I906J ROYCE— PRINCIPLES OF THEORETICAL SCIENCE. 101 



complex variations and recombinations of the fundamental logical 

 relations themselves. 



Meanwhile, however, the fundamental logical relations are char- 

 acteristic not only of our world of thought, but also of our world 

 of action. For will-acts involve acceptance and refusal, affirmation 

 and negation, a consciousness of consequences, a facing of alterna- 

 tives, a union of various acts in one act; so that the logic of action 

 is in form precisely the same as the logic of abstract thought. In 

 brief, so far as I can see, the trend of the modern study of the 

 principles of theoretical science is at present towards proving that 

 all the forms of conception used in exact science are but expressions 

 of the characteristic types of will activity of which we as voluntary 

 agents are capable. We thus conceive the structure of the world in 

 terms of the structure of our own types of voluntary activity. The 

 forms of our will determine the types of our theoretical concepts. 

 We define facts, so far as we theoretically comprehend them, in 

 terms of the nature of our w411s. The view of the logical source, 

 and of the internal structure of our concepts which is thus suggested, 

 is closely akin to what is nowadays called pragmatism. But to my 

 mind any pragmatism rationally thought out becomes philosophically 

 speaking an absolutism. Yet with that philosophical question we have 

 here nothing to do. The result of our modern study of logic is cer- 

 tainly to give us no less respect for facts, than we get from the study 

 of nature. But the facts with which the logican has to deal is the 

 fact that as a man willeth, not only so is he, but such are his theoret- 

 ical conceptions. The whole tr^nd of his theoretical science consists 

 in his effort to find in the universe, in the end, the expression of his 

 own will. His fancies, his capricious will, his temporary hopes and 

 hypotheses, he learns to resign ; and he calls this resignation a sub- 

 mission to external facts. But this submission itself is an action of 

 the will, a rational act, but also his own act. As he proceeds in the 

 work of his thinking, he is, as Kant long ago said, endless inter- 

 preting the world in terms of his own thought. But the forms of 

 his thought, these prove to be ultimately the forms of his voluntary 

 activity. Our modern unification of the concepts of theoretical sci- 

 ence looks then towards viewing all the fundamental types of rela- 

 tions as identical with the types of the purely logical relations. 



