Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/331

 318 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. Unseen itself, but man's relation to it, is the last object seen, the object which occupies and limits his horizon. That I take to be what philosophy in all ages has aimed at, to understand, not to construct, the Universe, as- if human logic contained the secret of its construction, or human diction- aries the Ineffable Name. The present position of philosophy is not only a scandal to the intellec- tual world ; it is also fraught with danger to the best interests of humanity. Until it is reconstituted, there can be no unity directing human effort : one man will be a Positivist, another a Transcendentalist, another a Materialist, and so on ; while all such speculative divergences necessarily involve corresponding divergences in the practical direction of conduct. It has seemed to me that nothing else but experience, experience simply and solely, can be the basis of the required all-embracing unity, dominating but not excluding minor individual differences. And as it happens, this very recourse to experience alone as the basis of true know- ledge has been the guiding idea and characteristic mark of English Philosophy, long before Transcendentalism was brought to the birth. I pass over Prof. Dewey's counter criticism of myself, not from any want of respect for my skilful critic, but because it would far exceed my allotted limits to put the incidental statements of opinion, which my article contains, in their proper setting. If this could be done, I think I discern several points on which we should find ourselves in substantial agree- ment. I am far from wishing to exaggerate our differences, and on these questions have no reluctance to leave the last word with Prof. Dewey. SHADWORTH H. HODGSON. The following from Prof. W. James has just come : " Professor Stumpf writes to me that in the quotation I made from him in the last No. of MIND, p. 27, n., I mistranslated his words Stelle and Ort by position, which is properly the equivalent of Lacje or of Stellung, and connotes relation to some other position, as Ort and Stelle do not. I am sorry that I failed to catch a shading of his meaning which was manifestly essential. I confess, however, that I find a difficulty in thinking of Ort as disconnected with Lage, of place as not implying position, of locus as independent of situs. Prof. Stumpf develops his view in a passage which I would gladly place before the readers of MIND if room could "be found for it in the April No. ; but it does not induce me to modify my own text." [Extract perforce omitted. EDITOR.] Lord Gifford, one of the Scottish Judges, recently deceased, has willed 80,000, in various proportions, to the four Scottish Universities, to be devoted to the foundation of Lectureships in Natural Theology. The terms of the bequest are sufficiently remarkable, as some extracts from the trust-deed will show. In the preamble he says : " 1 give my body to the earth as it was before, in order that the enduring blocks and materials thereof may be employed in new combinations ; and I give my soul to God, in whom and with whom it always was, to be in Him and with Him for ever in closer and more conscious union". Out of his estate he considers himself bound to employ a certain residue for " the good of his fellow- men," and therefore desires the Lectureships to be founded "for promoting, advancing, teaching and diffusing the study of Natural Theology, in the widest sense of the term ; in other words, the knowledge of God, the Infinite, the All, the First and Only Cause, the One and the Sole Sub- stance, the Sole Being, the Sole Reality, and the Sole Existence, the know- ledge of His nature and attributes, the knowledge of the relations which