Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/147

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
131
THE MISSION OF PHILOSOPHY.
[Vol. XIV.

which prevail in art, morality, and religion, are working within the scientific sphere.

On the psychological side of the problem of philosophy in the exercise of its function of reconcilement, we have then to remember the wonderful complexity of interests and activities which are always at work in the unitary being of the human Self. As the race called human develops in culture, it realizes more and more fully what it means to be a Self. The distinguished anthropologist Waitz lays down, as a sort of postulate to be taken into all anthropological investigations, "the spiritual unity of the race." But this spiritual unity is itself a progressive affair. Its intensiveness increases as the intensity of the Self-hood of the individual man extends over larger numbers of the social whole. Now the sharp separation made by Kant of the cognitive powers from the ethical, of the sensible from the transcendent or ideal nature, of the soul as a Thing-in-itself from the self-conscious Ego, of the a priori form from the empirical content, cannot withstand the tests and the conclusions of modern psychology.

But if we reject the doctrine of lifeless substantial unity, that admits of no degrees and of no decay, and adopt rather the doctrine of a living functional unity which must be achieved in its highest degrees by fidelity to the type of human soul-life, then we must not subsequently prove faithless to this new and improved conception in all the lower degrees and feebler forms of its functioning. The artistic, ethical, and religious sentiments, and the idealizing work of intellect and imagination in pursuance of clues and incitements given by abundant items of racial and individual experience, cannot be left out when we are reckoning with the unitary being called man's soul. Science, to greater or less extent, and the more the better, man must indeed pursue and must attain in order to be a growing Self. And what is true for the individual is true for society in an even more obvious and emphatic way. The true unity of the Self, of the human individual or of human society, cannot be realized or maintained in the worthiest way unless all these important forms of the life of the Self are harmoniously exercised. This truth from the philosophy of mind should assist both science and philosophy in the