PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE

Philosophy has been many things to men. It has been life itself, it has been a system embracing more than life, more recently it has become one of the storage places created in life by the multiplicity of modern knowledge, where metaphysical lore and technical logic have been placed as in a well-ordered catalogue. That it is in more than one way returning to some sort of intimacy with the problems of man is a supposition borne out by recent events. Such an one is the recent report of the Student Council Committee on Education wherein is recommended a compulsory course for all students in the one subject that can in any way profess to deal with life in its complete entity. Another such event will be the conference of philosophers which is to meet at Harvard next fall.

It is of course a far cry to the days when philosophers sat at Paris and decreed the fate of the medieval church and of its imperial counterpart. The university has changed with the philosopher; neither one is today what it was yesterday, and both have windmills which engage their Quixotic thrusts as completely as did the medieval world swing in its material and its spiritual axis about the university philosopher. But that such a change as has come about is permanent and not just the pendulum swing of reaction is a deduction hazardous and frail under the touch of reasoning.

Nothing could be more encouraging from the point of view of this metaphysical renaissance than the conference of philosophers to be held here in September. Not only does it come as a welcome sign of an increasing cordiality of public opinion among recently belligerent nations, but it is equally notable as another manifestation of that international mind which it is safe to assume is gaining more and more intelligent citizens of the world. It is not only in material things, in commerce and oil and rubber that we are becoming internationally-minded, but also in things of the mind and of the spirit. That Russian and English delegates should be sitting next to German and Indian philosophers here next September is a hopeful sign for the future of philosophy and a tribute to the University where such an event is made possible.