The World and the Individual, First Series/Preface

by Josiah Royce

PREFACE

The Lectures upon which this volume is based were delivered before the University of Aberdeen between January 11 and February 1, 1899. They appear in a decidedly more extended form than that in which they were delivered; and they have been subject to some revision. Lecture VII, in particular, has been much lengthened in the final preparation for publication. These differences between the lectures as read and the printed volume have seemed to me necessary, in order to complete my statement of the problems at issue, and of the solution that I offer.

The plan of the whole course is explained more at length in the opening lecture. Lord Gifford’s Will calls upon his lecturers for a serious treatment of some aspect of the problems of Natural Religion. These problems themselves are of the most fundamental sort; and in this first Series I have not seen my way clear to attempting anything less than a philosophical inquiry into first principles. The second Series, especially in its later lectures, will contain the more detailed application of these first principles to problems that directly concern religion. But the reader of the present lectures will not fail to discover how I define, in general terms, God, the World, the finite Individual, and the most fundamental relations that link them together. But these, as I suppose, are the essential problems of the Philosophy of Religion.

The philosophy here set forth is the result of a good many years of reflection. As to the most essential argument regarding the true relations between our finite ideas and the ultimate nature of things, I have never varied, in spirit, from the view maintained in Chapter XI of my first book, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy.^[1] That chapter was entitled The Possibility of Error, and was intended to show that the very conditions which make finite error possible concerning objective truth, can be consistently expressed only by means of an idealistic theory of the Absolute, — a theory whose outlines I there sketched. The argument in question has since been restated, and set into relations with other matters, without fundamental alteration of its character, and in several forms;^[2] once in my Spirit of Modern Philosophy (in a shape intended for a popular audience, but with an extended discussion of the historic background of this argument); again, in the book called The Conception of God, where my own statement of the argument has the further advantages of Professor Howison’s kindly exposition and keen criticism; and still again, in the paper called The Implications of Self-Consciousness, published in the Studies of Good and Evil. In the present lectures this argument assumes a decidedly new form, not because I am in the least disposed to abandon the validity of the former statements, but because, in the present setting, the whole matter appears in new relations to other philosophical problems, and becomes, as I hope, deepened in its significance by these relations. The new statement, indicated already in the opening Lecture, is especially developed in Lecture VII, and is defended against objections in Lecture VIII.

While this central matter regarding the definition of Truth, and of our relation to truth, has not essentially changed its place in my mind, I have been doing what I could, since my first book was written, to come to clearness as to the relations of Idealism to the special problems of human life and destiny. In my first book the conception of the Absolute was defined in such wise as led me then to prefer, quite deliberately, the use of the term Thought as the best name for the final unity of the Absolute. While this term was there so defined as to make Thought inclusive of Will and of Experience, these latter terms were not emphasized prominently enough, and the aspects of the Absolute Life which they denote have since become more central in my own interests. The present is a deliberate effort to bring into synthesis, more fully than I have ever done before, the relations of Knowledge and of Will in our conception of God. The centre of the present discussion is, for this very reason, the true meaning and place of the concept of Individuality, in regard to which the present discussion carries out a little more fully considerations which appear, in a very different form of statement, in the Supplementary Essay, published at the close of The Conception of God. As for the term Thought, I now agree that the inclusive use which I gave to it in my first book is not wholly convenient; and in these lectures I use this term Thought as a name for the process by which we define or describe objects viewed as beyond or as other than the process whereby they are defined or described, while, in my Religious Aspect of Philosophy, the term, as applied to the Absolute, referred not only to finite processes of thinking, but also, and expressly, to the inclusive Whole of Insight, in which both truth and value are attained, not as objects beyond Thought’s ideas, but as appreciated and immanent fulfilment or expression of all the purposes of finite Thought. This usage seems to be less effective for purposes of exposition than that which I have tried to employ in this book. Besides, I now more emphasize the distinctions there already implied, while I surrender in no whit my assurance of the unity of God and the World.

As for the present discussion, it is useless to defend its methods to people who by nature or by training are opposed to all thoroughgoing philosophical inquiry. Such are nowadays accustomed to say that they are already well aware of the limits of human thinking, and that they confine themselves wholly to “the realm of experience.” It is useless to tell them that this book also is an inquiry regarding just this realm of experience. For such critics, after a fashion not unknown amongst people who think themselves to be “pure” empiricists, will of course know, quite a priori and absolutely, that there is nothing absolute to be known. Not for such critics, who may be left where God has placed them, but for still open-hearted inquirers, I may as well say, however, that, to my mind, the only demonstrable truths of an ultimate philosophy relate to the constitution of the actual realm of Experience, and to so much only about the constitution of this realm as cannot be denied without self-contradiction. Whenever, in dealing with Experience, we try to find out what, on the whole, it is and means, we philosophize. Our goal is reached, so far as the demonstrable truth is concerned, whenever we have found a series of propositions relating to the constitution of the realm of experience, and such that, as soon as you try to deny these propositions, you implicitly reaffirm them by your very attempt at denial. After you have found these propositions, you have, of course, a right to use them, more or less effectively, as a partial basis for special applications and results which will indeed remain, like all our human knowledge of particulars, more or less hypothetical. But your hypotheses about particular problems must be judged by themselves. Your body of central truth is subject only to the test just mentioned. And you call this truth “absolute” merely because you conceive that it bears this test. Whether it does so is a question of fact, not of authority. And every man must, in such a matter, look for himself before judging about what is offered to him.

As to the principal special features of this discussion, they are: (1) The definition and comparison of what I have called the Four Historical Concepts of Being. I believe this aspect of these lectures to be, in many respects, a novelty in discussion. (2) The form here given to the criticism of Realism in the Third Lecture. (3) The use made of the parallelism between the realistic and the mystical concepts of Being in the Fourth and Fifth Lectures. (4) The transition, in the Sixth and Seventh Lectures, from the concept of the Real as the Valid to that concrete conception of Being which, to my mind, constitutes Idealism. (5) The statement of the finite contrast and the final unity of the External and Internal Meaning of Ideas. (6) The concept of Individuality which is expounded in the Seventh and in the later lectures, and the reconciliation of the One and the Many proposed here and in my Supplementary Essay.

This Supplementary Essay itself, which my publisher has very self-sacrificingly allowed me to add to the present volume, contains my defence against the objections which Mr. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality seems to render so serious as obstacles in the way of any such account as mine of our concrete relations to the Absolute. My defence is itself but a very poor expression of the very deep and positive obligations which I owe to Mr. Bradley’s book, — a book without which much of what appears in my Lectures themselves could never have received anything like the present form. As a part of this defence, I have been led into a discussion of the concept of the quantitative Infinite; and in this portion of my investigation my obligations are indeed numerous, and are, in part, recognized in the notes to the Supplementary Essay. In particular, however, I have now to mention what there can only appear in a very inadequate fashion, viz. my special obligation to Mr. Charles Peirce, not only for the stimulus gained from his various published comments and discussions bearing upon the concept of the Infinite, but for the guidance and the suggestions due to some unpublished lectures of his which I had the good fortune to hear. I need not say that I do not intend, by this acknowledgment, to make him appear responsible for my particular opinions. My own present study of the concept of the Infinite may be justified by its effort to bring into connection a number of apparently unrelated tendencies of recent discussion, and to review the whole issue in the light of my own conception of what constitutes an Individual. The result, as I hope, may serve to justify some of the essential bases of my thesis as to the relations of God and Man.

I regret that Professor Ladd’s Theory of Reality appeared too late for me to take account of this important contribution to the problems of the present volume.

My thanks are due to my colleague, Professor Charles R. Lanman, for his translations of the passages from the Upanishads which appear in the lecture on Mysticism. I have also to thank my other colleagues, Professor Maxime Bôcher and Professor William F. Osgood, for kind suggestions as to the remarks concerning specifically mathematical topics in the Supplementary Essay and in the lectures on Validity. And my especial thanks also are owed to my wife, for invaluable aid in preparing my lectures for publication. That, after all, quite apart from the problematic issues discussed, plain errors doubtless remain visible in text and in matters of fact, is something for which I alone am responsible. An index to both series of lectures is intended to accompany the Second Series, which will probably appear within a year.

Cambridge, Massachusetts,

October 30, 1899.

Notes

1. Published in 1885 at Boston, Mass., by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
2. I may here set down the titles of the other books that I have printed, dealing with philosophical problems: The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1892); The Conception of God (a discussion in which three colleagues, Professor Howison, Professor LeConte, and Professor Mezes, took part with me, while I was kindly allowed, by the indulgence of my friends, by far the most of the time and the space; New York, The Macmillan Co., 1897); Studies of Good and Evil (a collection of essays upon various applications of idealistic doctrine and upon related topics; New York, Appleton & Co., 1898).