216 PHILOSOPHY 



toward a more profound and comprehensive theory of Reality, 

 and toward a doctrine of values that shall be more available for the 

 improvement of man's political, social, and religious life. 



In view of this truth respecting the limitations of systematic 

 philosophy, I think we may hold that certain negative results, 

 which are customarily adduced as unfavorable to the claims of 

 philosophical progress, are really signs of improvement during the 

 latter half of the nineteenth century. One is an increased spirit 

 of reserve and caution, and an increased modesty of claims. This 

 result is perhaps significant of riper wisdom and more trustworthy 

 maturity. Kant believed himself to have established for philosophy 

 a system of apodeictic conclusions, which were as completely forever 

 to have displaced the old dogmatism as Copernicus had displaced 

 the Ptolemaic astronomy. But the steady pressure of historical and 

 scientific studies has made it increasingly difficult for any sane 

 thinker to claim for any system of thinking such demonstrable val- 

 idity. May we not hope that the students of the particular sciences, 

 to whom philosophy owes so much of its enforced sanity and sane 

 modesty, will themselves soon share freely of the philosophic spirit 

 with regard to their own metaphysics and ethical and religious 

 standpoints, touching the Ultimate Reality? Even when the recoil 

 from the overweening self-satisfaction and crass complacency of the 

 earlier part of the last century takes the form of melancholy, or of 

 acute sadness, or even of a mild despair of philosophy, I am not sure 

 that the last state of that man is not better than the first. 



In connection with this improvement in spirit, we may also note an 

 improvement in the method of philosophy. The purely speculative 

 method, with its intensely interesting but indefensible disregard of 

 concrete facts, and of the conclusions of the particular sciences, is no 

 longer in favor even among the most ardent devotees and advocates 

 of the superiority of philosophy to those sciences. At the same time, 

 philosophy may quite properly continue to maintain its position of 

 independent critic, as well as of docile pupil, tow r ard the particular 

 sciences. 



In the same connection must be mentioned the hopeful fact that 

 the last two or three decades have shown a decided improvement in 

 the relations of philosophy toward the positive sciences. There are 

 plain signs of late that the attitude of antagonism, or of neglect, 

 which prevailed so largely during the second and third quarters of the 

 nineteenth century, is to be replaced by one of friendship and mutual 

 helpfulness. And, indeed, science and philosophy cannot long or 

 greatly flourish without reciprocal aid, if by science we mean a true 

 Wissenschaft and if we also mean to base philosophy upon our total 

 experience. For science and philosophy are really engaged upon the 

 same task, to understand and to appreciate the totality of man's 



