The Concord School.

"To speak of mysteries and make them plain."

The Concord School of philosophy is well reported by the press, and we judge its many professors have given some interesting and otherwise excellent essays. The celebration of the Kant centennial offered at least two such, one by Professor Hedge of Cambridge, the other by Professor Bascon of Michigan University. The paper by the latter, though upon that old and time-worn topic, "the freedom of the will," was fresh and original, dealing with the question of liberty in a practical way. It referred to the relation that belongs to "truth and liberty," and we quote with pleasure the sentence which follows: "The movement of the mind towards truth must be flexible and spontaneous. Truth is the reward of freedom wisely exercised." Again, "The one condition of freedom is to maintain unimpaired intellectual activity in all directions and actions. The condition of intellectual freedom is virtue - feelings that subordinate themselves to truth. If the intellectual movement is honest, it fails of thoroughness." Liberty, while asserting with even greater emphasis that the condition of virtue is freedom, takes opportunity to add that this strain of philosophy from Concord is in perfect harmony with its own cherished thinking. To follow up and o'ertake truth, to know it and utilize it, is the very sum and purpose of its being.

Professor Bascom does well to consider as he does the limitations on man's freedom, and he is fully justified, as we believe, in the heroic expectations with which his essay is brought to a conclusion. The indefiniteness that shrouds a single word gives rise to slight regret, but the philosophical spirit will readily dispose of it and understand that the term "archangel," as here used, means simply, man raised to his supremest power. With this brief explanatory sentence we trust our readers with the full text; "There is no reason, in any limitation of liberty, why, under the laws of inheritance, man should not in time, walk the earth with the bounding life of an archangel, govern it with the strength of an archangel, and take home his thoughts and feelings to the pure and serene experience of an archangel."

And looking forward with Professor Bascom to the fulfilment of his high prophecy, Wordsworth's lines come to mind, and Liberty, heeding them, will

"Learn to make Time the father of wise Hope,"

trusting its cause to

"The light of Knowledge and the warmth of Love."