78 The Scientific Method. 



The department of Applied Ethics is intended to embrace educa- 

 tion, economics, and practical reforms. The method of artificially pro- 

 tecting the truth, or what is supposed to be the truth, from contact 

 with error is to be abandoned for the better plan of inviting the dif- 

 ferent systems of thought to enter into free competition with one an- 

 other, in the expectation that that which is intrinsically the strongest 

 will prevail, and that a higher and larger form of truth will be the 

 outcome of the conflict of ideas. No student is to be pledged before- 

 hand to arrive at certain conclusions. No professor or instructor shall 

 be appointed or excluded because of any opinions he may or may not 

 hold. Intellectual and moral fitness are to be the only tests applied. 

 Toward the realization of these plans progress is being made. On De- 

 cember 5th the convention of ethical societies will meet in New York, 

 and then it is expected that definite steps will be taken to give Amer- 

 ica its first free college. 



REV. JOHN W. CHADWICK: 



I am extremely glad that we have had the privilege and pleasure of 

 hearing Dr. Abbot speak. I have heard him many times, and never 

 without satisfaction and delight, though sometimes when he has said 

 " Come right along," and has gone through the philosophical stream 

 without wetting his feet, I have found the waters over my head. I have 

 watched the growth of his philosophic system with the greatest interest 

 and perhaps with a too lively confidence, it has tallied so agreeably 

 with the predilections of my own mind and heart. We have had many 

 essays about philosophers read to the association from the first, and 

 they have been very fine and good, but I must say that it is particularly 

 good to have a real live philosopher expounding to us his own system. 

 And yet I must make bold to say that if Dr. Abbot's system were 

 something quite peculiar to himself I should distrust it as I do not 

 now. I should fear it might be his idiosyncrasy come in the line of 

 the world's growing thought. I do not know a truer judgment than 

 that of my friend Joseph Henry Allen when he says : " The only intel- 

 lectual scheme that history respects is that which grows by its own slow 

 irresistible process from the contributions of millions of honest, intel- 

 ligent, thinking men who do each his best to shape his own thought to 

 the demand of his own time." Now. while Dr. Abbot's thought im- 

 presses me by its originality and by the force and clearness of his ex- 

 position, what I value it most for is for that element it has in common 

 with the philosophy of many other thinkers in our time, that element 

 in which science and philosophy, psychology and metaphysics, are find- 

 ing the adjustment of their long-standing differences and dislikes the 

 idea of organic evolution which resolves matter and spirit ultimately 



