The Essays which follow represent an attempt at intellectual
cooeperation. No effort has been made, however, to attain unanimity of
belief nor to proffer a platform of "planks" on which there is
agreement. The consensus represented lies primarily in outlook, in
conviction of what is most likely to be fruitful in method of approach.
As the title page suggests, the volume presents a unity in attitude
rather than a uniformity in results. Consequently each writer is
definitively responsible only for his own essay. The reader will note
that the Essays endeavor to embody the common attitude in application to
specific fields of inquiry which have been historically associated with
philosophy rather than as a thing by itself. Beginning with philosophy
itself, subsequent contributions discuss its application to logic, to
mathematics, to physical science, to psychology, to ethics, to
economics, and then again to philosophy itself in conjunction with
esthetics and religion. The reader will probably find that the
significant points of agreement have to do with the ideas of the
genuineness of the future, of intelligence as the organ for determining
the quality of that future so far as it can come within human control,
and of a courageously inventive individual as the bearer of a creatively
employed mind. While all the essays are new in the form in which they
are now published, various contributors make their acknowledgments to
the editors of the _Philosophical Review_, the _Psychological Review_,
and the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_ for
use of material which first made its appearance in the pages of these
journals.