PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 213 



scendentalism." In America this movement can scarcely be called 

 definitely philosophical; much less can it be said to have resulted 

 in a system, or even in a school, of philosophy. It must also be said 

 to have been "inspired but not borrowed" from abroad. Its prin- 

 cipal, if not sole, literary survival is to be found in the works of Emer- 

 son. As expounded by him, it is not precisely Pantheism --certainly 

 not a consistent and critical development of the pantheistic theory 

 of the Being of the World; it is, rather, a vague, poetical, and pan- 

 theistical Idealism of a decidedly mystical type. 



The introduction of German philosophy proper, in its nature form, 

 and essential being, to the few interested seriously in critical and 

 reflective thinking upon the ultimate problems of nature and of 

 human life, began with the founding of the Journal of Speculative 

 Philosophy, in 1867, under the direction of William T. Harris, then 

 Superintendent of Schools in this city. 



With the work of Darwin, and his predecessors and successors, 

 there began a mighty movement of thought which, although it is 

 primarily scientific and more definitely available in biological science, 

 has already exercised, and is doubtless destined to exercise in the 

 future, an enormous influence upon philosophy. Indeed, w r e are 

 already in the midst of the preliminary confusions and contentions, 

 but most fruitful considerations and discoveries belonging to a 

 so-called philosophy of evolution. 



This development has, in the sphere of systematic philosophy, 

 reached its highest expression in the voluminous works produced 

 through the latter half of the nineteenth century by Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer, whose recent death seems to mark the close of the period 

 we have under consideration. The metaphysical assumptions and 

 ontological value of the system of Spencer, as he wished it to be 

 understood and interpreted, have perhaps, though not unnaturally, 

 been quite too much submerged in the more obvious expressions of 

 its agnostic positivism. In its psychology, however, the assumption 

 of "some underlying substance in contrast to all changing forms," 

 distinguishes it from a pure positivism in a very radical way. But 

 more especially in philosophy, the metaphysical postulate of a 

 mysterious Unity of Force that somehow manages to reveal itself, 

 and the law of its operations, to the developed cognition of the 

 nineteenth century philosopher, however much it seems to involve 

 the system in internal contradictions, certainly forbids that we 

 should identify it with the positivism of Auguste Comte. In our 

 judgment, however, it is in his ethical good sense and integrity of 

 judgment, --a good sense and integrity which commits to ethics 

 rather than to sociology the task of determining the highest type 

 of human life, -- and in basing the conditions for the prevalence and 

 the development of the highest type of life upon ethical principles 



