266 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
It is reasonable to conclude that, if human wisdom suffice, this problem o f 
Inductive Philosophy will be carried to its logical results. It seems necessary 
that modern scientific investigation should exhaust all material means before it 
has recourse to those forces which lie beyond the purely physical. Let the 
world travel this side-track of materiaHsm untill they reach the utmost limit, and 
then they will be content to turn upon the highway of truth. When men have 
tried in vain to refer all natural phenomena to material causes, when they have 
fully proved a negative, they will become cognizant of truth, not reached through 
purely material processes, and faith will be recognized as the highest and best 
form of knowledge. And failure to reach the result through material means will 
demonstrate the existence of things immaterial, and will produce a wider, deeper 
and more universal faith, I believe, than has ever prevailed on the earth. It is 
logical to conclude, then, that some grains of truth were left hidden in the chaff- 
heaps of antiquity, not winnowed out by the Baconian Philosophy, whose pres- 
ence is the life and power and inspiration of scientific formulas. And this is the 
supreme question of the age: How shall the Baconian Philosophy be readjusted 
so that it shall contain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ? 
If we turn the page of history we shall find two great distinctive tendencies 
of the philosophic mind in which have various forms maintained their identity. The 
first is Realism, which takes its rise in Aristotle, and reappears under a different 
method in Bacon, and comes out in the Sensationalism of Locke, and in the Posi- 
tivism of Comte. The other tendency is Idealism, which takes its rise in Plato,, 
and flows on through the Transcendentalism of Germany from Kant to Hegel, 
and reappears in the Absolutism of Cousin. These philosophers differ in many 
respects, but may be classed in one form or another as defenders of these two 
great systems of ReaHsm and Idealism, or of Positivism and Absolutism. Aris- 
totle gave more place to the phenomenal ; Plato and his disciples to the meta- 
phenomenal. The reahst deals more with what appears to be real to the senses, 
the idealist with the ideal. The realist prides himself as a man of facts. The 
absolutist deals with things as they absolutely are, absolved or loosed from con- 
tingent relations. He looks upon phenomena as the mere husks of truth, unfolds 
things by the inner light of the soul, and is not to be deceived by his senses. 
Realism ignores the Absolute, or resolves it into contradictions ; claims that all 
knowledge must flow into the mind through the senses, and thus eliminates the 
supernatural and falls into materialism. Idealism would go behind phenomena, 
and seize hold of the very cause or essence of things by an intuition of mind, 
claims that what is conceivable is comprehensible, and by a species of omni- 
science rises above the world on the swift wings of thought, until it ends its airy 
flight in Mysticism and Pantheism. If any one doubts the power of philosophy- 
over the religious world, look at the Mysticism and Pantheism of Germany where 
Idealism or Transcendentalism obtains, and at the Materialism of England and 
. of our own country, where the Sensationalism or Realism has prevailed. 
It must be evident to philosophic minds that Idealism and Realism are only 
. coraplemental parts of one whole. Substantially, both philosophies are true in, 
