Note 26 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

Studies in Humanism, p. 19. The remarks made in this paragraph will have to be modified, to some extent, in view of the recent (1911) appearance of the third edition of Dr. Schiller’s Riddles of the Sphinx. This noteworthy book contains, to say the very least, a great deal in the way of a positive ontology, or theory of being, and also many quite different rulings in respect of the nature of metaphysic and of the matter of its relation to science and to common sense. It rests, in the main, upon the idea of a perfect society of perfected individuals as at once the true reality and the end of the world-process—an idea which exists also, at least in germ, in the pluralistic philosophy of Professor James; and we shall indeed return to this practical, or sociological, philosophy as the outcome, not only of Pragmatism, but also of Idealism, as conceived by representative living thinkers. Despite, however, these many positive and constructive merits of this work of Dr. Schiller’s, it is for many reasons not altogether unfair to its spirit to contend that his philosophy is still, in the main, that of a humanistic pragmatism in which both “theory” and “practice” are conceived as experimentally and as hypothetically as they are by Professor Dewey.