covered mysteries. The philosophy of education need not be understood as dealing with any thing of this sort. It is just an attempt at setting forth, in the most familiar manner, certain fundamental principles which underlie, and which should consciously and intelligently underlie, all the teacher's profesional work and professional life. And since this work is more of an art than of a science, and the really successful teacher deserves to rank with a great artist rather than with a great scientfic discoverer, you will please consider what I say to you as matters of opinion on which you are yourselves to exercise your own reflective judgment, rather than as demonstrations of indubitable truths.
In brief, then, the nature of a so-called philosophy of education may be the better understood, if we will reflect upon the meaning of the following statements. And, first, philosophy aims at the discovery of the most general principles appertaining to the subject about which it is proposed to philosophize. Science, too, aims at the discovery of general principles, and to these principles it is accustomed to give the name of laws. Science aims in this way to unify the phenomena. But as Mr. Spencer said, years ago, philosophy aims at a still higher kind of unity. In reaching out for this higher kind of unity, philosophy is apt to employ methods which I have elsewhere defined as the methods of reflective analysis and speculative syn-
