Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/141

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THE MISSION OF PHILOSOPHY.
[Vol. XIV.

vidual things. Such judgments cannot be said, in any proper meaning of the word, to refer to 'phenomena' only. Truly cognitive judgments never refer to phenomena only; they are always and essentially judgments expressing actual qualities and relations of things and selves. They have ontological reference and value for reality. But besides these judgments, and yet in some sort inextricably interwoven with them, as it were, there are also judgments of worth,—value-judgments that have reference to the satisfaction of the æsthetical, ethical, and religious sentiments. These judgments, too, in some sort are judgments of fact. The existence of these sentiments, of the objects which excite and appeal to them, and the satisfactions which are produced by the actualization in imperfect but concrete form of the corresponding ideals,—all these are facts of human experience. By extended observation of these forms of human experience, and by generalizations based upon such observation, we are enabled to frame certain so-called laws, which, however, have rarely or never the same certainty or availability for purposes of predictions as belongs to the laws of the chemico-physical, or even of the biological sciences.

These two classes of judgments,—the judgments of fact and law, and the scientific conceptions and highest generalizations derived from such judgments, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the value-judgments which satisfy the ethical, æsthetical, and religious sentiments, and which lead to the formation of ideals,—seem quite habitually to be in conflict. The task of philosophy is the perpetual readjustment of the relations between them, with a view to secure a higher and completer harmony. The belief of man, which shows itself in various forms, all the way from a blind groping to the most elaborately finished and closely articulated system of philosophy, the undying faith of humanity, is in a certain Oneness, or Unitary Being, which shall somehow both respond to, and explain, the totality of human experience. That the two worlds of which Kant speaks should either fall constantly farther and farther apart, or that they should collide with hostile force to the destruction of both, is intolerable to philosophy. Its very being consists in the effort to