of Religion. He builds upon the fundamental truth set forth by Professor James, that each man must build his own world. 'Practical Idealism is simply a presentation of the familiar facts of everyday life in their rational relations, as elements in a logical process and parts of an organic whole." This work is evidence of the much higher tone of thinking and superior scholarship that characterizes recent works along sociological lines than those that came from the press a few years ago. If this continues ten years more, the books that have been esteemed because of their popularity simply, would find no sale. The public mind is clarifying rapidly on such subjects, and President Hyde has been an important factor in this upward and onward movement. Z. S. H. DAVENPORT'S OUTLINES. THIS little digest or epitome of the soundest views on economic questions is a most admirable text-book for high schools and classes that are not sufficiently advanced to study more scientific works. It is a clear, succinct, and intelligent treatment, in propositional form, of the main truths of the science, and is thoroughly conservative and sane. Mr. Davenport has no peculiar views to advance, no wheels to put in motion, and no axes to grind. He is inductive and scholarly. In the hands of a thoroughly well-informed teacher, the book could be used for more advanced classes, as its treatment of subjects could be unfolded and elaborated. Mr. Davenport makes the time-honored blunder of confusing self-love with selfishness. He says: "Men now work under the incentive of want, incited and persuaded to effort by their interest in themselves and in those dependent upon them,-wives, children, relatives, and friends. Include all this activity under the head of selfishness, though the term seems, in some measure, an inept one," (p. 188). It not only seems an inept one, it is both inept and incorrect. Such an interest in one's own is not selfishness. It is self-love, and the distinction is as great as between reason and rationalism, love and lust, or any noble trait and its perversion. The desire to acquire is not avarice, though it may pass on into that, and the sense of ownership, like that of self-preservation, is not the mark of a depraved nature. Selfishness is such, and under no circumstances can it be commended. Mr. Davenport should correct this mistake in the next edition. 2. S. H. 1 Outlines of Elementary Economics. By Herbert J. Davenport. Pp. 280. New York: The Macmillan Company. 80 cents. 2See Bibliotheca Sacra for October, 1894, for a full exposition of this truth. ARTICLE X. CRITICAL NOTES. ROYCE'S "CONCEPTION OF GOD." 1 THIS work is a report of a discussion held before the Philosophical Union of the University of California in 1895. It contains the leading address of the symposium by Professor Royce; remarks, critical and constructive, by the other participants in the discussion; and finally a supplemental essay by Professor Royce in which he develops more thoroughly his central doctrine, and replies to his critics. It is apparent, from Professor Royce's introductory remarks, that the Philosophical Union of the University has been studying his work, “The Religious Aspect of Philosophy." "Were there time, I should be glad indeed if I were able to throw any light on that little book. But my time is short. The great problems of philosophy are pressing. It is the death of your philosophizing if you come to believe anything merely because you have once maintained it. Let us lay aside, then, both text and tradition, and come face to face with our philosophical problem itself" (pp. 5, 6). This seems to breathe a spirit of admirable candor; but if, as we shall find later, the conclusions of Royce's present discussion are utterly irreconcilable with his results in "The Religious Aspect," it would seem more candid, and also a saving of time, at least for the students of the Philosophical Union, to recognize and deal thoroughly with this fact at the outset. In seeking a philosophical conception of God, Royce begins with the idea of an Omniscient Being. This is evidently the Absolute Thought of "The Religious Aspect," but the Absolute Thought has experienced a remarkable transformation. There the Absolute Thought could not be personal or a Power, for an infinite person is an absurdity, and if a Power, the Absolute is responsible for the bad world. But now, "The attribute of Omniscience, if it were once regarded as expressing the nature of a real being, would involve the presence of other attributes,Omnipotence, Self-consciousness, Self-possession,-yes, I would unhesi 1 The Conception of God. A Philosophical Discussion concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality. By Josiah Royce, Professor of the History of Philosophy in Harvard University, Joseph Le Conte and G. H. Howison, Professors in the University of California, and Sidney Edward Mezes, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Texas. Pp. 354. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.75. tatingly add, of Goodness, Perfection, and Peace" (p. 8). This is the conception of God which Professor Royce maintains throughout this work, evidently a reasonably satisfactory presentation of the Christian personal God. Our joy that one of our prominent philosophers is coming out into the light on this question is tempered by curiosity as to the motives for the change, and by astonishment that he can reach such conclusions from his philosophical premises. Royce proceeds to prove the reality of the Omniscient Being by the same general argument by which the Absolute Thought was demonstrated in the earlier work. Your individual experience is fragmentary, it can be completed and made thoroughly rational, and so real, only by assuming one all-embracing Omniscient Being. The dialectic of the argument is given some new turns which are perhaps more bewildering but not more convincing. The unproven link in the argument is the assumption, a moral one, that the universe is rational. Professor Samuel Harris used to tell us at Yale Divinity School, "If you refuse to make the assumptions of the Scotch philosophy, you sink into complete agnosticism." Students idealistically inclined would inquire, "Why not, rather than assume what is unproven?" Here Hegelianism seems more thoroughgoing, but is not. If the agnostic says he is content with his fragmentary knowledge, the Hegelian can condemn him only by the assumption that the real is rational. Professor Le Conte discusses "God and Connected Problems in the Light of Evolution." "I can only admire, not criticise, the subtle method of Professor Royce in reaching the conclusion of the personal existence of God. I have my own way of reaching the same conclusion, but in comparison it is a rough and ready way” (p. 67). These words suggest how Royce's "argument" impresses the average man of culture who is not a specialist in philosophy. He is bethumped with words and confused by plausible dialectic, but not convinced. He therefore avoids the subject by a few words of vague compliment, and so the argument is heralded as the triumphant demonstration of a false philosophy. Le Conte argues to a World-Soul from the analogy of the conscious human spirit, and closes with some fine moral reflections on free, immortal personality as the final end of the evolutionary process. Professor Howison speaks of "The City of God, and the True God as its Head." The chief interest of the philosophical discusssion centers in the battle royal between Howison and Royce. Howison is a clear thinker and trenchant writer, and though an idealist is no Hegelian. He prefers to name his system "Personal Idealism, since all other forms of idealism are in the last analysis non-personal, are unable to achieve the reality of any genuine person" (p. xv). This is the key-note of his criticism of Royce, that his Hegelian principles result in a pantheism destructive of genuine personality, divine or human. In his Editor's Introduction, Howison gives an excellent historic review, and a remarkably fine char acterization of the present state of the philosophy of religion. The victory over materialism and agnosticism has been won by accepting an Immanent God, an All-pervading Intelligence, and the "burning question" now is, "Can the reality of human free agency, of moral responsibility, and unlimited spiritual hope for every soul, can this be made out, can it even be held, consistently with the theory of an Immanent God?' By far the most valuable part of this work is Howison's criticism of Royce on this point, and his answer to the question above is a decided negative. He intimates that he is preparing for publication a systematic statement of his philosophical position,-a work which will be cordially welcomed by the large and growing class who are profoundly dissatisfied with the Hegelianism prevalent in our current philosophy and literature. Doubtless Howison's keen criticism, wholly unanswerable from the standpoint of consistent Hegelianism, is largely responsible for Royce's insistence on the thoroughgoing personality of God, which is the conspicuous point in his Supplementary Essay. A consistent Hegelian, of the F. H. Bradley type, "views the categories of self-consciousness as 'mere appearance,' and as 'lost' or 'absorbed' or 'transformed' into something unspeakably other than they are, when we pass to the absolute point of view" (p. 302). This Supplementary Essay would be a really valuable contribution to the literature of Christian theism, were the reader not disturbed by a growing amazement that an Hegelian and the author of the early sections of "The Religious Aspect can hold such views. "A new moment which we have called Will is now introduced" (p. 210). "This generalized form of attention, which we now attribute to the Absolute Experience, is now conceived by us as that aspect of this Absolute which determines the ideas to find this concrete realization which they do find" (p. 201). In "The Religious Aspect" the Absolute Thought was not a Will, for if he controlled the train of his ideas, the things and persons of the world, he would create and govern the world. Here he is essentially the Christian Creator, and he is confronted by the old theological problem of selecting the best from an infinity of possible worlds (p. 212). The Absolute Thought now is also free personality: "This attentive aspect cannot be conceived as determined by any of the ideas, or by the thought aspect of the Absolute in its wholeness." "The Absolute Thought acts freely, unconstrainedly,—if you will, capriciously." Here our author realizes his danger from the argument used in "The Religious Aspect" to destroy the Christian God (p. 273),-if controlled by any superior law or power, He is finite. Instead of making God act capriciously, a manifest absurdity for the Absolute Intelligence, Royce needs to introduce the truism of theology, that being controlled in his choices by the supreme law of wisdom and love is not a limitation but a perfection. This is suggested on page 214. An attempt is made (pp. 203-204) to justify this extraordinary change of base. The author contends that, as he uses the term, from the abso lute point of view, the Absolute Will is not the cause of the world. This amounts, of course, in plain English, to saying the Absolute Will is not a will; and the plain man would inquire, "What is it then, and why call it a will?" It is a will or not a will, according to the work Professor Royce has in hand. The Absolute Thought is not a will when Professor Royce is destroying the Christian God by the antinomies of creation, of evil, and of inûmite personality; then the Absolute Thought is Aristotle's Prime Mover,-a passive, passionless, and inert spectator of the eternal ideas. But when Professor Howison says, "In that case, you have no genuine personality in God or man," then Professor Royce replies, "Yes, for the Absolute Thought is will, although, I do not hesitate to add, in a merely Pickwickian sense." It is therefore evident, as I have asserted at the beginning of this review, that the conclusions reached in "The Religious Aspect" and those of the present work are utterly irreconcilable. In the former, God is not personal nor in causal relations with the world. There the Absolute Thought as will is kept prudently in the background. And wisely, for, if will, Thought becomes an infinite Power, since, as its thoughts are the things and events of the world, if it controls and wills the train of its own ideas, it as really creates the world as does God in the crudest statement of the carpenter theory. And if the Absolute Thonght thus becomes a Power, all the objections so forcibly presented in Chapter VIII. of "The Religious Aspect " rise against it. It is an old maxim in beginning an argumentative discussion, "Don't raise a bigger devil than you can lay." Had Royce kept this maxim in mind, he would not have been so free to raise and enforce objections to Christian theism in the beginning of "The Religious Aspect," and he would have found much smoother sailing in the closing section of the book. In that case, however, it would not have been necessary to write the closing section, for the Christian Creator would have proven satisfactory. In Chapter VIII. the difficulties which confront any conception of a personal God are presented so forcibly, with such wealth of illustration and detail, that the old Hegelian device of viewing everything sub specie æternitatis is powerless to save the Absolute Thought, when it appears as will in this new work, from annihilation by the same difficulties. We would not be understood, however, to criticise Professor Royce unkindly for passing at one bound from the abyss of inconsistency and absurdity in which we find him at the close of "The Religious Aspect " to the firm ground of Christian theism; for surely "there is joy in heaven over one philosopher that repenteth." His change of attitude may be due to the stimulating religious atmosphere of Harvard; but whatever the cause, it is proper, and in harmony with Harvard principles, to test faith by works, and to expect the young convert to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. We may therefore hope that Professor Royce will soon find time to send to the students of the University of California a |