PROFESSOR BROOKS'S PHILOSOPHY 127 



tory duty upon philosophical speculations or not, it is utterly impossible 

 to prevent the importation of them into the mind/' he says, and fur- 

 ther raises the question if it is " not a little curious to observe that 

 those who most loudly profess to abstain from such commodities are, all 

 the while, unconscious consumers, on a great scale, of one or another 

 of their disguises or adulterations?"" In this spirit he recognizes that 

 such philosophical problems as those of " knowledge " and " conscious- 

 ness," of the " principles of science " in general, of cosmology, and, 

 more specifically, of psycliology and ethics, are problems which must 

 be solved in order to make the scheme of knowledge complete. What 

 he does not recognize clearly, or at least does not develop, is the fact 

 that, whereas the greater part of biology is consistent with any one of a 

 number of philosophical systems, it is through evolution that a particu- 

 larly strong leverage is secured by which it can be shown, perhaps, that 

 only one point of view, namely, evolutionary realism, is the correct 

 position ; but just how this is the case I can not here demonstrate. 



Some of the specific problems above mentioned are indeed discussed 

 by Professor Brooks in some detail, but not very satisfactorily. A few 

 lectures are almost purely biological, with only now and then a philo- 

 sophical reference, but in general it may be said that, even including 

 these. Professor Brooks is philosophizing all through the Founda- 

 tions as well as in his other writings, and that in this characteristic 

 rests his unusualness as a biologist. For while, of course, it must be ad- 

 mitted as a well-known fact that his philosophical interest did not lead 

 him to give up the exact observational investigation of detailed prob- 

 lems, one must go further, I think, and say that it was this same interest 

 also that actuated and stimulated him in all such investigations by 

 placing him ever on the lookout for the significant and important task. 

 But yet at the same time he did not ally himself with any specific and 

 definite constructive metaphysical system, not even with that of Berke- 

 ley. In fact, it may be said that with the real inner meaning of the 

 majority of the great historical systems Professor Brooks seems to have 

 been unacquainted. It is, rather, by Virtue of his openness of mind, of 

 his search for significant problems, and of his motivation by the spirit 

 of philosophical investigation and criticism, that he not only allies him- 

 self with philosophy, but was himself a philosopher, and in all this he 

 furnishes an example most worthy of imitation, if not of emulation, by 

 the investigator in any special field of scientific research. 



'Foundations, p. 25. 



