Page:Philosophical Review Volume 18.djvu/65

51 movement of contemporary thinking has undergone a change. Already we are removed from the time when, in the interest of a boastful naturalism or from the side of abstract intellectualistic theory, it was possible to ignore the volitional and the affective aspects of human nature, and their importance for our views of the world and life. Philosophy has gained a broader conception of the data from which it must start in its attack upon the fundamental problems, and by so much at least it has come nearer to the truth. But the advance brings with it new responsibilities. Less clear in the discussions of the Congress than the emphasis laid on personality and will, or less fully formulated than this, was the recognition of the need to rationalize, to universalize, the purposive and volitional factors. Such momenta were emphasized, or criticism was offered of their individualistic and subjectivistic implications ; the attempts were few to work out beyond these limitations to a view which should recognize the danger but transcend it.

At this point, therefore, fresh problems rise before contemporary thought. But the discussions which suggested them furnished aid also for their solution. The personal associations of the Congress, as well as its technical conferences, emphasized the relations of thought to social life. Philosophy has a duty toward modern culture, even with regard to the international phases of the latter. As it increasingly fulfills this mission, will not thinking men become more fully impressed with the broader developments of will and feeling which are wrought out in the life of civilized societies? And, on the other hand, as the modern nations, in part by the aid of reflective thought, more successfully develop their internal organization or their peaceful relations to other states, will not this better rationalized collective life contribute to philosophy new bases for its own constructions? For the present these are questions of a hypothetical kind. But their suggestions for the future are justified by an analogy from the recent past. May not the future of this phase of reflection furnish a parallel to the history of philosophy and science in the last age? Amid all the disturbance of the later thinking, no one can overlook the steadying influence which science has exerted. The