Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal

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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. SOME RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHILOSOPHY SOME RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHILOSOPHY Professor Santayana's first two volumes' in his proposed series of five will arouse wide interest. The remaining volumes2 are entitled Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, Reason in Science. As the titles indicate, the author aims at presenting a broad-minded constructive synthesis of the main results reached through the free investigation of the nature and implications of human experience. Science, Art, Ethics, Religion are, in turn, called upon to contribute data. These data (as the title, "Reason," indicates) are woven together into a consistent fabric, in whose variegated pattern may be traced a unity of design and treatment. Professor Santayana's problem is to spell out clearly for the individual mind its own characteristics and meaning, as these have been determined by the larger processes of humanity, of whose activities the individual mind is but the passing embodiment. His method is that of observing and analyzing life in its objective forms, taking as his instructors all those who in times past have labored upon the same problems, but correcting and supplementing each by his own observations and keen analyses. His field, therefore, is as broad as human life, measured to the confines of barbarism, on the one hand, and of the highest forms of civilization, on the other. With sympathetic but clear-minded insight he endeavors to interpret life through itself. His motive is to be found in the desire to formulate an intelligent ideal of conduct-for to Professor Santayana the life of reason is as truly practical as reflective. Its conquests are never made in the interest of barren abstractions but always as the means of formulating the conditions of more fruitful and noble forms of living. Such a task, intelligently confronted, might well seem impossible of achievement in any but the most crass and superficial manner. Of this, Professor Santayana is fully conscious. His is not the mood of the blind enthusiast, nor that of the shallow dilettante. He is entirely serious and keenly cautious. There I The Lile of Reason. By George Santayana. Vols. I and II: Reason in Common Sense; Reason in Society. New York: Scribner. ix+ 291 and viii+ 205 pages. $1.25 each. 2 Vols. III and IV have already been issued; Vol. V is still in preparation.