220 PHILOSOPHY 



there has been an increase in the profundity of the conviction of the 

 spiritual unity of the race. In the consideration of all of its problems 

 in the immediate future and in the coming century - - so far as we can 

 see forward into this century philosophy will have to reckon with 

 certain marked characteristics of the human spirit which form at the 

 same time inspiring stimuli and limiting conditions of its endeavors 

 and achievements. Chief among these are the greater and more 

 firmly established principles of the positive sciences, and the pre- 

 valence of the historical spirit and method in the investigation of all 

 manner of problems. These influences have given shape to the con- 

 ception which, although it is as yet by no means in its final or even 

 in thoroughly self-consistent form, is destined powerfully to affect 

 our philosophical as well as our scientific theories. This conception is 

 that of Development. But philosophy, considered as the product of 

 critical and reflective thinking over the more ultimate problems of 

 nature and of human life, is itself a development. And it is now, more 

 than ever before, a development interdependently connected with all 

 the other great developments. 



Philosophy, in order to adapt itself to the spirit of the age, must 

 welcome and cultivate the freest critical inquiry into its own methods 

 and results, and must cheerfully submit itself to the demand for 

 evidences which has its roots in the common and essential experience 

 of the race. Moreover, the growth of the spirit of democracy, which, 

 on the one hand, is distinctly unfavorable to any system of philosophy 

 whose tenets and formulas seem to have only an academic validity 

 or a merely esoteric value, and which, on the other hand, requires 

 for its satisfaction a more tenable, helpful, and universally appli- 

 cable theory of life and reality, cannot fail, in my judgment, to influ- 

 ence favorably the development of philosophy. In the union of the 

 speculative and the practical; in the harmonizing of the interests of 

 the positive sciences, with their judgments of fact and law, and the 

 interests of art, morality, and religion, with their value- judgments 

 and ideals; in the synthesis of the truths of Realism and Idealism, as 

 they have existed hitherto and now exist in separateness or antago- 

 nism; in a union that is not accomplished by a shallow eclecticism, but 

 by a sincere attempt to base philosophy upon the totality of human 

 experience; --in such a union as this must we look for the real pro- 

 gress of philosophy in the coming century; 



Just now there seem to be two somewhat heterogeneous and not 

 altogether well-defined tendencies toward the reconstruction of sys- 

 tematic philosophy, both of which are powerful and represent real 

 truths conquered by ages of intellectual industry and conflict. These 

 two, however, need to be internally harmonized, in order to obtain a 

 satisfactory statement of the development of the last century. They 

 may be called the evolutionary and the idealistic. The one tendency 



