The Concord School of Philosophy [pp. 49-71]

THE CONCORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
ered an able lecture on the "Groundwork of Ethics." He re viewed the improved Benthamism as presented by John Stuart
Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and Herbert Spencer, and gave an expo sition of the ethics of Kant.
Professor Harris seems to me to be at this present time the
greatest man in the school, and the most likely to rule its future
destinies.' I look upon him with profound respect. It may
be doubted whether there is or was an abler superintendent of
schools in America than he was when he held that office in Missouri. I do hope that he will continue to further the cause of
education by lecturing to our teachers and in colleges on what
is called Pedagogic in the German universities, or in some other
way that may occur to his fertile mind. But his great work, as
it appears to me, is The 7ournal of Speculative Philosophy, of
which he is the learned editor, and which he has carried on
with infinite courage and perseverance for a great many years
in spite of indifference on the part of the public, and I suspect
under a heavy pecuniary burden. In that journal he has had
discussed, always from a certain standpoint but invariably in an
elevated tone, the deepest problems of human-I believe he
would say divine-thought, and tried to make clear to the American public the profundities of Hegel. Once in St. Louis I had
-the privilege of listening to one of his papers or lectures delivered in a parlor to a dozen high-class ladies, who looked as if
they understood him, and who certainly appreciated him highly.
He made the generalizations of Hegel as clear and satisfactory
as they could possibly be made-generalizations very far-ranging, but, I may add, with which I could not concur. He delivered at Concord two courses, five lectures in each: one on" Philosophical Distinctions," and the other an exposition of Hegel's
philosophy. I do hope these last lectures will be published in
his journal or in a separate form, so as to enable Americans to
determine whether Hegel's strongly compacted system is a castle on the earth or a castle in the air; it is visibly a castle with
battlements, with bastions and towers of an imposing and formidable character. In the course on "Philosophical Distinc
1 If so, it will have less of Plato and more of Hegel: less of gold-leaf and
more of iron; less of rich pasture and more of fences; less of flower and fruit and
more of stalks and branches.
6I