406 £SSAVS IN PHILOSOPHY 



essentials in the system, that surprises and in some measure 

 discomposes me ; and all the more when one finds his own 

 lines of division for the discussion, and even his own topical 

 titles, running through the book. It is because I hope to 

 prevent misunderstandings on the part of the public, and to 

 forestall a confusion of ideas in presence of an identical 

 name used to cover very different conceptions, — dealt with, 

 above all, by very different methods, — that I am prompted 

 to comment on the Oxford volume, and to point out some 

 of the more important divergences between its metaphysi- 

 cal view and that which I would call Personal Idealism. 



That the book has great worth of matter, and will have 

 much weight in the doctrinal controversy that is now upon 

 us, follows of course from the known training and culture 

 of its writers. In many regards, those who are in earnest 

 about a polemic against the current anti-personal philoso- 

 phies, monisms of one sort or another, may unquestionably 

 rejoice in its uncompromising pluralism, and in its cour- 

 ageous, outspoken, and resourceful assault upon Naturalism 

 and Absolutism ahke. And if one were to decide upon the 

 philosophical meaning of a movement solely by the general 

 aim of it, in disregard of its method, there would be little 

 or nothing in the programme set forth by the Oxford Eight 

 to which any idealist could demur. " The reality of human 

 freedom, the limitations of the evolutionary hypothesis, the 

 validity of the moral valuation, and the justification of that 

 working enthusiasm for ideals which Naturalism . . . must 

 deride as a generous illusion" — this unquestionably sums 

 up well a cause for which every idealist works ; nor could 

 anything much better express one object with which my own 

 volume was prepared. But one doesn't become an idealist 

 simply by attachment to ideals, or by opposition to those 

 aspects of Naturalism which assail the credit of ideals ; other- 

 wise, many an empiricist, many a positivist even, might be 

 called an ideaUst, and such a persistent railer at idealism 



