don't know anything about life,
freedom, God and immortality. How unfortunate we are, and how
fortunate the professor is, must appear by his answer to the great
question, reported as follows: "Prof. Davidson discussed at length the
nature of phenomena, taking the underlying basis that time and space
are relations of the real to the phenomenal, and nothing but
relations; also that we not only have ideas of reality, but that
_these ideas are the realities themselves_. Then the question is, if
the _concept of reality be reality itself_, how is this related to
phenomena? There is a double relation, active and passive. * * *
Eternal realities are known to us only as terms of phenomena. They are
in ourselves, and from the exigencies of our intelligence."

Thus we understand nothing whatever exists but our own cogitations,
or, as the sailor jocosely expressed it--"'Tis all in my eye"--and
after these many years we are brought back to the famous expression of
the Boston Transcendentalist, "we should not say _it rains, it snows_,
we should say _I rain, I snow_." This, gentle, patient reader, is no
burlesque, that you have been reading, it is the wisdom of the Concord
Symposium of professors and authors meeting near the end of the 19th
century, and basking in the smiles of _cultured_ Boston! or at least
that portion which is devoted to the Bostonese idea of philosophy, and
thinks the feeblest glimmer of antiquity worth more than the science
of to-day. Such indeed are the sentiments of the President of Boston
University. And as for the wisdom of Concord, the _Open Court_, which
is good authority, says: "Dr. Harris and Prof. Davidson are, without
doubt, the _pillars of the school_; but there is some difference of
opinion as to which is its _indispensable support_." An intelligent
spectator would say that more metaphysical acumen and vigor has been
displayed by DR. EDWARD MONTGOMERY than by all the remainder of those
engaged in the blind hunt for philosophy at Concord.

On the last day of the Symposium, July 28, the report says "The burden
has fallen wholly upon Prof. Harris, and he has borne it so as to
excite the _wonder and admiration_ of his listeners. He _went to the
very bottom of things_ as far as human thought could go, and there, as
he put it, was on solid rock, with no possibility of scepticism. Both
his forenoon and evening lectures were _masterly in their way_."
Exactly so; they were unsurpassed as a reproduction of th