Plainly, there is a deep misunderstanding between the two parties. An error is involved somewhere. It appears to consist in assuming that objectivity can be supplied only by the intellect, in overlooking the fact that the feelings and still more the volition possess intrinsic controls and norms of their own, that Science, the work of the intellect, and art and ethics, spring from a common root, namely, the reality-producing functions. The manifolds with which each of the three respectively deals are different, the methods of synthesis are different, but the root principle, synthesis of the manifold, is identical in all. To describe our highest nature, therefore, as the rational nature is perilous, since the word rational suggests intellectual. Either we must strain the signification of reason to include feeling and will, which is contrary to common usage, or we should select some other term, such as _spiritual_, to designate that nature within us which operates in science and art and achieves its highest manifestation in producing the ethical ideal. Finally, if what has been said regarding the ethical manifold holds good, then a genuine philosophy of life can only be reached by the ethical approach to the problems of life. This has never yet been consistently attempted. The approach has been made from the scientific or the logical side, or as in the case of Plato from the æsthetic, or as in modern times from the biological. Yet the ethical approach is full of promise. A philosophy of physical nature may be feasible without it, a philosophy of art may be possible without it, but not so a philosophy of life. It has not been tried because ethics has lain in the lap of theology, which was itself corrupted by the attempt to apply to ethical problems the inadequate principle of causality in the form of creation theories, while again in recent times, by way of reaction against theology, the solution of ethical questions is sought for in the empirical disciplines where a measure at least of objective certainty has rewarded the investigators. Even Kant, who asserted the independence of ethics, actually made it dependent on Newtonian science. The great task now is, strictly to carry out the idea of the independence of ethics, not indeed as if its principles were unrelated to those of science and art, but in the sense of independently investigating the problems _peculiar_ to ethical consciousness. I am well aware that the attempt made in this volume to take the ethical line of approach to a general philosophy of life, is tentative and defective in a hundred ways, nevertheless it is an attempt in a new direction.