ABSTRACT
That philosophy must always reflect the general conditions of the time and place in which it arises, is today a widespread and unquestioned dogma. Writing in 1879, Stanley Hall drew a disheartening picture of the dismal unenlightenment that then characterized philosophic teaching in American colleges. The minutiae of sectarian doctrines and the zeal for narrow orthodoxy prevented free inquiry, which is the life of philosophic endeavor. To understand the profound revolution in religious and philosophic thought caused by the advent of the hypothesis of organic evolution, we must remember that natural history was, after Paley, an integral part of American theology. If philosophic eminence were measured not by the number of finished treatises of dignified length but by the extent to which a man brought forth new and fruitful ideas of radical importance, then Charles S. Peirce would be easily the greatest figure in American philosophy.
