LECTURES ON THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY.

These lectures by Dr. Royce, the first of which will be given tomorrow evening, are especially intended to attract the attention of students and others to a well-known but frequently neglected class of philosophic problems, problems that ought to be neither feared nor despised, but to be honestly, reverently and fairly discussed. The lectures will first make suggestions about certain modern ethical doctrines in their bearing upon religion, and will state the case of one doctrine in particular; then the inquiry will be taken up: What in the nature of things can be assumed to correspond to our moral needs, to offer them encouragement and religious support? Two or three theories will be passed in review under this head, notably the modern doctrine of progress as an universal law, and the doctrines in general that regard the world as showing us some kind of historical process. Then another view will be suggested as giving us another and higher sense in which we can assume that reality answers our moral needs. Finally, since all views in these matters involve faith as an element, the last discussion will try by a comparison of two well-known kinds of faith to define what the spirit of faith ought to be.