XVI 



SYSTEMATIC THOUGHT 



37 1 



push a science back to its first principles, but may still 

 ask on what those first principles rest. We may distin- 

 guish true ways of thinking from false, and yet be 

 reminded that the true ways are only ways of thinking. 

 Are we then landed ultimately in pure assumption as our 

 starting point ? Or may we recognise that the search for 

 a peg outside the world of thought to which thought 

 may be hung, is the result of an illusion, by which we 

 transfer to thought as a whole methods justly applicable 

 only to a part ? If this is so, the ultimate justification of 

 thought and experience is to be found within the world of 

 thought and experience itself. As I have argued at length 

 elsewhere, it is to be found in point of fact in its character 

 as a coherent system, a whole in which the diverse parts 

 support and necessitate one another. The goal of philo- 

 sophy is therefore a system which should embrace all 

 experience. 



There have been two views of the function of philosophy 

 which at first sight are difficult to reconcile. One is, that 

 philosophy is the unification of the sciences ; the other, 

 stated broadly, is that it is the analysis of the presupposi- 

 tions of thought. In the view here taken, these two 

 conceptions coincide, for it is in the possibility of harmonis- 

 ing the results of thought that the test of thought is ulti- 

 mately to be found, and such a unification is not possible 

 without taking exact account of the way in which thought 

 goes to work in building up its conceptions. The correla- 

 tion of the sciences on the basis of an analysis of experience 

 seems then to be the fuller statement of the work of philo- 

 sophy. It is by such a correlation, if at all, that we get back 

 from the world of thought which has arisen uncritically out 

 of human experience and human evolution to the Reality 

 which we still hope to be attainable. We find the need 

 of such a correlation obscurely felt in the special sciences 

 when in trouble about their elementary conceptions, ex- 

 plicitly recognised in modern metaphysics, but not yet 

 satisfied by any philosophic system. The ideal unity of 

 the philosopher, however far beyond the reach of human 

 attainment, may serve as a " regulative concept," indicating 

 the direction in which the advance of thought moves and 



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