lOO 



NA TURE 



[December 4, 1902 



in his second volume. As a contribution to the investi- 

 gation of ultimate metaphysical issues, Prof. Royce's first 

 volume, like previous works by the same writer, deserves 

 high commendation for the frequent grace of its style and 

 the freshness and freedom from unnecessary technicalities 

 with which the problems are presented to the reader. 

 Metaphysics has a bad name with the cultivated public 

 in general on the score of aridity and unintellig ibility, 

 but there is nothing in Prof. Royce's lectures that a 

 thoughtful man of ordinary education should find unduly 

 difficult or repellent, and there is much that every such 

 man must find of the highest importance. Writing from 

 a standpoint which may roughly be described as that of 

 Hegelian idealism, but in entire freedom from mechanical 

 adhesion to a master, and often with marked individual 

 originality, Prof. Royce gives us a most instructive dis- 

 cussion of the different senses which have, in the history 

 of human thought, been put upon the concept of Being. 

 We are led by consideration of the complementary errors 

 of realism and mysticism to the definition of real existence 

 in Kantian terms as the valid, that which accords with 

 the conditions of a "possible experience." But validity 

 or genuine possibility must, again, rest on a basis of actual 

 existence as part of a real experience ; hence Prof. Royce 

 conducts us from the third, or Kantian, to his own, the 

 fourth, definition of real existence as the completed pur- 

 pose or meaning of an idea. Space forbids detailed 

 examination of his line of argument, but there are perhaps 

 two main positions of the writer which seem hardly satis- 

 factory as stated. It is not made sufficiently clear how 

 it can be an " idea," in any recognised sense of the word, 

 which ultimately sets all selective attention to work, 

 and generally the relation between thought and will 

 is left in some obscurity. Thus, both in the first and 

 second series of lectures. Prof. Royce often seems to 

 imply the very doubtful view that voluntary attention is 

 the same thing as a volition to attend, but he nowhere 

 explicitly states his position on the question. A minor 

 peculiarity in the first series, which is perhaps open to 

 attack, is the use made of certain logical theories in 

 criticising the Kantian conception of reality. Prof. Royce 

 might reconsider, in the light of objections with which he 

 is no doubt familiar, but which he nowhere meets, the 

 view, adopted by him from the writers on symbolic logic, 

 of the universal proposition as a negative existential 

 judgment. 



To the professed metaphysician the most important 

 thing in the two volumes will be the supplementary essay 

 to vol. i., in which ingenious use is made of the modern 

 theory of infinite series, as expounded by Dedekind and 

 others, as the basis of a defence of the conception of the 

 Absolute as a Self against the negative dialectic of Mr. 

 F. H. Bradley. The argument cannot be dealt with here, 

 but one difficulty may be noted. Prof. Royce, if I under- 

 stand him rightly, assumes a very direct relation between 

 validity and actuality. He appears to take it for granted 

 that if you can reason about an infinite series in mathe- 

 matics, it must be possible for that series to be actually 

 summed ; or again, that every proposition of an in- 

 finite series of propositions which would be true if made 

 must actually be thought by some mind. As the infinite 

 series of such minds, according to Prof. Royce's view, in 

 its entirety makes up the mind of God, it would seem to 

 NO. 1727, VOL. 67] 



follow that the infuiitus intellectus Dei, which we are 

 assured knows all that we know, just as we know it, is like 

 nothing so much as an infinitely extended Bradshaw's 

 Guide without an index. Before we can adopt this view, 

 we need, 1 think, a more searching investigation into the 

 relation of mathematical truth to actual fact than Prof. 

 Royce has supplied. Is it, after all, allowable to assume 

 without criticism that mathematical conceptions must be 

 the exact counterpart of actual existence? 



In the second series of his lectures, Prof. Royce uses 

 the metaphysical standpoint secured in the first volume 

 as the basis for a striking theory of the real character of 

 the processes which appear to our senses as the physical 

 order. His general thesis is one which seems inevitable 

 if we accept the premisses of idealism, that what we per- 

 ceive as physical nature is a vast society of purposive 

 and intelligent beings, which appears to us to be a dead 

 mechanism simply because we have no direct insight 

 into the special nature of the purposive life which ani- 

 mates it. In connection with this general thesis, Prof. 

 Royce supplies an invaluable criticism of the notion of 

 uniformity or "natural law " and a most suggestive at- 

 tempt at a philosophical interpretation of the empirical 

 facts of evolution. 



The concluding essays of the series contain a striking 

 vindication of the doctrine of moral freedom and an in- 

 genious argument for human immortality, in a sense 

 rather different from that commonly put on the term. I 

 hope it is not ungracious, in the presence of such a wealth 

 of suggestive discussion of topics of vital interest, to 

 suggest that Prof. Royce's psychology is sometimes of a 

 doubtful kind. More than once he seems to make the 

 contrast between my self as it is in time and my " self in 

 eternity," with its complete insight into the solution of the 

 problems my temporal self finds insoluble, so sharp as to 

 amount to a positive ascription of two distinct types of 

 existence to the same individual. His eternal self be- 

 comes, especially in the last lecture, so much a sort of 

 lesser god, and so remote from the struggling, perplexed 

 creature I know as my temporal self, that it is not quite 

 easy to see how the two can ultimately be one. His 

 doctrine of sin, deeply true as many of his statements are 

 felt to be, again, seems to me to involve the already men- 

 tioned confusion between attending voluntarily and willing 

 to attend. Lastly, the argument for the temporal im- 

 mortality of every self might perhaps be found hardly 

 consistent with the admission of the temporal origination 

 of new selves by evolution. Does not evolution involve 

 the disappearance of selves in precisely the same sense 

 in which it involves their origination ? Prof. Royce's 

 argument, if pressed, ought to prove immortality ex parte 

 ante as well as ex parte post. And, in view of his 

 general acceptance of a clarified Christianity, it is not 

 improper to ask whether Prof. Royce agrees with all 

 serious forms of Christian doctrine in recognising the 

 possibility that some selves may be finally "lost," and, 

 if so, how he interprets such ultimate loss. Misgivings 

 of this kind, however, need in no way detract from our 

 admiration of the courage with which Prof. Royce has 

 essayed the task of bringing idealistic philosophy into line 

 with the positive results of empirical science, and of the 

 vast originality and ability with which that task has been, 

 on the whole, executed. The Gifford trustees are indeed 



