390 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



has reached a kindred view, closer to Mr. Davidson's, in 

 fact, than my own. 



This common result is the doctrine that the world of 

 absolute reality is a world of minds, each eternal in the 

 sense of being immutably real, self-active, and self-deter- 

 mining ; none of them is a derivative, or mere result, of 

 the efficient causality of any other being whatever, though 

 all coexist in a mutual recognition intrinsic to the nature 

 of each. Thus, by their essential freedom, they constitute 

 a moral order, in the profoundest and only proper meaning 

 of that phrase. 



But beyond this base-line of agreement, the system as it 

 has developed in my own mind diverges in important ways 

 from that reached by Mr. Davidson. In the first place, I 

 have to dissent from the view recorded in his title of 

 Apeirotheism : I am unable to regard as divine any of the 

 individual minds that he took account of; they are, to me, 

 all of a type which I should describe as human, in contrast to 

 divine. In the second place, I find it necessary, in order to 

 complete the logical circuit of the whole world of minds, 

 to recognise in it a member to whom the name of God, as 

 designating the absolutely realised perfection of Personality, 

 is alone adequate. This supremely personal Being, this one 

 and only God, my honored friend did not recognise, be- 

 cause, like so many of the members of the Ethical Societies 

 who sympathised with his view or were directly influenced 

 by his reasonings, he found neither necessity nor warrant 

 for it : he could see no propriety in calling by the name of 

 God any one of the eternal society of minds rather than 

 another. 



I must not burden the present pages with any argument 

 upon the point of difference between myself and my 

 lamented friend. Here I merely wish to set the difference 

 forth, and to call attention to it as vital to the view I name 

 Personal Idealism. Readers who care to follow up the 



