ABSTRACT
The main subject with which I deal in this paper is the question in what way, if at all, philosophy is concerned with human interests and desires, and therefore with the world of concrete fact. The importance of this problem for our whole view of philosophy has been impressed on me anew by some expressions in Mr. Russell's recent lectures !On our Knowledge of an External World. There is a great deal of matter in this book which I should have liked to discuss at length, little competent as I am in regard to certain aspects of it. But to do so would have required a treatise, and I shall do best to confine myself, in principle, to the subject which I have indicated. I should hope, by giving a fairly full consideration to this single point, and a single example of it, to make clear a view of the traditional philosophy differing in principle from that of the work referred to.
