THE METAPHYSICS OF A NATURALIST 
Philosophical and Psychological Fragments by the 
Late C. L. Herrick 
INTRODUCTION 
In these days when philosophy is considered less and less as 
transcendental metaphysics and more and more in terms of the 
instrumental methodology of the sciences, the thoughts and 
writings of men who represent this phase of human endeavor 
are coming to be valued above every other source of philosoph- 
ical inspiration, The opinions of such men as Tyndall, Hux- 
ley, Helmholtz, Kelvin, Mach, Ostwald, to mention no others, 
become of great significance to philosophy when the latter is 
conceived as an interpretation and criticism of the underlying 
principles and methods of the sciences. 
It is as a contribution to this increasingly valuable literature 
that these pages are offered to the public. Professor Herrick was 
not only an eminent naturalist and neurologist, but from the 
first he conceived and executed his researches in a philosophic 
spirit and with the special problems of psychology in mind. This 
fact in itself would make his views of interest. But when to 
this the fact is added that his ideas are always expressed viva- 
ciously and in suggestive form, his writings become doubly in- 
teresting and important. 
An account of the life and work of Prof. Clarence Luther Her- 
rick, with portrait and an appended bibliography, may be found 
in the Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology^ and more 
fully in the Bulletin of the Scientific Laboratories of Deni- 
son University.^ As a young man, while serving on the Geo- 
logical and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, he acquired a 
thorough and broad knowledge of natural history, devoting him- 
self to paleontology, systematic zoology and comparative anat- 
^ Vol. 14, no. 6, November, 1904. 
^ Vol. 13, pp. 1 to 33,. January, 1905. 
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