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 undertaken. I am content to accept his words as an instruction to begin my tenure of office by reflecting upon the relations to one another of certain parts or branches of Philosophy, commonly distinguished, if not separated, from one another; to endeavour, after clearness and distinctness of view about the precise nature of their difference and connexion, to bear all this perpetually in mind, and, if possible, to assist others to the rejection of whatever is fanciful or arbitrary and the firmer grasp of whatever is solid and reasonable. In this task not much aid is vouchsafed by the legislator himself who, like the lord of the oracle at Delphi,. In fact, as I have said, he has left to his Professor rather a problem to consider than a clear solution to his natural questioning. It is to this problem I invite your attention to-day. It is one which frequently recurs in the history of Philosophy, and it still remains of interest and importance.

To divide or partition anything presupposes that it is a whole, a whole of parts. Philosophy is above all things a whole, a whole in the most pregnant sense of the word—not an aggregate or a collection, but a well-ordered system. This it is at least in idea or as an ideal. Though historically it has been constituted by the gathering together of a number of separate and separately originated problems, discussions, solutions, it is not, and cannot regard itself as a mere sum or aggregate of these. It exists precisely to remove their initial separateness, and, so far as it is actual, is the result of their integration. It looks behind and beyond their severance, and ceaselessly labours, not to abolish or obliterate their distinctions, but to link them together, to organize them, or rather to discover and exhibit their organic connexion within its well-ordered