have named the first is in my view the most important, as that on which all the rest depend, and in which they all find their application. It is what all begins with for us, for all that we call existence is for us a thought of ours, which it belongs to that philosophy to discuss the nature, meaning, validity of. It is what on the other side, is concerned with that which we must know and have settled for ourselves before we can, with reason, apply our knowledge of experience to action: namely, what we want: what we mean to do with ourselves, what ends we wish to gain, what it is well we should do, what we are called upon to do this is the region of ideals, of freedom, and of choice, where no positive knowledge or knowledge of experience can help us except in those subordinate manners to which I have alluded, as to judge what is attainable, or by what means we may best gain our end.

The purpose then of what I have here written is to clear the ground, or to do what I could to help clear thought, both in respect of philosophy and of physical view of nature: the one is quite as interesting to me as the other, and they seem to me, rightly pursued, to be mutually helpful, not antagonistic. A great deal of the Philosophy of the Human Mind damages both, especially philosophy proper, by its confusion of viewthis I have endeavoured to exhibit: 'notionalism' or ' relativism' damages both, philosophy by cutting off from it all life, and fruit, and prospect, the view of nature by making us think and talk of abstractions where they are out of place, and where we want to be in the fresh and open air of good or rightly applied phenomenalism (as I have called it), looking at things as they are before our eyes without perplexing ourselves by thought as to how we know them or what

they may be besides. Mis-phenomenalism or positivism damages the study of nature and of fact in this way, that by the expecting from it, and the trying to effect by it, what does not belong to it, it raises suspicion against it, and what is worse, tends sometimes to make its cultivators pursue it with a sort of misgiving, as if this suspicion really attached to it, and as if fidelity to it really required that at whatever sacrifice, we should abnegate, at its apparent bidding, everything which I should call our higher nature, and all our worthier beliefs and aspirations. What I have called philosophy is of course to such positivism of the nature of a dream, and that a foolish and pernicious one.

The manner in which I have tried to help clear thought I must leave the following pages to show for themselves-I will only mention one thing here.

It is in reference to what I may call the coordinating facts of mind and matter, as what go together to make up the universe. This I have variously commented on. I think the purpose of what I have said may be better understood through a few words here to the following effect.

One of the branches of science in which perhaps at this moment (in company probably with many others) I feel special interest on account of the manner in which it seems to promise fruit, is the study of what we may call 'the facts of mind' as we may see, observe, experiment, upon them in the universe, both in various human individuals with corporeal organizations individually different, and in various animals (so far as we can thus study them) with such organizations dif fering generically.

Facts of mind of this character are facts of the universe, and may legitimately be co-ordinated with

facts of matter, and knowledge about them must be pursued in the same manner in which the study of the facts of matter is-by observation, experiment, induction.

But there are facts of mind, and what are more properly described as 'facts of mind' than these are, which are not at all of this character, but are of such a nature, that so far from being in any way what can be co-ordinated with facts of matter to make up the universe, the whole universe is itself one such fact of mind to us-when we say it is, we mean that we believe in it —it is the way in which we think, something which our thought sets before us-and there are other such facts of mind besides this. The great fact of the kind is human freedom, liberty, choice. Mind, as we study it for instance in various animal organizations following various laws, is something different from mind as we feel it, or ourselves, thinking and choosing what we will do: and the generic mind in such organizations, with its future, so to speak, marked out for it by nature, is something different from our mind as we feel it, which is more even than humanly generic or generically human-for we have a free view around us-we may see what is good to be done, and choose what we will act for, not (in this case) as men, but as moral beings, who can see even beyond their manhood or proper kind, and can aspire to raise themselves and that kind-when we have chosen indeed, it is as men that we shall have to act: we have but human powers, though we have a choice going beyond known or proper humanity: and thus, in a subordinate way, the facts of mind which may be physically studied are of vast consequence: but the real and great facts of mind are the others. And the treatment of these, in both an intellectual and moral view, is what I have called philosophy: the examina

tion what knowledge is, how we know, and what we mean by certainty and truth: the examination what liberty or choice is, what is the meaning of a purpose or ideal of action, what purposes or ideals present themselves to us, what we are to think about them.

Unless we have philosophy of this kind, whatever we can make of it, as a companion or pendant, it seems to me that we cannot follow either of the two lines of thought which at this moment are of special interest, without getting into a hopeless perplexity as to the application of them to our action. By these two lines of thought I mean, the one, the physio-psychology of which I have spoken: the other, the past history of the human race, both intellectual and moral or civil. If we wait to know what we ought to think about ourselves and what we are to do (more than subordinately) upon these studies, not only shall we be in an unnatural suspense, but we can hardly fail to get more and more into a logical perplexity, and we shall injure these studies themselves. Already it is evident that the study of human progress, or human developement, or civilization, is in a confusion most difficult to disentangle, on account of people's having failed to present to themselves as two different notions, the progressive improvement, on the one side, of beings with liberty, enterprize, aspiringness, and desire to do the best and the right and to elevate their nature, and, on the other, such a progressive developement as we may conceive to take place in any kind of beings (or zoöcosm as I have later called it, i.e. system of kinds) in consequence of any natural tendencies in them or circumstances about them, independent of such free choice and aspiringness. In respect of the great and important science of the philosophy of history, as we call it, it seems to me that the prospect is

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bad for the very reason which makes some think it good: namely, that we are now looking to it for our morality: we want to find out from it what I am sure we cannot find out from it without perverting it, namely, what we ought to do: we shall lose our power of moral judgment in criticizing what man has done, and after all we shall never be able to say why what man has done (whatever it may be) is, as such, the thing which we ought to do now.

The world is in some respects getting old, and its value for the history of the past, whether the intellectual history of man's successive discovery of things, or the moral history of his advance in civilization, may be taken as one sign of this: at the same time the world is in some respects as young as, or, if one might venture the expression, more young than, ever, and never I suppose were hopefulness and enterprize more abundant. No one can feel more interest in history of all kinds than I do: almost, perhaps too much. But the tendency of questions and subjects of all kinds at this time to run to history, if I may so express it, amounts, in many cases, to a blinking the great and real questions, which ought not to be encouraged. This historical tendency is a part of the character of mind which may be called 'positivism', though it spreads widely beyond the circle of those who would accept the name. But roughly, the principle of this tendency is the following: To understand things, you must understand their history: or perhaps, we cannot understand things: all that we can understand is their history. For things we might put 'men': the study of the history of man is now put before us as that by means of which we are to understand man himself, and know what we ought to do.