X PREFACE 



Yet such is the unmistakable fact. With this every- 

 day Occidental's instinctive preference for personal 

 initiative, responsibihty, and credit, I confess myself 

 in strong sympathy ; and though from my acquaint- 

 ance with the facts I cannot share in his surprise, 

 I am glad of an opportunity to protest with him 

 against this all-engulfing monism, fatal to our moral 

 freedom even when taking on the plausible form 

 of monistic idealism. Idealistic monism, though in- 

 deed a real philosophic advance as compared with 

 other monism, is in the last resort irreconcilable with 

 personality. By its unmitigated and immitigable 

 determinism, with its one sole Real Agent, it directly 

 annuls moral agency and personal freedom in all 

 the conscious beings other than its so-called God. 

 Accordingly, it leaves this professed God himself 

 without genuine personality ; for his consciousness 

 is void of that recognition and reverence of the 

 personal initiative of other minds which is at once 

 the sign and the test of the true person. 



The aim throughout the following papers, on the 

 contrary, is to present, and in one way or another 

 enforce, an idealistic system that shall be thoroughly 

 personal in the sense ju.st implied. Instead of any 

 monism, these essays put forward a Pluralism : they 

 advocate an eternal or metaphysical world of many 

 minds, all alike possessing personal initiative, real 

 self-direction, instead of an all-predestinating single 



