and animals. Psychology goes deeper still, and penetrates the world of mind as it is found in man, seeking accurately to ascertain and analyze mental facts and to derive their laws. Ethics studies the special field of mental life manifested in moral character and conduct. Theology studies God, seeking to discover the nature of his being and his relations to man, especially in the practical field of religion. Thus each of the hundred or more sciences investigates its own field. Yet while no science attempts to go outside its proper limits, all sciences overlap one another at their mutual boundaries, and are together interrelated and form one continuous and harmonious system of truth.

Some of these sciences include several kindred fields or subordinate sciences. Thus physics investigates matter in the mass, whether the mass be an astronomical sun or a chemical atom. Biology studies life in all its myriad forms, and thus freely crosses the line between botany and zoology; it is concerned with the principles that are common to both these fields. Psychology, while it is primarily concerned with mental life, yet cannot keep from invading the body and studying the interrelations of the two widely distinct fields of mind and matter. Sociology, with its shadowy outlines and vague contents, endeavors to grasp a wide field of diverse facts embraced within economics, ethics, politics, sanitation, and other sciences, and is thus concerned with the structural elements of society and the principles that are common to these many subordinate sciences. Theology has an

immensely wide reach, endeavoring to lay hold of the nature of God and of man in themselves and in their mutual relations..

It will be observed that the wider the field of a science is, the fewer are its specific facts and principles; the more extensive it is, the less intensive it is. Botany has a narrower but a richer field than biology, for all the vital facts within its field belong to it, whereas biology is concerned only with those that are common to botany and zoölogy. As a science rises above and includes within its range several sciences, it leaves behind it all but that which is common to them; and, therefore, the wider the circle it covers, the less rich it is in details and the more it is reduced to general principles. At last it may become only a skeleton of principle denuded of all flesh.

This principle carried to its logical limit gives us metaphysics. Metaphysics is the universal science which seeks to grasp the whole field of being, the common ground of all the special sciences. As biology takes the many elements of botany and the many elements of zoology and picks out the relatively few that are common to both and drops all others out of view, so metaphysics endeavors to dissect out the few principles or the one principle that is common to all fields. It proceeds on the assumption that there is one mode, or, at most, two or several modes, of being back of all the myriad forms of reality which we see in the world; and its grand endeavor is to penetrate to this ultimate principle and discover its nature and laws; to rise above all

specific differences in the sciences and construct one comprehensive science.

Metaphysics thus has no boundary lines such as limit the special sciences. Wherever reality manifests itself, there lies its field. It sends out a decree that all the world shall be taxed in its interest. Yet it is not primarily concerned with the wealth of details that constitute the richness of a specific field of fact, but only with the underlying skeleton of principle that is its framework in common with all other fields. In particular, metaphysics crosses that deepest line of division that cleaves the world, the gulf between mind and matter. These two fields that seem so widely sundered belong equally to its domain, and its chief concern is to determine their mutual relations, and especially to discover whether they are really diverse or are only two aspects or modes of the same fundamental reality. Since the Creator falls within the field of being as truly as any creature, metaphysics includes God in its view and endeavors to reach his nature and his relations to the whole of being. In accordance with the principle that the wider the field of a science is, the fewer are its elements, metaphysics has the least wealth of detail and is reduced to the barest skeleton of being. When it finds one principle or element that underlies and explains the universe, it attains its goal.1

1 Philosophy is the general science of ultimate principles, and divides into the two branches of epistemology, which investigates the nature and validity of knowledge, and of metaphysics, which investigates the nature of ultimate reality.

But having reached this goal of a unitary principle or germ of ultimate reality, the metaphysician at once proceeds to evolve it again into the universe. He is not content with a metaphysical skeleton, but reclothes it with flesh and blood and makes his world full-rounded and warm with life: only his new world is now reconstructed on metaphysical lines and his central luminous principle is 'the master light of all his seeing.'

2. THE METHOD OF METAPHYSICS

The search for truth is not a haphazard adventure, but a systematic process. The several sciences, therefore, for carrying on their investigations have various rules, methods, and instruments, which experience has devised and found necessary and efficient for the best work. Some sciences, such as astronomy and chemistry, have an elaborate outfit of instruments, and others, such as mathematics, have a complicated system of technical terms and symbols. The fundamental methods of all sciences, however, are the same. These are the mental processes involved in reaching reality in any field, such as accurate observation, trained judgment, correct reasoning, constructive imagination, and experimental test and proof. When these operations are properly conducted, the truth is likely to be attained, though the regulative rules and instrumental helps may be few or imperfect. (But if the mental processes are loose and illogical, the whole structure reared on them may be unsound, though it may present an imposing appearance of learned research.

Metaphysics has no observatory or laboratory, no instruments and few rules. It carries on its work almost wholly by mental processes; its workshop is within the mind. It does not follow from this, however, that it has no method and is loose and lawless in its ways of working. It is sometimes thought that metaphysics is not a true science, but is simply a subjective maze and mist of individual speculations without principle or system; that every metaphysician spins his own web out of his own brain according to his own wild will. This is a mistake. Metaphysics, like any other science, is an attempt to systematize our knowledge of a certain field; to clear it of errors and to clarify and arrange our conceptions of it so that they will reflect and fit reality; and so far from being loose and vague in its methods, it seeks to reason with the greatest care and rigor, to question and crossquestion every fact and theory with the most painstaking thoroughness and pitiless impartiality, and to spare no assumption or prejudice or appearance, however selfevident it may claim to be or however it may be supported by authority or consecrated by tradition. It has therefore been defined by Professor William James as simply "an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently." Metaphysics has a passion for truth, and its one fundamental method is the most strenuous reasoning.

This reasoning, however, is not carried on in a secret chamber of the mind or up in the air, remote from the reasonings and experiences of everyday life. The meta