PHILOSOPHY AND SPECIALTIES. 
17 
being professed and trained combatants, it is to be expected 
that when the latter applies injurious epithets to the former 
there shall be a “ conflict.” This is not the case as regards 
Philosophy. There cannot be a fight without two parties to 
it, and Philosophy serenely ignores both attack and defense 
in this quarrel. The old conditions are reversed. Philoso¬ 
phy was once a part of religion; religion is now a part of 
Philosophy. Religion is recognized among the forces and 
phases of human development to be respected as of possibly 
greater import than any other—it might not be too much to 
say than all others—by reason of its duration and influ¬ 
ence. As religion claims to be true, yet must acknowledge 
that there are more truths than are connected with itself, 
while all truths belong to Philosophy, no objection should 
be made on the side of religion to its inclusion in the scope 
of Philosophy. Philosophy cheerfully accepts the truths— 
whether classified in terms of psychology or grouped in the 
special science of comparative mythology—that exist in all 
religions and it is tender to the errors found in all religions. 
It can indeed employ the many oblique lines of human 
error to demonstrate the directness of truth, and therefore is 
not harsh to forms of error which may have served their 
hour in the great economy of nature. All of the sciences and 
all of the religions are severally but the specialties in the 
domain of Philosophy, hence there is no more conflict 
between any of them and Philosophy than there is between 
the ocean and the tidal streams that empty into it with 
changing though regulated ripple. Tides during ages pro¬ 
duce modifications in Philosophy as in the ocean, but do not 
cause storms. 
That true philosophers have not been excited to combat 
with the religionists is from no remissness of the latter, who 
have pelted them with the worst names inventable by their 
ingenuity, sometimes in ludicrous confusion of terms. But 
since that is no more than the religionists did to one another 
such behavior would not greatly trouble a proficient in 
ecclesiastical history. The Greeks and Romans gave to the 
2—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., XI, 1889. 
