The World and the Individual, Second Series/Preface

by Josiah Royce

PREFACE

The discussions upon which the present volume is based formed the second and concluding series of my Gifford Lectures on “The World and the Individual.” They were delivered before the University of Aberdeen in January, 1900. The delay in publishing them is largely due to the revision to which I have subjected the original manuscript. This revision amounts, in a portion of the lectures, to a rewriting, and has also come to include statements and arguments that I had not previously put into shape at all. These additions have caused me, in some cases, more trouble than I had anticipated, and more, as I hope, than the text will directly make manifest to the reader.

The general need for such changes did not spring, I am sure, from any lack of effort on my part to adapt the lectures, actually read at Aberdeen, to their announced purpose. The variety and the complexity of the topics of the present volume require the printed book to contain much that could not have been adequately stated in any oral discussion; while these same characters of my subject-matter led, at some points, to a diffuseness in the original lectures which I found it possible to abbreviate in preparing the volume for publication. In the public lecture-room the hearer has no time to meditate, and the speaker too little opportunity to be either concise or exhaustive. While some of the same general grounds for a change from the originally prepared text existed in case of the revision of my former series of these lectures, they proved to be less effective than here, since, in that series, the single problem of the Conception of Being dominated the entire discussion, while here the relations of the Theory of Being to various problems of empirical research, and to the demands of our ethical consciousness, have complicated the undertaking.

The scope of this closing volume includes a sketch of an idealistic Theory of Human Knowledge, an outline of a Philosophy of Nature, a doctrine about the Self, a discussion of the origin and destiny of the Human Individual, a summary consideration of the world as a Moral Order, a study of the Problem of Evil, and, finally, an estimate of all these views in the light of what seem to me to be the interests of Natural Religion. This is a large and manifold programme. It was required of me by my interpretation of my task as Gifford lecturer. I well know how inadequate the consideration of each topic has necessarily proved to be.

As to the first of these topics, — the idealistic Theory of Knowledge, — what I here have to say is founded upon studies which I began as a student at the Johns Hopkins University in 1876-1878. The first formulation of these studies I made in my thesis for the Doctorate at that University. A further stage of my inquiry was published in 1881, in a paper on Kant’s Relation to Modern Philosophical Progress, printed in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy of that year. The interpretation of our knowledge of finite facts as largely due to an active “acknowledgment,” whose significance is ethical, rather than to a mere passive acceptance of “given” contents of present experience, was insisted upon in the concluding section of that paper. When, in preparing my Religious Aspect of Philosophy (published in 1885), I had definitely passed over from my earlier sceptical position to the constructive Idealism that I have ever since endeavored to work out, I attempted at once to take up this former view of our finite knowledge into what was then, in my own personal growth, a new doctrine as to the nature of the Absolute. In 1892, in my Spirit of Modern Philosophy, I essayed a still further development of this theory regarding human knowledge, in the lecture entitled The World of Description and the World of Appreciation. Since then, in the paper called Self-consciousness, Social Consciousness, and Nature, published as one of my Studies of Good and Evil (1898), as well as in other essays, I have attempted to apply the same essential view to the explanation of the bases and characteristics of our human knowledge of the physical world. In recent years I have been much interested in comparing my views about this matter with those of my colleague and friend, Professor Münsterberg, who has independently reached a somewhat similar doctrine regarding the two-fold nature and basis of what he also consents to call our “descriptive” and our “appreciative” knowledge. This topic, as well as the ethically significant character of our “acknowledgment” of facts, has been discussed summarily in Professor Münsterberg’s book, entitled Psychology and Life, and, more exhaustively, in his important Grundzüge der Psychologie (Vol. I, 1900). In giving final form to my present statement, I have undoubtedly felt the influence both of these expressed opinions of Professor Münsterberg, and of the admirable monograph by Professor Rickert entitled Der Gegenstand der Erkenntniss, — a work to which Professor Miinsterberg first called my attention, shortly after its publication in 1892.

In my own former accounts, so far as they bore upon this doctrine, the contrast between these two types of human knowledge, the “descriptive” and the “appreciative,” has been made to depend solely upon the difference between the “social” and the “individual” points of view. I still defend, and, in the fourth lecture of this volume I expound afresh, the thesis that the contrast between our “descriptive” knowledge of the physical world and our “appreciative” knowledge of the facts of finite life, is determined precisely by this difference between our social consciousness of what is “valid for all individuals” and our personal consciousness of what is valid for the Self. But it is true that one must still seek within the consciousness of the individual Self for the motives that make it logically possible for this Self to regard the abstraction called “a view valid for all individuals” as a possible abstraction. We must show how the Self can make such a view the object of its own contemplation in any sense whatever. For the human Self, although (as I have shown in the course of these lectures) it comes to be aware of itself in terms of its social contrast with other Selves, still (in so far as it has become self-conscious at all) acknowledges its objects as valid, in the first place, from its own point of view, and not from the point of view of another Self. How comes it, then, to interpret its world of facts as such that another Self could find these same facts, or some aspect of them, to be also its own facts? The power to make this abstraction, however much social intercourse is needed to give it definition, must have its logical roots in the consciousness of the Individual. Accordingly, in the second lecture, I have here presented a theory of how far the general contrast between the World of Description and the World of Appreciation can be logically (not psychologically) defined, apart from explicitly social experiences, on the basis of a certain contrast that arises between two aspects of the inner personal consciousness of any intelligent individual whose relations to the world are such as are our human relations. This logical deduction of the primal contrast between the “descriptive” and the “appreciative” points of view does not set aside my still emphasized doctrine that both the psychological development and the concrete logical application of the categories of the World of Description are possible only under essentially social conditions. For, as I point out on p. 96, sqq., of the text, the World of Description is essentially a world of abstractions, valid for the Self only in so far as it conceives itself as at present unable to find how the facts express its own conscious purpose, and, consequently, valid for the Self only in so far as the Self, in its submissiveness, conceives these facts as also valid for an indefinite number of other points of view, which it has not yet made its own. Thus, within the individual consciousness, I point out one of the roots from which the more abstract interpretation of the world that is “valid for all” the members of a society grows. My present account of the logical basis of the “descriptive” view of things is therefore a supplement to my former discussions. This present account contains, moreover, a good many elements which are to me, as I think that they will be to others, decidedly new, so that the resulting view of the theory of our finite knowledge is at any rate not the conventional one. The views here expressed, so far as they are new, have been, in my own mind, the outcome of an effort to study some of the recent literature of the Logic of Mathematics, — a region in which the Supplementary Essay of the former volume of these lectures sought for light. The second lecture of the present volume carries still further the train of thought of which that Supplementary Essay was a part. Whatever my success or failure, I am convinced that such study of the Logic of Mathematics is a region where the philosophical student of to-day ought to work. I call special attention here to the doctrine of the two forms of Serial Order, and to their respective relations to the “descriptive” and “appreciative” points of view.

The Theory of Time and Eternity which follows, in my third lecture, was briefly outlined in one passage of the former volume, but is here developed at length. It is of central importance for all the problems of the later lectures.

The cosmological discussions which follow, in the fourth and fifth lectures, constitute a deliberate effort to mediate between Idealism and our human experience of Nature. I have tried to show that an idealist is not obliged either to ignore or to make light of physical facts in order to maintain his theory of the Absolute. That the latter theory is, in the only reasonable sense, itself an empirical doctrine, I have set forth in the former series of these lectures. Here I attempt to point out what links connect our general idealistic interpretation of all experience with our special interpretation of our experience of Nature. Hypotheses are, in such an undertaking, unavoidable. I pretend only to provisional views regarding all the details of the discussion. But that one has a right to such hypotheses, at the present stage of our knowledge, I have tried to make plain so far as my space has permitted.

In these first five lectures of the present series, I have come nearest to the ground which was covered by the much more thorough and closely reasoned lectures of my predecessor in the Gifford Lectureship at Aberdeen, Dr. James Ward. I had intended to find room in the text for some discussion of the volumes entitled Naturalism and Agnosticism, in which these lectures appeared. But discovering that I could not adequately deal with Dr. Ward’s volumes under the present conditions, I have preferred to leave until a future opportunity a treatment of the relations between his views and mine. Apart from such usually minor differences of opinion as exist between us, I feel that the two lines of argument are complementary to each other. Dr. Ward has approached the problem of our knowledge of Nature from the side of a criticism of special doctrines that have been held, and of special problems of science. I have made the topic one to which my previously stated general theory of Being is to be applied. At certain points, as I have been rejoiced to find, we have independently reached the same special statements both of our questions and of our solutions, although by very different roads. Dr. Ward’s account, in his second volume, of the unity of the universal and the individual experience, his treatment of the dualism which has come to make the two seem divided, his consequent criticism of the mechanical conception of Nature, — all these are matters with which I find myself in close agreement. I shall be glad indeed if my own much more superficial discussion of this portion of my task can be of any service to the readers of his work.

From Nature these lectures pass to the Human Self. Characteristic of this part of the argument, and of previous statements of my own upon the same topic, are: my entire willingness to lay aside all assertion of the existence of a substantial Soul; my unreserved acceptance of the empirical evidence regarding the dependence of the Human Self, for its temporal origin, for its development, and for its preservation in its present form of life, upon physical and social conditions; and my insistence that various Selves can possess, in the whole or in a part of their lives, identically the same experiences, so that one Self can originate, or can develope within another Self, and so that the lives of various Selves can be interwoven in the most complex ways. The known empirical facts of “multiple personality” possess nothing surprising for such a doctrine. The individual Human Self appears, in my account, as a part of the Selfhood of the race. Social intercommunication amongst Selves is explained as a phenomenal indication that they share in a common larger Selfhood. The phenomenal dependence of Mind upon Matter is interpreted as another sort of evidence whereby our personal participation in the various forms and stages of Selfhood that are present in Nature is indicated. No facts upon which Materialism has ever based its arguments need be either overlooked or belittled by such a view. Death, for my theory, no longer appears as a “sundering of soul and body.” Dualism in the interpretation of the relations of the Self and its environment is wholly laid aside. And yet, as I undertake to show, no spiritual possession of the true Self is endangered, no aspect of its ethical dignity is belittled, no sense in which it is near to God is called in question by this very doctrine of the temporal origin, and of the social, physical, and divine relations of the Self. The reconciliation of our natural knowledge about the Self with our Idealism and with our fundamental religious interests, is indicated, in these discussions, in a fashion that I believe to be, to a considerable extent, new. If my views have any coherence, the importance of the subject ought to insure for them a serious hearing. They are, again, not the conventional views about the Human Self.

As to the problem of Immortality, it is one that I long deliberately declined, as a student of philosophy, to discuss in any formal way, because, for years after I published, in my Religious Aspect of Philosophy, my first statement of that general idealistic view of Being which I have ever since maintained, I was not clear as to how the general doctrine ought to apply to the case of the finite Individual. The problem of Individuality, as I have since more clearly seen, and, in the first series of these lectures, have explained at length, is the most central and important one in the idealistic Theory of Being. I felt this fact, although with less clearness, from the first. I was of course sure, from the time of the first statement of my doctrine, that I attributed conscious individuality to the Absolute; and I plainly insisted, in my Religious Aspect of Philosophy, that, in the Absolute, all finite individual lives, wills, meanings are consciously recognized, fulfilled, and justly expressed, precisely as they deserve to be. But I was not clear as to what consequences were involved in this thesis when one applied it to the question as to the continued existence of this man, as he at present conceives himself. Now a philosophical student waits for light; and does not teach a doctrine until he finds light about that doctrine; and is careless what other people think of the practical value of his teachings, so long as he is conscious that he is sincerely looking for truth. I can at all events say that my own little contribution to the doctrine of Immortality, such as it is, has been no product either of a feverish desire for the endurance of my private consciousness, or of a similar longing regarding any friend of mine, or of any wish to conform to the traditional lore upon the subject. In my discussion with Professor Howison (published in the book called The Conception of God), in my more recent Ingersoll Lecture on The Conception of Immortality (published at Boston in 1900), and, finally, in the present volume, I have simply reported the results to which meditation on the nature of the Ethical Self and on the place of Individuality in the Theory of Being have led me. To make clearer my personal equation, I may add that, since childhood, I have never had any faith about the problem of Immortality except in so far as I have seemed to myself to see philosophical reasons for such faith, and that I regard the whole issue as one for reason, in precisely the sense in which the properties of prime numbers and the kinetic theory of gases are matters for exact investigation. That all our beliefs about truth of any grade and that all theories have a practical meaning, I do indeed explicitly teach. That, in fact, as my reader will see, is my whole philosophy. But the process of coming to consciousness as to what we can rationally desire, mean, and believe, as the fulfilment of our highest purposes, is a process in which private desires must be subordinated. We must obey in order to triumph. And such obedience, for the student of philosophy, takes the form of a cool reflection and a patient wandering in the wilderness of ignorance until he sees the road home. That has been my own method in dealing with the problem of Immortality.

My treatment of the Problem of Evil, in the eighth and ninth lectures of the present volume, is inevitably, in the main, a restatement of what I have elsewhere repeatedly discussed. Yet I have tried to bring to light several new aspects of this issue, in particular its relation to the theory of the Temporal and the Eternal. The doctrine of Freedom and of the Moral Order, as presented in my later lectures, touches upon several matters that I have not before formally discussed. The discussion of the Union of God and Man, in the closing lecture, will also, as I hope, appeal to some theologically minded fellow-students as containing some relatively novel suggestions.

In sum, these lectures have tried to be not a perfunctory defence of the faith, and not a mere repetition of the common tradition of modern Idealism, but the expression of an individual experience of the problems at issue. I do not want to make mere disciples; but I hope that I have helped some fellow-students toward a clearer knowledge of God and of themselves. Such knowledge, however, they can never get by merely accepting my views. They must use their own labor.

My further acknowledgments are still due to many helpers. First, I must here remember my own pupils, whose criticisms have frequently aided me, — in particular, my friend, Dr. Richard Cabot, who for years has stood by me with counsel, encouragement, and criticism, even while, from time to time, he has found room, amidst the duties of his own medical profession, for some continuance of his philosophical studies in connection with my Seminary at Harvard; and Mr. Reginald Robbins, who, while also an occasional member of my Seminary, has written several closely reasoned criticisms of my work, by which I have profited more than he knows. My indebtedness to the influence of Mr. Charles Peirce continues in the present volume, remote as my views often are from his. And in closing the task that for two years gave me an official relation to the University of Aberdeen, I must especially acknowledge my indebtedness to my colleagues there, and to colleagues in the other Scottish Universities with whom I came in contact during my two visits. In particular, Professors W. R. Sorley (now of Cambridge, England) and W. L. Davidson, not only brightened my stay by their kindness, but aided me, by their counsel, in adapting especially this second course of lectures to its academic purpose. To the Senatus of the University of Aberdeen I offer, as my last word, not only my thanks for the opportunity which that body gave me to put into this form my philosophical studies, and for the kind hospitality shown to me personally, but my cordial recognition of the interest thus expressed in closer relations between Scottish and American University life and work. May we learn still further the arts of coöperation with our brethren.

Cambridge, Massachusetts,

September 29, 1901.