REALITY—WHAT PLACE IT SHOULD HOLD IN PHILOSOPHY. 685 
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act of will. If reality has its solid blessings, so has ideality its pleasing 
fancies. We should profitably retain and cherish both. But we should 
always distinguish between them. 
The prevalent philosophy in the present day is that of Kant ; and this 
in all countries, European and American, in which philosophy is valued. 
[ wish it to be understood that I look on Kant as one of our great thinkers. 
There never can come a time when certain truths of Kant and the Ger- 
man philosophy are to be regarded as superseded. But Kant was guilty 
of one great oversight. He did not start with Reality in his primitive 
assumptions. While we cannot dispense with him, the crisis has come in 
which the Critical Philosoply should be critically examined, when it will 
urn out that its supremacy should be set aside. 
Kantians of all descriptions are forever referring to space and time as 
forms of sense. I do not say that too much importance has been attached 
to space and time, while light has been thrown upon them by these dis- 
sussions. But along with these forms there should have been assumed 
Reality in the things made known to us. Reality is not an end to be gained 
after a process or by a process, but is a means to an end. We are to 
oegin with Reality and carry it on with us throughout with that mother’s 
kiss, with that nurse’s lap, and it should run on throughout the whole 
fe. 
There is admirable system in the Categories and in the Ideas with which 
Kant follows up his Forms of Secuse; and in them Reality is not to be 
regarded as superseded or set aside. But if we have not Reality through- 
out, the foundation is insecure ; and hence the vacillations through which 
the German philosophy has passed, and which are not to be arrested ill 
Reality has its place to stay the whole. 
Kant began with phenomena. But the phrase has two senses. In ordi- 
aary science it means a fact to be explained that is referred to its law. 
Or it may retain its Greek meaning and signify appearance to be explained. 
[t is in this sense that Kant uses the phrase. With these appearances he 
starts, and from these he never could derive and infer any real object 
without having in the conclusion what was not in the premises. He 
should have begun with realities as made known by the consciousness and 
che senses. Only thus can we have a true philosophy with a well-laid 
superstructure. A philosophy which does not thus begin with Reality must 
always have something insecure in its foundation. 
Hitherto America has had no special philosophy as the ancient Greeks 
had, as the Scotch have had and the Germars have had. But there is a 
philosophy lying before it, and it should appropriate it and call it its own 
—an advance beyond Locke, beyond the Scottish school—the American 
philosophy. This would be in thorough accordance with the American 
character, which claims to be so practical. 
The change from the speculative to this thoroughly realistic philosophy