INTRODUCTION 



BY JOSIAH ROYCE 



THE " Cosmic Philosophy " is reprinted, 

 in the present edition, without any 

 change of the original text. But if the 

 author had foreseen that his principal contribu- 

 tion to philosophy would remain forever unre- 

 vised, he would have deeply regretted the mis- 

 fortune. During the later years of his life, the 

 interests that determined both the form and the 

 matter of the " Cosmic Philosophy " had been 

 modified in a number of respects. For the 

 first, the more recent discussions of the doc- 

 trine of evolution had inevitably placed many 

 aspects of the subject in various new lights. 

 On the other hand, some of the controversies 

 that were prominent in literature in the years 

 between 1869 and 1874 had become, through 

 the changes of current opinion, no longer so 

 important ; and Fiske, had he himself revised 

 his book, would probably have given to such 

 topics decidedly less space. Thus, for instance, 

 the extended polemic against Auguste Comte, 

 in which this whole work had its origin, -r:- a 

 xxi 



