stand what Plato meant when he defined the philosopher as the "synoptic man." He is the man who tries to see all these things from the point of view of their unity in the human mind which created them.

In the second place, philosophy treats the mind, as seen in science, art, religion, morality, not as your mind or as my mind, not as mind subjective, but as mind objective. I do not mean, of course, that these things have an existence outside of mind. I do not, myself, believe they have. They are not external existences, like this room. They are mental, mental possessions, subjective realities if you like; but notice that they are realities upon which all minds meet. They are not the possession of any one individual mind; they are the common ground of the mind of humanity. This is a commonplace with regard to science; we all admit that science is the ground upon which we all can meet. To a lesser extent it is admitted of art. It is so, for instance, when we describe the subjects of university education, the universal subjects, the subjects upon which societies of students, universitates, meet, as "science and arts." By-and-by, let us hope, people will also meet on morality and religion, when, perhaps, these will be more frankly and fearlessly admitted as subjects of university education. In the meantime it is none the less true, because people differ on these matters, that they are objective, that they are real, that they are the ground for the meeting of minds. This is why we sometimes speak of philosophy as the science of reality. It is the science of those great things— the great realities of life, and their unity in mind. We endeavour to see what they mean to us, what is their rationality, their reality. Here, then, we have

our definition, such as it is, of philosophy. Philosophy is the speculative science of mind, or it is the theory of reality. I prefer the latter definition-the theory of reality.

With this definition before us, let us now come to our main question: What is the relation of this theory of reality to life and practice? Before I attempt to give a positive answer to this question, let me mention what it is not, in order that you may not expect too much from it, and so be disappointed when I come to describe what it is. Philosophy does not, as is sometimes supposed, aim directly at edification and construction. Philosophy is sometimes supposed to be a species of preaching, a kind of glorified sermon, exhorting us to believe in religion, morality, and the like. There are, of course, philosophical discourses which are also the most glorious of sermons -e.g. the Phado and the Apology of Plato. But philosophy does not aim directly, like a sermon, at creating belief in these things-at producing faith. As Hegel said, if it did, it has come too late into the world. Fortunately, belief in these things exists already, and philosophy accepts that fact. It accepts as its supposition the existence of faith in science, art, morality, religion. Its dictum, indeed, might be said to be what the medieval Church took as its motto, "Credo ut intelligam "-I believe in order that I may go on to understand. Philosophy accepts these beliefs, and then it tries to understand them. But now I wish you to note that, while our object is not faith, but knowledge and understanding, this understanding may have an important influence upon the beliefs, because \ a belief which is understood is something different from that belief before it is understood, and it is in

this direction that we must look for the real function of philosophy, for its relation to life.

Remember, please, the definition I have given of philosophy; it is the theory or science of reality. And just ask yourselves for a moment what is the relation of theory generally to the particular reality with which it deals, because I claim that philosophy has the same relation to those realities of which I have spoken as theory in general has to the facts with which it deals. What is that relation? In common language we often speak of fact and theory as something quite different. Your breathing this air here is a fact. That stands on one side. On the other there is the chemical theory of your respiration. This we take to be something quite different, dealing with what takes place in the air when it has gone through your lungs. More closely looked at, this distinction, however, is seen to be all wrong. The theory of a fact is only the fact more thoroughly realised. When you come to realise what you are actually doing in breathing this air, you understand the fact of your breathing this air very much better than before. You understand, for instance, that if I were to shut the window and keep you here till midnight, you would be all very ill indeed, while if I kept you till the middle of the week none of you would survive to tell the tale. In this way we may say you realise the fact. It is a different fact to you, a clearer fact, a deeper fact, a more vital fact. What you have done in trying to understand it is to vitalise the fact, to bring it home to yourself, to assimilate it.

Now, I wish you simply to apply to philosophy and the great facts with which it deals what I have been saying about the relation of fact to theory in general.

It is just the same relation. Philosophy tries to understand, let us say, what is meant by science and art, what is meant by morality, what is meant by society and the State, what is meant by religion. And, in doing so, it helps us to realise more fully what these facts are. We, as it were, translate them into our intellectual medium. With what object? Not to get away from the facts into some pure abstract region, but to get closer to them, to make them more of facts to us, to broaden them out through understanding their bearings. Nettleship brings this view of the relation of philosophy to life vividly home to us in a fine passage in his recently published lectures by quoting Novalis's account of it. "Philosophiren," said Novalis, "ist dephlegmatisiren, vivificiren." To philosophize is to get rid of your phlegm, to rid yourself of what lies between you and the fact. The great realities of which philosophy treats are brought nearer to us, acquire a vividness and intimacy that they previously lacked.

Now, you may say this is a very general and abstract description, and I propose in the rest of this lecture to try to come a little nearer to the subject; and I think I shall best do so by asking, Are there any special circumstances of the times in which we live which make this service of especial value to people who wish to live rationally and well? Such circumstances I find in some of the characteristics of the age, which it has become almost a commonplace to note. I shall mention two.

In the first place, we are frequently told that it is an age of specialisation, and everybody knows that this is true. We have all got to live, and we must live under the conditions of the time we are living

in; and one of the chief of these conditions is that we should take up something special. We have got to turn our backs on other things, and devote ourselves to one corner of reality, one bit of the world-becoming specialists, and, if possible, experts. This, of course, is a necessary and a very advantageous mode of dealing with our business, dividing labour; but it brings with it its own dangers. I do not mean that the great men, the great scientific discoverers, the great artists, novelists, religious teachers are really apt to forget that they are dealing only with a part of reality, but that the lesser leaders, and those of us who are not leaders at all, are very apt to forget it. We are apt to conceive of our bit as though it were the universe. It is from this misunderstanding that the ordinary catchwords of our time-"art for art's sake," "science for science's sake," "business is business," and such other mischievous half-truths, or no truths-come. We try to set up one feature of reality against the whole, and this has, of course, the result that what lies outside of our particular cornerour "Fach," as the Germans say-is apt to lose reality and significance; it is apt to become shadowy and unreal to us. But this is not all. By a peculiar Nemesis, a kind of irony in nature, it is not only \the great whole which lies beyond our part that tends to lose significance and meaning, but our own part itself is apt to become insignificant when it is treated in this way. Art, for instance, when taken by itself and made its own object, is apt to become mere photography-perhaps something worse; science and literature are apt to become pedantry; religion is \ apt to become ceremony; morality mere convention; business money-making, and so on through all of