SECTION A METAPHYSICS 



(Hall 6, September 21, 10 a. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR A. C. ARMSTRONG, Wesleyan University. 

 SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR A. E. TAYLOR, McGill University, Montreal. 



PROFESSOR ALEXANDER T. ORMOND, Princeton University. 

 SECRETARY: PROFESSOR A. O. LOVEJOY, Washington University. 



The Chairman of the Section, Professor A. C. Armstrong, of Wes- 

 leyan University, in opening the meeting referred to the contin- 

 ued vitality of metaphysics as shown by its repeated revivals after 

 the many destructive attacks upon it in the later modern times: 

 he congratulated the Section on the fact that the principal speakers 

 were scholars who had made notable contributions to metaphysical 

 theory. 



THE RELATIONS BETWEEN METAPHYSICS AND THE 

 OTHER SCIENCES 



BY PEOFESSOR ALFRED EDWARD TAYLOR 



[Alfred Edward Taylor, Frothingham Professor of Philosophy, McGill Uni- 

 versity, Montreal, Canada, b. Oundle, England, December 22, 1869. M.A. 

 Oxford. Fellow, Merton College, Oxford, 1891-98, 1902- ; Lecturer in 

 Greek and Philosophy, Owens College, Manchester, 1896-1903; Assistant 

 Examiner to University of Wales, 1899-1903; Green Moral Philosophy Prize- 

 man, Oxford, 1899; Frothingham Professor of Philosophy, McGill Uni- 

 versity, 1903- ; Member Philosophical Society, Owens College, American 

 Philosophical Association. Author of The Problem of Conduct; Elements of 

 Metaphysics.] 



WHEN we seek to determine the place of metaphysics in the gen- 

 eral scheme of human knowledge, we are at once confronted by an 

 initial difficulty of some magnitude. There seems, in fact, to be no 

 one universally accepted definition of our study, and even no very 

 general consensus among its votaries as to the problems with which 

 the metaphysician ought to concern himself. This difficulty, serious 

 as it is, does not, however, justify the suspicion that our science is, 

 like alchemy or astrology, an illusion, and its high-sounding title 

 a mere "idol of the market-place," one of those nomina rerum quae 

 non sunt against which the Chancellor Bacon has so eloquently 

 warned mankind. If it is hard to determine precisely the scope of 



