XXXViii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 



ment get vindicated at once and together. To think 

 objectively, to kucnv, is tacitly to refer the " neces- 

 sity " of one's judgment to the universal society 

 of minds as a standard, is to discern oneself as 

 typical of a kind, and thus attain the certitude 

 that the judgment is truly universal, because spon- 

 taneous in the nature of each as involving the 

 nature of all. 



Why this view of what constitutes objectivity, in- 

 woven as it is in the very tissue of Personal Idealism, 

 and reiterated time and again in my pages, in all sorts 

 of contexts, should have escaped the notice of so 

 many readers, is, I confess, a genuine puzzle to me. 

 Over and over, it turns up in these essays that a per- 

 son means a being who thus recognises others and 

 relates himself to them, and that the Personal System, 

 while rigorously idealistic, making all existence root 

 in the existence of minds, is still always a Social 

 Idealism, so that the objective judgment is always the 

 judgment that carries the weight of the social logic, 

 and the final test of any and every truth, though 

 never so often discovered in the private chamber of 

 the single spirit, is that it conforms to this principle 

 of universal social recognition. And yet, also over 

 and over, the new theory has been dealt with as if it 

 were only a fresh form of isolated subjectivism. 



On careful reflexion, I incline to think this must be 

 owing, in part, to defective exposition of my own; 



