FUNDAMENTAL METHODS AND CONCEPTIONS 173 



PHILOSOPHY: ITS FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND 



ITS METHODS 



BY GEORGE HOLMES HOWISON 



[George Holmes Howison, Mills Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philo- 

 sophy and Civil Polity, University of California, b. Montgomery County, 

 Maryland, 1834. A.B. Marietta College, 1852 ; M.A. 1855 ; LL.D. ibid. 

 1883. Post-graduate, Lane Theological Seminary, University of Berlin, 

 and Oxford. Headmaster High School, Salem, Mass., 1862-64; Assistant 

 Professor of Mathematics, Washington University, St. Louis, 1864-66; Tile- 

 ston Professor of Political Economy, ibid. 1866-69; Professor of Logic and 

 the Philosophy of Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1871-79; 

 Lecturer on Ethics, Harvard University, 187980; Lecturer on Logic and 

 Speculative Philosophy, University of Michigan, 188384. Member and vice- 

 president St. Louis Philosophical Society; member California Historical 

 Society; American Historical Association; American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science ; National Geographic Society, etc. Author of 

 Treatise on Analytic Geometry, 1869; The Limits of Evolution, 1901, 2d edi- 

 tion, 1904; joint author and editor of The Conception of God, 1897, etc. Editor 

 Philosophical Publications of University of California; American Editorial 

 Representative Hibbert Journal, London.] 



THE duty has been assigned me, honored colleagues, of address- 

 ing you on the Fundamental Conceptions and the Methods of our 

 common pursuit philosophy. In endeavoring to deal with the 

 subject in a way not unworthy of its depth and its extent, I have 

 found it impossible to bring the essential material within less com- 

 pass than would occupy, in reading, at least four times the period 

 granted by our programme. I have therefore complied with the rule 

 of the Congress which directs that, if a more extended writing be 

 left with the authorities for publication, the reading must be re- 

 stricted to such a portion of it as will not exceed the allotted time. 

 I will accordingly read to you, first, a brief summary of my entire 

 discussion, by way of introduction, and then an excerpt from the 

 larger document, which may serve for a specimen, as our scholastic 

 predecessors used to say, of the whole inquiry I have carried out. 

 The impression will, of course, be fragmentary, and I must ask 

 beforehand for your most benevolent allowances, to prevent a judg- 

 ment too unfavorable. 



The discussion naturally falls into two main parts: the first 

 dealing with the Fundamental Conceptions; and the second, with 

 the Methods. 



In the former, after presenting the conception of philosophy 

 itself, as the consideration of things in the light of the whole, I take up 

 the involved Fundamental Concepts in the following order : 

 I. Whole and Part; 



II. Subject and Object (Knowing and Being, Mind and Matter; 

 Dualism, Materialism, Idealism); 



III. Reality and Appearance (Noumenon and Phenomenon) ; 



