Sidebilder
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

I do not intend to trouble you with a long paper or in leed with any paper at all. Whether it is in my power to live up to your program and give you a short, crisp speech" w be in your equity to judge. I thought at any rate I could describe in this fashion better than by a written paper what I had in mind to say. The subject we are considering was suggested by the great amount of money that has been given within the last year for the promotion of philosophical study in this state. At Cornell university we have been able to appropriate a sum not far from $25,000 a year to the study of philosophy; and here comes the inquiry, what use we are to make of such a sum of money?

In the old college courses we were taught logic and mental and moral philosophy, and we all carried away the impression, I think, that these sciences were not progressive sciences, but had been settled once for all, and were to be handed down to the next generation unchanged. But a change has taken place in our conception of philosophy. If I may refer to the old Greek conception, it was that philosophy constituted a science or a method of investigation or inquiry independent altogether of other sciences, and that by means of Rome faculty which the philosopher possessed it was in his power

to discover truths about the nature of things hidden to other investigators. The vocation of the philosopher was regarded as the highest thing on earth. The sciences according to the Greek conception were subordinate to philosophy. Now in modern times we have changed that and at the present day the sciences are regarded as the foundation of philosophy. With this changed conception of the relation of the sciences to philosophy there is also growing up a broader philosophy, and if you will allow me I will mention some of its branches and describe very briefly what I think may be done for them.

First of all we have the old discipline of logic. When Kant attempted to construct a critical system of philosophy he based it on logic which he declared had been a perfect science for 2,000 years. No doubt, in so far as we mean by logic, merely the art of drawing certain conclusions from certain premises already laid down, its canons are to-day what Aristotle first discovered them to be. On the other hand, if we raise the new inquiry, How then are these premises reached from which conclusions are drawn? we shall find in the writings of Aristotle next to nothing to help us to an answer. The first work that attempted to answer the question was the Logic of John Stuart Mill. Mill formulated the logic of induction, or in other words the principles and methods which are to be followed by scientists in the investigation of nature, if their results are to be valid results. But his work was only a beginning; and the logic of the sciences can never be completed so long as human knowledge continues to expand. Here then, as it seems to me, is a field which may be very successfully prescribed for university students. What methods must be followed in the various sciences if the results which are reached are to pass as valid results? I think one of the best ways to answer the question would be to get the professors of mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry and the historical sciences to come before philosophical classes and explain to them, each for himself, the method followed in the sciences they represent. Here then is a large field for investigation in philosophy.

When we turn to psychology we also find abundant room for investigators. No branch of human knowledge has made greater progress in recent years. A new method has been introduced. The old method was the introspective one. It was supposed that the science of mind should be built up by the investigator looking into his own. consciousness and tabulating what went on. This subjective method, however, has in recent times been supplemented by an objective

or experimental method, and we now draw from altogether new sources facts for building up the science of psychology. We are thus reaching quantitative results regarding the intensity, character, and time-order of mental phenomena in the individual; and we study these phenomena in all manifestations of mind, normal and diseased, and in such mental deposits as language, religion, law, custom, etc. While in a college course it seems to me desirable that there should be presented to the student who is required to take the study, a more or less connected view of facts which are universally recognized in the science of psychology, the university teacher of philosophy should familiarize his advanced students with the new methods of investigation and turn them into fields of inquiry with a view to their enlargement of the boundaries of the science.

When I pass from psychology to ethics I think I may say there has been the same change of method and the same fruitfulness of results. In the older text-books there were two to three fundamental questions, such as the end of life and the moral law, but later inquirers have come to feel that these great questions can not be settled satisfactorily until the investigator is in possession of a much larger collection of facts than have hitherto been gathered. I can not, ladies and gentlemen, give you my own view of this question better than by describing a course of ethics to my own students in Cornell university. It was a course of three hours a week running through the entire year. During the first term or about one third of the year I devoted the entire time to the collection of facts bearing on the moral consciousness of mankind. I asked my students to read the Old Testament, especially the earlier books, in order that they might get a view of the moral sentiments, beliefs and practices of one very important branch of the human family. I described in lectures the moral ideals, institutions and practices of other peoples

of savages, old Aryans, Greeks, Romans, and Christians. Having in that way spread before my students a picture of the moral facts of mankind as they are represented in the literary remains of the great nations of the world and in the existing customs of lower races, I then attempted to make an analysis of the individual moral sentiments and beliefs of the American of the 19th century. Then when the facts on which the science of ethics is to be built up were completely before us, I proceeded in the second term, or the second third of the year, to the erection of a theory of ethics; in other words, I endeavored to discover whether, when we surveyed these facts through and through, there were any general and universal

principles of conduct and, if so, to tabulate them. In the third term I made an application of these principles of morality to actual life. I examined by the criterion discovered, the moral life of the individual, of the family, and of society, as we are acquainted with them in modern times. Now this sketch opens up, you see, a field of inquiry which might occupy the time of one investigator for a great number of years; and I found as I went into my course with more detail, as I endeavor to do from year to year, that it takes so much of my time that I have scarcely any time for other branches of philosophy. I hold then that even if we have large sums of money given for the prosecution of philosophical study, we have in these sciences I have already mentioned,- in logic, in ethics, in psychology, an abundant field worthy to be cultivated by the best investigators money can procure us.

There remains, however, another branch of philosophy, a branch of philosophy which endeavors to give us a conception of the world and of human life which will satisfy at once the demands of the understanding and so far as possible the needs of the heart. There are a great many people at the present day who deny the possibility of such a science. I am not here either to vindicate or to condemn it. What I want to say is that for hundreds or even thousands of years the best intellects of the race, have struggled with these ultimate problems of the nature of man and of the world and of the relation of both to God. It seems to me, therefore, whether we believe in the science of metaphysics or not, we should recognize that it is worth while to study, at least historically, the great answers that have been given from the time of Plato and Aristotle to these questions of ultimate existence. I hold, therefore, that in a university school of philosophy, provision, and I am prepared to say liberal provision, should be made for at least the historical study of meta physics. I need not in this audience dwell upon the advantages of such a study. For my own part I should be disposed to go a little further and say that I think we should have a chair of constructive metaphysics; that we should not content ourselves merely with the answers that have been given in the past to those ultimate questions I have described, but should ourselves attempt in the light of existing knowledge to form some intelligible theory of the ultimate nature of things. If I have any doubt about the possibility of a final theory of things it is only because I realize that the perfect metaphysician should be, if not omniscient, at least a master of every science a microcosm of all human intelligence.

I trust I have now made clear the kind of work that, in my opinion, should be undertaken by a well equipped university school of philosophy, though for the sake of brevity, I have mentioned only its principal divisions.

Prof. N: M. Butler Columbia college has by statutory act been reorganized on the basis of a university. Students enter the university course at the close of the third or old junior year of the college curriculum. The university organism is divided into four faculties of which the faculty of philosophy is one. Students entering the department of philosophy, either from our own or from other institutions, have been presumably instructed in the elements of philosophy and of ethics.

Our university study of philosophy being pursued along four popular lines, it is of course all voluntary and all elective; and although it presents to ourselves an organic whole, it is not such an organic whole if the student elects certain portions of the subjects treated. We proceed along these lines to discuss philosophy. In the history of philosophy we proceed along the elective lecture method, supplementing by two years of instruction by the discursive method. We think there should be cooperation between the teacher and the student and that by working inductively along these lines that the greatest progress is made and that the spirit of research is most fostered. We follow these new problems in logic and in ethics and in other departments of philosophy upon the broad plane of the theory of knowledge; and therefore we keep in mind, throughout, the fact that it is a problem of the theory of knowledge. How can man know anything? How can man's mind gather to itself the facts offered?

We also include in this division a university course in pedagogics. I agree entirely with the idea Prof. Schurman has expressed. We follow all philosophical studies for a practical end. A very important and very real application is found when one formulates the details of individual opinion, his researches, his ethical and philosophical opinions, his opinions gained by contact with others in daily life. We believe that a scientific study of the facts of education contributes very largely to that end as a philosophical discipline. Therefore we start from the theory of knowledge and endeavor to bear in mind that we are proceeding to a practical end.

One word on the question of metaphysics. We study metaphysics and the metaphysical problems historically, and we do so for a defi

« ForrigeFortsett »