In these days, when, if the words of constitutions can be trusted, sovereign Parliaments based on manhood or adult suffrage are rapidly extending their sway over the greater part of the world, there is surely no conception more deserving of the attention of the political theorist than that of Representation. There was a time when government for most men meant monarchy, when ruler meant king or king's minister. To-day for most men ruler means Parliament or ministers responsible to Parliament, and government means representative government. In those former times the political theorist would naturally take the king or prince for his centre-piece, and devote himself to expounding the nature and attributes of the office. “For from the prince, as from a well spring, cometh the flood of all that is good or evil upon the people” (Sir T. More). In our own day he would perhaps do well to devote himself first and mainly to reflection on the meaning of this term representation, standing as it does for something which is taken by general consent to constitute the distinctive feature of the normal modern type of government. He may run the risk of speaking merely for his own day; but he should at least be sure of remaining near the centre of his subject.

It is a momentous venture to attempt to frame an hypothesis of the universe. But if we reflect upon the meaning of life, we are forced to make such an effort. The only way we can escape the responsibility is to be guilty of the great refusal—the refusal to think. If we frame an hypothesis, it should be such as to assign the proper significance to all the facts of human experience—not merely the physical facts, but the biological and mental as well; not merely our scientific interests, but our æsthetic, ethical, and religious interests as well. And it should do so in the simplest possible way. It would be futile and impossible to examine all possible solutions. Henri Poincaré proved long ago that if there is one explanation of a class of phenomena, there are an infinite number of explanations.

Any attempt to construct a philosophy of Value must presuppose some general understanding of what Value is. And so it might seem natural to begin with a precise definition of the concept we are about to investigate. What, we might ask ourselves, is the characteristic peculiar to all those situations in the description of which we are accustomed to use the word “value” or its cognate terms, and distinguishing them as a class from all those situations to which we do not apply the word? Proceeding empirically in this way, from an inspection of the “field of application” of the word “value” we might reasonably hope to discover a “highest common factor” of all the data, which would be the required definition of the concept “Value.” But we should be met at the outset by radical differences of opinion about the scope of the relevant data.

The Upanishadic thinkers arrived at the conception of the Atman—the self—through psychological reflection. By an analysis of consciousness, they concluded that the self was the primary reality. Further, they discovered that it was the same primary reality—the same principle—that formed the basis of the Universe. In this capacity the self was called the Brahman This psychological approach to the problem of ultimate reality is characteristic of the Upanishadic philosophy. It is interesting to note that the writers of the Upanishads have also offered cosmological speculations which led them independently to the positing of absolute existence.

It is the true function of thought, Lotze said, to show “how absolutely universal is the extent, and at the same time how completely subordinate the significance, of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world.” I do not propose to discuss the problem of mechanism versus teleology, but rather to point out and emphasize the importance of a distinction, drawn alike by Plato and Kant, between a narrower and a wider kind of determination, and to indicate the subordinate character of the former.

The treatment of history by philosophers seems to have entered upon a new phase, as regards the questions both what kind of knowledge we are dealing with and what is the relation of the historic experience to reality. As Professor Guido de Ruggiero pointed out in the April number of the Journal, this interest in the problems of history has not received much recognition in English thought at present. It is the purpose of the argument of the present article to maintain that whilst there are two methods of approach to reality, the one through knowledge and speculative thought, the other through history and practical experience, a philosophical interpretation is necessary to the understanding of history, though philosophies of history as usually conceived are not possible. The dualism of experience to which reference is here made is not identical with the dualism with which Professor de Ruggiero is concerned.

The business of philosophy is “to think things together,” so far as the reality of things and the capacity of thought allow. That reality presents many contrasts, physical, ethical, metaphysical, light and darkness, life and death, good and evil, right and wrong, the One and the many, the Infinite and the finite, the Eternal and the temporal, and what we mention as last, but not least, for our immediate purpose, Being and Becoming, the Constant and the Contingent. The contrasts need not be regarded as contradictions, negations one of another, as thought the Eleatics with their emphasis on Being, or the Heraclitics with their preference for Becoming. To our immediate scrutiny all stands and all flows may be irreconcilable oppositions; but Einstein is teaching us that there is relativity in all our interpretations of reality. We need not with Indian thought declare Brahma alone real, and all else Maya, illusion.