Excellent submission. I found his use of the phrase "the Mandarin disease" really intriguing, and it turns out so did other people; if you Google the phrase there is a lot of really good commentary on this piece.
oddly enough, same here. I wondered about writing papers on metaphysics...then I saw the article was dated 1903.
Any guess as to who the brilliant student was (whose published thesis was a "most brilliant contribution to metaphysics")?