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REPLY BY PROFESSOR G. S. MORRIS, M.A., 
( University of Michigan.) 
I N offering any comments on the foregoing discussion, I would wish first 
to express my appreciation of the kind and sympathetic intelligence 
with which my paper was received and discussed. The remarks made by 
various speakers show that the purport of the paper was fully understood, 
and I should be quite willing to let it go upon the records of the Institute 
without further explanation or defence than that which these speakers 
have offered. Still, I embrace this opportunity to present a few final and 
partly supplementary observations. 
A word may be fitting as to the “metaphysical foundation” underlying 
“ Science.” That positive science does rest on such a foundation was fully 
admitted by those who took part at length in the above discussion. The 
same fact is recognized by men of note in all schools of thought and 
investigation. Nor are the facts on which metaphysics, or “ philosophy,” 
builds, of doubtful authenticity or altogether susceptible of a double inter- 
pretation. The paper offered partly failed to accomplish its object, if it did 
not show that the surest elements of human knowledge are of metaphysical 
origin. 
The conception of metaphysics, or philosophy, as a science, was one of the 
earliest to be formed, because the philosophical instinct is inseparable from 
human reason, and must manifest itself from and after the first epoch of 
cultured thought. Its object is nothing more nor less than to attain to and 
demonstrate a correct view of the nature of things ; and whatever be the 
end which, in the speculations of different thinkers, it reaches, whether the 
conclusion be materialistic or idealistic, it is still metaphysical. That is to 
say, it aims and, sometimes with an unwarranted assumption of absolute 
certainty, professes to furnish the true theory (science), not of the special 
laws and inter-relations of things as phenomena, but of their true causes 
and real nature. It seeks thus to furnish the common element in which all 
special scienoes have their true basis, and in which they are organically 
united as parts of one harmonious whole — of one general, systematic con- 
ception of the universe. 
And yet, simple as it may be in its fundamental data and principles, it is 
a science which appears never complete, and is, in some sense, a perpetual 
ideal. For its principles are required to have universal application. What- 
ever new realms of being may be brought to light, whatever new truths may be 
demonstrated in the special sciences, these must all be shown not to conflict 
with the principles of our pre-assumed and partially demonstrated meta- 
physical science. Hence, with the progress of special knowledge, the ever- 
renewed requirement that the philosopher shall show that his principles 
dominate the new facts, or new aspects of facts, which the special sciences 
