PREFACE

THIS volume originated in the conversations and discussions of a group of friends drawn together primarily by their membership in the Oxford Philosophical Society. The Society was started in the spring of 1898, and among some of the most regular attendants at its meetings a certain sympathy of view soon declared itself. In the course of two years the trend of opinion had grown so definite as to suggest to me the project of a volume of essays. Among those who seemed likely to contribute I circulated a programme which made it the object of our volume "to represent a tendency in contemporary thinking, to signalise one phase or aspect in the development of Oxford idealism." That tendency was summed up in a phrase which I thought I was originating at the time I wrote the programme, though it seems to have occurred independently to others. It is the phrase we have chosen for our title, "Personal Idealism." For me our volume fulfils the purpose with which it was projected so far as it develops and defends the principle of personality.

Personality, one would have supposed, ought never to have needed special advocacy in this self-assertive country of ours. And yet by some of the leading thinkers of our day it has been neglected; while by others it has been bitterly attacked. What makes its vindication the more urgent is

1 Prof. Howison uses it to characterise the metaphysical theory of his Limits of Evolution, published last year.

that attacks have come from two different sides.

One adversary tells each of us: "You are a transitory resultant of physical processes"; and the other: "You are an unreal appearance of the Absolute." Naturalism and Absolutism, antagonistic as they seem to be, combine in assuring us that personality is an illusion.

Naturalism and Absolutism, then, are the adversaries against whom the personal idealist has to strive; but the manner of the strife must be different in each case. Personal Idealism is a development of the mode of thought which has dominated Oxford for the last thirty years; it is not a renunciation of it. And thus it continues in the main the Oxford polemic against Naturalism. To it and to Naturalism there is no ground common, except that both appeal to experience to justify their interpretations of the world. Thus against this adversary the argument must take the form of showing that from naturalistic premises no tolerable interpretation of the cardinal facts of our experience can be made. If it be asked what are those cardinal facts, I should answer: Those which are essential to the conduct of our individual life and the maintenance of the social fabric. They are summarily recognised in the credo that we are free moral agents in a sense which cannot apply to what is merely natural. Round this formula of conviction are grouped the questions debated with Naturalism in our volume. They are 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, fatalistic if it is to be logical, must deride as a generous illusion. If these crucial questions be decided in our favour, the system of Naturalism is condemned.

Accordingly, where Naturalism confronted us, we were not unfrequently obliged to take the aggressive and carry

the war far into the enemy's country. But in the other essays a different line of action has been taken. The Absolutist is a more insidious, perhaps more dangerous adversary, just because we seem to have more in common with him. He professes to agree with us in the fundamental conviction that the universe is ultimately spiritual; against the naturalist it was just this conviction which had to be vindicated. We decided, then, to meet the Absolutist with what may be called a rivalry of construction. Absolutism has been before the world for a century, more or less. It has put forth its account of knowledge, of morals, and of art; and that account, suggestive though it is, has not satisfied the generality of thinking men. If the grounds of dissatisfaction be demanded, I can only give the apparently simple and hackneyed, but still fundamental answer, that Absolutism does not accord with the facts. Thus, instead of entering upon the intricate task of refuting Absolutism, we have felt free to adopt the more congenial plan of offering specimens of constructive work on a principle which does more justice to experience. Our essays are but specimens. They indicate lines of thought which could not be worked out fully in the space allowed. But they are extensive enough, let us hope, to enable the reader to judge whether their general line of interpretation is not more promising than that of Absolutism.

It may be objected that we are wrong in assuming that Absolutism cannot be reconciled with the principle of personality. In reply two points of incompatibility may be specified shortly; further particularity is impossible without a much fuller statement, more especially since Absolutism is not so much a definite system as an aggregate of tendencies without a universally acknowledged expositor. The two points in respect of which Absolutism tends1 to

1 I use a guarded phrase, because what follows is not entirely true of exponents of Absolutism so distinguished as Prof. Henry Jones and Prof. Royce.

be most unsatisfactory are, first, its way of criticising human experience, not from the standpoint of human experience, but from the visionary and impracticable standpoint of an absolute experience; and, secondly, its refusal to recognise adequately the volitional side of human nature. Both matters are dealt with in the essay on Error which stands first in the volume. There it is shown that error and truth are not dependent upon the Absolute; in other words that we can know with certainty without knowing the absolute whole of Reality; and that, if we err, it is by human criteria, not by a theory of the Absolute, that we measure the degree of our error. Further, in regard to volition, the same essay shows that error is relative, not to the content of knowledge only, but also to its intent, ie., the intention of the agent in setting out upon his search for knowledge. The reader may be left to trace for himself the wider operation of these principles.

In conclusion there is one feature in our essays to which I would venture to call attention as constituting what to my mind is the most valuable feature of their method; that is, the frequency of their appeal to experience. The current antithesis between a spiritual philosophy and empiricism is thoroughly mischievous. personal life be what is best known and closest to us, surely the study of common experience will prove it so. 'Empirical idealism' is still something of a paradox; I should like to see it regarded as a truism.

If

H. S.