ioo HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



But, before attacking the problem itself, there 

 is one point to which I wish to call your attention 

 namely, the meagre light thrown on this prob- 

 lem by the " systems " of philosophy properly 

 so-called. What are we? What are we doing 

 here? Whence do we come and whither do we 

 go? These, it seems, are the essential and vital 

 questions, the questions of supreme interest, 

 which first present themselves to the philosopher 

 and which are, or should be, the very cause of 

 philosophy's existence. But not at all. If we 

 consider the enormous work done in philosophy 

 from antiquity down to the present time, we find 

 that attention has been engrossed with a host of 

 special problems in psychology, in morals, in 

 logic, as well as a crowd of very general meta- 

 physical speculations on the more or less hypo- 

 thetic principles of things; and then again we 

 find a welter of critical reflections on the manner 

 and method of knowledge, and finally a multi- 

 tude of works of history and discussion which 

 give us the opinions of thinkers on the opinions 

 of others; but we perceive that those problems 

 which interest us as human beings above all else, 

 and which are for us the vital problems, have 

 very seldom been squarely faced. I mean that 

 the solution given has been thrown out in pass- 

 ing, as a consequence of certain very general and 

 highly abstract conceptions of Being, of Thought, 

 of Extensity, of Substance, etc. It seems as if 

 philosophy thought it would be slighting the 



