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16 the Individual” will thus, I hope, prove to be justified by the scope of our discussion in the two divisions of this course.

The plan of the proposed investigation has now been set before you in outline. May I next undertake to indicate a little more precisely not merely what problems we are to attempt, but the sort of positive argument that we are to use, and the kind of result that we may hope to reach? A philosophy must indeed be judged not by its theses, but by its methods; and not upon the basis of mere summaries, but after a consideration of the details of its argument. Yet it helps to make clearer the way through an intricate realm of inquiry if one first surveys, as it were, from above, the country through which, in such an enterprise, the road is to pass. I propose then, to indicate at once, and in the rest of this lecture, where the central problem of the Theory of Being lies, and by what method I think that this problem is, in a general sense, to be solved. To state the proposed solution, however, even in the most abstract and necessarily unconvincing fashion, is to arouse comments as to the meaning of this thesis, as to its consequences, and, above all, in a discussion like the present, as to its bearing upon the more practical interests of religion. I think that we may be helped to an understanding hereafter, if I attempt at once to call out, and, by anticipation, to answer, a few such comments.

I am one of those who hold that when you ask the question: What is an Idea? and: How can Ideas stand in any true relation to Reality? you attack the world-