433 ANNALS NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Dr. Lowie said in abstract : While it is commonly assumed fhat Ger- 

 many lags behind in the development of pragmatic philosophy, the speaker 

 contended that the theoretical principles of pragmatism have been long 

 ago defended by Ernst Mach, while a humanistic conception of philosophy, 

 joined with a conception of truth identical with that of Schiller and 

 James, was postulated by Ludwig Feuerbach nearly seventy years ago. 

 As modern pragmatism is primarily a protest against neo-Hegelism, so 

 Feuerbach's philosophy meant a secession from the older Hegelian school. 

 Like James, Feuerbach insisted that philosophy must be based on the 

 totality of human nature as opposed to its exclusively rational compo- 

 nents. As an empiricist and nominalist, Feuerbach taught the primacy 

 of the concrete as compared with the abstract. His refusal to abstract 

 from the given totality of human nature prevented him from holding the 

 materialistic views erroneously ascribed to him. He considered reality 

 and thought as incommensurate, and accordingly rejected all systems as 

 artificially cramping the contents of experience. In the treatment of his 

 special problem, the philosophy of religion, Feuerbach pursues a method 

 strikingly similar to that of James and Schiller in their critique of "pure 

 truth" and of Mach in his critique of the Ding an sieh : the divine is 

 recognized as based on human traits mystified and set up as non-human 

 by the religious consciousness. Feuerbach's atheism in no way contra- 

 venes his pragmatism ; for it is based not on the metaphysical question of 

 the existence of the deity, but on the purely practical question whether 

 religion has "worked" satisfactorily. This Feuerbach denies, considering 

 religion an obstacle to social and political progress; but this difference 

 from James and Schiller is merely a difference in the interpretation of 

 historical data and only emphasizes his insistence on pragmatic standards. 



The meeting then adjourned. 



E. S. WOODWORTH, 



Secreta?^. 



BUSINESS MEETING. 



December 5, 1910. 



The Academy met at 8:15 p. m. at the American ]\Iuseum of Natural 

 History, President Kemp presiding. 



The minutes of the last meeting were read and approved. 

 The following candidates for election as active members, recommended 

 by the Council, were duly elected : 

 J. E. Healy, West 118th Street, 

 F. Lvman Wells, Columbia University. 



