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people see in our present policy a greed for empire. We cannot so regard it. To us it seems only the logical and necessary result of the principle of which America is the embodi ment. In 1818 Henry Clay, interpreting the spirit which drove the Puritans to our shores, said there should be established on this continent a human-freedom league for defense against the crowned despots of Europe. In 1822 our country recognized the republics of Chile, Venezuela, and other South American States which had fought successfully against Spain. In 1837 Texas was recognized as free. In 1865 we drove the French from Mexico. Our policy touching the New World culminated in the co-called Monroe Doctrine, which asserts in brief that "the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers." This declaration, together with the warning of Washington to keep out of European complications, and the ready acceptance of European powers of the assumption that, if we would not permit them to control any part of this hemisphere, we must not interfere in their matters, have kept us almost wholly to ourselves. But the explosion of our battleship in the harbor of Havana awoke the deeper consciousness of our people to the cries of Cuba's enslaved sons. It was the nation, not the politician, that declared war against Spain-the nation moved by the Puritan spirit. We are in Cuba to train her sons in the lessons of self-mastery according to Christian ideals. We are in the Philippines to subdue the spirit of license, to persuade—compel, if you choose--the wild sons of that island to be free men. are in China to preserve the ancient integrity of that empire from the vandalism of European powers. We are in the world to help all men to assume that liberty wherewith Christ has made every man free. The idea of individual liberty "has thus come to be more than national; it has become imperial. It has come to rule and it has come to stay.

WCalle Lennan

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ART. V. THE PLATONIC IDEA ELUCIDATED BY THE COMPOSITE PHOTOGRAPH.

MONISTIC philosophy views the universe as being one in origin as well as existence, and tending to one purpose. Whatever discords there be are only superficial, and change the general trend no more than the waves on the surface of the sea disturb the calm of its great depths. If this oneness be the true expression of that reality toward which the reason strives, and accounts best for all phenomena whether of matter or mind, we must look for such a correspondence of parts that all, however removed in space, time, or mode of action, will be mutually illustrative. The advance of science discovers unexpected and striking analogies between elements of thought and action the most diverse. The present era is one of tremendous progress in scientific discovery. Facts are established much faster than they can be classified in their natural order and importance. But, though the sum total of verified facts is greater than man's power to colligate them, still enough can be known to prove that they evidently belong to one system and are correlate with each other. Hence we are sure that if our intellectual force were sufficient, we could see the agreement and mutual support, even of those which seem directly contradictory.

And here the observation is pertinent that the so-called conflict between science and religion does not exist, save in the brain of him who is too narrow to see truth on all sides, or too faithless to trust Omniscience to work out his designs in his own time and method. The inmost consciousness of each honest thinker rests with unshaken confidence on the belief that the two domains of matter and spirit, and the two spheres of life, the present and the future, are counterparts of one system presided over by one Intelligence, and are moving on toward one common result. Hence the controversies of science on its own domain, as well as when it trenches on religion, arise because facts are not understood in their true re

lations; and it often requires centuries of wearisome progress to discover that what were apparent contradictions are actually concords when seen in their mutual dependence as parts of a system embracing all reality. While viewed apart as disjecta membra they were repulsive because they argued a world of disorder; but when brought together bone to his bone, with each organ in its place, and covered with the garment design has woven, they become a body of wondrous beauty, fit dwelling place for Divine Intelligence. It may take ages before a new fact finds its place. Present knowledge may be able to discover a truth, and yet be unable to see the place which it is fitted to fill. And hence the meaning of prophecy, whether in its highest manifestation through divine inspiration, or the lower grade as seen in genius, is not fully grasped by him who is its medium to man. The revelation is only partially understood by the age in which it is given; for its meaning is so comprehensive that it may be drawn upon for centuries and never be exhausted.

The recent discovery of the composite photograph by applied science would seem to be as far removed from the abstract conception of the "idea" or "universal" as are any two products of human thought. The ideal system of Plato, the universal of the schoolmen, the existence in nature of a reality corresponding to a general name, have been the target for ridicule by all such philosophers as propose for their goal the facts of experience investigated by sense perception. No two things could be more diverse than the shadowy, unsubstantial abstractions by which we designate a class of objects, and the composite picture which is made by a number of photographs printed over each other. Here we have the shadows which the sun casts from several objects of the same size and kind upon the sensitive plate of metal or paper. There the mind forms a picture of several objects combined into one class by leaving out of view the specific differences and retaining only those common to all the objects. On closer examination, however, we will find a striking analogy between the two processes.

The doctrine of the idea that there is a reality to which the general name is given would have been laughed out of court by Aristotle's mockery and the modern materialist's contempt if it had not the power of an endless life. But somehow the theory is as lively as when Plato first elaborated his "Parmenides," and is accepted by all the greatest thinkers of the world, or at least by those who admit that there is something beyond matter and that phenomena indicate a hidden cause which eludes sense perception. In support of this view we propose to call science to the witness stand, and prove that the composite photograph renders the doctrine of ideas, or the existence of a reality corresponding to universal names, not merely possible, but true beyond controversy.

Now, it must be admitted that the existence of universals of some sort is the basis of science, and the sine qua non of the reasoning process. They are as necessary to the nominalism of Aristotle as the realism of Plato, to the classification of Darwin and Cuvier as to the calculus of Leibnitz and Laplace. For they underlie the axioms of geometry, the signs of algebra, the formula of chemistry, and the scientific arrangement of facts in botany and zoology. Hence those who deny their existence assume it even in arguments for their subversion. They are indispensable in all speculative philosophy from Socrates to Lotze; and are so ingrafted in the human mind and the expression of thought by language that they cannot be rejected without rendering connected thinking impossible. Plato, the profoundest thinker of the ages, was the first to formulate the doctrine of ideas to represent the reality lying back of the concrete things which to our senses are phenomenal. These are the forms, είδη οι τύποι, after which as patterns all individual things are created. They are the models treasured up in the divine mind according to which the phenomenal world, with all its various parts, have an actual existence, so far, and only so far, as they participate in the originals. These are eternal and constitute the thoughts of the creative intelligence according to which God proceeded in forming the universe. They are

immortal, even as the mind which contains them; and, being constituent parts of his nature, are uncreated. Hence to think after God, that is, to think his thoughts, is to discern the unchanging verities which control the sum total of being, whether physical, intellectual, or moral. And just as the earthly temple erected at Sinai, with all its complicated rites and furnishings, was made after the type shown to Moses on the mount, even so in the revelation made through the transcendent genius of Plato, the TÚTO became the patterns of all the philosophic temples which have been reared for man in speculative thought. Teste David cum Sybilla here gives us another correspondence between the elements of truth, however diverse in themselves or in their mode of communication to men.

Plato saw that the doctrine of Heraclitus, nāvтa pei, would not answer as the basis of a philosophic system. For if all things are in constant flux, nothing permanent and remaining under one form, then no science would be possible. For conclusions made at one moment would be contradicted by changes occurring in the data in the next; so that even the endless enumeration of individuals, were that possible, would avail nothing, since they, too, would not continue the same. And if they remained in one stay, their number being illimitable, to classify them under the head of one of more qualities would be contradictio in adjecto unless we were permitted to employ an idea or general term which remains constant. And the inductio per enumerationem simplicem could never advance beyond the particular individual, because by it we are precluded from using a common type. This would leave thought helpless amid the richness of its materials because they could not be classified by means of any quality belonging to all. Plato saw by that discernment which looked down into the roots of things that the real object of knowledge must not be the phenomenal, the changing, the evanescent, but that which is permanent, unchanging, and real. And this can be nothing but the form or idea сараble of being apprehended by pure thought alone, and which

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