APPENDIX B 



THE SYSTEM IN ITS ETHICAL NECESSITY AND 

 ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS i 



I HAVE called the system set forth in this book Personal 

 Idealism because, as I undertake to show, it is alone con- 

 sistent with the existence of a world of genuine persons, 

 including a personal God. My object here is to give a 

 brief summary of it, and then to point out whatever impor- 

 tance it may have for the aims of the higher ethical life. 



The system is closely affiliated with another, advocated 

 by the late Thomas Davidson, and called by him Apeiro- 

 theism ; that is, the doctrine of a divine nature, or ideal 

 rationality, distributed in an indefinite number of individual 

 minds. I mention this affiliation, because, although it is 

 unmistakable, it came about from studies entirely inde- 

 pendent, and without collusion or even conference. The 

 agreement, so far as it exists (and it by no means exists 

 throughout), must be explained as an encouraging coinci- 

 dence, resting on a common connexion with the same foun- 

 dations in the history of previous thought : two investigators, 

 working quite apart upon a common problem, without any 

 knowledge by either of what the other was doing, have 

 come out upon a result in the main the same. And it is 

 of great interest to note that a third thinker, remote from 

 both of us, Mr. McTaggart, of the University of Cambridge, 



^ Reprinterl, with omissions and minor alterations, from the Inter- 

 national Journal of Ethics, July, 1903. 



389 



