650 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
Hence, philosophy is defined by Hamilton as ¢he science of first principles, and by 
Spencer as completely unified knowledge. 
Having briefly stated the aim and scope of philosophy in general, we will be 
the better enabled to understand the special aims and scope of the Synthetic 
Philosophy as set forth by Herbert Spencer. In this system of philosophy we 
find exemplified the strongest intellectual tendencies of the age. If we would 
know what class of questions is stirring most deeply the minds of thoughtful 
persons; if we would know in what direction the thought of many of the leading 
minds of the age is traveling, then we must study the Synthetic Philosophy. It 
is not too much to say that the man who has not done this cannot properly esti- 
mate the intellectual characteristics and tendencies of the age. Philosophy, as 
we have seen, aims to reduce all causes to one cause, all laws to one law, and all 
phenomena to one primordial source of being, that man may see the many in the 
one, and the one inthe many. The Synthetic Philosophy claims to have done 
this by establishing the universal law of Evolution. For this reason Mr. Spencer 
has termed his system the Synthetic Philosophy, because it aims to construct by 
means of the law of Evolution a harmonious and consistent ovganon out of all 
the departments of knowledge. 
To one not correctly informed, the word Byoludent is full of materialistic 
and atheistic associations, as though it were a denial of the spirituality of man 
and the existence of God. Nothing can be farther from the truth than such an 
idea. Evolution, so far from aiming to set aside the idea of a first Creative Cause, 
claims to be the manifestation of a Power which no human thought can fully 
comprehend. It teaches that the postulate of Absolute Beis is alike essential to 
doth science and religion. ‘‘ Both religion and science,” says Mr. Spencer, ‘‘ are 
obliged to assert the existence of an Ultimate Reality. Without this religion has 
no subject matter; and without this science, subjective and objective, lacks its 
indispensable datum.” Persons having only a partial knowledge of the Synthetic 
Philosophy have made the mistake of supposing that it makes /ovce its ultimate 
postulate, and. that hence the idea of Absolute Being or God is rejected. This 
mistake is less excusable from the fact that Mr. Spencer has used great clearness 
and fullness of statement to prevent his readers from falling into this very error. 
He says, ‘‘Over and over again, it has been shown in various ways that the 
deepest truths we can reach, are simply statements of the widest uniformities in 
our experience of the relations of matter, motion and force; and that matter, 
motion and force are but symbols of the Unknown Reality.” We thus see that 
force is not the Ultimate Reality, but the symbol of the Ultimate Power which 
ever works throughout all nature, and ‘‘in which we live and move and have our 
being.” No philosopher goes beyond Mr. Spencer in emphasizing Absolute Being 
as the ultimate datum of all science, philosophy and religion. He says: ‘‘ By 
the very conditions of thought we are prevented from knowing anything but rela- 
tive being; yet by these very conditions of thought, an indefinite consciousness of 
Absolute Being is necessitated.” He, in common with all other philosophers, 
