The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-06-09

the mutual assistance of the different
parts Of philosophy, which in spite Of
their apparent separation are still today
parts of one philosophy only. All this
would benefit the students of philosophy
themselves, but not less good would come
to the university as a whole. The spe-
cialiZation Of our age has brought 1t
about that in the organization of uni
versity even philosophy, or rather, each
of the philosophical branches, has be-
come an isolated study co-ordinated with
others The average student looks to
psychology as to physics or botany; he
thinks of ethics as he thinks of econom-
les or history; he hears about logic as
co-ordinated with mathematics; and SO
on. The university has somewhat lost
sight of the unity of all philosophical
subjects and has above all forgotten that
this united philosophy is more than one
science among other sciences, that 1t is
indeed the central sciences which alone
has the power to give inner unity to the
whole university work. Every year our
universities reward our most advanced
young scholars of philology and history
of literature and economics of physics
and chemistry, Of mathematics and biol
ogy with the degree of PHI. D., that is of
doctor philosophical, sYmbolically thus ex-
pressing that all the special sciences are
ultimately only branches OF philosophy,
but the truth Of this symbol has faded
away from the consciousness of the
academic community. All knowledge ap-
pears there as a disconnected mass Of
they all have once been parts of philoso-
ply, till one after the other has been
dismissed from the mother arms, has
been forgotten. A school of philosophy
as a visible unity in the midst of the
yard will renew this truth and thus give
once more to the overwhelming multi
tude of intellectual efforts of our uni
versity real unity and interconnection;
the external connection of administration
will be reinforced by the inner unity Of
logical interdependence.
1.-THE time is ripe for a school of phil
osophy to play this role and fulfill again
its old historical mission to be the unity
ing principle of human knowledge and
life The second half of the nineteenth
century was essentially controlled by
realistic energies, by the spirit of analy-
sis by triumph of natural science and
technique. But a long time before the
century came to an end a reaction start
ed throughout the whole intellectual
globe; the synthetic energies came again
to the foreground, the idealistic interests
were emphasized in the most different
quarters; the historical and social SCI
ences make today the same rapid prog
ress which characterized fifty years ago
the midst of the empirical sciences there
is awakening again the interest in
philosophy. In the days of anti-philo-
sophical naturalism scientists believed
that philosophy had come to an end and
that an unphilosophical positivism might
be substituted for the real philosophy;
today the mathematicians and physic-
lists, the chemists and biologists, the his
torians and economists eagerly turn
again and again to philosophy and on
the borderland between philosophy and
the empirical sciences they seek their
most important problems and discus
sions. The world begins to feel once
more that all knowledge Is empty If it
has no inner unity and that the inner
unity can be brought about only by that
science which inquiries into the funda-
mental conceptions and methods OF