Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/456

 442 W. CALDWELL : our power of reflecting upon and analysing the conditions of experience as a whole, i.e., of the nature of the world-process as related to our experience and our action; and we have thus retained the main principles of the doctrine of Criticism while at the same time letting go our hold of the crude psychology of Kant. (2) Biology has gone even farther than psychology in proclaiming that the end and purpose of all thinking, of all brain development and mental contrivance, of all morality, indeed, is action and evolution. In its eyes, as in the eyes of sociology, the supremacy of philosophy and the arts and science, consists in the fact of their having raised man to his present position from the condition of the animal or the subconscious man. We shall, however, again face this fact in thinking of Prof. James's conception of the function of philosophy as the selection of " vital hypotheses " and of his implicit claim that truth itself is not absolute but relative. 1 (3) It has been discovered by social psychology that the adoption of the social standpoint, the imitation (even before we can understand them) of the habits and customs and " reactions " of other people, is demonstrably necessary to the mental development of the individual. 2 It is thus no new thing for us to adopt intellectual points of view and mental attitudes that have come to us, first of all by way of practical exigency or unconscious natural " suggestion ". We have from childhood been compelled to use our intel- lectual powers to imitate, and devise means to the execution of "reactions" that are suggested to us by our associates. There is already in vogue a way of writing out the history of philosophy, the history of leading ideas about man and the universe, from the standpoint of the moral and social needs of men at different times and places. 3 (4) The logic of 1 See the reference to Simmel, below. 2 Cf. Mr. Balfour's perception of the importance of social relations and social "reactions" to the development of the religious consciousness. . . . " Religion works, and to produce its full results, must needs work through the agency of organised societies. It has therefore a social side, and from this its speculative side cannot, I believe, be kept wholly distinct," Foundations of Belief, p. 259 (italics mine). 3 The names and works of Profs. Eucken and Ziegler and Hoffding and of Mr. A. W. Benn and others, suggest themselves at once as proof of this tendency, not to mention the recent important prize essay (published in the current numbers of MIND) by Dr. F. Tonnies, which insists so thoroughly on the influence of the social will on the formation and differentiation of metaphysical conceptions. Dr. A. Kenyon Rogers of the University of Chicago has recently written a Brief Introduction to Modern Philosophy, that openly professes to connect the "presuppositions of philosophy " with our " ordinary beliefs and practical needs ". Doubt- less a thorough knowledge of the life of the Middle Ages would reveal the