312 PSTCH0L0G7. 



whicli system shall carry our belief is governed by princi- 

 ples which are simple enough, however subtle and difficult 

 may be their application to details. The conceived system, to 

 pass for true, must at least include the reality of the sensible 

 objects in it, by explaining them as ejects on us, if nothing more. 

 The system lohich includes the most of them, and definitely ex- 

 flains or pretends to explain the most of them, ivill, ceteris 

 paribus, prevail. It is needless to say how far mankind still 

 is from having excogitated such a system. But the various 

 materialisms, idealisms, and hylozoisms show with what in- 

 dustry the attempt is forever made. It is conceivable that 

 several rival theories should equally well include the actual 

 order of our sensations in their scheme, much as the one- 

 fluid and two-fluid theories of electricity formulated all the 

 common electrical phenomena equally well. The sciences 

 are full of these alternatives. Which theory is then to be 

 believed ? That theory luill be most generally believed ivhich, 

 besides offering us objects able to account satisfactorily for our 

 sensible experience, also offers those ivhich are most interesting, 

 those ivhich appeal most urgently to our cesthetic, emotioned, and 

 active needs. So here, in the higher intellectual life, the 

 same selection among general conceptions goes on which 

 went on among the sensations themselves. First, a word 

 of their relation to our emotional and active needs — and 

 here I can do no better than quote from an article j)nb- 

 lished some years ago :* 



" A philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either 

 of two defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its ulti- 

 mate principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints 

 our dearest desires and most cherished powers. A pessimistic principle 

 like Schopenhauer's incurably vicious Will-substance, or Hartraann's 

 wicked jack at-all-trades, the Unconscious, will perpetually call forth 

 essays at other philosophies. Incompatibility of the future with their 

 desires and active tendencies is, in fact, to most men a source of more 

 fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself. Witness the attempts to 

 overcome the 'problem of evil,' the ' mystery of pain.' There is no 

 problem of 'good.' 



"But a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that of con- 

 tradicting our active propensities is to give them no Object whatever 



* ' Rationality, Activity,^ and Faith ' (Princeton Review, July 1883, 

 pp. 64-9). 



