From the PREFACE. ALMOST all of the essays of this book first appeared as editorial articles in THE OPEN COURT, where they had the good fortune of being exposed to the criticism of thoughtful readers. The ideas presented could thus be tested, and the views of the author received an opportunity of being further elucidated, not in futile battles against men of straw, but in discussions with thinkers who had found difficulties in understanding the solutions proposed. I here publicly acknowledge my indebtedness to the gentlemen who have favored me with criticisms. The author, while working out in his mind the Fundamental Problems, has endeavored to introduce as little as possible of his personality and his private sympathies with, or antipathies against, other solutions. The brain of the philosopher should be a mental alembic to clarify ideas, to analyze them, to extract their essence. His brain should work with the regularity of a machine. And among machines the philosophical mind must be compared to the so-called precision machines, the work of which is not measured by horse-power but by minute exactitude. The article "Form and Formal Thought " discusses a subject which is of fundamental importance. A correct conception of form and the laws of form will clear away many mysteries; it will afford a satisfactory explanation of causality and shed a new light on all the other problems of philosophy. The view here presented, in spite of all our differences with Kant, may be considered as the natural outcome of Kant's philosophy. But it would be wrong to represent it as Kantianism. It is rather the historical development of Kantianism broadened by later enquiries, matured by criticisms, and adapted to the needs of our time. It is a protest against the halfness of agnosticism and a rejection of the perverted ethics of shallow hedonism-of that view so popular now, which bases the rules of conduct upon man's desire for happiness. The view here presented unites two qualities which may appear contradictory at first sight. It is radical and at the same time conservative. It is radical because it fearlessly presents the issues of philosophic thought in their stern rigidity without trying to conceal the consequences to which the argument leads. The old and long cherished errors are not passed over in silence, but are countenanced and critically explained. The view propounded is at the same time conservative because it preserves its historical connection with the work of our ancestors; it does not hope for a progress by a rupture with, but through a development from, the past, and does not come to destroy but to fulfill....