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

THE CONCORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
ica, there is, unhappily or happily, no influential philosopher
or philosophic school commanding the thought of our young
men and calling forth their devotion. The consequence is that
those who are not content with the commonplaces of America
are resorting to the imposing systems of Germany, most of them
to Kant and Neo-Kantism-which is the form in which Kant is
now presented, and a few of them to Hegel.
In the last century Locke was by far the most influential philosopher in America. He was the leader in the great movement
which set aside the old abstract philosophy drawn out of the
brain in favor of the new method founded on facts and experience, and so he was hailed by a people who rebelled against
kings and established a republic. Locke easily derived all our
ideas from sensation and reflection. Happily this philosophy
was never accepted entirely in America. Men seeking to defend truth and morality were always calling in, consciously or
unconsciously, and appealing to something deeper than a gathered experience which can never be necessary or universal.
The Scottish principle of common-sense satisfied many for a
time, but is now forsaken, as supposed to be a mere appeal ad
populum and not sufficiently profound. American youths, after
finishing a rather commonplace course of mental philosophy in
their colleges at home, now betake themselves to Deutschland,
with high expectations of being able to reach the bottom of
things. A writer in a foolish paper lately published, apparently
on the principle "Answer a fool according to his folly lest he be
wise in his own conceit," thus describes them ("Conflicts of the
Age," p. 72): "I have observed of those youths who, after finishing their course in the college down there, set off for a year or
two to Germany, that they come back with a most formidable
nomenclature as ponderous as the armor of Goliath of Gath.
How I rejoice to find a boy rising up to lay them prostrate with
a more primitive weapon! For they have become unbearably
haughty, and would slay all who cannot pronounce their shibboleth at the fords of speculation. They are introduced at the
German universities to a set of distinctions which seem very
deep,-the distinction between form and matter, subject and object, apriori and a posteriori phenomenon and noumenon, by
which they are led into a labyrinth with no clue to bring them
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