After the disturbing announcements of previous communications, the Executive Committee thinks it owes to the members of the Institute that they should be apprised of the measures that have been taken to deal with the crisis caused by the sudden death of Mr. Emile Garcke, who was so generous a supporter. As a result of that event the Committee found itself committed to an expenditure which would leave a deficit at the end of the year ended March 31, 1931, of approximately £1,000. Two problems faced the Committee: first, that of providing for this deficit; secondly, that of reducing expenditure for succeeding years so as to keep it within the limits of present income.

In Process and Reality Professor A. N. Whitehead formulates a Cosmology which embodies a resolute attempt to combine in one philosophical synthesis a scientific account of Concrescence with a metaphysical explanation thereof in terms of Creativity.

The phrase “Cosmic Purpose” and others akin to it are familiar enough, particularly in the literature of edification. It is the aim of this article to examine the idea the words convey rather more closely than we do in our common use of them; to deflate the expression, so to speak, of those gaseous suggestions of “uplift” which too often hang about it. The question involved is, of course, in what sense, if in any, purpose may be attributed to the Cosmos, to the universe in its totality. And we have to ask, in case the term so used should turn out to be really misused, Is it a sheer error that dissolves away under criticism, or is there some valid core of meaning which may be restated in other terms? If these are well-worn questions, yet the problem is too fundamental for them ever to be altogether trite.

Is there really such a thing as moral progress? Do we get any better as time goes on? It is a question which must often exercise the minds of those who reflect on moral questions at all. And it is a frequent topic of discussion, both in private conversations and in the written contributions of a good many of our popular philosophers. Of some of these contributions one may safely say that their chief value is as a warning against the dangers of hasty generalization on a subject such as this. And, taking advantage of such a warning, I shall make no attempt to give a final or dogmatic answer to this question. All I can try to do, within the limits of a single lecture, is to disentangle some of the most important considerations that seem to be in people's minds in discussing this question, and to estimate their importance as arguments on one side or the other.

The title of this paper may, at first glance, somewhat surprise the casual reader. That the writings of a philosopher who was, by his own confession, an atheist should contain a trenchant critique of the theistic position is only to be expected; but the suggestion that any positive contribution to the philosophy of religion can be found in them may appear somewhat startling, and even paradoxical.

Last year the B.B.C. arranged for certain eminent men to broadcast their Points of View to the public. The result was a most interesting series of talks; but for the sceptical philosopher the series was chiefly entertaining for its brilliantly illustrating the old tag: quot homines, tot sententiæ. One was struck not merely by the discrepancy of opinion, but by how each speaker was ‘true to type': the biologist, the physicist with a taste for spiritualism, the Christian Platonist, and the rest—each spoke his part and told of a world built according to his own particular measuring-rod.

One of the great difficulties in effecting a synthesis of experience is the contradiction of the apparently mechanical character of the physical universe on the one hand, and the sense of freedom we associate with life on the other. In our own persons, we are told by medical science, or some of it, we are governed by physiological laws which are mechanical, as distinct from vital, in their nature. The best reconciliation of these with freedom, in the writer's opinion, is the philosophy of Samuel Butler. In studying freedom as experienced by human beings Butler pointed out that a large number of practices which are apparently mechanical are really habits that have become stereotyped, and he drew attention to the fact that human actions can be classified as follows:—

There are, I imagine, five considerations that will serve as a point d'appui to the future historian of our century's philosophy, aiding him to interpret with fair adequacy the working faith and working postulates of one large and influential group of present thinkers. The members of this group, he will point out, however much they differ in other respects, accept in common and act upon this five-fold assumption, namely, that progress in philosophy depends upon (i) it abandoning its traditional claim to being systematic and final, in favour of “more modest” attempts at the piecemeal solution of particular problems; (ii) these piecemeal attempts being conceived as essentially co-operative undertakings, calling for assistance from men of science no less than from philosophers, so that (iii) the character of philosophical research is broadly not very dissimilar to that of scientific research; that this, in turn, necessitates (iv) an abandonment of the claim to, and the search for, “necessary” and certain knowledge, and an acceptance of knowledge that is probable as rationally sufficing; from all of which it follows, lastly, as something very like a corollary, that (v) philosophers can deal profitably only with “hypothetical questions,” seeking to discover, from certain things provisionally taken as true, what other things may or must also be true. It is by these methodological convictions, by some declared, by others not, that much of the best work in Britain and America during this first third of our century has been inspired.

Summary This survey deals with five books: (i) Ethical Questions, by Moritz Schlick; (ii) Significance, Genuineness, and Love, by Paul Feldkeller; (iii) Neo-Kantian Tasks, by Kurt Sternberg; (iv) Kant's Ethics, by Arthur Liebert; and (v) Contemporary Philosophy of the History of Art, by Walter Passarge