Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/137

121 morality and religion on the other hand, has characterized the philosophical development of the nineteenth century, worthy both to define for us the conception of the nature of philosophy and also to indicate its mission to humanity? I believe that it is worthy.

Let us return, then, to the inquiry: What is philosophy; and what is the field of research and endeavor which is peculiarly its own? Surely it can no longer be said to be the compassing of the entire domain of human science, so as to gather all human cognition into a system of conceptions or formulas, and become a science of sciences, a universal mother of science, or a dominant lord over all the particular provinces of knowledge. Such a conception of philosophy is as extravagant as it is vain and illusory. If,—to adopt the distinction already quoted,—we are seeking, not an historical but an ideal definition of philosophy, we may well enough derive one from the experience of the past hundred years. During this period, and especially during the latter half of it, the particular sciences have been making unexampled progress. These sciences have established themselves, their fundamental conceptions and their approved methods, not only in the different spheres of the physical and material, but in all the departments of the life of the individual man and of the race. Morality, religion, and art have also been subjected with more or less success to the scientific method, and the corresponding sciences so-called have resulted in such a way as to demand our attention, if not to challenge our admiration. What remains, then, for philosophy to claim as its peculiar sphere?

In answer to this inquiry, let us admit that a certain conception of the Being of the World has been, in some sort, agreed upon by the particular sciences. This conception makes its more or less successful appeal, not only to the phenomena of so-called Nature, the orderly totality of so-called material things, but also to the facts of human life, on its ethical, æsthetical, and religious sides. In spite of all protestations to the contrary, the modern combination of the sciences into a unitary conception is something more than merely 'conventional,' in any appropriate meaning of that term. It is, indeed, metaphysical,—a theory of Reality placed