Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/9

vi exhaustive. While some of the same general grounds for a change from the originally prepared text existed in case of the revision of my former series of these lectures, they proved to be less effective than here, since, in that series, the single problem of the Conception of Being dominated the entire discussion, while here the relations of the Theory of Being to various problems of empirical research, and to the demands of our ethical consciousness, have complicated the undertaking.

The scope of this closing volume includes a sketch of an idealistic Theory of Human Knowledge, an outline of a Philosophy of Nature, a doctrine about the Self, a discussion of the origin and destiny of the Human Individual, a summary consideration of the world as a Moral Order, a study of the Problem of Evil, and, finally, an estimate of all these views in the light of what seem to me to be the interests of Natural Religion. This is a large and manifold programme. It was required of me by my interpretation of my task as Gifford lecturer. I well know how inadequate the consideration of each topic has necessarily proved to be.

As to the first of these topics, — the idealistic Theory of Knowledge, — what I here have to say is founded upon studies which I began as a student at the Johns Hopkins University in 1876-1878. The first formulation of these studies I made in my thesis for the Doctorate at that University. A further stage of my inquiry was published in 1881, in a paper on Kant’s Relation to Modern Philosophical Progress, printed in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy of that year. The interpretation of our knowledge of finite facts as largely due to an active