Philosophical Lecture.

A large audience assembled in Sanders Theatre last evening to hear Professor Royce deliver his third lecture on Modern Thinkers "From Spinoza to Kant."

Professor Royce began by saying that this period was one of marked contrast with the time of Spinoza. The seventeenth century trusted to reason but later the world was driven to the study of human nature rather than physical. The lecturer went on to show how valuable is doubt. The skeptic is indispensable. The four great ages of doubt have done the world more good than six centuries of faith.

The problem concerning Innate Ideas was dwelt on at some length and the growth of the two great philosophical problems treated in a clear, concise and able manner. Des Cartes, who had named these principles Innate Truths, was the next step reached in the subject, and his theory was set forward-that one who had never expressed or even given thought to such truths might nevertheless have them inborn in him. Locke's belief that there were no innate ideas and his horror of anything mystical was the natural sequence of this. Professor Royce then considered the historical consequences of the controversy from a direct and indirect point of view.

The Idealism of Berkeley came next before the audience. Professor Royce described him as a born child of Plato, a true philosopher and one who could meet the Divinity face to face.

Hume was termed the greatest of British speculative thinkers and his skepticism-that one event follows another but without connection-was shown to be fruitful in its results, though blind in its application.

The lecture concluded with a few words on the transition to Kant.