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Dr. Paul Cams was born in Ilsenburg, Germany, in 1852. He was educated at the Universities of Strass-burg and Tubingen, from the latter of which he received the doctorate of philosophy in 1876. It was, however, in the United States, to which he shortly after removed, that his life-work was performed. He became editor of the Open Court in 1888, and later established The Monist, remaining throughout his career, editor of these two periodicals and Director of the editorial policies of the Open Court Company. He died in February, 1919, at La Salle, Illinois.

The primary interests which actuated Dr. Carus's life-work were in the field of philosophy, touching with almost equal weight the two great phases of modern speculative concern represented by the philosophy of science and comparative religion. To each of these he devoted numerous special studies, and to each he gave the influence of the press which he directed. This influence was in no sense narrow or specialistic. Dr. Carus was personally profoundly concerned for the broadening of that understanding in all intellectual fields which he felt must be the foundation of whatever is to be valuable in our future human culture; he saw his philosophy never as a closet pursuit, but always as a quest for the social illumination of mankind, in which his hope of betterment lay. In this interest he combatted prejudice, in religion and science alike, seeking to divest the spirit of truth of all cloaking of formula, and turning with eager and open eyes in every direction in which there was a suggestion of light and leading-to men and to thought of every complexion and to all levels of active human concern with matters of reflection. Dr. Carus was, in fact, strongly Socratic in disposition: he wished to bring philosophy down from the skies of a too studied abstraction and habituate it to the houses of men's souls and to the rich and changing tides of cultural interests. Certainly so far as America is concerned his service is a signal one. During much of his career he stood almost alone as a philosopher outside academic walls, a living exponent of the fact that philosophy is significant as a force as well as useful as an educational discipline. He looked to the cultivation of philosophy as a frame of mind open to all, lay and professional, who should come to see that social liberty is made secure only where there is growth of a sympathetic public intelligence.

It is with the spirit and intention of Dr. Carus's life-work in mind that his family have established in his memory the Paul Carus Lectures. In the United States, foundations devoted to the cultivation of philosophy are so confined to scholastic institutions that the whole field of philosophic concern tends to assume the slant of an immured and scholastic discipline; and the observer is tempted to say that the greatest gift that can befall philosophic liberalism is one that will cause its followers to forget their professional character. Such a gift, certainly, is more than suggested by a lectureship which comes with no institutional atmosphere to further the free play of the mind upon all phases of life. In the stipulations for the Carus lectures, the themes of the lectures are left without definition, for it is recognized that philosophy is a spirit of approach rather than a set of problems or theories; and the choice of the lecturers, while it is properly placed hi the hands of those who make the study of philosophy their profession, is in no manner limited. The Foundation is free, and it asks of its beneficiaries no other response than the spirit of liberalism.

The conditions governing the lectures are few. They are established as a memorial and are to be called the "Paul Cams Lectures." The lecturers are to be chosen by committees appointed from the Divisions of the American Philosophical Association. The lecturer is recognized by an honorarium of one thousand dollars, and the lectures are to be published by the Open Court Company in a series of volumes, which, it is hoped, as the years pass, will become representative of the finest phases of our speculative thought. It is expected that series of lectures will be delivered biennially, the time and place being set by the committees to whom is delegated the selection of the lecturers. It is more than happy that the first series of the Paul Carus Lectures should have been delivered by John Dewey, for there is no living American philosopher of whom it can more truly be said that his influence is of the type which represents Dr. Carus's ideal.

HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER.