THE
PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
PREFATORY NOTE.
THERE is scarcely a province of the entire realm of science and scholarship which is now without an official organ in America. New journals of Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Philology, Archæology, etc., have within the last decade or two succeeded one another with astounding rapidity. But whether it is that Philosophy is the late product of a nation's maturity, or that the example of the sporadic and incidental efforts to which the British people are mainly indebted for their systems of thought has infected the habits of the American branch of the Anglo-Saxon race, the fact certainly is that there does not exist amongst us any periodical organ which concerns itself exclusively with Philosophy in general, or even an academy or a society which, in the absence of such an organ, might bring the philosophical minds of the nation into fruitful co-operation for the promotion of their common object. There is neither an organ nor an organization of philosophical activity in America.
If, however, we reflect a little upon the conditions, we shall have to acknowledge that, whatever be the pre-conceptions of supercilious critics, America is a land of great promise for Philosophy. Why did the Greeks excel all peoples of anti-
