Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[236] which facts are ends and which are only means. But there is no evidence that any law like that of gravity is absolutely exact or more than approximately true or that it holds beyond the observable stars. The inductive or empirical character of the actual laws of science explains the reality of accidents or phenomena which could not have been predicted from any finite human knowledge of their antecedents. The rise of self-consciousness, the use of the voice as a means of communication, or the properties of new chemical combinations, all illustrate phenomena which are subject to law yet unpredictable. Though life is subject to the law of conservation of energy, nothing characteristic of life can be deduced from such a law.

Wright's penetrating and well-founded reflections on the nature of scientific method did not attract widespread attention. The vast majority come to philosophy to find or to confirm some simple ‘scheme of things entire.’ And though all scientists are empirical in their own field, most of them demand some absolute finality when they come to philosophy. Wright's profound modesty and austere self-control in the presence of glittering and tempting generalizations and his willingness to live in a world subject to the uncertainties of ‘cosmic weather’ will never attract more than a few. But the character of his thought, though rare, is nevertheless indicative of a tendency toward the scientific philosophy, the negative side of which was more crudely and more popularly represented by Draper's History of the intellectual development of Europe (1862）¹ and in many articles in The popular Science monthly. But at least two great American philosophers were directly and profoundly influenced by Chauncey Wright, and those were Charles Peirce and William James.

To the modem reader the writings of William T. Harris— even his last and most finished book, Psychologic foundations of education (1898）—sound rather obsolete and somewhat mechanical. But the position of the author, who from 1867 to 1910 was regarded as the intellectual leader of the educational profession in the United States, who for over twenty-five years edited The journal of speculative philosophy, and who was the chief organizer of the Concord School of Philosophy,²