Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/270

254 has been, what is the concrete universal in which the visible particulars throb as members? what is the ultimate ground, source, basis, reason which authenticates — gives weight and worth to the various forms of authority which have been the educators of mankind? On its intellectual side it has been a critical regress upon the categories and ideals of reason to what they necessarily presuppose. In this method modern science and philosophy are one, differing only in the degree and extent of their procedure. The ultimate work is being done by philosophy — the synoptic and synthetic work of spirit, building upon and following out the necessary work of science. On its ethical side it has been a psychological and historical estimate of past and existing cults, codes, and institutions to find their radical source and basis. This part of the work is of much wider and nearer interest, but as it is never carried through without the aid of the philosophical work, we may place the philosophical first. That is, the task of finding the right of might, the ethical worth of code, creed, cult, and institution can only be performed by the aid of philosophy. The function of philosophy is simply the comprehending of the old and the new as elements of a rational process. It differs in toto from the not yet obsolete rationalism of the eighteenth century, in that it has no a priori ideal, no fixed quantity and measure of the rational. To it the real is the rational, however much it may contradict the subjective reason of the individual. It is a process, a movement of real logic through historic process of corporate man. Again it seeks the ground, rather than for "grounds" as the old rationalism did. Grounds or reasons are external and artificial, and not inherent. But such bolstering up with external props inevitably leads to sophistry, or the inventing of reasons that may seem to be valid. This is the resort of one who knows that he is defeated, that he has no real ground. Again, mere reasons are individualistic "points of view," and one person's are as good as another's. Ground, on the contrary, is universal and objective, and yet immanent. It is that which is creative of differences and constitutive of unity. It is organic, catholic. It is the First Principle of all things. It is, in the most concrete