic 

 way, and upon a basis of history and of modern science, I do not 

 need to mention; they are known, or they surely ought to be known, 

 to us all. 



In attempting to summarize the gains of philosophy during the 

 last hundred years, we should remind ourselves that progress in 

 philosophy does not consist in the final settlement, and so in the 

 ''solving" of any of its great problems. Indeed, the relations of 

 philosophy to its grounds in experience, and the nature of its method 

 and of its ideal, are such that its progress can never be expected 

 to put an end to itself. But the content of the total experience of 

 humanity has been greatly enriched during the last century; and 

 the critical and reflective thought of trained minds has been led 



