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

THE PRILVCETON RE VIE W.
tions" he has stages of cognition arranged a la Hegel in a triune
or triplet form. The first stage is sense-perception, in which
there is no thinking. This gives us mechanism. My criti cism is that there is intelligence in sense-perception, and that
there cannot be mechanism without thinking. The second stage
is reflection, which classifies and arranges. I remark that this
is a peculiar use of the word reflection, the function of which is
usually supposed to be the bending back of the mind and the
looking on what is in the mind or has been in it. Arranging
and classifying has been commonly ascribed to the compara tive powers of the mind. This second stage brings us to chem ism, which, as it appears to me, cannot fall under reflection.
The third stage is etiology or teleology, which carries up to
another triad the miracle, art, and religion. These three things
may have some affinity as all coming from the higher nature of
man, but their bond of union is very loose. It appears to me
that an ingenuity much inferior to that of Hegel or Prof. Harris
could draw out of the worlds of mind and matter an indefinite
number of such trinities, made in a vague way to embrace all
things under them, but the distinctions having no deep or actual foundation either in mind or matter.
I am sorry that I have not the means of sketching certain
other papers. As I am dealing with philosophy I pass over the
literary papers, some of which were brilliant. I have studiously
omitted those of the professors who came from their academic
halls to discuss metaphysical subjects, as President Porter (who
had read for him the paper which appeared in the last number of
this REVIEW), Professors Morris, Mears, and Watson. They
appeared personally or by their papers chiefly to ventilate Kant
in this his centenary year. I may refer to them in a later part
of this article, when I treat of the great German metaphysician.
It could be shown by a large induction of historical facts
that every prevalent opinion, nay, every practical measure following, is apt to fall back on a philosophy to sustain and defend
it when attacked. Hitherto the Concord school has leaned
mainly on the ideas of Plato, so grand but at the same time so
vague and unbounded. The feeling now is that they must
have something more definite and logical. At this present
time while there are countless metaphysicians of ability in Amer
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