few moments
on the intentions of the donor as expressed in this definition; and I do
so the more willingly as I shall thereby be enabled to introduce the
topics to which the present course is to be devoted.

We are justified, I think, in taking the second clause of the definition
as in part explanatory of the earlier clause. What is the philosophy of
the sciences? It is not a bad answer to say that it is the study of the
relations between the different departments of knowledge. Then with
admirable solicitude for the freedom of learning there is inserted in
the definition after the word 'relations' the phrase 'or want of
relations.' A disproof of relations between sciences would in itself
constitute a philosophy of the sciences. But we could not dispense
either with the earlier or the later clause. It is not every relation
between sciences which enters into their philosophy. For example biology
and physics are connected by the use of the microscope. Still, I may
safely assert that a technical description of the uses of the microscope
in biology is not part of the philosophy of the sciences. Again, you
cannot abandon the later clause of the definition; namely that
referring to the relations between the sciences, without abandoning the
explicit reference to an ideal in the absence of which philosophy must
languish from lack of intrinsic interest. That ideal is the attainment
of some unifying concept which will set in assigned relationships within
itself all that there is for knowledge, for feeling, and for emotion.
That far off ideal is the motive power of philosophic research; and
claims allegiance even as you expel it. The philosophic pluralist is a
strict logician; the Hegelian thrives on contradictions by the help of
his absolute; the Mohammedan divine bows before the creative will of
Allah; and the pragmatist will swallow anything so long as it 'works.'

The mention of these vast systems and of the age-long controversies from
which they spring, warns us to concentrate. Our task is the simpler one
of the philosophy of the sciences. Now a science has already a certain
unity which is the very reason why that body of knowledge has been
instinctively recognised as forming a science. The philosophy of a
science is the endeavour to express explicitly those unifying
characteristics which pervade that complex of thoughts and make it to be
a science. The philosophy of the sciences--conceived as one subject--is
the endeavour t