Page:Philosophical Review Volume 31.djvu/279

No. 3.] other hand, every problem in philosophy has its scientific bearings, since reality declares itself through its activities. This is quite as true of the innermost nature of selfhood as of the sense-world. Thus we can, in theory at least, have a science and also a philosophy of every subject that engages our attention. But philosophy has one advantage over science. It can take over and utilize all the accredited results of the sciences, and out of these resources build a world of meanings, subjects, and values, that science cannot attain. Yet even here we may have a science of values, an analysis of self-activity, and a scientific treatment of meanings or interpretations. The faith of a Kant that whatever question the intellect of man may ask, the intellect should be able in principle to answer, is exemplified in philosophy and nowhere else; but such philosophy must wait upon the sciences for its data.

Just a word concerning the difference in method. This difference is significant, though not thoroughgoing. For the most part science can give its undivided attention to research, experimentation, and deduction. Yet when a new discovery of prime importance is made, such as the phenomena of radioactivity, no little adjustment is found to be necessary. While only at comparatively long intervals does science have occasion to make this regress upon its first principles, such a regress is the very life of philosophy. It is throughout critical in method. This apparently is not a temporary characteristic, but is likely to remain dominant through all the future. When philosophy ceases to be critical of its foundations and becomes dogmatic, it is ready to be transmuted, sublated, set aside, and absorbed, as Bradley might say. Yet this does not mean that the movement of philosophic thought is merely back and forth over a course that issues in nothing definitive and final. The lay mind often fails to understand the inner spirit of philosophy at this point, and therefore discounts it as falling short of the sure way of the sciences. But the critical regress does not necessarily end in scepticism. The foundations may hold against every assault. Nevertheless each new insight acquired by reflection so affects the entire thought structure that a re-examination of first principles becomes necessary. Besides philosophic truth must