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AUTHOR 
 
 PHIL P, JOSEPH HOWA-iD 
 
 Arm.. 1-.JMJJ « 
 
 PRINCii 
 
 n 
 
 LEOF 
 
 INDIVIDUATION 
 
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 1916 
 
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 191U01 
 DP 
 
 Philp, Joaeph Howard 
 
 The principle of individuation in the philo- 
 sophy of Josiah Royce, by Joseph Howard Philp., 
 CI9I63 
 
 96 p. 23 on. 
 
 , 93-'^ 
 
 Thesis (Ph.DOt Yale, 1916# 
 
 
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 rhe Principle of Individuation 
 
 IN THE 
 
 Philosophy of Jo«iah Royce 
 
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 BY 
 
 JOSEPH HOWARD PIIILP, M.A., B.J. 
 
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 A DISSERTATION 
 
 esented to the Faculty of the Graduate 
 School of Yale University 
 in Candidacy for the Degree of 
 Doctor of Philosophy. 
 
 1916 
 
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 The Principle of Individaation 
 
 IN THE 
 
 Philosopliy of Josiali Royce 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH HOWARD PH 
 
 
 JLi«I>< 
 
 I 
 
 A DISSERTATION 
 
 Prese^led to the Faculty of the Graduate 
 
 School of Yale University 
 
 in Candidacy for the De:^^e'^ of 
 
 Doctor of Philosophy. 
 
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 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction — Cliai)ter I 
 
 Part I. Historical 
 
 Period 1. Chapter ]].— Exposition 
 
 Cliaptor III. — Critical 
 
 Period II. diapter IV.— Exposition 
 
 Chapter V. — Critical 
 
 Period III. Chapter \' I.— Exposition 
 
 Chapter VII.— Critical 
 
 Chapter Yill. — Snmmary on Indivi- 
 
 dnation 
 
 Part II. Constructive Criiicisni 
 
 Cha])tcr JX.— On the Ahsohile 
 
 Chapter X.— On Self-alieinition 
 
 Conclnsion 
 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 IS 
 
 2(j 
 Si] 
 
 36 
 47 
 
 GO 
 GO 
 
 78 
 
 91 
 
 3"? 
 
 J 
 
 ERRATA — p-page ; 1-lJne. 
 
 
 I. Misspelled or wrong words. 
 
 OMIT 
 
 p. 5. 1. 34 — Pliilosophy. 
 
 
 p. 12. 1. 5 — Relativity. 
 
 p. 0. 1. 27 — The content. 
 
 p. 15. 1.33 — Apply (not appear). 
 
 p. 64. 1. 23 — Even. 
 
 p. 16. 1. 15 — Consciousnesses. 
 
 p. 85. 1. 42— Only formally. 
 
 p. 23. 1. 31^Teleological. 
 
 ADD - 
 
 p. 29. 1. 20 — Brute. 
 
 
 p. 31. 1. 36 — Expression. 
 
 p. 47, at end of I. 37 — Not. 
 
 p. 34. 1. 32 — Arguing (not iii-ging 
 
 
 p. 39. 1. 18 — Purposo. 
 
 MISTAKES IN FIGURES 
 
 p. 40. 1. 29 — Emphasize. 
 
 
 p. 41. 1. 39 — Insight. 
 
 p. 6 — not« 9, 409 (not 400) 
 
 p. 45. 1. 23 — Earlier (not earliest 
 
 p. 12. 1. 17 — 17 (not 15). 
 
 p. 49. 1. 6 — It (not is) 
 
 pp. 16-17 — notes 49 & 50 — out of 
 
 P. 52. 1. 30 — As (not is). 
 
 correct order. 
 
 p. 61. 1. 34— Absolute. 
 
 p. 17. 1. 24 — 53 (not 58). 
 
 p. 66. 1. 38— Created. 
 
 p. 27. 1, 18 — 10 (not 40). 
 
 p. 67. 1. 6 — Foreknowledge. 
 
 p. 29. 1. 19 — at 25 insert " 
 
 p. 79. 1. 12— Chaos. 
 
 p. 37 — note 7 — 7 is missing. 
 
 p. 85. 1. 9 Conscientiousness. 
 
 
 p. 94. — Santayana. 
 
 
 1 1 
 
I 
 
 4 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDiATiON IN THE 
 PHILOSOPHY OF JOSIAH ROYCE. 
 
 IXTRODIXTIOX. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 T. 
 
 The aim of this thesis is to estimate the contrihution which 
 Prof. Royce has made on the question of the principle of 
 individuation. It is a point on which monistic^ idealism must 
 saj something. And it is a point on which the answers of 
 monism have been verv unsatisfactory to their opponents. 
 
 The realist finds his problem in a seareli for the principle 
 of umty among the world of facts. The idealist finds difficulty 
 in making full provision in the unity for thj finite individmls. 
 
 Possibly no idealist has written more comprehensively on 
 the question than has Royce. And no idealist has sought to 
 keep his doctrines grounded in empirical facts more than he 
 has. The older absolutists re-read our actual thinking ex- 
 perience, our actual scientific consciousness, and our actual as- 
 sociative life in detail, in terms of that which gives them 
 their reality. But if you posit some process of t-ransmutation, 
 not consciously experienced by us as finite, you can get almost 
 any conclusion. Royce would leave our experiences in the 
 region of the empirical. Our individual and social cat^ories 
 are to be valid in the infinite. Our lives are to be included 
 in the absolute without any transmutation.^ 
 
 Royce is ever affirming that he goes only so far as the tinite 
 facts will allow. More room is thus left for the actual lie 
 would satisfy the empirical scientist. The Absolute, in which 
 he seeks to place finite beings a-nd facts, is an absolute v/hich 
 he has demonstrated as the logical implication of the facts. 
 He claims to be able to make the transition logically and truly 
 in both directions. 
 
 Now it is submitted in this thesis that the Absolute is 
 brought to the facts, not found there. The apparently larger 
 concession to and reverence for the empirically given elements 
 is mainly nominal So far from finding the Absolute !)y 
 way of logic, he seems to reach the Absolute by way of 'con- 
 trast'.^ And this method is one which works in the realm of 
 
 1. See the Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 433. The Spirit of Modern Philosphy, 
 380. The World and the Individual, Vol. I, p. 426 f. 
 
6 
 
 Uinjcc and I ndlvUhiallon 
 
 lioijco and J ttdiridiialion 
 
 the conceptual.^ The tinite is portrayed as so fragmentary that 
 the completed whole rises in imagination on the other side. 
 The true self that looms up through such contrast is the finite 
 self.'* When we learn that "the true distinction, and the true 
 connection, between the temporal and the eternal aspects of 
 Being, furnish, in truth, the basis for a solution of this whole 
 problem- "'^md are given no common ground between the two 
 conceptions, we find ourselves at sea. To be told that "the 
 eternal Now is simply not the temporal present,"® seems of 
 the essence of contrast,^ not of logic. 
 
 The contention is made here that the Absolute is an imported 
 conceptirm. 
 
 If we bear in mind however that Koyce would carry over un- 
 transmuted into the Ab^^olute finite facts and individuals, and if 
 we add to this the alternative^ reading of the ultimate which he 
 allows in his third period, (i.e. the ultimate is the Divine 
 Community), wo have a result which may claim to be no mere 
 contrast but a logical conclusion. This alternative reading 
 while it marks a distinct advance in emphasis on the social' 
 seems an unadmitted retreat ^from the engulfing Absolute. In 
 his latest period, Royce, in follcnving out the oiitologieal monn- 
 ing of loyalty, has been forced to ascribe something of the 
 eternal and underived to the members of the community. But 
 the personal or individual Absolute must then be another in 
 
 dividual or the informing spirit of the community. Royce has 
 
 * 
 
 2. See the Philosophical Review (lf)02), p. 404. Prof. Dewey says "the fragmen- 
 tariness, the trursitoriness of our actual experience the content is magnified: ... 
 it affords by contrast the content of the definition of the Absolute." 
 
 3. Dewey, (o.c.), p. 406, claims that Royce is working with the formal. "Rojce 
 dives arbitrarily from the region of concepts into the cl aotic sea of experience, 
 and fishes out here and there just that particular experience which is required at 
 that time to give bodv and tone to thin and empty catet'ories." 
 
 4 See G H Howison, "The Conception of God." p. 104; or W. E. Hocking, "The 
 Meaning of God in Human Experience," p. 290; or C. M. Bakewell, "The Inter- 
 national Journal of Ethics," (vol. 12, p. 394) in a r-jview of The World and the 
 Individual. 
 
 5. The World and the Individual, vol. IT, p. 347. 
 
 6. The Conception of God, p. 348. _ 
 
 7 See as example of mere contrast, The World and the Individual, II. p 44o. in troa 
 we are real individuals, and really conscious Selves, — a fact which neither human 
 thought nor human experience, nor yet any aspect of our present form of cou- 
 sciouBness can make present and obvious to our consciousness, as now it is." 
 How has the human being. Prof. Koyce, learned about it ? 
 
 8 I call it an alternative reading since I do not find the equivalence of th-i two read- 
 
 ings to be proven. Royce seeks by postulating real individuality to social unities 
 above the level of man, to merge finally such unities in the Absolute. But I do not 
 know what is meant when we are told that these super-personal unities have 
 •minds'. It is the citizen who thinks, not the state. It is the citizen who has con- 
 science, not the community. 
 9. See the Problem of Christiauify, II. p. 296, 220, 270, I. p. 400. In private con- 
 versation Royce claims still to be an Absolutist, and refers to the illustration of the 
 men and the bo.'it. See the Problem of Christianity, TT. pn. I'V Ot. 242 f 
 
 not adopted the former. The latter alone seems open to liim 
 and it is not the Absolute of the earlier periods. 
 
 ir. 
 
 This change from the earlier absolutism, if admitted, frees 
 Royce's work from a charge which is to the point against his 
 earlier position. It is submitted that in such an Absolute as 
 is treated of in the earlier periods, there is no room for real 
 individuals. Xo amount of portrayal of the situation from 
 one side or from the other makes the One and the Many really 
 articulate. The grasping of the distinction and connection of 
 the eternal and the temporal is not made clear. He oscillates 
 between an eternal which is a grasping of the whole time-span 
 and where all particular moments are alike 1o the eternal, and 
 an eternal which is in each finite constituting it what it is. Fur- 
 ther his whole treatment of the eternal and future time is un- 
 set isf actor v. 
 
 While (in contrast with Bradley) lioyce would ascribe 
 thought and will, selfhood and experience, to the Absolute, !t 
 must be noted that the capitalizing of these terms is a device 
 which deludes. With us, thought always finds its objects be- 
 yond itself. For Thought there is concrete union with the 
 objects. Here again it is submitted we have a contrast present- 
 ed to oneself in imagination or conception not a logical and 
 existent fact. So it is with the other individual and social 
 categories which are taken as valid l^eyond the finite. 
 
 III. 
 
 Further, if we follow Koyce, in his third period, in what 
 T hav^e called his alternative for the Absolute, we will find his 
 treatment of the principle of individuation to be partial and 
 inadequate. 
 
 The ultimate is the Divine Communitv. Individuation 
 is then an ultimate feature of realitv. The individual is eter- 
 nal and underived. This being so reflection and conscious 
 purpose and interpretation mark aspects of the making explicit 
 of the potential. They are not the ultimate causes for actuali- 
 zation. Back of reflection and will lie less calculable impulses 
 and desires. The impulse to live, to reflect, to will, are ulti- 
 mately inexplicable. 
 
 I 
 
lioijce and Lidiviilualion 
 
 JiOt/ce and liuHvlduallun 
 
 9 
 
 Keflection and will seem to enter a Held of want or difficulty 
 already there. They are not primitive. What is primitivo^'^ 
 must contain, in germ at least, what conies later but it is reached 
 in actual experimentation. It cannot be outlined in theory 
 ahead of time. The facts of the social precede the postulating,^ 
 of man as social. 
 
 One niav, in theory, declare that a life based on instincls 
 and desires^nd impulses is one of anarchy. Yet out of the 
 inchoate, primitive form of life the rational develops. Even 
 the hi*^her forms of individual life seem to attain a ^second 
 nature , where reflection works like instinct at the first stage, 
 i.e. there is a free and non-reasoning functioning of a life. 
 
 IV. 
 
 If we give u)) the futile eudcavor to articulate the many in 
 an Absolute and look at Royce's view of the true life for the 
 many, the contention is made that the ethical ideal set forth 
 is self alienating. In the concrete, life cannot be other than 
 personal. The sources or springs of conduct are ever within 
 rather than Vvithout. 
 
 It <loes not change the situation radically to emphasize that 
 the choice of a cause is left to individual initiative. Even in 
 the third period the cause a man is to serve is impersonal as 
 
 reo^ards himself. It is ])ersonal only in that it involves other 
 persons. ^^ 
 
 The contention is put forward that our life is so complex 
 that no Universal Will which all may follow can be found.'' 
 That which Tioyce has discovered is the empty formal principle, 
 ^Will that there be such a will'. Life being thus so complex' 
 the individual, if \w would have a career, not a chaos, must be 
 the center of that career. Royce has used the methiMl of 
 magnified contrast, in reducing the individual'" to the private, 
 to the merely private, to the ab-^olutely isolated. It becomes 
 
 10 A K Rogers (in The Philosophical Review 1900, p. l»30) wyg 'Thoiicht from 
 
 ' the biolocical standpoint, cannot possibly be regarded as an end m ith^.f. but 
 
 only as a function of the whole life-process. For psychological theory, the onjei- 
 
 nal datum is the organism already struggling to maintun and develop ityli. It 
 
 is from this that the life of conscious experience is slo vly differentiated. 
 
 11. See The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 20. G. Santayana (in The Journal of Ph,L 
 Psy. and Sc'ic Method Nov. 25, '15, p. 649). asks "Why is true freedom -^ ^.vy 
 unlike the blessed consciousnesss of being willingly a sl^ve ? , . , 
 
 12 A K Rogers (The Philosophical Review 1016, p. 162) s-iys "we are led to de- 
 " fine tiie Summum Bonum as the sura of the interests and satisfactions of all senti- 
 ent creatures, not in so far as they possess some one identical content, but^ in so 
 far as they are capable of living together harmoniously in the same world. 
 
 13. See The Phi1<»8ophy of T.nyalty. p. 08. 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
 «' 
 ^ 
 
 an empty claim to individuality. On the other side is the 
 world of objective situations and affairs. Of course one w^ill 
 choose this alternative as giving content to life. But it is 
 submitted that this life of content will be chaotic without the 
 center of selfhood around which it must be organized. Such 
 contrast is not logic and outside the merely formal, in the 
 world of objective situations wc find that life centers around 
 selves. 
 
 Not only is the w^orld too large and complex for one to find 
 an unequivocal Universal Will, but, the world being composed 
 of many individuals, the question of unanimity on the exact 
 meaning of the Universal Will becomes a vexing problem. ^So 
 many Gods, so many creeds^ says a poet. How^ is one to know^ 
 or choose among the rival claimants for one's loyalty ? Royce 
 seems very obscure at this point. 
 
 If I find myself at odds with a neighbor in our interpretation 
 of this Will, I shall be less an individual if I drop my ow^n 
 view to follow his. And if I seek to follow^ the gleam for 
 myself, I will have great difficulty in making my neighbor 
 accept my position as impersonal and unbiased. 
 
 In fact, it is submitted that it is only in conceptioti that one 
 can build up a world in which the self and its satisfactions 
 are sunk in larger causes. On the contrary, in actual life the 
 source of all initiative is personal, and at every stage the self 
 is still the center of its own life and still estimates, in terras 
 of its own satisfactions, the value of objective situations and 
 events and causes. 
 
IQ ' Royce and Indirldtiation 
 
 PART I.— HISTORICAL. 
 
 Period I. 
 
 CllAi^TER II. 
 
 Exposition. 
 
 1. 
 
 For the purpose of this thesis, the writings of Prof. Royce 
 are divided into three periods/ In the first period, the prin- 
 ciple of individuation in' the finite is ^Reflection'. In the 
 second, it is ^wilF. In the third, it is Royalty' or the Svill to 
 interpret'. 
 
 In the first period, Royce is seeking primarily to demon- 
 strate the reality of the ^\bsolute'. In the second, he seeks 
 to make clear the principle of individuation and also to articu 
 late fully the One and the Many, the ^World and the Indivi- 
 duaP. In the third p^M-iod, we are given the social or ethical 
 implications of the metaphysical position which Royce occupies. 
 
 In the first period he is reacting against a metaphysics 
 based on evolution.^ The long processes in evolutionary des- 
 cent seem to Royce to be an historical succession only if behind 
 or in all the change there is the permanent.. In the second 
 period, he shows that adequate place is given to the finite 
 individual in the Absolute whose existence he has demonstrat- 
 ed. In the third period, the ethical and social implications 
 in the finite are elaborated to show the significant place in 
 realitv which the finite occupies. 
 
 11. 
 
 At the time the firsi book was written scientists were ask- 
 r What are the facts ? Some of philosophic bent were con- 
 structing a metaphysics on the basis of these evolutionary 
 sciences. Their ultimate was ^Nature', 'Natural Law', 'Hu- 
 manity' or an 'Unknowable'.*'' 
 
 1 (a) The Relic-ious Aspect of Phil. (1885). The Spirit of Modern Philosophy 
 
 • a892) The Conception of God (pp. 3-50) i^S^^V ;^.> I,*^^^;^'' 'sSq 1901 
 ;i 1 r Ti<^m»-^\ ^AQ^ Thw World and the Individual, 2 vols. 18»», i»"i- 
 
 ^^'^ir^hLChy oVlo^^^^^^ (1909^ TheSources of Religious Insight (1911). 
 'rtl^l^le^Ti^^^^^^^ toU. (1913). There are ^!- two hooks of essay, 
 
 and some reprints of nrticle.s in periodicals. (1) Studies in Good and Ev,l. (2) 
 Wm. James and Other Kssays. 
 
 Bojjrr and Individnaiion 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 Koyee seeks an answer to the question, What is a fact ^ 
 The answer, he finds in following out the logical implications 
 ol the fact, lie finds a positive doctrine of an Absolute. The 
 world-primary is 'Thought'. Such Thought he holds to be a 
 person'.* The world in time, of which evolution has so much 
 to say is a temporal manifestation of this personal life. For 
 Royce, 'the far-off divine event to which the whole creation 
 moves'' IS eternally existent. "Time is once for all present 
 in all Its moments to a universal all-inclusive thought.'" 
 
 The facts, whose logical implications are examined bv 
 Royce, ,are the nature of the 'ought',' of 'religious faith',' of 
 •hi.ite selfliood'^ of 'finite experience'." The examination of 
 the "possibility of error'--' is his favorite"' demonstration in 
 proving the reality of the Absolute. In his treatment of the 
 doctrine of the Absolute, we have thus much of Royce's views 
 as to the nature of the finite individual and of the principle 
 of indivi(hiiifi(pn. 
 
 The method, which is characteristic ,.f the logic .,f Royce's 
 doctrine, and one which he explicitlv states, is this. "The onl> 
 demonstrable truths of an ultimate philosophy relate to the 
 constitution of an actual realm of experience, and to so much 
 only about the constitution of this realm as cannot be denied 
 without self-contradiction." That truth is "Absolute" which' 
 if you deny, "you implicitly affirm."- In the sense of imper- 
 fection, defeat, error, or incompleteness, we find logical impli- 
 cations of a positive doctrine of reality as it is. 
 
 2. See The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 6, 11. 43 167 •>■>■, , ,!>« <><!7 oa- 
 ^«0. 401, 430. 3 (See Religious Aspect of Philo8ophy)fi p 6. ' ' - 
 
 433 I"nV«^'^' r'/Tl "^'^'^T '"'^^" Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p 
 
 ;> L \ ^® .^^""'^ ""^ -^««dern Philosophy, p. 380, he uses the word 'person' of 
 the Ab.solute. In 'The World and the Individual', vol. II. p. XIV writL o? hi 
 earliesl book he say.s in it he ascribed 'conscious individuality' io Tlie ll^solut^ 
 Compare with Tennyson— Browning (Paracelsus). ' Absolute. 
 
 . , "-'^•1 tended up to mankind, 
 
 And man produced, all hath its end thus far. 
 
 But in completed man begins anew 
 
 A tendency to God." 
 Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 423. See also pp. 443 484 
 (See The Religious Aspect of Philosophy.) Bks. I. & II' 
 See The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, pp. 368-380 
 See The Conception of God, pp. 3-50. 
 
 10. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Ch. XI. 
 
 11. It was the subject of his thesis *for the Doctor's degree and is referred to in 
 different places in his books. See The Religious Aspect of Philosophy p XIH 
 The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 371. The Conception of God. pp 1^6. 342 
 Studies m Good and Evil pp. 140. 163. The World and the Individual, vol II 
 nhWt !/ I T^ * P^^i^™;"«n^, Statement showing the complete identity of the 
 object of knowledge and the ob.iect in the ronl world, a proof based on the 
 mature of thought is open to ambiguity. Conceptual completeness is so easy lo 
 
 12. The World and the Individual, vol. I. p. XI. 
 
 5. 
 
 8. 
 9. 
 
 I ♦ 
 
 I'aMitnfiiiiiiifiifl"'*"'''^**'''*-^^ 
 
12 
 
 PkOljre and I ltd i rid not ion 
 
 III. 
 
 * 
 
 liUijce and Indiuldualion 
 
 13 
 
 If Wror' is possible' there is a real difference between truth 
 and error. If evolution or a stream of successive eveiits were 
 the last word, our standards of tru.th and error would be ten- 
 tative — if, indeed, we would have any sense of continuity. 
 The doctrine of Total Relativilty goes beyond ^reasonable 
 doubt'. "It tries to put scepticism to rest, by declaring the 
 opinion, 'that there is error', to be itself an error."" But **if 
 there is no real distinction between truth and error then the 
 statement that there is such a difference is not really false, but 
 only seemiiiirly false."^* This is the ultimate test. "That 
 real error exists is absolutelv indubitable."^" Hence the finite 
 being is capable of valid thought.^* 
 
 Where then is the criterion of truth and error ? It is 
 not the subjective standard of so-called psychological idealism, 
 for "if my mind can be concerned only with its own ideas, 
 then sincerity and truth are identical, and truth and error will 
 be alike impossible."^** In such a case, I could make corrert 
 assertions about the content of my thought. But we mean by 
 truth more than mere correctness. 
 
 There is more adequacy in the "commonplace assumption 
 that a statement of mine can agree or fail to agree with it? 
 real object, when this object is wholly outside my thought."'® 
 The finite thinker is one "whose thought has objects outside 
 of it with which it can agree or disagree."^® If this is true 
 of each, it is true of all finite beings and the reality of truth 
 and error cannot be explained on "the consensus of men" or 
 by a show of hands. 
 
 Again, this question of the reality of truth and error is not 
 
 13. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 394. 14. Ibid, p. 375. 15. Ibid, p. 395. 
 
 16. This is not merely to say that, however critical one may be of thought's activity, 
 One must strirt with this necessary assumption that thought is capable of reaching 
 valid results. No doubt it is the "reflexive turn',, the "absolute assurance" of 
 the subject — as indicated in "The Meaning of God in Human Experience", p. 191 
 f. by W, E. Hocking. Royce in turning in on the subject wishes to see what the 
 'subject' is. He finds the subject is in reality the Absolute as Subject. 
 
 17. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 378. D. S. Miller in the Philosophical 
 Review (1893) p. 403 f. has sought to show the vicarious nature of knowledge 
 which carries past experiences in image, kinesthesia or other symbolic equivalent. 
 He thinks that this meets Royce on the nature of error, in that the finite knower 
 himself carries the corrective of the error in this vicarious form. An inclusive 
 mind would not then be needed. James (in "The Meaning of Truth" p. 22, note> 
 agrees with Miller. The problem of Royce is however just that which Miller 
 assumes, viz. : the significance of our knowing actual reality Miller's work is a 
 study in the psychology of an individual. Royce is dealing with the metaphysical 
 question. 
 
 1^ The Religious Aspect of Philosophy", p. 378. 10. Ibid. p. 377. 
 
 
 one which time fixes. We say that time will prove one right 
 or wrong. But if it will be right in the future it must^e 
 right in the present. "The future is now, as future, non- 
 existent, and so judgments about the future lack real objects "-« 
 Truth does not depend, for its infallibility, on the outcome of 
 the temporal process. My judgment is about real objects and 
 is true or false now, I do not "make" but "find" '' truth 
 One can speak neither truly nor falsely about a merely "pos- 
 sible"" object. ^ ^ ^ 
 
 \ 
 
 The agreement or disagreement of my thought with objects 
 outside of it "can be possible, only if there is a thought 'that 
 includes both my thought and the object wherewith my thought 
 is to agree. This inclusive thought must be related to my 
 thought and its objects as my thought is related to the various 
 partial thoughts that it includes and reduces to unity in any 
 one of my complex assertions."" ^ly judgment is true or 
 false according as it agrees with or differs fromthis all-embrac- 
 ing thought. And Time', in which I become aware of the 
 accuracy of my though:, is "present in all its moments to a 
 universal and all-inclusive thought"'* "in the unity of one 
 eternal moment"^' Further a judgment, to "be false when 
 made, must be false before it was made. An error is possible 
 only when the judgment in which the error is to be expressed 
 always was false"'« This all-inclusive thought hns present 
 to Itself "all possible relations of all the objects in space, In 
 time, or in the world of the barely possible."'^ It is thus an 
 "absolute rational unity." ^'Our thought needs the Infinite 
 Thought in order that it may get, through this Infinite judge, 
 the privilege of being so much as even an error""" and "save 
 for Thought there is no truth, no error, in separate thoughts."-^ 
 The finite being is *^a part of the universal life."'*' 
 
 In the finite individual, thought and its objects are never 
 fully united. Evolution holds out to thought the hope that 
 the future will bring fulfilment. Royce sees the 'meaning' 
 I of thought as indicating that such fulfilment is eternally pre- 
 sent in the Absolute. The Thought of the Absolute is ever 
 
 ^^' T90 f '^ir"Tl-^^'^*'^St ^^"T^^^' P- ^2"^ '• 21. Ibid. p. 431. 22. n.id p. 
 
 428 f. 23, Ibid. p. 377 f. Here we see reference to finite thought as a true 
 unity in variety or variety in unity. This has reference not to thought in relation 
 to Its objects but m itself as it faces its world of objects. In The World and 
 
 n%h i^ . • '''''• ^' ?: ^^^ '• ^^^"" '"^« ^^^P^'^^'^ «" '^^^ «« something present 
 in the finite correspondmg to the unity of the Absolute. 
 
 |24. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 423. 25. Ibid. p. 441. 26. Ibid p 424 
 f. 27. Ibid. p. 425. 28. Ibid. p. 427. 29. Ibid. p. 432. 30. Ibid. p. Ssl 
 
14 
 
 Iioycr and hidichlualuni 
 
 one with its object. Tlie persistent ineunipleteness in the tem- 
 poral, indicates that the true self of the fragmentary finite self 
 is the Absolute. We are ])arts of the Tnfiinte Siihjecr. 
 
 ^•;a 
 
 Again this Thought is inclusive of "Will and Experience, 
 and refers "not only to finite processes of thinking, but also 
 and expressly to the inclusive Whole of Insight; in which botl 
 truth and value are attained, not as objects beyond Thought's 
 ideas but as t'ppreciated and immanent fulfilment or expression 
 of all the purposes of finite thought. "^- 
 
 The logic of the facts of 'errc^r' has thus led up to the cei: 
 ception of an ^All-Thinker'. This whole has constituted a 
 world in which we find what we term finite individuals.^'^ In 
 these finite beings is a power of thinking or *Kef lection', which 
 is able to transcend the temjmral. The objects of this reflec- 
 tion are ever 'beyond it', a separation wliicli it never overcome 
 in the temporal. ''Moments of Insight"'^'* come when, in ideal, 
 the separation is overcome. This is not a mystic vision since 
 it is a product of refloction. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The finite being is as 'thinker' n inic 'pari' of the Absolute 
 as Thinker, i.nd is capable of valid tlusught. This is true of 
 the finite as a reflective being facing its world of objects. Tf 
 true indi\i duality means the complete union of thought with 
 its objects, then finite beings are cumpleto only in the Abso- 
 lute. The temporal is 'Appearance' not reality.^^ The true 
 self of each finite bcin^• is the Absolute. 
 
 This Absolute as 8ul)ject has individuated himself (''cut 
 itself up"^^)into the world of individn-ils, or "separate empiri- 
 cal sehW\ With the passing of the empiricnl. reunion of the 
 
 31. 'The Religious Aspect of Philosophy" pp. 433, 435. 
 
 32. Quoted from The World and the Individual vol. I, pp. IX f. where Royce is re- 
 ferring to this usage, in the enrlier work, of the term Thoupht. 
 
 33. It must be emphasized that Royce is not showing that the finite is merely the 
 object of the Absolute Knowledge (As James interprets him — see "A Pluralistic 
 Universe" p. 36). The finite individual is a constituent element of the Absolute 
 Energy. (See Bosanrjuet — "The Principle of Individuality and Value" p. 372 
 note). As a constituent element of the Ab.solute mind, not na an object of the 
 Absolute thought, thought in the finite is a true "unity in variety" or variety in 
 unity, and is a true fragment or part of the Absolute as Subject. 
 
 34. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 156. 
 
 35. F. H. Bradley in "Truth and Reality" p. 250 writes: "We have appearance when- 
 ever, and so far as, the content of anythir.s: falls outside of its existence, its 
 'what' goes beyond its 'that'. You have reality on the other hand so far as these 
 two a.<?pects are inseparable, and where one may. porliaps. be .said to reconstitute 
 the other." 
 
 f^6. Sep thi<< expression — The Religious .\si>»'<i of PliilusMphy. ]». 194. 
 
 Botjce and Individuation y^ 
 
 ir,;!! '^''^l''' ^f ""-^ J'""^^- nothing of individual immor- 
 tality. The part, as a separated individual, has a temporal 
 appcaranco only. / >" ■' 
 
 • ^" *'f '^T'l ^'"" ^"^'i"J»af'ng principle of the Absolute 
 IS present as 'reflection' or as 'finite thought'. At work in the 
 fin.te, to bring It to simplicity and unity, is found this power 
 of thought. "Moments of insight" give needed direction The 
 finire indivulual glimpses his true self and henceforth his aim 
 
 will of the Absolute. 
 
 Finite •thought-, then, is that which marks the finite indi- 
 vidual as man. Its active endeavor is to grasp, in unity and 
 simplicity, the world of objects beyond it.^ It'^is the inillec- 
 tualishc or reflective power in the finite individual which ir, 
 meant Eoyce in his theory of the Absolute would trace thi. 
 individuating thought back to its eternal spring. Whether or 
 not one agrees with this Absolutism, the doctrine remains that 
 refection or thinking in man individuates the finite. It is 
 that which constitutes him a human being. 
 
 V. 
 
 I have given, somewhat fully, the use Koyce makes of -the 
 possibility of error." In a similar manner, other finite facts 
 are made to yield up their ontological significance. In "The 
 Religious Aspect of Philosophy" (Book I.), the meaning of 
 ough ness is traced out. It implies a world-will, inclusiv'e of 
 all wills and purposes as its 'parts'.- Finite wills are constituent 
 elements of this central purpose, not mere objects of that pur- 
 pose. This answer to the moral demand construes the world 
 m terms which meet the demands of religious faith. The 
 world ,s a "VVorld of Divine Life".- This insight has come 
 trom withm the finite consciousness, not from without." 
 
 the earlier book hi wa. not cl^r .,.:; Tl\""T'.'^" " "" '™'' ^' '"»«« 
 
 immaterial souls of men are first individuated rvthlh.i' I ' *' "'^ *^* 
 inclinatio to an individual bod> st 11 iSduates it onZrlZ-'^^T"^'- '^^' 
 See the Conception of God, p. ^ggj. ^ '* ^" *^^ ^^^^^"^ ^^ ^'^^ empirical 
 
 38. See the Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. ui, 217. 380 f 437 457 
 ^9. Ibid p. 436. 40. Ihid. p. 470. * 
 
16 
 
 lloyce and Individuation 
 
 The Unite 'self, with a world of other minds and objects 
 of its thought beyond the self, is seen to be, in reality, one 
 with them. ''You, in one sense, never do or can get beyond 
 your own ideas, nor ought you to wish to do so, because in 
 truth all those other minds, that constitute your outer and real 
 world, are in essence one with your own self."*^ "Your total 
 of normal consciousness already has the object."" There is 
 thus no prison of the inner self. In thinking, the self actively 
 means or refers to its object. It must ''in some measure al- 
 ready possess that object, enough, namely, to identify it."*' 
 as what the self means. Each finite self, imperfect always as 
 finite, is seen complete as the Absolute. "There is, at lart, 
 but one self, organically, reflectively inclusive of all selves, 
 and so of all truth.'^" "This Self,*^ infinitely andreflectively, 
 transcends our consciousness, and therefore since it includes 
 us, it is, at the very least, a person and more definitely conscious 
 than we are. 
 
 In the California Lecture, the recognized incompleteness of 
 human 'experience^ is ehown as implying a ^completed' ex- 
 perience. In finite experience, there is divorce between ideas 
 and their objects. In 'Experience', "true ideas are fulfille«K 
 confirmed, and verified.'''*' For the xVbsolute, "All genuinely 
 siirnificant, all truly thinkable ideas would be seen as directly 
 fulfilled, and fulfilled in his own experience."** 
 
 The Absolute constitutes** the initial or rather the eternal 
 individuation of selves, or wills. These finite selves, guided 
 by reflection, seek actively to conquer or understand their en 
 vironing world. This proc^ess of experience''** is ever temporally 
 
 - -^ 
 
 49. See "The Religious Aspect of Philosophy" p. 462. "The Inllnit« thinks them". 
 See also 456, "in thinking thee." 
 
 50. In this change of terminology from 'thought' to 'experience' we see sn evidence of 
 41. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 368. 42. Ibid. p. 371. 43. Ibid. p. 370. 
 
 44. Ibid. p. 379. . 
 
 45. We have throughout Royce's statement of the nature of a 'self an oscillation 
 rather tha»i a truo passage from one idea of 'self to another. The word 'self' 
 is used in the first place, of the \inity of consciousness, as opposed to the multi- 
 plicity of its content. It is iis-^d also in tht> sense of the concrete self of finite 
 
 experience. To say that subject and object are indivisible means simply that aa 
 object cannot be conceived except as existing within a unity of consciousness. 
 Here we are dealing with knowledge in the abstract or so-called represenUtiye 
 sense. But when references are made to the concrete self and the object is said 
 to have no existence outside the finite subject, we have the unity of the other 
 meaning of self carried over illegitimately. In the concrete self there is no 
 promise of that inclusive unity which implies that the universe may be conceived 
 as a concrete experience or a single consciousness. 
 
 46. "The Spirit of Modem Philosophy" p. 380. There is no trace here of any trans- 
 mutation of the finite selves in being included. Bosanquet (The Principle of 
 Individuality and Value, i>. 337 f. See also p. 37^1) criticizes Royce on this 
 point. 
 
 47. "The Conception of Ood" p. 0. 48. Ibid. p. 10. 
 
 i 
 
 Ikuycc (ind I ndi rid ualiou J7 
 
 incomplete. The ^parts' have always thus a fragmentary time- 
 experience. Eternally, each is complete in or as the Absolute. 
 
 Eeflection or thinking is that which individuates the finite 
 in the time order. Insight enables the finite to see his re- 
 lation to the whole and thus to live his life truly by seekintr to 
 will the Universal Will. ^ .^ fe 
 
 The Absolute, whether considered as 'Thought' or 'Self or 
 'Experience', is a direct, immediate and eternal union of 
 Thought with its objects ; a Self, not merely thinking validly, 
 but concretely; an Experience which is complete, its ideas eter- 
 nally fulfilled. It is this Absolute which individuates" the 
 finite thinker, not as an object of his thought, but as a con- 
 stituent element of himself as Subject. Just why this individ- 
 uation takes place we are not informed. It is. 
 
 The finite 'part' carries over into the temporal some of the 
 same power of individuation. This is 'reflection'.. This 
 principle of individuation operates in the time-experience to 
 constitute man as individual. From the side of consciousness" 
 in the finite being, Royce would thus reach logically a doctrine 
 of a world -consciousness. 
 
 Divine Thought then is the principle of individuation in 
 the universe. Reflection is the form in which it apjiears a^ 
 the 'parts' of the Absolute. The Divine Thought in its larger 
 implications is attained in insight in the consciousness'" of the 
 part. 
 
 t.^^^.^^*^ T ^*"f'^^J' current to-day. Royce is changing from a more 'struc- 
 tura Idea of reality to a functional or dynamic one. Thought is being subor- 
 dmated to thinking. Reality is being read in dynamic— not in static terms Now 
 just as Royce admits 'thought' to be a dealing with objects in some sense beyond 
 the tliinker, so experience' setms equally to have to do with objects which are 
 outside m some sense. When I possess a description of reality, I am not in direct 
 and immediate union with the objects out there. Finite experience may be re- 
 garded as holding the greater part of its possessions in a representative - way. 
 A short stretch of time, the present, is direct and immediate. Increase of Know- 
 ledge means with us not so much the widening of direct experience as the in- 
 crease of that which IS held in a representative way. Completeness for us would 
 not mean one single and direct experience of the whole. 
 
 51. In the "Studies in Good and Evil' pp. 198-248, Royce sets forth a conception of 
 nature as an individual wiUi an apperceptive span different from man's. 
 
 ^^' 1° "Impl»<^*tion8 of Self Consciousness" in "Studies in Good and Evil" pp 140- 
 168, Royce has further outlined this argument. 
 
 Sa. See The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p, 470. 
 
 I i 
 
 f^-avtH^^^ 
 
18 
 
 lioyce and Indivuluation 
 
 Uoiji-e caul Judh'idualiuii 
 
 ISi 
 
 ClIAl^rKK IIT. 
 
 Criliral. 
 
 I. 
 
 Till' interest in tliis period of our author's work center.-, 
 aromid the proof of the reality of an Absolute. It raised other 
 questions which it leaves unanswered. The individii avion, 
 initiated in and hv the Absolute, is only treated ineidentallv. 
 Where, in such an Absolute, ])rovisio'n is made for the reality 
 of the finite, is a question that can also be raised. Of this 
 latter problem only a little will be said here. Fuller notice 
 will be taken of it in Part IT. It persists throughout Royce^s 
 work. 
 
 Ft seems clearlv our author's view that reality, as Thought, 
 is thought fully and concretely fulfilled, a completed experience, 
 idea in perfect union with its object in one eternal instant. 
 It is not clear where in such a finished universe there is a-ny 
 place for free individuals even as mere thinkers, to say nothing 
 of real activity on the part oi the finite.* A completed ex- 
 perience would seem to leave no room for even such noveltif^s 
 as a movement of reflective thought which is a kind of experi- 
 ence. It is submitted that in a finished universe, or in a com- 
 pleted experience, there is no reality in 'time experience' or 
 *free- individuals. It docs not make it less impossible, to 
 postulate Vlegrees of re^dity'. If my thinking, as psychical 
 fact, and mv activities involving the environing world, are ?1] 
 there eternally, it seems impossible to account for my sense 
 of pioneering, of resiMaisibility. Or does the Whole take ?/dre 
 to provide even this ^feeling' of being free ? 
 
 W^e have noted already that Royce does not think of the 
 finite consciousness as the object of the thought of the Absolute 
 but as a constituent element of the Absolute as Subject. It 
 participates in the nature of the Absolute. If this Subject, 
 individuated into constituent elements, is eternally fulfilled in 
 
 I 
 
 Its object, then fl.e 'parts' are fulfilled also. There is to be no 
 .lupheation of thought or experience. Time-experience seems 
 some Lsolated extra, nnaecountablv thrown in. If the 'parts' 
 as such, are not eternally fulfilled, then their fulfilment in time 
 may be real, but rmly at the expense of the 'finishedness' of the 
 world Inasniuch as Prof. IJoyce would cling, as a point of 
 departure, to finite fact, it would seem contradictory to rea^h 
 logically a position which would enable him to count the poi-it 
 of departure something less than real. In view of the lar^c 
 place given in the later jKM-iods to the work and activities o^^ 
 men ami society, we must believe that Koyce counts the finite 
 individual as real. A "completed experience" however makes 
 the growing, changing finite less than real.. 
 
 If one is to keep in touch with finite exi)ericnce while tr-ie- 
 ing out the logical boundaries, it might be objected that in 
 finite experience a 'compli-ted experience' is one which ha- 
 ended an.l is already past. Our experiences have that way 
 of passing as they are completed. Just what an experience 
 eternally complete and eternally present would mean is some- 
 Hung an analogy for which I ,lo not find in my experience. 
 un the other hand, experience presents us with many instances 
 where one's mind or purpose becomes so clear-cut' and well- 
 defined that as an active purpose it functions without inner 
 change. It has become a fixed principle. Finite experience 
 presents us with a tendency to a reasonable and unchangin- 
 identity in the indindual as he embodies his life-purpose and 
 produces novelties in life-content. Might we not think of .a 
 world infinitely unfinished, of a fully-defined^ and hence .ib 
 solutely unchanging Purpose, embodying itself in this uni- 
 verse ? The identity would move forward unchanged This 
 would leave room for free individuals and a real time-experi- 
 ence. The contributions of the free individual, however 
 infinitesimally small, would yet be real. It is enough at this 
 point to sho^v that a real finite and a completed 'Experience' 
 are incompatible. 
 
 Hy Jones in the "Hibberf .Toumal"' vol, I, No. I, in reviewing Royce's Oifford 
 Lectures says "He adopts Mr. Bradley's doctrine of thought and, from that point 
 of view, the substitution of the categories whole and pairt for those of appearance 
 and reality is not possible, not- therefore a positive defence of both the finite a id 
 ttio infinite." 
 
 It would be necessary to note that a fully-defined purpose or principle in thp flni^A 
 18 not one which is formulated in exact detail as to it^lJ^l^ ^^^■ o® 
 
 the perfectly defined Purpose or Will o1 thtAb^ lutV^ 'ZTtl bf ont i^ed a^ 
 fixing before-hand the complete manner of its application. conceived as 
 
 3. 
 
 I '» 
 
20 
 
 liOf/cc and Individual to it 
 
 Ii()ijC(j (ind I ndividiialion 
 
 ■11 
 
 II. 
 
 According to this logic of Trof. Koyce, he demonstrates tlie 
 nature and existence of a Being in full and perfect-union 
 with the objects of his thought. The demonstration is based 
 on the nature of finite thought. This logic is open to question 
 for this so-called concrete union finds no analogy in the finite. 
 
 I find in my experience that the conditions of. truth and 
 error involve in me an ever widening knowledge of reality. I 
 have a focus in consciousne:?s and it gives, no doubt, a short 
 stretch of direct experience. But attention, as I possess it. 
 must know continual change. 1 find that much of the interest 
 of life consists in passing to new phases of experience. Tliat 
 which is passed is carried over ])y me in some sort of represen- 
 tative way. My experience, per se, does not show any signs 
 of such widvMiin'g as might mean, as an ultimate, the one fixed 
 vision of tlie \vh<de. The conditions of attention would be 
 violated and the senile of monotony rather tlian interest woidd 
 result. 
 
 When I look at this dinn^t exi)erience, I find that while 
 directly or concretely present it is not actual nnion with or 
 immanence of myself in the objects. Indeed the objects ever 
 remain beyond my thought which remains always a thought 
 of reality.' There is no basis then for the concrete union 
 ascribed to Thought. 
 
 It is rather jiu ever widening knowledge of reality, rather 
 than experience of it, Vvdiich is found to be significant in my 
 experience. There is the diflerence between the representation 
 of the thought of reality as experienced in the past and the 
 present. It is a difTereuce of time rather than a difference 
 involving in present experience a direct union with reality. 
 I know I have seen a book. It was yesterday. Right now T 
 see it again. My thought has been compared with the per 
 ception in either case. In the former case, psychology tells 
 us there comes up some physiological representative of the 
 former perception. In the latter case, I have the original per- 
 ception present. But now in either case very much more is 
 involved in the physical book than my perceiving and thinkiiig 
 of it. As a concrete thing it has not been in complete union 
 with my thought. My perception of the book indicates +hat 
 it is there apart from any ])rivate experience of mine. Tlie 
 
 ] 
 
 object of my thought will not be literally the book and all it 
 actually is. But I know that this object of my thought, this 
 intellectual <!ontent, has reference to a real object in the exis- 
 tent or physical world. 
 
 Our thought, with its proiilems of truth and error, does imply 
 a completed unity. It is the unity of a whole of hnowledge. 
 It is not a single and complete experience of reality, but a com- 
 plete knowledge of reality. But this is an ideal. No doubt 
 it implies the bringing together of all reality within a single 
 whole. It is not however there literally and physically, but 
 in knowledge form."* 
 
 Only in this form of a moving ex{)erience and an accumu- 
 lating of knowledge of realitv, do we seem to do iustice to 
 other psychological features. It is not possible to feel uncer- 
 tainty and cjrtainty on the same point and feel them simul- 
 taneously. All the personal sense of ignorance, evil or error, 
 implies other experiences in which they may be overcome. My 
 actual feelings of ignorance and of recovery from it imply a 
 widening knowledge through further experiences. To crowd 
 lx)th into a single experience as contemporaries is to do injus- 
 tice to the psychological coloring of the facts.. A sense of error 
 and of truth recovered belongs to a part of reality, not to the 
 whole. The former carries its own coloring or feeling tone 
 which cannot be transferred to another. 
 
 My point is this, that our thought is ever an ideal represen- 
 tation of reality, never an actual or concrete nnion with it 
 Logic cannot give, on the basis of finite facts, such concrete 
 union. Only a conceptual contrast, based on the wholeness 
 yet limited nature, of finite experience as direct and immediate, 
 can give the conception of some synoptic vision that in an in- 
 stant might envisage the totality. And such can be but a con- 
 ception or imaginative presentation.. 
 
 If one wishes to round out logically, on the basis of finite 
 thought, the nature of reality, one might hold that there is at 
 least a society of knowers or selves. Certainly one advances 
 beyond his knowledge and its logic when he postulates an all- 
 inclusive Thought or Selfconsciousness. We have no fin'te 
 experience furnishing an analogy of a self or consciousness 
 having such an experiential relation to the objects of its thought 
 
 4. The Philosophical Review (1903) p. 48 f, A. K. Rogers on Prof. Royre »nd 
 Monism. 
 
,« 
 
 22 
 
 lloyce and Induulualioa 
 
 1 
 
 ft 
 
 i 
 
 lloijce and 1 tali cidaal ion 
 
 2:\ 
 
 that there is no traiis-subjective reference. Closing that gap 
 is not the looic of existent facts bnt a conceptual construction. 
 
 in. 
 
 The other (iuestiou left i.nii)igu(ais is that of the principle 
 of individuation. The possible embodiments of finite thought 
 seem indefinitely ninny' when viewed conceptually. 'Thought' 
 or the Absolute 'includes not only all actual experiences but all 
 possible experiences. This would seem to mean 'innumerable' 
 worlds. But we have in reahly one world. Reflection pre- 
 sents us witli alternatives which, if not equally acceptable, 
 seem equally possible. Royce discusses' the simpler forms 
 of knowledge and indiciites the positive or active nature of the 
 mental process. The mind seeks unity and simplicity. Atten 
 tion ''fixes on only a portion of the field at a time.'' It makes 
 a difference to sense-impressions whether or not they 
 are in the focus of coiisciousness. Attention is ac- 
 tive in increasing and diminishing the intensity ol: 
 impressions. The measure of effort which accompanies atten- 
 tion affects qualitatively the impression received. ''Attention 
 is the same activity that'in a more developed shape we coinmonly 
 call will." Attention, in thus narrowing our focus, "males 
 all our knowing and believing possible." Along with attention 
 we find recognition. It too tends to alter the data of sense to- 
 wards order and simplicity. Our interest also will be seen 
 as affecting our resultant knowledge. Thus "the most insig- 
 nificant knowledge is in some sense an original product of the 
 man who knows." In it is expressed his disposition, his power 
 of attention, his skill in recognition, his interest in reality, his 
 creative might " ' 
 
 Here we have an aspect of the finite which, with the greater 
 emphasis of the second period, developed into the Voluntarism 
 for which Royce stands in the academic world. It explains 
 the selective nature of finite thought. But the selectiveness is 
 far from absolute. Other possibilities linger on the horizon. 
 
 Reflection guides the finite individual. The sense of diroc 
 tion is reached in ''Moments of Insight". These short-lived 
 
 o. 
 
 6. 
 
 7. 
 
 Roycp. in the next period, writes -It is of the r.ature of pure or abstract think- 
 ing to deal with endless possibilities." 'The Conception of God p. 193. 
 The Relizioa^ Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 308-323. ^ *^ , . » 
 
 F H Bradl >y denied that any of our categories apply to the Absolute. Royce 
 oerees with legard to physical cateRorics only. The categories expressive of the 
 human individual are applicable. At least he claims to carry over these .-at- 
 gori.s. It is a criticism offer, d in this thesis that the categories of the finite nro 
 not carried across unchanged. 
 
 I 
 
 
 moments reveal in ideal the fruition of the categories' followed 
 laboriously by reflection. The ^oneness' of the world is an 
 open book in the moment of insight but the way to it is not 
 so clear. Reflective thought, with its point of departure in 
 finite fact, does not make clear how 'Thought' constitutes otic 
 world and finds complete fulfilment in it. Reflection takes up 
 its task where individuation has alreadv done much of its work 
 We are conscious before we are self-conscious. 
 
 The treatment, given above of attention and recognition 
 and interest, seems psychological rather than metaphysical. In 
 the acquisition of new knowledge, we are affected by our previ 
 ous experiences. We hold our past in a vicarious way, in 
 images or kinesthesis or in some other symbolic form. One 
 might say that our history is one where each new experience 
 has its effect on the psychic organism and helps to constitute 
 one's psychic attitude. But I carry the objects of ray know- 
 ledge in a vicarious way, not in the concrete direct way of im- 
 mediate union with them which is ascribed to 'Thought'. We 
 do not, in our thinking of the world of objects, reach such 
 union with the real objects as to c*<3nstitute or reconstitute them 
 what they are. Finite thinking, as such, does not imply this 
 individuating or constitutive power ascribed to Thought. 
 
 There is a distinction which we must not ignore between the 
 object as it enters our limited life of immediate experience, 
 and the object as it exists in a world which we reconstruct in- 
 directly by thought and whose connections are independent of 
 our practical teleology. One must separate carefully between 
 the real world and the knowledge of the world which one p« s- 
 sesses. Connections exist objectively in the real w^orld. But 
 in my experience I make connections. Only in this practical, 
 teleologicala^ way does cause enter into the constitution of 
 'finite experience'. Existence for knowledge, and existence for 
 experience are not essentially convertible terms. It seems to 
 me that Royce makes them synonymous. There is never that 
 immediate presence of reality in the very thought-experience 
 of finite beings. Reality is brought home to us by a thought 
 
 8. There may be two meanings given to teleology. It may imply an end to the 
 action as a distinct result. Here the activity itself is only a means to that cud. 
 All positive value will lie in the result — not in the activity. This seems to me 
 to make the essence of reality a static fact. Progress would be only a mere inci- 
 dent in attaining the end. The second meaning is that the end is actually realiz- 
 ing itself in life. There is value in the process per se. It is not a question 
 merely of a finished result or attainment. Royce in 'Thought', 'Self or 'Exper- 
 ience' seems to imply the former type of teleology, whereas in finite experience it 
 is clearly the latter which is present. 
 
24 
 
 lioyce and I ndlcidnailon 
 
 llojie and Individual 10 II 
 
 ■mi 'J 
 
 distinct from it. llonco it is no logic but a bare contrast tliat 
 enables Eoyce to see in finite ^experience' that which logically 
 implies an Absolute, or a direct and immediate experience. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A furrher qnestiim which will be more fully treated in Part 
 II. relates to the ideal of duty held up to the finite individual. 
 As a part" of the infinite Subiect, and on l>ecoming aware, in ins 
 consciousness, of this relation to the whole, his supreme task 
 is to will the Universal Will. He must thus return into the 
 life of the whole. 
 
 One mav call this a doctrine of self-alienation for one must 
 seek -impersonal"^' ends. Selt>onsciousness would seem to carry 
 with it the ideal of self-negation or resignation as its true direc- 
 tion. Xow in theory this might seem plausible. But in actunl 
 life the springs of action are ever personal. There will bo 
 carried over at the start of a life where the self is sunk in the 
 universal will somethini- of the impetus which will rise froTU 
 the choice as personal. Ihit it is true to life that such impetus 
 will wane. 
 
 One mioht indeed deubt whether altruism as an iih'al is 
 not both abstract and unreal. Self-love takes many formt^. 
 Altruism is one of them. It is very d^mbtful if it is the 
 highest. 
 
 Royce notes that we learn the moaning of the Divine 
 Thought in our consciousness.^' It will bear all the niarks of 
 a pers'onal interpretation and of spontaneous origination. How 
 one may make another aware of its impaitiality or imperson- 
 ality scims problematic. Not only so but, mediated through 
 human consciousness, it will come forth in all sorts of partial 
 forms. Which shall the individual follow, his own or 
 another's ? Which is most like the archetype ? 
 
 Prof. Rovce would no doubt say that no one finite wiP, 
 as finite, represents the Universal Wiil. It seems then on- 
 will have left just the bare, empty will to have the Universal 
 
 9 In the Supplementary Essay in Vol. I of the Gifford Lectures Royce i"u8trates 
 he part-whole relation from the analogy of self-represent.tive ^^J^^^^ ^^^^^J^^^^ 
 matics The part is equal to or is the image of the whole. It may be that Koyce 
 Spends the illustration to be more than an analogy. But in a true infinite the 
 nd"rduated eh^ment images the whole, not in a wooden ---^o-one coireBpondence 
 but in a differentiated response to organic necessities. See on th^ point Bosan- 
 q^et "'The Principle of Individuality and Value" pp. 38. 393 f. The mathem.ti 
 cal system is abstract or empty of content. The true infinite .8 ^"^^^'^te. 
 10 See The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 211. 212. 213. 11. Ibid. p. 470. 
 
 Will, the will that there shall be such a WilP^ As this is an 
 ideal rather than an embodied fact, to which one may givo 
 adherence, it seems impossible to get away actually from ^'per- 
 sonal" aims and ideals. If the Infinite Subject has individuat- 
 ed into a world of finite individuals, will not these 'parts' be 
 such in reality only when as "parts' they achieve a richer in- 
 dividual content? It is something to give one's life to the whole. 
 Can one do more ? Yes. By having more to give. This will 
 l>e found in a greater emphasis on the final value of the personal. 
 
 12. Wo have here not an attaining of a concrete will, but, by means of a contract 
 
 : based on the imperfection or incompleteness of the finite, an outlining in concep- 
 
 ^ tion of a perfect or complete finite. Thus we have not escaped from the personal. 
 
26 
 
 Eoyce and Individuaiwn 
 
 Jloi/ce and Indl c Iduai iu n 
 
 .li 
 
 Period IL 
 
 nr \rTKK tv. 
 
 Exposition. 
 I. 
 
 In 'The Conception of God', the Supplementary Essay i> 
 Koyce's answer to the question on individuation. Then in the 
 Gifford Lectures, he gives in complete form his whole meta 
 physical position. 
 
 The difference between pure or abstract thinking and con- 
 crete thinking or 'Thought' lies in the Will or Purpose.' Pure 
 reflection presents no mystery. In Will one passes beyond 
 the merely conceptual or the contemplative. Will is activr 
 and involves other elements than reflection.^ It is not irra 
 tional. Yet it may not make explicit its implicit reasons. Sc' 
 the kernel of indiViduality is Will. Or better, the organiz- 
 ing, individuating principle is Will. ''The satisfied Will, as such, 
 is the sole Principle of Individuation.'" "Experience always 
 determines the infinite universals of thought to concrete in- 
 dividual examples. Thought, on the other hand, even when 
 it defines the contents of experience, always does so by viewing 
 them as individual cases of an infinite series of possible case=."* 
 ''In this sense, the individuahty, the concrete reality, of the 
 contents of the Absolute Experience, must be conceived as, on 
 the one hand, fulfilling ideas, but as on the other hand freely, 
 unconstrainedly,— ifyou will, caiyriciously,—emhodymg tiieir 
 universality in the verv fact of the presence of this life, this 
 experience, this world. ''^ 
 
 The reality of the Absolute is demonstrated in the Roycean 
 way, by a consideration of the relation of thought and its ob- 
 ject in connection wdth realistic theories. The 'independence* 
 
 1. In Munsterberg's "GrundzuRe der Psychologie" pp. 44-45, it is held that the 
 dot-isive step in the mutual contact in experiencing our fellow men, ib in the will 
 rather than in the intellect. 
 
 2. G. K. Chesterton has noted this when he tells us th»t it is idle to argue with the 
 choice of the soul. 
 
 3. "The World and the Individual" vol. I, p. 586. 
 
 4. 'The Conception of God" p. 194. 5. Ibid. p. 203. 
 p. 186 f. (Italics are mine). 
 
 • and the 'relation' of the objects 'beyond' indicate the larger 
 
 • and inclusive experience where thought is adequate to the 
 object; "a Unity not bound to the limitations of our own flow 
 of successive and numerically separate experiences, although 
 inclusive, both of this flow, and of these various experiences 
 themselves, — in their very fragmentariness,— but also in their 
 relationsliips."^ 'Omniscience' or 'Thought' is the best term 
 ''to define the Absolute."' P>ut the purely theoretical definition 
 must be completed. Ue ])ie})ares for this crjiiiplorion by an 
 examination of the nature of finite Will. 
 
 Will involves ''Desire, Choice, and Efiicacious Effort."- 
 
 De.-ire alyne may be cn])rici<iis, though desire is at the root of 
 
 . will. "Unless I first desire, I shall never get any of the more 
 
 complex and rational processes of the will."** Choice is a more 
 
 rational level, but may remain only a mental process. It calls 
 
 • logically for effective expression. This expression may be 
 estimated in kinesthesis only. Will involves a higher element. 
 It is "Attention".*^ Our voluntary processes are, in all their 
 grades, selective rather than inventive. Consciousness has a 
 focus and to direct the focus upon some part of the field of 
 vision is to cause that spot to come out more clearly and the 
 rest to sink into obscurity. Attention is selective and, in its 
 selection, the limitless possibilities of fulfilment of the idea 
 pass away as the one concrete choice is made. This significant 
 (^hoice is in the finite ever less than complete. But the direc- 
 
 I tion of will is evident. The limitless or endless conceptual 
 , possibilities become embodied in the one concrete. It is a 
 ' limitation in the abstract but a distinct expansion in the con- 
 crete. "Experience always determines the infinite liniversais 
 of thought to concrete individual examples."^ ^ 
 
 This conception of the will, filled out logically, implies that 
 ^vhile we may abstractly think of the ideas of the Absolute as 
 liaving infinite possibilities of embodiment; vet there is an Ab- 
 solute "Arrest" of such possibilities. The one world embodies 
 fully the ideas of the Absolute. Our embodiment of ideas 
 never attains this absolute arrest. In the case of the Absolute, 
 further conceptual ])ossibilitie3 are absolutely unreal. Just 
 why the one world must thus realise fully the ideas of the 
 Absolute, we cannot know\ There is here to the spectator the 
 
 6. Ibid. p. 178. 7. Ibid 
 
 Tho Conception of (iod. p. 187. 9. Ibid. p. 187. 10. Ibid 
 
 191. 
 
2b 
 
 lloyce and Indii iduaUon 
 
 presence of 'caprice'.'^ The caprice lies in this, that the act 
 of the will as a mental process is hidden from the onlooker. 
 
 This embodiment is ''an organized, significant, purposeful, 
 or teleological, worthy perfect whole of fact."'* "The Will 
 individuates according to its own needs ; and if it needs, for its 
 fulfilment, free individuals, it will possess them/''* The 
 Universal Will thus individuates a world of free individual^.'' 
 This initial or eternal individuation shows its presence in the 
 finite individual in his will. He is a free individual. 
 
 This ability of the finite selves to have interests which arc 
 focussed, — exclusive interests, — is that which individuates in- 
 dividuals in the time-experience. In developing aims, object^ 
 or ideals, we are out of the chaos of more primitive levels of 
 life. We are making ourselves significant individuals. ''It 
 is by an individuating or exclusive interest in living one lifc; 
 for one purpose, that a man l)ecomes a moral individual, one 
 self, and not a mere collection of empirical social contrast 
 efifects."'^ We are real as we are thus individuated. To be 
 individual is to "be unique.'"' 
 
 Now while the world of individuals has been individuated, 
 not by the thought but by the Love, Interest, and Will of the Ab- 
 solute, yet "Divine Omniscience is fulfilled in the world whicli 
 Divine'Love individuates.'''' Thus "individuality, in such a 
 world would neither be absorbed in one indistinct whole nor 
 yet be opaque fact, for the exclusive Love of the Absolute for 
 this world would render the individuality of the fact secondarily 
 intelligible as being the fulfilment of the very exclusiveness of 
 the love.""" In this original endowment of individuality con- 
 ferred by the Absolute, the individual has his distinctiveness.''^ 
 
 Roycc and Individual ion 
 
 ^0 
 
 11. 
 
 14. 
 
 15. 
 
 Tho Conception oi God, p. 212. 12. Ibid. p. 202. 13. Ibid. p. 210. 
 "The Conception of God" p. 271. 
 
 This view puts central significance in God's Will or Purpose in the initial "sun- 
 dering" of himself. An argument which seems to have influenced Prof. Royce to 
 make this change of emphasis on the element of Will is found in the criticism by- 
 Prof. Le Conte (see "The Conception of God" p. 76 f.) Taking Thought in the 
 sense of thought, reflective, contemplative, 'powerless', he sees no explanation of 
 why this particular sort of world is the embodiment of that thought. He gives 
 his evolutionary conception of God's purpose. Divine Energy has sundered itself 
 in order to have something to contemplate and ultimately to love. This sunder'^ri 
 Divine Energy, the immanence of God in nature, rises through various levels until 
 in man, in self-conciousness, there is the birth into the spiritual world, where man 
 holds communion with Deity. 
 
 16. 'The Conception of God' p. 265. 
 
 17. "The Conception of God" p. 268. 18. Ibid. p. 259. 19. Ibid. p. 266. 
 
 20. Though will is looted in desire and, in untutored nature, is liable to all sorts of 
 whims and caprices, yet, in the will of the intelligent, the caprice is not of this 
 sort. It is the unpredictable expression of a free being. It is necessary to note 
 that the highest in man is thus linked back to the desires which, untutored, give 
 'anarchy'. In the true individual, desire is not extirpated but put in its proper 
 place. 
 
 23 
 
 I It is not then just as Mhinker' that the finite individual is the 
 
 image of the whole. ''The Absolute individuates the lives of 
 
 , A and B by virtue of interests, of forms of will and of self- 
 
 1 consciousness, which are difl'erent for A and I)."" Such in- 
 
 I dividuation is not a mere fiat but appears in the development 
 
 i of individual will. ''The individuating will of any person, as 
 
 I this person, is expressed from moment to moment, in his more 
 
 J or less conscious intention to view his life as a struggle towards, 
 
 • and consequently as in contrast with, his ideal goal."" The 
 
 Absolute Will, in individuating a Avill, has not predetermined 
 
 in the physical sense the temporal sequence of its acts.' 
 
 IL 
 
 Having made definite his conception that the world-primary 
 is Purpose or Will, Royce gives us in the Gifford Lectures a 
 full system of metaphysics on this basis. 
 
 The Absolute is the "Individual of Individuals" and "the 
 [satisfied Will, as such, is the sole Principle of Individuation.'"* 
 
 lloyce approaches the problem of the nature of reality 
 [through the medium of ideas. His first question is not, WHiat 
 Jis reality ? but "What is an Idea 1 and How can Ideas stand 
 in any true relation to reality?" To start with reality makes fail- 
 ure certain. "Begin by accepting the mere brnte 
 
 reality of the world as fact, and there you are, sunk in an ocean 
 
 of mysteries The world as fact now bewilders vou. . 
 
 l>y a chaos of unintelligible fragments and of scattered 
 
 <'vonts; now it lifts up your heart with wondrous glimpses of 
 ineffable goodness, and now it arouses your wrath by frightful 
 
 t^igns of cruelty and baseness." It is a "defiant mystery 
 
 3)ersistently baffling, unless we find somewhere the key to it.""'' 
 
 We must "assert the primacy of the world as Idea over the 
 World as Fact," and "deal with the problem of reality from 
 the side of the means through which we are supposed to be 
 Me to attain reality, that is, from the side of Ideas." "What 
 then is an Idea ? and how can an Idea be related to Real- 
 
 }tv ?"= 
 
 P. 317. 
 
 !l."The Conception of God" p. 312. 22. Ibid. p. 31G. 23. Ibid 
 
 54. "The World and the Individual" vol. I, pp. 40 and 586. 
 
 15. "The World and the Individual" I, p. 16. 26. Ibid.I, pp. 17, 18. 27 Ibid I 
 
 p. i;>. . . . 
 
ao 
 
 lloycc and Indiildualluu 
 
 Jlojjce and Individual ion 
 
 :J1 
 
 The essence of an idea does not consist in representing a 
 fact existent beyond itself. This is the ordinary view. Its 
 primary and inner character does not lie in the objective refer- 
 ence, in that it images or symbolizes or in any other way indi- 
 cates external facts or events. Ideas express the active sidt 
 of life rather than the receptive or sensory. The elements con- 
 stituting our ideas have been selected under the guidance of a 
 purpose. It is the voluntary purpose that organizes the ele 
 ments of an idea into a unity as well as chooses them. Idea 
 are primarily 'pla'ns of action' and represent intentions. "Idea.^ 
 have the significance of an act of will." In brief an idea i^ 
 "any state of consciousness whether simple or complex, which, 
 when present, is then and there viewed as at least the partiii 
 expression or embodiment of a single conscious purpose."" . 
 pen is really defi'ned by its use. The intrinsic meaning of i 
 flows from the purpose of an agent. 
 
 Ideas arc secondarily representative of objects. This ^exter 
 naF or objective meaning would seem to be the one of mo^ 
 significance. Validity and value as truth cannot belong to an 
 idea through conformity with a mere purpose. It must indi- 
 cate the nature of an object. However, much voluntary selec 
 tion may operate in the constitution and arrangement of the 
 contents of an idea, the function of the idea is to express the 
 truth and to conform to facts. And facts are stubborn and, at 
 least on the surface, indifferent to the purposes and intentions 
 of individuals. Indeed, the value of an idea as a vehicle of 
 objective truth seems to be destroyed just in the degree to whicli 
 it is observed to be subservient to an individuars will. It 
 would seem, therefore, that the purpose with which we form 
 our conceptions of objects is not relevant to their truth. Our 
 knowledge must confomi to facts, not the facts to our desires ; 
 and in this respect there is the strongest contrast between the 
 ^intrinsic meaning' and the objective reference of an idea. 
 
 This is the "world-knot""'' and is a contrast which Royc 
 would heighten. But he would reduce it by reducing the e.\ 
 ternal meaning, qua external, into mere appearance; and thei 
 representing it as an aspect of the internal meaning. The e\ 
 temal meaning is simply the internal meaning imperfectly un 
 derstood. "Our final result will simply reabsorb the secondar 
 
 nspect, the external meaning, into the completed primary as- 
 )ect, — the completely embodied internal meaning of the idea, 
 "he final meaning of every complete idea, when fully embodied, 
 
 must be viewed as wholly an internal meaning."^** 
 
 . Jf to the ordinary hunuin consciousness objects appear to 
 }>e independent of man's purposes, and to determine his ideas 
 for him, that arises simply from his imperfect comprehension 
 
 ^of what both his will and objects mean. The more fully he 
 nterprets them, that is to say, the more intelligent his purpose 
 ►ecomes, and the better he comprehends objects, the more the 
 purpose and the facts will be found to approach one another. 
 I shall not only imitate my object as another and correspond 
 t • it from without. I shall become one with it, and so inter- 
 nally possess it." "The real world is just our whole will em- 
 bodied."'"*^ 
 
 I*ut we only partially know our own will, and, in conse- 
 quence, we find it obstructed by that which appears to be en- 
 ^rely foreign and other to us, by 'brute facts'. But the process 
 " comprehending facts strips them of their otherness, explains 
 way their indifference, and foreignness, brings them into our 
 kvn intelligent lives, makes them part of our living experience, 
 nd constitutes them into expressions of our conscious purpose, 
 pd, on the other hand, the process explaining the world as 
 ir "embodied purpose" is the process of explicating the im- 
 licit significance of our own will, till at last we find it is co- 
 itensive with real being. "Our theory will identify ignor- 
 ice of reality with finite vagueness of meaning, will assert 
 lat the very absolute, in its fulness of life, is even now the 
 ^jcct that you really mean by your fragmentary passing ideas, 
 d that the defect of your present human form of consciousness* 
 's in the fact that you just now do not know precisely what 
 
 >\\ mean. 
 
 M32 
 
 28. 
 
 'The World nnd the Individual. T .pp. 22. 23. 29. Ibid. T, p. 35. 30. Ibid 
 
 Xow this absorption of the external meaning of ideas in the 
 internal meaning is to do away wuth the distinction between 
 exiernal objects and conscious volitions, and to represent the 
 world of reality simply as the expresion of an intelligent will, 
 i^irther to represent the 'real world as just our w^hole will 
 ^Tyibodied' is to identify man with the Absolute, and to make 
 h i > finit ude a mere appearance, an accident due to his ignor- 
 
 T>. 3 4. 31. Ibid. I, pp. 37. 38. 32. n)kl. T. p. 39. 33. Ibid. I, p. 38. 34. 
 
82 
 
 Iloyce and J ndlriduallon 
 
 Boyce and Individuation 
 
 
 ance. It may be an appearance from which he can never en 
 tirely free himself, for he may be endlessly engaged in over- 
 coming this ignorance, to which the contrast between inner an ! 
 outer is due. Yet his destiny, were it fulfilled, is to "faco 
 Being", to "become one with it, and so internally to possess it''' 
 This identification of the world with man's will and man's wil 
 with the Absolute is the very means of secnring the individual 
 ity, the unique personal existence of both man and God. Go 
 is the "Individual of Individuals.'"* And seeing that man i 
 will, his individual rational life, in the process of comprehend 
 ing the world more and more fully, ever deepens within itselt 
 into greater inner determinateness and unity with itself. II 
 becomes free of the whole world, for the whole worl 
 is his own, and the enactment of his personal intelligeir 
 will. This man's action is "as unique as is the whole divii;* 
 life, as free as is the whole meaning of which the w^orld is a 
 expression." It is one with the divine life. "When I thi 
 consciously and uniquely will, it is I, then, who just here ai 
 God's will."''^ 
 
 Ibid. I, p. 40. 35. Ibid. T. pp. 468, 409. 
 
 CIIAPTKR V. 
 
 Critical. 
 
 I. 
 
 With Will as the principle of individuation there is a diffi- 
 culty similar to that where thought was held to be the principle. 
 "A will, or a purpose, can never be the whole of the world. 
 A purpose always means that, founding yourself on matter 
 accepted as a basis, you recognize a certain alteration as essen- 
 tial, in view of the admitted situation, for the restoration or 
 partial restoration of harmony.'" Such at least i:>/ 
 finite purjx>se. It is "a partial phenomenon within a 
 totality." All processes of will imply the contrast be- 
 tween existence as it comes to us in the here and now of actual 
 feeling, and existence as it should be. and as we seek to make 
 it, for the satisfaction of our various impulses, cravings and 
 desires. In an experience where the aspects of ideality and \ 
 real existence are once for all finally united, thought complet- 
 ed, will fulfilled or embodied, we arc giving to Svill' and 
 'thought' meanings not in ordinary usage.^ We have obscurity 
 then in Will as the princi])le of individuation. The logical 
 demonstration of Will as completely satisfied and fulfilled is 
 based on facts of finite experience. Yet a finished world is 
 not in accord with the nature of will" a^ we know it. 
 
 Will in the finite has still another ])liase. Xot only do we 
 regard will as in process of embodying itself, but as purpose, 
 in its exact definition, we think of will as growing more definite 
 
 1. Bosanquet "The Principle of Individuality and Value", p. ">91. See also A. E. 
 Taylor, "Elements of Metaphysics" p. 410 f. 
 
 2. In Spinoza's Ethics I, 17. Sch. we read, "If intellect and volition belong to the 
 eternal essence of God each of these attributes must differ toto caelo from our 
 will and intellect," See also F. H. Bradley, "Truth and Reality" 96 f. "Will must 
 
 imply something in the self, or beyond the self, which is other than will and apart 
 from this 'other' I cannot find any sense or meaning in the 'will' either of man 
 or God." See also p. 350 note. 
 3 Prof. Howison sees danger in basing will in any sense on desire, or of finding its 
 JCajUaJft-dfiait^^**® '^^^ conception of God, p. 187 f. Royce's dialectic of Will). 
 Ho thinks such a relation opens the door to possible anarchy (see Report of the 
 Philosophical Association for 1915, in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology' and 
 Scientific Method, Feb. 17th, 1916, p. 99). He would find the basis of origina- 
 tion in man in "rational self-activity." (The Conception of God, p. 321. Ed. 
 note). Will is not indeterminate in any direction. Selective attention is motivat- 
 ed. Howison believes we are forced back in search of cognitive grounds of 
 choice. RoycG would acknowledge the presence of other influences than the putely 
 cocnitive. T>psirf! and instinct arc present 
 
u 
 
 Jioyrr anr^ / ixlirifhtalion 
 
 and adequate. The 'Arrest' we tind in will is not so nnioli 
 that which absohitely precludes all other embodiment but thai 
 arrest which perfect definition gives to the purpose. Mighi 
 we not think of the Absolute as a fully defined Purpose, exist 
 ing not as a mere ideal but as being embodied is an infinitelv 
 unfinished world?* Part II. will deal more fully with thi> 
 point. 
 
 IT. 
 
 As noted in the criticism of J\^riod I, a -completed exper- 
 ience'' leaves no real place for free individuals. While Though 
 individuated the world, the finite was still capable of vali 1 
 thinking. As reflection it was 'powerless' and indeed soughi 
 no power. 
 
 But if Will individuates the world and embodies itself con. 
 pletely, there is no room for real will in the finite. ''Whoever 
 is possessed of any meaning, whoever faces truth, whoever rat 
 ionally knows, has before his consciousness at once, that which 
 possesses the unity of a knowing process, and that which fulfil ~ 
 a purpose, or in other words, that which constitutes what w 
 have from the outset called an act of will as well as an act of 
 knowledge.'- '^ Does this mean more than getting a clearly d( 
 fined thought, ideal or purpose be'ore the mind? If it implir- 
 an active effort to embody the will, then in a 'closed uniyers(3' 
 such effort** is unaccounted for and its results are negligible 
 and temporal replica'^ of the eternal realities. 
 
 IloycG and hidlvlduatioi 
 
 »> \ 
 'j.> 
 
 the closed universe, it was noted that the finite could know his 
 relation as a 'part' of the whole, and could know that the w^hole 
 is the expression of a Universal Will. As a 'part' of this Will, 
 ■ the activity in time open to the part was to return to the wlioh^ 
 from which it had been individuated. This doctrine of duty 
 seemed a doctrine of self-alienation. 
 
 In this second period the position is imchanged.' "In all 
 this my own struggle wath evil, wherein lies my comfort? I 
 answer, my true comfort can never lie in my temporal attain- 
 ment of my goal. For it is my first business, as a moral agent, 
 and as a servant of God, to set before myself a goal that, in 
 
 ^ rime, simply cannot be attained Wlierein can comfort 
 
 I truly be found? I reply. In the consciousness, first, that the 
 I ideal sorrows of our finitude are identically God's own sor- 
 j rows and in the assurance, secondly, that God's ful- 
 filment in the eternal order is to be won through the very 
 
 I bitterness of tribulation through this, my tribulation.'"* 
 
 ^ In this my attitude there is resignation, acceptance rather than 
 I any active cointrol. I am loyal to the Universal Will even if 
 T do not comprehend it.® 
 
 , 7 Oa this point see W. E. Hocking, "The Meaning of God in Hainan Experieace" 
 ' p. 498 i. "It seems to me that Royce has brought this principle of altruism to 
 ita philosophic fulfilment." 
 
 S The World and the Individual, pp. 407, 408. 
 
 y Th!« point is dealt with fully in Part II. 
 
 Ill 
 
 With regard to the finite as 'part' we are no further aheaJ 
 than in the earlier period. Xeglecting there the doctrine of 
 
 5 
 6 
 
 Bosanquet (Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 113 f.) takes the ground that 
 if observation and experience of our formed individual character are adequate one 
 
 can predict the expression of will. Koyt-o would say. I think, that if one hud t'le 
 complete situation one might predict. There seems no clear cut Ime between 
 •rational self-activity* and less rational stages in mental development. Royce 
 
 is urging for the expression in will of the wh(»le personality. 
 
 Proi James in his Essay, "The Dilemma of Determinism" (The Will to Believe, 
 p 181) has comp.'ired our relation to the universe to that of the unskilled player 
 and the skilled one. The Intter knows not ahead the moves of the opponent, but 
 ho knows ho himself will win. 
 The World and the Individual I, 433 f. 
 James Scth in a review of "The Conception of God" in the Philosophical Review* 
 
 (1898) p. 312, says "Will is after all only 'appearance' in man, its reality is the| 
 Will of Cod." 
 
?i'W>«ll 
 
 ■..■fltaj»vi">t,-.. ^■ 
 
 .»*• 
 
 36 
 
 Itoycc and liuluUluallon 
 
 lioijcc and Indiridiiallon 
 
 
 Period III. 
 
 ciiAi'TEU vr. 
 
 Er position. 
 
 In ^The Philosophy of Loyalty' (1907) we have Royee's 
 first attempt to deal directly with the question of ethics since' 
 his first book. The latter dealt with the subject only in outhne 
 with the ulterior aim of showing the implication, in the ^moral 
 demand', of a Universal Will. This later book is a more 
 complete dealing with the ethical ideal. The earlier work 
 carried the implication that the social was a somewhat tempor- 
 ary' means of awakening in a man the recognition of his irue 
 relation to the Absolute. This later bo^>k develops the question 
 of man's relations to man. It proves to be more than a tem- 
 porary or temporal phase.. The social is the real. It; is a 
 matter of indifference whether we view Reality as the Absolute 
 or as the Community.' In the earlier work, ^'independence is 
 a temporary means,'who?e ultimate aim is harmony and unity 
 of all men on a higher plane."* In the third period the social 
 is eternal and hence distinctiveness is not merely temporal. In 
 the earlier work the finite individual is temporal aiid derived. 
 In the last work the individual is eternal and underived.'' 
 
 In the secHuul period the individual is eternal and derived. 
 Immortality is ascribed lo the individual. But its statement 
 is not unambiguous. While the "moral ego really is unful- 
 filled"^ individuality persists as a "finite life" in time. Attain- 
 ing the goal in time means the end. So immortality means a 
 goal ever unattained. But on the other hand the aim is eter- 
 iially attained. Immortality as a doctrine presents these two 
 aspects. "Temporal categories are wholly inadequate to ex- 
 
 1 Seo thfl Philosophy of Loyr.lty, p. ix. 
 
 2 See The Religious Aspect of Pihlosopohy, p. 478. 
 sonal immorality." See also 440. 
 
 3 See the Problem of Christianity, I, pp. xxxvi, 409, II, 11. 
 
 4 The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 21G. 
 
 .5 If we choose as alternative "the Divine Community". 
 
 We know nothing about per- 
 
 ^ press the ultimate facts of life."" We have here an unmediat- 
 • ed contrast between time and eternitv. 
 
 This position is restated in The World and the Individual/ 
 ''In Eternity all is done, and we too rest from our labors. In 
 Time there is no end to the individual ethical task." We are 
 assured that "Philosophy here supports tradition. This is a 
 moral world. All moral battles get fought out. All quests 
 are fulfilled. The goal — yes, your individual goal — is by you 
 yourself attained in the eternal life. You, yourself, and not 
 merely another, consciously know in the eternal world the at- 
 tainment of that goal."® This oscillation between ^eternaF and 
 'temporar leaves the matter ambiguous. I find it impossible 
 to make Royce's meaning clear to myself. I can but accept his 
 word that "this Eternal Xow is simply not the temporal pre' 
 ^^ent."^*' 
 
 Ir appears it is necessary to see that **tlie true distinction 
 and the true connection, between the temporal and the eternal 
 aspects of Being, furnish, in truth, the basis for a solution of 
 this whole problem."^^ Yet the distinction and connection are 
 not made clear. One welcomes then the chance of escape from 
 these dark sayings as offered in the position of the third period. 
 Here we may regard the ultimate as ^the Divine Community'^" 
 and hence the need is gone of seeking to hold together two such 
 incommensurables as 'temporal' and 'eternal'. 
 
 In the earlier work we read ''the moral insight, insisting 
 upon the need of the harmony of all human wills, shows us 
 that, whatever the highest human good may be, we can only 
 
 attain it together, for it involves harmony Either the 
 
 liighest goo<l is for man unattainable, or the humanity of the 
 iiiture must get it in common. Therefore the sense of com- 
 munity, the power to work together, with clear insight into our 
 
 reasons for so working, is the first need of humanity 
 
 Extend the moral insight among men."^^ "This extension of 
 the moral insight is best furthered by devotion to our individual 
 vocations, coupled with strict loyalty to the relations upon 
 which society is founded."^* This sense of community, as 
 
 ^! Tho Conception of God, p. 323 f. Ibid. p. 326. 
 
 ^ The World and the Individual, II, p. 444 f. 
 
 9 The Conception of God, p. 326. 10. Ibid, p, 348. 
 
 11 Tho World and the Individual, II. 347. 
 
 12 See the Problem of Christianity, I, pp. x.xxvi, 409; II, p. 11. 
 1^ Tho Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 275. 14, Ibid. p. 473. See also p. V. 
 

 lioyte iuni J iiiiit iduaUon 
 
 Royce arj] Indlciduatloti 
 
 
 conscious, wliile coining later than a conscious sense of separate 
 ness, is more fundamental. In this earlier period the relation r| 
 of separateness and community is temporal only and the former 
 is produced only to be resigned for the latter. In the latest 
 period distinctiveness and connnunity are co-eternal. 
 
 In the first period the Absolute is One Will appearing in 
 the temporal order as many wills. In the second the many 
 persist in some sense as immortal. In the oscillation between 
 the temporal and the eternal, it is not clear v.hcther the individ- 
 ual has some form of temporal existence after the death or th(^ 
 bodv. If it has reached the end and yet, while no longer tem- 
 poral, has an eternal form of persistence, then the fact can b- 
 stated only. What that ^eternar is you cannot know "in so 
 far as vou remain on this shoal of timc."'^ Are we not given 
 a contrast here instead of logic? In the third period alon^; 
 with the older Absolutism we have an alternative position oi- 
 fered us. The unity and plurality are co-eternal. Just how 
 the unity remains as uniquely individual as in the earlier 
 periods is not made clear.^" Unity and plurality are, at any 
 rate, two aspects of the same reality. Here we seem to escapiN 
 through the alternative, from the obscurities of the eternul 
 derivation of the individual. If plurality is ultimate then 
 individuals are ultimate and hence underived. "A community 
 immediately presents itself to our minds, both as one and as 
 many and unless it is both one and many it is no communitv 
 at ail.'"' We have then In this alternative position only that 
 individuation which consists in the development of the individ- 
 ual as ultimate. And individuation in time is still mediated 
 through the individual consciousness.^® 
 
 IT. 
 
 lu this later perii.d we have monism and pluralism rather 
 externally joined together. A general impression is that Royce 
 has retreated from his extreme Absolutism. But we have a 
 clear attempt to unite that extreme position to his later empha- 
 
 Also The Conception of God, pp 278 f., 320 f. 
 
 15 The Conception of God, p. 326. 
 
 16 Tho attempt is made by the ascription to family, social or other higher unities 
 of an individuality more concrete than is that of the indiridual "[^an Even » 
 crowd has a 'mind.' It is impossible to locate this mind except in the mdividuais. 
 'Public spirit' is a figurative expx-ession. Only citizens as individuals possess it. 
 
 17 Tho Problem of Christianity. TT, p 17. 
 
 sis on the individual as social. And the attempt results in his 
 usual oscillation. 
 
 The individual, as we have just noticed, exercises his own 
 initiative in choice. Yet he is social. Xow we have at time.^ 
 these social unities, in which man is found, regarded as ideal ^" 
 This still leaves the individual as the maker of his own destiny. 
 Then we have them drawn out before us as over-individuals, 
 with minds, etc. Just how the freedom of the individual is 
 preserved here^° is obscure. We are told that "we all of us 
 believe that thei^e is any real world simply because we find 
 ourselves in a situation in which, because of the frajnnentarv 
 and dissatisfying conflicts, antitheses, and problems of our 
 present ideas, an interpretation of this situation is needed, 
 hut is not now known to us. By the ^real world' we mean 
 Isimply tlie 'true interpretation of this our problematic situation. 
 Xo other reason can be given than this for believing that there 
 is any real world at all."" Yet we read ''a community, when 
 unified by an active indwelling purpoe, is an entity more con- 
 crete, and, in fact less mysterious than is any individual man 
 and that such a community can love and be loved as a husband 
 and wife love; or as father or mother love."^^ A "corporate 
 Jentity is something more concrete than is the individual fel- 
 llow man.''" Or "if, by person, you mean a live unity of know- 
 ledge and of will, of love and of deed, — then the community 
 of tlie Kingdom of Heaven is a person on a higher level than 
 is the level of any human individual."^* Just how such en- 
 jtities are more concrete than the individuals in whose conscious- 
 Incss they appear as ideals seems obscure. If the community 
 nas such concrete existence and is endowed with mind and will, 
 then supreme power over its members is the logical conclusion. 
 
 18 See The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 470.. 
 Also Tho Problem of Christianity, Jl p. 60. 
 
 10 See Ibid. II, p. 79, it is a "consoioasi.fss of Unity" and "a commo.i life in time." 
 Sea also II, p. 88, II, 264. 
 
 ■ Prof. Dewey in his book on "German Philosophy and Politics" shows that Prus- 
 sia has taken literally this over-individuality and hence ascribes to the State 
 supreme power over the citizen. When Royce is emphusi/.ing the more monistic 
 side of hi.s position he seems open to Dewey's criticisms. 
 
 -1 The Problem of Christianity, II, p. 264 f. 22. Ibid. I, p. 95. 23. Ibid. I, p. 
 94. See I, 64, where he cites Wundt approvingly as saying that organized com- 
 munities are psychical entities. Or I, 62, "a community is a sort of live unit, 
 
 that has organs, as the body of an individual has organs it has a mind of 
 
 its own." 
 The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 313. The Absolute is viewed as "one unity of 
 con.sciousness, wherein countless unities are synthesized." o.c. p. 310 "Our Social 
 organization as personal unities ol con.sciousness." o.c. p. 311. From this point 
 of view we are, and we have our worth, by virtue of our relation to a conscious- 
 ness of a type superior to the human type." See also The Sources of Religious 
 Insight, p. 201. 
 
 ■^ Tho Problem of Christianity. I. S.Vi. 
 
 liili^HiMji^wif^iiifttyii^riHigiatttaMj! 
 
 gg^waui^itti 
 
40 
 
 Jlojjce and lit'jindualtun 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 iluijce and Indlviduaiion 
 
 41 
 
 This unmediated relation betAvcen coniiimnity and units 
 holds throughout and as the unity intended has been found un- 
 satisfactory in the discussion of the earlier periods, one can 
 exercise the privilege of choice and select that viev> 
 which is more just to the individual since such is our startmir 
 point. If man is social in his essential nature both temporallv 
 and eternally, there need be no such concrete and unitary per- 
 sonal mind inclusive of his. 
 
 We shall count these conununities as spiritual, and more 
 idecd yet than actual, and based in the essentially social nature 
 of men. In the first period all are to use personal choice lu 
 deciding to '^nct as one being.''" Here we surely have an ideal 
 or a formal principle. This choice is exercised only in th(i 
 temporal since immortality is not known.. In the last period 
 the choice of ideals is a permanent feature of individual life. 
 The individuality of the ^part' persists, since community as 
 such i:^ ultimate and eternal. 
 
 111. 
 
 Choosing this alternative po.-^iiion, imlividuation is \h- 
 problem of ""developing tlie potential. It is a social potential. 
 We realize it in the service of 'cau.ses'. The 'highest' ideal of 
 life is to be '4oyal not for the sake of the good that we private- 
 ly get out of loyalty, but tor the sake of the good of the cause,-- 
 this higlier unity "^of experience,— gets out of this loyalty."'' 
 This conceiving of a gulf between any true self-satisfactio^n and 
 a disinterested service of a cause is an abstraction and is evi 
 deuce of that one-sidedness in ethical theory which I have called 
 self-alienation. It does not seem to be a necessary feature 
 of the life of the individual in the community.. This seem5 
 to me to emphaize the persistent variety of interests and aini'^ 
 rather than the monotony of an ultimate unit of aim and pur- 
 pose. This self-alienatimi as discussed in connection with the 
 first period, seems to me m view foisted on the individual by the 
 necessities of an Absolutism not really found in finite experi- 
 ence. Here also in the third period in spite of the alteniative 
 offered k^ween Monism and Pluralism, the monistic ethical 
 ideal is present. 
 
 This is the highest ideal since, '^I, myself am a fragmentary 
 conscious life that is included within the conscious conspectus 
 
 25 The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 193. 
 
 26 Tlie Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 312. 
 
 I 
 
 of the world's ex})erience, and that is in one self-consciou i 
 unity with that world-consciousness.""^ I am to find my high 
 est life in ^^a practical service of superhuman objects."^^ Thi 
 service is ever one which I personally am to choose. Hence 
 ^^the unity of the world is not an ocean in which we are lost 
 but a life which is and which needs all our lives in one."^'' 
 Here we have a juxta-position of the concrete and the ideal. 
 The 'life is* and yet needs our efforts. 
 
 Our task as free individuals in this higher unity is to be- 
 come indi\dduals. The meaning of life comes in some degree 
 at first, "through some authority external to our wills"^^ and 
 ever "in so far as our moral training is incomplete, the moral 
 law may at any mo^ment have to assume afresh this air of exter- 
 nal authority merely in order to win our due attention. "^^ The 
 truly right or wrong act, however, calls for the activity of 
 conscience in the individual himself. ''My duty is simply m.y 
 own will brou£>ht t(^ mv clear self-<*onsciousness."^" 
 
 Xow "by nature, apart from any specific training, I have 
 no personal will of my own.""'' "Plans of life come to us in 
 connection with our endless imitative activities"^* which are 
 however never merely imitative for "conformity attracts but 
 also wearies us."^' But "social conformity gives us social 
 power."^'* Thus, in interaction, one comes to consciousness of 
 who and what he is. One is actuallv individuated in the 
 growth in the individual of the sense of individuality and its 
 power of service. 
 
 This individuation, marking man';5 social dependence or 
 interdependence, is indicative of the direction of his true life. 
 I do not give up my will but my highest achievement is to 
 choose freely and with personal satisfaction the will of the 
 higher unity. The patriot is one who "has no will but that of 
 the country."^^ This personal choice of impersonal ends or 
 loyalty "reverberating all through you, stirring you to your 
 
 27 Tho Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 306 f. 28. Ibid. p. 374. See also "The Sources of 
 Religious Insight" p. 200. 
 
 29 The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 394. Italics are mine. 30. Ibid p. 24. 
 
 31 The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 25. 32. Ibid. p. 25. 33. Ibid. p. 31. 34. 
 Ibid. p. 32. 35. Ibid. p. 34. 36. Ibid. p. 35. 37. Ibid. p. 41. See also 
 Sources of Religious Insisglit, p_ 201. 
 
 One may note here the change in phraseolop^y (if not iu meaning) from the 
 earliest book. In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (pp. 210-212) much is 
 made of 'impersonal' aims and ideals. Here the choice of one's service is ever a 
 •personal' one. (See the Philosophy of Loyalty, pp. 18 f., 20, 52, 79, 384) p. 
 
 20 'The cause is never something wholly impersonal. It concerns other 
 
 men." The difference seems verbal. The 'personal' choice to be impersonal seems 
 to me to be a seli-contradiction. 
 
4:i 
 
 Uoijcc and liiJiridualiun 
 
 Jiui/cc Ur.d IitJicidaatiuH 
 
 A.) 
 
 depths, first unifies your plan of life, and thereby gives you 
 what nothing else can give,-yourself as lived in accordance 
 with a plan, your consciousness as your plan interpreted tor 
 you through your ideal, your cause expressed as your personal 
 purpose in living.'"' This loyalty which individi.ates us as 
 selves is "the will to manifest the eternal in and through the 
 deeds of individual selves."" In loyalty to a cause is found 
 that which not onlv individuates the life of any person in ur- 
 nishing him with a task, but which brings him to full moral 
 self-consciousness. My onsciousness is my ideal and vice 
 versa. 
 
 Vow the causes of men will vary. Our tasks may oven 
 seem to clash. I must be loyal not so much to the cause of 
 another which clashes with my own but to my fellow s spirit 
 of lovalty. Thus the principle that individuates men may be 
 stated in its most general form as "loyalty to loyalty . Under 
 the leading of this spirit, we will be guided towards harmony 
 and iwace and a true communal life. 
 
 Thus Kovce has sought to place, metaphysically, the moral 
 life of man.' Individuals temporally construct social organiza- 
 tions and institutions, because eternally they are social. 1 ho 
 'city of God' is teing let down out of Heaven." The sense ot 
 individual separateness is the negative side of a positive com- 
 munity of nature. An isolated individual is nan-existent. 1 lie 
 gap which thought makes at times between individua s, if 
 seen as onlv real for thought. Our consciousness is social and 
 it is in soc'ial communion that the uniqueness of self-ident.ty 
 is attained. In defining his own plan and purpose within the 
 unity of the communal mind, a man attains what degree of dis- 
 tincfiveness is his. The basic purpose of us all is thus, making 
 our purposes definite, to cooperate with our fellows m the 
 pursuit of common aims. 
 
 IV. 
 
 h, the I'hilusophv of Loyalty, the principle for guidance 
 in moral conduct, is "the principle of "loyalty to loyalty . It 
 the individual feels that the direction 'to be loyal to a cause 
 
 38. The Philosophy of Loyally PP. 384. 39. Ibid, p. 377. See also Source, o. 
 
 Religious Insight, p. 206. 
 40. See Rpvelation 21 2. 
 
 I 
 
 gives little more counsel than a rule to be conscientious, tlie 
 interpretation given 'loyalty to a cause^ in the concluding chap- 
 ters of the book and in ^'The Problem of Christianity'^ seems 
 much more adequate. The ethical rule is made definitely meta- 
 physical. Loyalty does not work in a vacuum, but in the con- 
 crete world. Here causes aiv found. A cause is the appear- 
 ance in the time-process of a unity of life, wider or larger than 
 the individual person.. . These causes, if not fully actual in 
 the time-process, are being realized there. So then "by Loyalty 
 is meant the thorough-going aud loving devotion of an individ- 
 ual to a community''*^ and such a view presents logically the 
 problem "whether the whole universe is or is not, in some ser<se, 
 both a community and a divine beinu;.''*^ 
 
 The idea of the communiry, suggested by the problems of 
 human social life, is an illustration of the possible solution of 
 the problem of the One and the Many and hence of the quarrels 
 of Monism and Pluralism.'^ To Iloyce, in this latest period, 
 it seems a matter of indifference whether one calls final reality, 
 the Absolute or the Divine Community.** 'Ovlan the commun- 
 ity without ceasing to be genuinely human, may also provo to 
 be divine Man the community may prove to be God."*^ 
 
 These communities are true individuals. "A crowd 
 
 has a mind, but no institutions, no organization, no coherent 
 unity, no history, no traditions."*^ Add these latter features 
 and 3'ou have a community, for "a true community is essentially 
 a product of a time-process."*" This is illustrated by the 
 'familiar analogy' from individual life. "The self comes dovvn 
 to us from its own past. It needs and is a history."*^ *^My 
 idea of myself is an interpretation of my past, linked with an 
 interpretation of my hopes and intentions as to my future.'**^ 
 If I extend my past, my life tends to merge with the lives of 
 iny kindred^^ and with my race. If I extend my hopes into the 
 future, I find a corresponding Community of Hope. The ulii- 
 mate unity of all would be the Absolutc.^^ 
 
 The analogy of the finite, with his power of extending "his 
 life in ideal fashion, so as to regard it as including past mw] 
 future events which lie far awav in time, and which he does 
 now personally remember,"*" is used to illustrate the meaning 
 
 41. The Problem of Christianity, vol. I, p. XXXVII. 42. Ibid, vol I, p. XXXVI. 
 43. Ibid. vol. II, p. 17.44. Ibid. II. p. 11, 17, 220, 296. 45. Ibid. I, 408 f. 
 46. Ibid. II. 36 f. 47. Ibid. II, 37. 48. Ibid. II. 40. 49. Tbrd:"TTr"J27 
 50. Ibid II, 64. 51. Ibid II, 46 f. The Absolute is implied in the unity of 
 the two men in the c«iioe. 52. Ibid, vol, II. p. 60 f. 
 
44 
 
 liOj/cr a ((I IiidirahndwH 
 
 liUijcc and Iiid'iclduation 
 
 A:^ 
 
 of the 'Coniiimniry\ It is a genuine unity of many, a social 
 unity with a history and with ideals for the future.. 
 
 "Motives which are as familiar as they are hard to analyse 
 have convinced us all, before we begin to philosophise, thai our 
 human world contains a variety of individually distinct niind» 
 or selves, and that some, for us decisively authoritative, prin- 
 ciple of individuation keeps these selves apart.""" Here is 
 ^stubborn pluralism'. It points to the "diversity and the csp- 
 arateness of our streams of immediate feeling"'* or notes "that 
 our trains of conscious thought and purpose are mutually in- 
 accessible through any mode of direct intuition" or refers to 
 "our deeds". Are we not ultimately separate? Yet "primi- 
 tive man is not an individualist"^' even though he gains dis- 
 tinctiveness as he emerges from the primitive. 
 
 ^ilonism would indicate a more fundamental unity in that 
 "social cooperation unquestionably brings into existence lan- 
 guages, customs, religions."" The facts of social and state life 
 indicate that "large and small bodies of men can come to act 
 as if one conmion intelligence and one common will wore 
 using the individuals as its almost helpless instruments."'' In 
 actual social life "the close shut-in streams of consciousness ap- 
 pear as if they had lost their banks altogether."'^' The ^Com- 
 munity', as not only the larger inclusive present, but as also 
 the great past and the future, holds v/ithin itself the individuals 
 in spite of or through their separatenesss. So the Divine Com- 
 munity is that invisible world which holds us all. 
 
 The problem of individuation is not then to note the points 
 of separation as if the dndividual could be defined nega- 
 tively by what he excluded or was not. "My life means noth- 
 ing, either theoretically or practically, unless I am a member 
 of a community. I win no success worth having unless it is 
 also the success of the community to which I essentially and by 
 virtue of my real relations to the whole universe belong. My 
 deeds are not done at all, unless they are indeed done for all time 
 and are irrevocable.""^ The community gives this historical 
 fixity and continuity. The lesser unites or communities are all 
 fixed in the supreme unity or conmumity. Here the 'credit 
 values' of postulates and hypotheses have their 'redeemers' "laid 
 
 53. Ibid, vol II, p. 18. 54. Ibid. vol. II, 20 i. 
 56. Ibid. vol. II. 25. 57. Ibid. vol. II. P. 26. 
 
 59. Ibid. vol. II. 28. 
 
 60. Tho Problem of rhriRtisnity. IT. 313. 
 
 55. Ibid, vol. II, 23 f. 
 58. Ibid, vol. II, p. 27 f, 
 
 11}) in a realm where our experiences past, present, future, are 
 the objects of a conspectus that is not merely temporal an.] 
 transient"^^ for ''the temporal world in its wholeness, constitutes 
 in itself an infinitely complex Sign. This sign is, as a whole, 
 interpreted to an experience which itself includes a synoptic 
 survey of the whole of time.'""- 
 
 If now I am, more or loss potentially, a member of a com- 
 inunity how am I individuated as such a member? I am a 
 self in being" "a life whor^o unity and connectedness deperds 
 upon some sort of interpretations of plans, of memories, of 
 hoj)es and of deeds."^^ "The word 'interpretation' is a conven- 
 ient name for a process which at least aims to be cognitive."^* 
 "There is no direct intuition or perception of the self"^^ but 
 "one discovers one's own mind through a process of inferonce 
 analogous to the very modes of inference which guide us in a 
 ocial effort to interpret our neighbour's minds."^® Even in my 
 noments of reflection I am social for "reflection involves an 
 nterior conversation."*^^ "Tlirough the present self, the past is 
 interpreted that its couiLsel is conveyed to the future self.''^'^ 
 Thus in my very cognition I show my social nature. I am a 
 ommunity, an image of the whole. This constitutes my in- 
 dividuation. In loyalty I serve the ultimate cause and become 
 n myself an interpreter. Just as in the earliest periods l)ring 
 iig the Absolute to the facts, each finite self turns out to be, 
 -vlien fully viewed, the Absolute. So here the Community 
 (though viewed also as less definitely a unit) is brought to the 
 tacts and each individual, as seen fully, is a community.^® 
 
 "Loyalty to a community of interpretation enters into all 
 he other forms of true loyalty. Xo one who loves mankind 
 an find a worthier and more significant way to express his love 
 han by increasing and expressing among men the Will to In- 
 erpret.""** 
 
 The loyalty to a cause which is thiLs posited as the principle 
 'f individuation, if deepened from an ethical to a metaphysical 
 reference, means a Loyalty to the Beloved Community. Each 
 
 <'!. The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 3.^7. 
 ^'2. The Problem of Christianity, II. 286 
 
 53. The Problem of Christianity, II, p. 111. 64. Ibid. II, 129. 65. Ibid. II, 138. 
 66. Ibid. II, 138 f. 67. Ibid. II, 138. 68. Ibid. II, 144. 
 
 59. To view one's cognition as triiidic and thus social and hence to ground the notion 
 of man's social nature in this is to me an analogy but no more. 
 
 fO. The Problem of Christianity, 11.218. 71. Ibid, II, p. 215. See also the Philo- 
 sophy of Loyalty, p. 172. 
 
46 
 
 Royce and Indnnduation 
 
 one is then *4cleally aiming at an ideal event —the spiritual 
 unity of our community" ^^ and in so doing becomes a significant 
 individual. 
 
 The loyal individual in possessing the ^Will to Interpret' 
 is an interpreter. That which viewed practically is loyalty 
 viewed cognitively is interpretation. 
 
 Royce and Jndiridaalion 
 
 47 
 
 CIIArTER vir. 
 
 Critical. 
 
 1. 
 
 In thib period, the principle of individuation, whether 'luy- 
 ilty to a cause', ^loyalty to loyalty' or 'the will to interpret', 
 is after all a merely formal conception. We are left with no 
 canon of preference which will enable us to choose between 
 competing causes each of which might by itself be regarded as 
 good. Indeed we do not seem to be in the sphere of concrete 
 situations Avhere causes ^re real. 'Loyalty to loyalty' is "a 
 noble virtue but unless we read into it all our virtues and our 
 lentire traditional morality, it remains too general and empty to 
 jbe of any great theoretical and practical value."^ 
 
 To such a possible objection Koyce has mnde the following 
 lanswer. If our uncertainty is the choosing between causes to 
 both of which one should be loyal, then the deepened conception 
 |of loyalty is to guide us. This is ^'loyalty to loyalty". We 
 ire to be loyal to loyalty in order to do what we can to produce 
 la maximum of devoted service of causes, a maxinmm of fidelity, 
 and of selves that choose and serve fitting objects of loyalty, 
 put if I use the word ^fitting' I assume the distinction between 
 j^:ood and bad causes. This is what a fundamental principle 
 |of morality should give. And so we are left still without any 
 calculus of loyalties and apart from such calculus the distinc- 
 tion between good and evil is assumed simply from the views 
 )f common sense and that without any acknov/ledgment. Grant- 
 ed we are to be loyal and to promote loyalty. It is not loyalty 
 that makes a cause good or bad. I want guidance in objective 
 [situations, not a mere maxim to be conscientious.. 
 
 Without a doubt this ^'fixed principle of duty" is necessary 
 in all morality. But the morality which is constituted by ]nire 
 
 p. Thilly. Review of "The Philosophy of Loyalty" in The Philosophical Review 
 for 1908, p. 541 f. He holds that Royce deduces from the concept of loyalty 
 exactly what he hag put in and so has not got to the roots of human conduct. 
 Loyalty is a general labfl for pH the virtues and is not shown to be a prinf^-ipl** 
 (*cc Tho Philosophy of Loyalty, pp. 12«) f.. 1H9). 
 
48 
 
 Iloyce and LtdiridaaiioH 
 
 Roijcc vnd Indicidualion 
 
 49 
 
 Loyalty is a morality that is yet in tlio stage of intent ior, i.v 
 theory. The loyalty of the official' to his conscience takes \nx- 
 cedence over his loyalty to his chief. Here was a concrete or 
 objective situation with certain values involved already. Loy 
 alty said only, ^stick to your highest value.' It did not decid< 
 which. Gen. R. E. Lee had to choose between his loyalt.y^ tr> 
 state rights and to the Union. The advice of ^loyalty^ is'— 
 study the whole situation and when choosing— choose with de- 
 cision and, having placed one's hand to the plow, turn not back 
 AVhen deciding between two good causes, the principle of loyalty 
 ^'commands simply but imperatively that since I must serve, 
 and since, at this^ critical moment, my only service must take 
 the form of a choice between loyalties, I shall choose, even in: 
 my ignorance, what form my service is henceforth to take.''' 
 The principle of choice is — choose ! Having chosen I must not 
 look back nor regret. ^'Decide, knowingly if you can, i^^^aut- 
 Iv if you must, but in any case decide and have no fear."*^ And 
 this is the guidance where loyalties conflict! ''Indecision 
 would of itself constitute a sort of decision." And it is better 
 to act for one of the causes than to do nothing. Here we have 
 no real dealing with a situation as objective. It is rather the! 
 subjective. Where further objective information is what is 
 needed, we have the subjective maxim — Choose.® 
 
 In ethics we are seeking for some absolute rule or, if net 
 absolute, something at least that comes to us with a note vi 
 authority. We find in practice that all particular rules aro| 
 tentative, except the rule — 'observe rule'. This is the ''la^v 
 that there shall be law" (Palmer). Loyalty to loyalty is of| 
 this absolute, subjective' type. It is a fixed principle of dutv 
 rather than a guide in particular cases. The real criterion bo- 
 hind loyalty — the one involved not merely theoretically in the I 
 subject but' in the object also in all truly objective situations— | 
 is the social unity, the kingdom of ends, a union of selves in- 
 spired by social ideals. 
 
 While this is so it is not a useless emphasis which we have 
 here on loyalty. It is an absolute rule even if its absolutism 
 does not seem to help much in actual situations. If we aro| 
 object-minded and each actual situation in which we find our- 
 selves is a subject-object situation, it is not altogether useless 
 
 2. The Philosophy of Loyalty, pp. 135 137. 3. Ibid, pp 183 193. 4. Ibid, r 
 189.5. Tbtd. p. 180. 
 
 to see what the subject side implies. It is an 'anticipation of 
 attainment' to view in vision the self as in all loval and harmon- 
 ious relation with his fellows. It will nerve his actual deeds 
 to justice and equity to have this good will in intention. In 
 this sense it is a guiding ideal, however blind® it is in the details 
 of accomplishment. But is is subjective and hence abstract 
 though it "is never a merely pious wish".^ Other ethical theor- 
 ies seek some objective end, such as happiness, well-being, self- 
 realization, at least some concrete^^ ideal for action. 
 
 This 'retreat into the self has a peculiar value from Royce's 
 point of view. If loyalty is a formal principle, the "form" is 
 significant. The subject is social in his true or full nature. 
 To recognize always that one's good, — whatever it may be, — 
 must be one which shall imike or keep one a true member of the 
 community, is to keep in mind a 'formal' idea which will have 
 its effect socially. One is committed to the cause of 'good will 
 among men'. But this loyalty, seen thus as ideal, is rather the 
 primal individuation, the potential, than the actual becoming 
 of a personality. This is wrought out in the objective situa- 
 tions of life. We are to face this process with the recognition 
 that w^e are 'members one of another'. This is to be loval, 
 even to 'be loyal to loyalty.' It is the assertion of the aufon- 
 omy of a social being. In any ])ossible action I will be free. 
 The choice is to be my own. It must be a unforced^^ loyalty 
 to a cause that fascinates me. This cause I view beforehand 
 as of necessity one of good will to all. But it is a prophecy of 
 individuation rather than its attainment. 
 
 IL 
 
 Against loyalty as elaburattMl there seems a fiirtlior (.♦riricisni. 
 It is essentially altruistic. Rovce attacks the individualism of 
 Xietzsche^^ whose 'will to jwwer' he characterizes as "power 
 idealized through its social efficacy, and conceived in terms of 
 some more or less vague dream of a completely perfected 
 and ideal, but certainly social, individual man." Despite this 
 appreciative interpretation, Iloyce goes on to show the objections 
 to "defining your personal good in terms merely of power."^" 
 the attainment of power is so uncertain, the lust for it becomes 
 
 1^. It would seem also that experimentally one sl.ould be prepared to look back and 
 make ch.injjos if experience should sugprest it. 
 
Iloijce and Indic'uluulioa 
 
 50 
 
 insatial.le, au.l it niea«. iu.-rcasing oppovtunity for conflict 
 S: Ihis ;eo.« to be giving 'power' a sort o ^^^^^^ 
 force meaning. If we read power in terms of mechanical skill, 
 th^n:^; oflhe orator, the art of tl>e teacher, .esee^power.i 
 another form than the one akin to violence.. E%en m the loy 
 a"y to oyal.y' life, since I must act, I will be in ^-^f ^^ -"' 
 £t llycl challenges the individualist to set about the task 
 He \vo^^ld lave him%«it his 'preliminary g-t-lations and 
 n J It seems to Roycc an ideal with no content and surely u 
 mea!i::;;aUing li the empty claim to self-hood over agains 
 the whole world of possible deeds and -'^'^^^^^^ 
 tentless. Dut have we not the same position if c^e S^stK - bt o 
 talks of devotion to causes, and loyahy to kyaltyj On. mi,J. 
 well s.y-Bogin the life of loyalty or find t h^ ^ ^^^; 'f 
 Povce's position there seems the exaltation ot Iho t-ause. 
 ?hrVill to power' stirs up troubie with «tl>evs. This is an 
 objection to it Loyalty to a cause wU ^J^^ ^^J^'^ 
 the absence of self assertion? Ha-.e i ne n i 
 seheme to trust my own judgiuent about -"^^ ^^ J, ^J^^^; 
 c.,n T convince one who has a rival cause that I am iinpaiti. 
 i^iLed, and impersonaH Or if I a^.id all setting up c.f .^ 
 own iudgnunit and accept that of another, am not u dnu 
 nf ho nn- clnssed as a mere partisan of another 1 Jn cithci 
 elnl Un'S vn.h trouble. It is not the 'will to power' alone 
 that has warfare in its carc^er. 
 
 Prof Pv-wce's statements make much of such terms as 'fidel 
 itv"devotion', 'self-surrender'. He feels the "essential yirre- 
 ^ Stible forces of the whole universe"" quoting Spinoza's "Th 
 ' ;: of m n is infinitely surpa-'i by the power of externa 
 ' Thhi's " It seems an attitude of defence, rather than one o 
 t taci;: The great inventions or creaticms are not -n ^irov^ 
 a direct command of nature's laws. It is rather that ki.ov 
 lecte" and obedience to nature's laws give powers of achieve^ 
 meS not otherwise possessed. "Our creativity in any field 
 
 7^^ v.. Hockin. -Th. Mo.„in« o< God in Hu«..n Experience" p, 193 H. «.• 
 
 ■ the iirdovum universal and its value. 
 8 The Philosuyliy of I-oyalty, p. 186. 9. Ibid. PP. . • ^, ..ti,j 
 
 u'";::'Tr:Phi,osophy o. .,,... pp. -o ^i. 12. n>id. pp. .. as. ^s, ,«.. 
 
 382 The Problem of Christianity. I, P. l^-^- 
 1-^ -The Philosophy of Loyalty" PP. 87-89. 14. Ibid. p. 8H 
 15 W E Hocl« 'The Meanin, of God in Human Experience P- XMI. 
 If). The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. '>3. 
 
 Uuycc and ludlcidaaiiun oV 
 
 follows faithfully the character of our passivity in that same 
 field, and varies with it not inversely but directly.''^^ Burbank 
 has exercised something of this power to create. The Xietz- 
 schean Svill to be mighty' may seem an ''empty proclanning 
 of a moral sovereignty over your life'V^ but the emphasio on 
 'devotion' to causes seems to denature one on the other side. 
 Even though there be the unforced and personal choice of a 
 'cause- that fascinates me, loyalty will tend to a minimum since 
 it lacks the urge of the truly or fully personal.. It will lack 
 the full initiative which I submit cannot exist w^here one has 
 'surrendered' self. We are not held to a choice between a 
 selfish^" and an altruistic life. One cannot unself oneself. 
 The higher self, the fully personal, has its legitimated^ right 
 to the sense of happiness and victory. Because the ruthless 
 violent self demands such satisfaction, the demand in itself is 
 not therebv wrona*. 
 
 III. 
 
 Lovaltv has been criticised as abstractlv formal or subjec- 
 tive. It is submitted further that Interpretation, as a cogni- 
 tive process, is not primary. It is concerned with predicates, 
 with the 'what' of things, and hence it has no originating pcwer 
 over existential propositions. As every interpretation, includ- 
 ing a theoretical first one, presumes the existence of the minds 
 addressed by the interpreter, the belief in the existence of minds 
 l)eyond my present self cannot be a product of interpretation. 
 
 It would seem then that in Interpretation, as cognitive, we 
 have a stage or partial phase only of a developed individual 
 life. It may reinforce the more primitive individuation 
 but has not caused it. This more primitive individuation is 
 that which has not only separated me as a discrete individui^l 
 but has supplied that simpler and more direct or immediate 
 knowledge of other mind, which the interpretative process takes 
 up and elaborates. Interpretation, as cognitive, is the name 
 for a certain stage or formation of the individuating process. 
 
 In the iirst two periods, Royce holds that in iinite thought, 
 ideally viewed, (not as concretely embodied) we have a true 
 
 ^7. In Aristotle's Ethics Book IX, Ch. VIII., this point is discussed, to distinguish 
 two kinds of self-love. To Aristotle the highest a man can seek is self-love of 
 The higher type. In this it seems to me Aristotle is nearer the truth than is 
 Rovcp. 
 
r^^> 
 
 Ruyce and ladivulualioii 
 
 liotjce and LndicidaaUon 
 
 O-J 
 
 unity in varictv" In interpretation wc have the true trian. 
 Is it not simply, as before, ideally viewed ? Is not its attempt- 
 ed concrete embodiment forever incomplete? As \vith the finite 
 thinker in the Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Interpretation 
 is of the nature of reflection on or after the event. The fact 
 of individuality already is, ^vhen interpretation^ takes up Us 
 work. 
 
 It is submitted further that iiilorpretatl.m as cognitive, is, 
 as in the case of 'thought' in the first period, not a basis upon 
 ^vhich to found a doctrine of the concrete world as an inter- 
 T>rotation. Cognition knows nothing of a concrete union, i- 
 is a Inoirlcdge of reality. To capitalize the word and speak 
 of it a., the concrete world is a conceptual construetiuu. in- 
 terpretation deals with the "what" nf things. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In ,his later period uc find s.ill the presence of the abso- ' 
 lutism which means a completed e.xix^ne.ice. It. '« *'«" 
 (thoudi not proved) to be synonymous with 'Ibe l)muc Com- 
 mimit'y'. The Absolute is an '"experience which itself includos 
 a synoptic survey of the whole of time."" In .Icveloping, from 
 finite individuality the idea of a commiMiity reference is made 
 to "the power of an individual self to extend his life, in ideal 
 fashion, so as to regard it as including past and future which 
 lie far awav in time and which he does not now personally re- 
 memVerr^ We are told "the genuine l>erson lives in the tar 
 off .past and future as well as in the present."" The abso.ut. 
 or the Divine Community including all time, past, present and 
 future, is held to be the logical implication. 
 
 18, T!,is objction to Royce is d..nlt « ith mar.. '"'1^ "' ^/';{.h"-.w„ricl and the Indi- 
 19 S"f Tlu^ It.'ligious Aspect of Philosophy. l>. 378, and ine 
 
 the inside of what is taHng pUce wh^e^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ 
 
 engaged in his Rcanh ^^^^V/ if sol f Interpretation is what the process lacks, 
 
 t.tion' into tho -"^"'t'Ynd' k s P eciselv as sUU la king the interpretation souglU. 
 not wh:U It possesses; and it is prec^sel> as ^ ^ knowledge, is a cogn. 
 
 and is still looking %^l^ ^l^^^'^Z^ll^.^l^ in question is all over when th. 
 tive funct.cn at all. Ihe ,^y;;^ \';''^/"^i^ti„,tio; between discovering and the d.s- 
 ^l^J^^-SX^Sr r.^'l^^ ^ tUe results in knowledge than to tl. 
 'process in being' which is 'knowing'. ^^ 
 
 21. The Problem of Christianiiy, p. 286. ^u. Ibid. p. ^ 
 
 Tltifl . p. <^'^- 
 
 In the second period this time-transcendence has been illus- 
 trtited bv the analogy from the finite where "in our conscious- 
 ness, the now of experience does mean just such an actual, 
 brief but still finite, interval or period of time, within which 
 and during which events succeed one after another."^* This is 
 a ^time-span', and "an eternal consciousness is definable as onn 
 for which all the facts of the whole time stream, just so far as 
 time is a final form of consciousness, have the same tvpe of unity 
 that your present momentary consciousness, even now within its 
 little span, surveys.''^^ The Infinite has an all-inclusive time- 
 span. 
 
 In this third period, "the time-order, in its sense and inter- 
 connection, is known to us through interpretation, and is neither 
 a conceptual nor yet a perceptual order.'^^^ "Time, for in- 
 stance, expresses a system of essentiaUy social relations. The 
 present interprets the past to the future"^^ and "this whole time- 
 process^® is in some fashion spanned by one insight which sur- 
 veys the unity of its meaning Its value is the one em- 
 pirically known to us at any one moment when we clearly cor- 
 trast two of our own ideas and find their mediator."^^ Here 
 we no longer have a time-span, but yet the Interpretatio)i is 
 not timeless. Yet as quoted in the previous paragraph, this 
 experience is a "synoptic survey'\ It is submitted that there 
 are two conceptions of time given here. One is the time-span, the 
 other an interpretation. 
 
 We have then the doctrine of a totuin simuJ , a closed or 
 finished world. This persists through all periods and if held 
 too strictly, leaves no room for free individuals unless it be in 
 a sort of passive reflection or interpretation of the meaning of 
 life. There is no room for will in action. 
 
 If, neglecting the logic of a 'finished universe', we con^ider 
 the nature and function of the higher or super-personal unities, 
 much will turn on whether they are actual in any positive form 
 
 24. The World and the Individual, I, p. 421. 25. Ibid. I, 425. 
 2R. The Problem of Christianity, 11, IS.'i. 27. Ibid. II, 280. 
 
 28. Royce notes that Bergson "rightly asserts that the world of any present moment 
 of time is a summary of the results of all past experience." It is an interpre- 
 tation. The whole interprets its past in the present to the future. But this 
 future is not included. It is an open door, and the source of endless novelties. 
 (See Creative Evolution, p. 340.) To posit a synoptic survey of the whole of 
 time is to put past and future on a par in the Absolute and to make time unreal. 
 2P. The Problem of Christinrity. IT. 271. (Italics are mine). 
 
 
 .«.•«. |. ^ S KXi -wf N^.'^MV- 4*. . ' 
 
 iiffl^.'iiwlaaiaii 
 
 ^la.-^.&;6t:\^«fe&»:-AV-.ii^ft;^ 
 
^^^■■^ 
 
 in ,he world. They are defined ns true "-l--^''"^'^^ ''^'^ 
 hiohly organized comnmuity is as truly a lunnan being as ^.e 
 a e ndtvfdually human. Only a conununity is not what .e 
 ZaUy call a lunnan being; because it has no one -parate an^l 
 internally well-knit organism of its own; and because it. mind 
 if you atu-ibute to it any one mind, is therefore not mamfeste.. 
 through the expressive movements of such a separate human 
 or-antsm "- Now if this means an actual community— a true 
 S idual-having a mind and a will, it is but logic to inter- 
 pret such as giving it supreme and if need ^-..^--^ 1-^^, 
 over the individual members of the ~""*J„i J ^e/e w 
 community is however a very plastic aftair Only ^vhere we 
 have an autocracy does it really act as a whole -<1 1-- f , 
 individual mind overrides all other mmds. In \d"nociac> 
 it is different, the common will is not actual but ideal We 
 L- ather a 'collective will. -The State is a reality which^s 
 what it is bv dint of the combined resolves of many human 
 w H throuoh time; we individuals find the state as something 
 apptnlv finished standing there as something to be accept- 
 ed but at no time does the existence of this object becoiw, so 
 ndependent that it can continue to hold its reality apart rom 
 the good will which from moment to moment recreate, it 
 tL state, regarded thus, will not have that over-ind.vidual.ty 
 I hieh will nfean supreme power.^'^ ^'i^^'^X CZ 
 at times as if the higher unities are ^'•"-"'^l^"^"'^^;' '^'^.^J^S 
 droDDed the emphasis found in his earlier book, that the wU 
 of s'uch community is reached through individual insight and 
 choice. We have an oscillation Ijotween the two views. 
 
 I would submit that in speaking of "tsvo levels of human 
 
 life the level of the individual and the 1^- "^ ^ 'TfX 
 itv "'* Rovce leaves the door open to such literalizing of this 
 over-individuality as can mean coercion of the individua mem- 
 Z: fnd hence their enslavement. But if it is -^i'^f ^^';^; 
 the consciousness of individuals we have in place of the le^e 
 
 T i«« it-iMc^ »re mine as marking a BJgniflcant 
 
 30. The Prob.™ »« Chri...an.O. . P„;„«,^,.,]rromr«.." 
 
 dom would depend on its temporary violation. 
 34. The Problem of Christianity, H, 57. See aUo I, 165 ff. 
 
 lluyce and Individual ion 
 
 oo 
 
 of the eoiimuuiity' ^vllat might be called the 'fully personal/ 
 This is the social level of human individuality. The efforts 
 to embody this in society and in the state are ever tentative. 
 Without a doubt the experience of the past is the heritage of 
 each new individual. The organization of society provides 
 for this continuity of life. But the new breaks in to life 
 through the individual. God does not speak to the crowd or 
 to the community as such. In some brain'^^ his message comes 
 to explicit consciousness. Life for the individual must at its 
 best be fully personal. His decisions must ever be his own. 
 
 VI 
 
 A further cMJiitentioii (•(mcerniiig interpretation is this. As 
 interpretation in the finite it is a cognitive process. This im- 
 plies a growing knowledge of reality, but not such widening of 
 experience as concrete or direct and immediate as to point logi- 
 cally to a concrete Interpretation. The capitalizing of the 
 word must not hide this significant difference. 
 
 "In the concrete, then, the universe is a ccmimunity of in- 
 terpretation whose life comprises and uiiiiies all the social com- 
 munities which, for any reason, we know to be real in the em- 
 ]>irical world which our social and our historical sciences 
 study."^^ This ''single Community of Interpretation"^' marks 
 a union of a cognitive process with the objects such as we do 
 aiot have in the finite. Further we do not have that which 
 shows any tendency towards such union. We have that only 
 which can give by direct contrast this union. And contrast 
 'loes not carry with it necessarily the predicate of existence. 
 
 One would say that Royce would have come much nearer the 
 mark logically had he reached the view of a community of In- 
 lerpreters. This 'Community of Interpretation' is the new title 
 for the Absolute. I am unable to see that Royce has found 
 in the facts of the social as logically implicated this Community 
 of Interpretation. This Community in its members possesses 
 
 35. Lowell in his poem "on reading Burn.s in a workman's car. 
 "All thoughts that mould the age, begin 
 "Deep down within the primitive soul, 
 "And from the many slowly upward win 
 "To one who grasps the whole. 
 "In his wide brain the feeling deep 
 "That struggled on the many's tongue 
 "Swells to a tide of thought " etc. 
 
5G 
 
 Roycc and I ncU rid nation 
 
 lioyce and' I ndiriduafion 
 
 r> 4 
 
 a continuallv wider knowledge (or interpr(>tation) of reality. 
 It has not a direct and immediate and ever widening expenenfr 
 of reality. The past is carried in symbolic or other memory 
 form. The future is not yet. Nothing indicates an 'Interpre 
 tatioa' with -synoptic survey'. As with 'Thought' and ^\lll 
 we have here in the case of 'Interpretation' something gamed 
 not bv logic, but by a conceptual contrast. 
 
 We have two views of an ultimate somewhat externally 
 run together here: the Divine Community in a real time-order, 
 carrying with it its past in a true interpretation to the present 
 facing of the future and an Absolute, ^S^ewing the whole time 
 process by a single synopsis"- and thus inclusive of the future. 
 The first' gives a teleology where the process is real and signiti- 
 cant The latter makes the process in time a mere means to 
 the significant end. The reality which is eternally present is 
 essentially static. The former gives to time its true reality. 
 The latter, in including the future, renders time meaningless 
 to us. 
 
 36. The Problem of Christianity. II. p. 272. 37. Ibid. II. 272. 38. Ibid II. 271. 
 
 V 
 
 C'HAl^TKK VII r. 
 
 Summary on the Principle of Indiriduafion. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the 
 IIS found 
 I Hence the 
 It can be 
 Reflection 
 cm what is 
 is akeadv 
 level. 
 
 first period the distinctiveness of the human individual 
 in 'Reflection'. The world is eternally complete, 
 thought of the finite indi\ddual must be an idea oi:ly. 
 valid, but not creative or constitutive. We have in 
 but a partial vien^ of individuation, since reflection is 
 already given or existent.'^ Individuality in some sense 
 present, but in or through reflection it attains a higher 
 
 II. 
 
 In the second period the distinctiveness of the human individual 
 is held to be the work of will or purpose. The world is a 'com- 
 
 leted experience'. Will in the finite as achievement, or embodi- 
 ment, finds no place in such a world. The finite is shut up to the 
 possibilities of clarifying in idea his purpose or to defining his 
 vill. In so far as this remains untried, uucxnrcs.<^pd or unfulfill- 
 
 d, such will or purpose seems s}Tionymous with clarity of thought. 
 
 f not exactly synonymous with thought, it is inclusive of other ele- 
 nents such as instincts and necessarv desires, w4iich however arc 
 to be potential rather than active. If we mean by will a passage 
 from the theoretical to the actual then it is submitted that in a 
 Vompleted experience' there is no room for will in the finite. We 
 ,i:<t no further than a clearly defined purpose, held, as yet, theore- 
 tically. If any element is added in this period to the principle 
 
 f individuation in accounting for the human personality it is 
 this, that there must be (if action could take place) such expres- 
 sion as will do justice to the more instinctive parts of man's nature. 
 Much of our past experience is still with us in the form of an 
 nttitude w^hich is largely non-conscious. 
 
 John Dewey (in the Philosophical Review (1906) page 472) writing of thoughts 
 work says — "It serves to valuate organizations already existent as biological func- 
 tions and instincts, while, as itself, a biological activity, it redirects them to new 
 conditions and results." (Black-face type is mine.) 
 
wjs^.>;^:g 
 
 58 
 
 Ixoyce and Indivkhiulloa 
 
 lioi/ce and Iiuliuidiialion 
 
 5;t 
 
 III. 
 
 In the third peri..<l, the principle of individuation is loyalty 
 to a cause, which, metaphysically viewed, is loyalty to a commutt- 
 ity or in its cognitive fomi Interpretation.^ It is still a 'timshed 
 world when a synoptic survey includes past, present and fithire. 
 We can allow then, to the finite, interpretation as a theoretical 
 or reflective process only. Except in the novelty of the triadic form 
 by which man's social nature is proved, it seems identical with 
 the positiooi of the first F"od where reflection is taken as the 
 in-inciide of iiidividuiition. 
 
 IV 
 
 If however, we hold that the facts of finite experience do not 
 imply a 'complete.l exi>eriencc', and if we hold that our author 
 has brought this theory of the Absolute to the facts rather than 
 found it there, then we may ignore the doctrine of the Absolute 
 and note Royce's exposition of the place and individuation of he 
 human being in the universe. The human achievements in ,he 
 time-experience will no longer be negligible temporal replicas of 
 eternal realities. 
 
 That which constitutes the finite individual a human iierion- 
 ality is the power of mind. It will not be reflection alone, con- 
 sidered as a contemplative observation of the world-order, v et 
 it will involve such. It will not be will or purpose as a clearly 
 defined intention. The concrete actions will involve the fultiU- 
 in- of this purpose. 'A satisfied will' can then be posited as a 
 phase of the questh.n of individuation. In interpretation we 
 have a renewed emphasis on the cognitive. "Reflection involves 
 an interior conversation.'" It is social. 
 
 It must be noted also that whether the principle of individua 
 tion be reflection, will, loyalty or the 'will to interpret , we fin. 
 all are used in developing an ethical theory which I have called 
 self-alienating. We are to live the life of the whole m imper- 
 sonal' service. We are to take 'comfort' while our lives are in- 
 complete that they are caught up in the triumph of eternity. J o 
 
 ,~i;Z:Zet.n.. .e .0,0 than » J-ere,, co..i,iv^ o, reHecU.e p^oe.^ »ueh 
 
 an activity as means loyaltj to a cause, ims 
 reasoning is a life which interprets the past to the future. 
 3. The Problem of Christianity, II, 138. 
 
 fiich a ^caiise' we are to *devoto' ourselves ^strengthenecr by tlu- 
 
 knowledge that we shall share or do share in that eternal triumph. 
 
 All this seems a little short of the highest. ^'Such vicarious 
 
 Happiness must be, in fact, the greater part of the actual joy of 
 
 iny living man/'* But one's highest comfort must be found with- 
 in one's own will. If the world of human actions are contribu- 
 
 ions to reality, then the making of some contribution, in some 
 way, how^ever infinitesimally small, is the source of the highest 
 satisfaction and will mark the highest reach of the individual. 
 
 i one sublimates the rather empty and ruthless self-assertion of 
 
 Nietzsche or unites it with the finest and most intelligent al 
 
 truism, one will get that which is most characteristic of man as 
 
 in individual. The principle of individuation will be the urge 
 
 >f life toward real expression, a wnll to contribute or to create. 
 
 S^ietzsche calls it the 'Svill to power." 
 
 W. E. Hocking, The Meaning of Cod in Human Experience, p. 49' 
 
60 
 
 lioyce and Indtculuatlon 
 
 Iloi/cc and Indlridaallon 
 
 GI 
 
 I'nrf II 
 
 COXSTKrOTIVK ( lUTKlSM. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Ahsohifr. 
 
 I 
 
 It' we count liiiitc fact real enough to serve as a point of 
 departure, what we achieve logically must not destroy that 
 reality in our starting point. Yet free individuals in a real 
 time-experience and an Absolute whose world is eternally and 
 completely i)erfect are two incompatible* conceptions. An 
 Absolute whose thought is eternally fulfilled means a wovlfi 
 which is finished. There are no loose edges for it is given all 
 at once. The perfect realization of th« thcaght of the Absolute 
 is eternal. This leaves no room for free individuals and there 
 is indeed no reason for any temporal manifestation. If wo 
 pass over this ultimate lack of reason why there should be any 
 finite processes in time, or any manifestation of free indi- 
 viduals, and if we admit ilie unexplained existence of free indi- 
 viduals, we are at a loss to see what the finite individual can 
 do. The universe is eternally comi)lete. The finite beina then 
 can make no difference to reality for all that needs doing is 
 done and that eternally. If we grant further that something 
 is done, then since it can be no contribution to reality, that 
 something must be of the nature of appearance. This would 
 make the relation of the finite to the infinite an Appearance. 
 Keality relation. What further can be the nature of thi^ 
 appearance? What is done must not nuike any diiference to 
 tlie whole, not even in the way of novelty. There must l>e no 
 
 1. John Dewey (in Phil. Rev. 1906, p. 469 f.) says "idealism is condemned to move 
 buck and forth between two inconsistent interpretations of a priori thought. It 
 is taken to mean both the orgranized, the regrulated, the informed, established 
 character of experience, an order immanent and constitutional; and that which 
 organizes, regulates, forms, synthesizes, a power transcendent and noumenal.' . . . 
 "th« first sense, if validated, would leave us at most an empirical fact, whose 
 importance would make it none the less empirical. The second sense, by itself, 
 would bo so thoroughly transcendental that while it would exalt 'thou.;at' in 
 theoi-y, it would deprive the categories of that constitutional position within ex- 
 perience." This criticism is valid if the whole is a 'completed experience'. In 
 that case the 'thought' of the finite individual can contribute nothing to experience. 
 No doubt the finite finds qualities which are primary but it supplies or creates the 
 se^'ondnry ones. 
 
 originality. It must be an appearance of what is already 
 clcrnallv existent. One must seon to live the life that is 
 eternally perfect, and to serve the Universal Will. The ideal 
 of duty for such finite beings will be the service of 'impcr- 
 sonaF ends and hence a life of self-alienation. If we allow 
 the unexjdained existence and the unaccounted-for activity of 
 finite and free individuals, the logical form of life would be 
 this life of resignation and devotion. And this doctrine of 
 self-alienation is found throughout the philosophy of Prof. 
 Kovce. It is more than doubtful whether the doctrine of a 
 closed world or a completed experience is derivable logically 
 from finite experience.^ But if we forget logic for the moment 
 and posit free individuals within a 'finished world their 
 manifestations are appearance, negligible temporal replicas of 
 eternal realities. 
 
 As brought out in liis first book, the ilnite, as thinker, i.i 
 able to understand, and passively to know the nature of the 
 whole. He is a valid thinker. But such thinking makes no 
 real difference to the whole. It might be objected that as 
 thinking is a form of existence even the moments of reflection 
 as novelties would be impossible in a ^completed ex})erience\ 
 But of course a finite thinker assumes the validitv of thought 
 even if he were trying to deny it. This capacity for thought, 
 enables the finite individual to understand the Vv'orld process 
 and gives him that which he may copy in the life of appearance 
 which alone is open to him. This copying implies the se^f- 
 alienation which seems to be the ethical do<^trine of our author. 
 
 Finite beings, following this vicarious idern, are to seek 
 ^'imjKBrsonaP'^ ends and organizations. In sucli attainment we 
 ^'lose our lives''* as separate private selves. ''We are instru- 
 ments"^ unable ourselves to "attain the Absolute Moral in- 
 sight."*^ The "vast ocean of life"^ or the ''surging tides of the 
 Infinite Ocean"^ receive us who are "drops in this ocean of the 
 Absoute tnith.''^ 
 
 2. It should be noted that as we regard finite experience, we sw a growth in iii- 
 clusiveness. But it is our knowledge of reality which is becoming greater, not 
 an ever-widening of experionce as direct and immediate relation to objects. In 
 "The Religious Aspect of Philosophy" pp. 393, 405, Royce speaks of an "organism 
 of thought" and the "organic unitv of a series of judgments". This seems to im- 
 ply that our experience as direct is ever widening, which is not the case. See on 
 this point A K. Rogers in the Philosophical Review, vol. 12, p. 48 f. 
 
 3. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 211-213, 464. 4. Und. 442, see aLso 181. 
 
 200 f., 193. 218 f, 5. Ibid. 215. 6. Ibid. 168. 7. Ibid. 216. 8. Ibid 217. 
 . Tbifl 4 n . 
 
02 
 
 Royce and Lidicidaallon 
 
 lluijce and Indicidnalion 
 
 C 
 
 
 II. 
 
 But lioyee writes of the tiiiile as a 'part' of the whole. ^ In 
 the Supplementary Essay in the first volume of The World 
 and the Individual this part-whole relation is dealt with from 
 analogies found in the mathematical sciences. In a Self- 
 Kepresentative System, the part is equal to the whole or is the 
 image of the whole. In this part-whole relation, Royce means 
 by ^part\ not any mechanically separated part, but a significant 
 part or a constituent element of a dynamic whole. To follow 
 this analogv of the Self-Representative System the whole ap- 
 pears in each part^« and the part is the image of the whole. 
 We are ^parts' of the whole in some vsuch significant sense' 
 
 Xow I submit there is no room in a closed or finished world 
 for 'parts' of that nature. If a part is an image of the whole 
 in any real sense then it must have, in some degree however 
 slight, the power of making a real diiference in the world and 
 to the world such as we ascribe to the Universal Will. U thi 
 Will of the Absolute is eternally and completely fulfilled, thei. 
 the wills of 'parts' of that Absolute Subject must be included 
 in that which is fulfilled. If the 'part' has a will, unfulfilled 
 in the sense at least that it needs the realization which it get^ 
 in time, then that will as a constituent element of the Absolute 
 Will is' not yet realized and hence a completed experience for 
 the whole is impossible. 
 
 III. 
 
 Time-experience is real only in an infinitely unfinished uni- 
 verse. It is made unreal and unnecessary and indeed incon- 
 ceivable in a finished world. Yet it is from a bit of time- 
 experience that Royce takes his departure. His Absolutism 
 seems to deny the foundation upon which it is built. What is 
 this foundation? What doe^ the finite know of time and its 
 transcendence t We are told that "the true distinction, and the 
 true connection, between the temporal and the eternal aspects 
 of Being, furnish, in truth, the basis for the solution of thi> 
 whole problem."" 
 
 First, I have a direct experience of a time-span. I hold 
 in conscimisness more than the mere, instant of time. I may 
 increase this a little in practice. In this sense then I transcend 
 
 10. See the W^orld and the Individual, I, p. 468. 11. Ibid. II, 347. 
 
 I 
 
 ! 
 
 time that I can hold in t?onsciousness more than an immediatelv 
 |)resent moment or instant. Xow^, in this time-spnn transcen- 
 dence, there is no hint of any ability to get within the time-span 
 the future as sucli. In this transcendence too the full nature of 
 time as actual is found. 
 
 x\gaiii, I transcend time in another way. Alucli of my ex- 
 perience is past. Physiologists and psychologists tell us that 
 none of this is lost. It exists in some physiological or psychic 
 form. I have the idea eciuivalents of mv actual experiences 
 which are past. These need not be considered as necessarily 
 in consciousness. They are implicit in my attitude. This 
 being so, I hold my past in any moment of my experience. But 
 here ^gain there is no hint of the inclusion of the future. 
 
 While past experiences are held, they are held in an inter- 
 ])reted wav. The essential direction is keot but abstraction is 
 made from the aciiial stretch of time. The time-s})an trans- 
 cendency alone is direct and immediate while the interpreted 
 form alone promises all-inclusiveness. If the time-span were 
 all-inclusive the second form of time-transcendence would not 
 figure as it does with us. Ihit the time-span gives no promise 
 of such inclusiveness. The other form has such promise but 
 the future must have lx3Come present in order to take this form. 
 This implies the full reality of the time-process. In its ill- 
 inclusiveness there will be the end we call the present where the 
 })rocess is ever growing by biting into the future. 
 
 Now I can find no other form of time-transcendence and in 
 neither form is the future included. The musician, holding 
 the symphony as a whole present in a moment seems to be a 
 case of the second form of time-transcendence. He has hear<i 
 the symphony before, and, abstracted from the actual time- 
 stretch, he holds the music then in the grasp of a moment. It 
 is thought-content, not the actual music. 
 
 Now^ in a 'finished world' or 'completed experience' all tem- 
 poral processes, however fragmentary and incomplete are in- 
 cluded. And not only are the pa.st and present there; but the 
 future^" also is eternallv existent. I submit that we have no 
 analogy in the finite for the inclusion of the future in such 
 
 12. Of course in Royce's view of the Absolute as holding all of time in one time-span, 
 there is no future for the Absolute. But it is future for us and for us the future 
 has a sense of non-existence. If it is actual for the Absolute it must exist. Then 
 what I may do to-morrow both is existent and non-existent. This is obscure. 
 We might think of a time span including the past up to the present. But to in- 
 clude the nonexistent future is impossible. At least it seems so to me. 
 
64 
 
 lloyce and IndluUluuUort 
 
 TiUijic and ludu'i dual ton 
 
 0^ 
 
 time-traiisceiulence and house it U an uiinieaning^^ statement, 
 to say that the future is present eternally to the Absolute. 
 Neither form of time-transcendence found in the finite give-^ 
 a hint of such forestalling of the actual coming of the future 
 into the present. The form of time-transcendence, as inclusive 
 of the future, makes time unreal, and, as stated above, thi^: 
 cuts away the foundation of fact on which the doctrine of the 
 Absolute is built. I submit that we must hold to the reality 
 of the tem])oral and in no way go beyond the limits set by what 
 we know of time-transcendence in our own experience. 
 
 Prof. Koyce has passed beyond these limits. Dealing v.-ith 
 time transcendence in the Absolute, he has spoken of it is a 
 time-span.^* He refers to the time-span of the finite, and car- 
 ries it over, in analog;)^, to the time-span of the ^'eternal con 
 sciousness.'''* "The type of empirical unity is the guide." 
 "The eternal insight observes the whole of time."^® "Th( 
 difference is merely one of span."^^ Yet we find that the 
 future turns up as included in the time-span of the Eternal. 
 Or again something of the second type of time-transcendenc( 
 is noted for "Time is known to us, both perceptually, as tlit 
 psychologists would say, and conceptually."^® There is the 
 ^specious present' or time-span, and also the ability to hold a 
 past even event as present in consciousness. I submit that tlien 
 is here a confusion of two kinds of time transcendence, and nlr^') 
 a false inclusion of the future. The attempt to leave thr 
 choice of the future to the determination of the individuar" 
 
 13. Wm. James in "The Will to Believe" p. 181 note says, "a mind to whom all time 
 is simultaneously present must see all things under the form of actuality or under 
 some form to us unknown. If he thinks certain moments as ambiguous in their 
 content while future, he must simultaneously know how the ambiguity will hnv*' 
 to be decided when they are p;vst " This seems a gratuitous fiction. 
 
 In an address in the year 1907 on "The Relation of Time to Eternity" (and quoted 
 by A. O. Lovejoy in The Philosophical Review, 190», p. 497 f.) J. M. McTaggart 
 says, "When taking Time as real as we must do in every day life, we are en 
 deavouring to estimate the relation of Time to Eternity. We may legitimately say 
 that Eternity is future". . . . "We must conceive of the Eternal as the final stage 
 
 in the time process Time runs up to Eternity and ceases in Eternity." The 
 
 states of the time proce.ss ;ire iiureasingly adequate in their representation of 
 reality. Full adequacy would mean the ceasing of the process. We would have 
 timeless reality. Eternity is rather the successor of time than that which holds 
 the time- process in a time- span. 
 
 14. If the Absolute includes the whole of time in a time-span then it would seem to 
 imply that the particular moments would be alike indiflferent to the eternal and 
 ever remain fragmentary. Yet we read again that "when I consciously and 
 uniquely will, it is I then who just hero am God's will or who just here con- 
 sciously act for the whole." (Compare the World and the Individual, I, pp. 425 
 and 468.) Here are two contradictory ideas of the whole, one is static, the other 
 dynamic. The former, if held, would certainly call for duplicate experiences for 
 infinite and finite. The second would seem to cancel human initiative and the 
 time- span of the static theory. Just how the future can be eternally present in 
 such a dvnamic whole is not clear. 
 
 15 The World and the Individual, I, 421, 425. 16. Ibid. II, 144, see also 147. 17. 
 Ibid. II, 145. 18. Ibid II, 113, 115. 19. See Ibid ii, 148. 
 
 is more just to the facts than to the logic of his position. IIow 
 can the future be present and yet the choices be unmade? 
 
 When we come to the third peri(xl, it seems to me, lloyce 
 is using in his doctrine of interpretation the second form of 
 time-transcendence. My past is with me in the present as I 
 face the future. Every experience helps to make me what I 
 am and what I am affects the experiences that I am having. 
 My attitude makes a difference in the present to the events 
 that are transpiring with me. "The time-order, in its sense 
 and interconnection, is knowTi to us through interpretation, and 
 is neither a conceptual nor yet a perceptual order."-*^ Inter- 
 pretation is triadic. "The present interprets the past to the 
 future. "^^ Yet even this use, which seems to give to the future 
 its true place, is vitiated by the dragging in of the older time- 
 span conception and that too as inclusive of the future. The 
 "whole time-process is in some fashion spanned by one in- 
 sight."" We read of "a synoptic survey of the whole of 
 time."" It is based on "the power of an individual self to 
 extend his life, in ideal fashion, so as to regard it as including 
 past and future events which lie far away in time, and whicli 
 he does not now personally remember. ^^^^ The dragging in of 
 the future on a basis which is unreal is evident in the passage. 
 Surely we do not now remember the future. 
 
 It should be emphasized that in the second form of time- 
 transcendence which we find in our experience, the past is 
 present in a vicarious or representative w^ay. It seems to me 
 that interpretation bears the mark of this type of time-trans- 
 cendence. If so, it must be noted that the past, as such, is not 
 directly and immediately present to the Interpreter. The 
 whole as the direct or immediate relation of the Absolute as 
 Subject to the World as Object is not conceivable under this 
 form of interpretation which we find in the finite. Interpre- 
 tation implies a time-process. We have an attempt on the part 
 of Royce to take in combination two phases of the finite which 
 show no signs of uniting, i.e. direct experience and all-inclu- 
 siveness. I submit that in sucli ^synoptic survey' time is un- 
 real. And free individuals need, for the reality of their free- 
 dom, a time experience which is also real. 
 
 20. The Problem of Christianity, II, p. 155. 
 
 21. The Problem of Christianity, II, p. 280. 22. Ibid. II, p. 271. 23. Ibid. II, p. 
 286. 24. Ibid. II. 61. (Italics are mine). 
 
GG 
 
 llvyte and liuhvldualluii 
 
 Royvc and Iiidicidaaliun 
 
 C 
 
 IV, 
 
 We are told tliai ••foreknowledge iu time is possible only 
 of the general, and of the catisally predetermined, and not ot 
 the unfque and free" and "hence neither God nor n.an can 
 perfectly foreknow, at any teniporal moment, what a free-wiU 
 agent is yet to do. On the other hand, the Absolttte possesse 
 .?porfect^knowledge at one glance of the .hole of the tempora 
 order, present, past, an<l future. This knowledge is ill^allc-a 
 foreknowledge. It is eternal knowledge. ' 
 
 The anihiguitv in the word -eternal' has already been point- 
 ed ot.t It n.av' be said of the 'foreknowledge ot the causally 
 predetermined' \hat sueh seems to moan that,-given the or)g.- 
 nal cosmic formula and assuming the conservation of energy 
 and the indestructibility of matter and ^]'« °"^7;^. '^^,^. "t^;" 
 .sarv result which one may deduce or predict. But >^ jh e- 
 
 knowledge 'eternal knowledge' ♦ It is the assertion of univer 
 sd validitV rather than that direct and Immedmie knowledge 
 which is ascribed to the Absolute. Then too the combmauon. 
 of atoms and molecules vary an.l change and while the quan- 
 tity mav be held as invariable, the arrangement of them is eve. 
 new an*d so they have a real future that it seems impossible to 
 foreknow, i.e. as regards order. 
 
 The ditticultv is even greater when we consider the soK^alled 
 secondary qualities. The order and arrangement of the physi- 
 cal, to which we refer primary qualities, is ever ctoj/m^. ^> 
 tlie secondary qualities, we see that which the individual is ev 
 creailnn.^^ No cosmic fovnada will enable one to predict the 
 moment and place of creation. These secondary qualities may 
 ,.ot have the «ro..s reality that physical nature possesses, yet 
 they are real.^ We have here "a process of absolute, unpredic- 
 table, and inexplicable creation of new realities out of not..- 
 i„„."" .lust how these new existences arc eternally fore- 
 kimwn is obscure. I'rimary qualities may be known. \U\ 
 
 secondary qualities are vinpreclictable. The arrangement or 
 order of the reality to which we ascribe primary qualities eyer 
 presents noyelties. The secondary qualities are undoubtedly 
 such. Are all such noyelties real or illusory? A 'completed 
 experience' would render them illusory. The attempt to 
 tind their reality in an 'cternar foreknowoledge of them 
 leaves the point very obscure. 
 
 V. 
 
 The term 'eternal', if used tlius in relation with the term 
 'temporaF, must have some community of meaning. The 
 eternal cannot be simply 'not the temporal'.'^ A blank negation 
 of the temporal is an irrelevant negation. 
 
 \Vlien then we read, that ''as there is an eternal knowledae 
 of all individuality, and of all freedom, free acts are know^n 
 as occurring like the chords in the musical succession, ])recisely 
 when and how they actually occur."^'** It seems natural to 
 suppose that the term 'eternal' has some functional relation to 
 the term 'temporal'. But the 'musical succession' is only 
 grasped in this way after a rehearsal in which it has gone 
 through the actual stretch of time of playing. Xow^ we can 
 hardly think that the present time-order is a second rehearsal. 
 The illustration from nuisic involves a necessity of havir.a 
 heard the music produced at least once before. Even in the 
 mind of the composer, however rapidly the creation takes slmpe, 
 it takes actual time. Afterwards he may hold it in an all-in- 
 one-instant manner. It is not clear then what it is to have 
 'eternal' foreknowledge of a -first production. Time and eter- 
 nity are not made commensurable by the juxtapixsition of the 
 terms. 
 
 The eternal consciousness is in some sense to be ahout ^ojii- 
 poral and changing objects and further is to include and indi- 
 viduate consciousnesses that work in a time-order and throuah 
 successive experiences. I have shown two forms of time-trans- 
 cendence in finite individuals. In the form of a time-span or 
 in the vicarious or representative form^^ in wdiich our past ex- 
 
 25. The World and the Individu.l II. J; j;*;,.,^,:, Jen^ld^nd^ tL 
 
 Ends" p. 313. hold, that Royce here d^nrnsh^ ^G^d cannot foreknow but th. 
 
 26 See "The Problem of Knowledge" I>. C. Macintosh, pp. 314. 323. Color.... 
 
 the created product ot fplrit." ,,„nnx dso \ naner on "the 
 
 27. A. O. Lovejoy. The Philosophical Review (1900) p. 489 A paper 
 
 obsolosconcp of tho Ftirnal. 
 
 28. "The Conception of God", p. 348. "The Eternal Now is simply not the temporal 
 »^ resent." 
 
 29. "The World and the Individual',' II, p. 374. 
 
 30. In the Philosophical Review (1902) p. 405. J. Dewey (reviewing The V/orld 
 and the Individual, vol. II) says "Prof. Royce seems to have two minds aboui, 
 time and two about eternity. On the one side, the temperal process in each and 
 every phase is equally fragmentary and finite. The eternal is simply the temporal 
 process taken as an object of knowledge all at once. Here there is no organic re- 
 
^g Uojjcc (fid IitdivUlucdiun 
 
 „erience i. present ^virh us, the nature of time is not lost. But 
 Ef^'re I simply not yet existent. ^^^^^^^ 
 in the se<-.>n(l form of time transoendeucc that the tinite De.ng 
 ; hi "or ase of knowledge of reality is not ganung an ever 
 ^ider n.l wider direct and immediale experience of reality 
 T^ time-span transcendence is ever Hunted "V^efinUe. Suc- 
 cession a J enters both forms of tn--t-nBcende.ce.^^^^ -^^^^^^^ 
 no tendency in any way to change its nature to simultaneity 
 It is a niti e of the tinic-order. Now in the senses mentioned 
 I can li 1 out objects and events in the time-order. It seems 
 PCS rJrto postulate a consciousness of time-span so exter.de 
 S:;; all theV is Presentin an ^....^^^ ^^Z^:^ 
 r i; t tSft^rg^ie f!^r TiL is not to mere- 
 ; r^Lend time but to ignore it. and to be separate absolutely 
 from it. Time and such eternity are incommensurable. 
 
 VT. 
 
 This absolute, Jfoyce holds, has individuated finite inclivi- 
 duals The Whde i; a "completed experience" in an eternal 
 n^ant. iL these 'parts' pursue a temporal e-tenc..Ea^ 
 part is temporally ever fragmentary an.l >mpe'-fe<^ • ^ ?^ the 
 nature and reality of these parts are necessary to the complete 
 Te^ :f the whole. This Eternal is then in relation to much 
 that changes. Yet it loses not Us eterni y. It - «^ -J^ 
 fulfilled and complete. How is it possible that a relation De 
 ticen the eternal and the temporal can be unchangeable w^iei 
 one term in the relation is one of changed 1 cannot find t^t 
 Prol I'yce makes this clear and to me it seems self-contradic- 
 
 tory. 
 
 The difficulty is no. rendered less so when -' tuul .lj.|. -1- 
 
 1 <. Q„u ^f tViP finite beinir is this Absolute belt wuicu i» 
 complete Self of the finite bein i , ^ ^^ ^f 
 
 the Eternal. One might ask with Sidgw ick i a 
 
 the unity of the individual's consciousness when it is thus sp-i 
 
 up hitoL eternally complete consciousness out of time and a 
 
 ^»hip between e.erni.. ^nd ^'^^:^:i'tZ^^:^J^^ ^^^^ 
 U that the meaning of the «h°'« '^^^^^Ve' c. has an eternal meaning, becans. 
 r^X"mta.rin its r r;^C;c?rh: meaning 0. an o.he... being l.n.e. 
 to them in the Absolute. ' 
 
 Iioijce and Indlci dual ion 
 
 09 
 
 function of an animal organism which this eternal mind, somo- 
 liow limiting itself, makes its vehicle. "^^ 
 
 It seems but just to demand, that, when one starts froju 
 finite experience which is in a real sense a temporal experience^ 
 and passes to an eternal experience one must make the steps 
 such that others may see the way. If this is not done the pas- 
 sage in question will seem mystical or even verbal. Until time 
 and eternity are shown as commensurable we are condemned 
 by our thinking as l)eings in time to hold that time at least is 
 real and knowable by us. If time and eternity are incommen- 
 surable, it seems but words to say that an eter'nal being has 
 relations to a temporal one. If the Eternal Being needs in 
 any sense the endeavors that appear in time in the careers of 
 empirical egos, then the eternal being is not out of time. To 
 assert a real relation between the eternal and the temporal re- 
 duces the eternal to the temporal. 
 
 We may challenge tlie right of Prof. Royce to say, before 
 he has made clear this relation of the temporal and the eternal, 
 ''Our comfort lies in knowing in all this life, ideals are sought, 
 with incompleteness and with sorrow, but with the assurance 
 of the divine triumph in Eternity lighting up the wliole.'' '" 
 
 VTL 
 
 While this relation of the ti'mj)<>ral and the etenuil remains 
 obscure, it seems impossible to hold that the Absolute has been 
 proven to exist. Ilence one ca'nnot say that the problem of the 
 principle of individuation has been cleared up. And if the 
 logical relation of the Absolute to the finite is not indubitalde 
 we cannot begin from that larger side in our explanation of 
 the lesser. We cannot, that is, approach the finite self from 
 
 31. As quoted by A. 0. Lovejoy in Phil. Rev. 1909, p. 403, from Sidgwick's "Lectures 
 
 on the Ethics of Green, Spencer and Martineau." (1902) Ch. I. 
 
 32. The World and the Individual, II, p. 411, (Italics are mine). The Problem of 
 the presence of evil in a perfect universe is obscure in the same way as is the 
 question of the relation of time and eternity. For Royce there is eternally present 
 in the Absolute, the evil and the good will which annuls it. But, in the finite, 
 there is, in the time-process, the suffering of suspense and of the soitows un- 
 solved. Just how the Absolute, in its eternal and simultaneous consciousness of 
 the evil and triumph over it, could have the grief of despair and hope, deferred, 
 seems hard to understand. While the meaning of the term eternal is obscure one 
 does not know whether in an 'eternal consciousness' the evil and its sting is 
 present at one and at the same time with the triumph. If they are simultaneous, 
 it would seem as a 'painting of a sorrow'. 
 
 \ 
 
70 
 
 liuyce and Indicidualion, 
 
 the si<le of tl..' wholeness, a wovl.l-view which wo have readied 
 in thought by mere contrast, not by logic. 
 
 I sav rontrast. I find in my cognition two phases. There 
 is that form found in direct and immediate experience. There 
 thought is working with original sensations and peroeptioi-.s. 
 It is conscious of them as new and as marking present exper- 
 ience But the present moves across the narrow time-span ot 
 my direct consciousness and becomes past. The actual stretch 
 of time is eliminated. In memory, image or kmcsthesis, the 
 past remains on in the present. Thonglit may work over 
 these memories. In doing so it has full recognition ot such as 
 past, and that, in whatever sense they remain, they are the 
 equivalents or representations of past experiences. Ihe refer- 
 ence is not lost. Now in my experience it is this knotvledcie 
 of what is past which grows. It is present with me but not 
 liowever as direct experience. It is a knowledge of reality. 
 The direct experience with its narrow time-span may widen a 
 little. 15ut its signiticance does not lie in any evident tendency 
 to c'l'ow' ever wider and v.ider. 
 
 Now the Al)s<dute as described is a whole and is a direct 
 experience. The logic of my finite experience is an ever widen- 
 ing knoidedge of reality together with a non-expansive time- 
 span Yet it is this latter as expanded infinitely which is 
 aseribe.1 to the Absolute. This is not the logic of finite ex- 
 perience but a straight contrast based on the co7icre!eness ot 
 mv direct or immediate experience. But if it is a contrast, 
 we must see that it remains still in the region of the formal or 
 eoiicoptual. 
 
 On the other han.l there is logi.- in the view of a coinpre- 
 hensive unity of knowledge. It is the unity in the individual 
 knowers thought and life manifests an ever widening reduc- 
 tion of his experiences of reality to this knowledge form. W e 
 have thus the experiencing mind and its accumulated knowledge 
 
 of veal it V. 
 
 We iiave then to look for the principle of individuation 
 not to some all-inclusive Absolute, but to the nature of the m- 
 
 „3 K»„t in a letter to M.m.8 Herj in 1780 write, "that we c.nnot «»»»■"■■'*_« 
 oo. iv.ftm lu u iKnt^i I." oamo ftR thp divme. and only aistin- 
 
 TsoraVnuoted by A. S.th in Hejrelianism nnd Personality, p. 33, note.) 
 
 Boycc and Indn-iduatlon 71 
 
 dividual in himself. We find a certain instinct for reality or 
 will to live in all levels of human life. Some unifying and 
 directive value-seeking impulse is in even the pre-self-conscious 
 stages of life. One might postulate some sort of absolute and 
 personal value that unifies the special instincts and necessary 
 desires. Nietzsche has called it the Svill to power'. If powder 
 is read in its higher meanings, this mav not be too vague a 
 title. 
 
 And now it will not do to select some high level or phase 
 of individual life and explain the lower by it. To speak of 
 rational self-activity"^* as the mark of the true self is to do 
 less than justice to the pre-rational and instinctive levels of life. 
 We find too on a high level of huma'n life activities which are 
 carried on in habitual forms where reasoning or reflection is 
 not explicit. There is also the intuition that succeeds reflec- 
 tion. 
 
 The Absolutist tends to define the individual in terms of 
 content or relations. This enables him to think of the content 
 in a large way. It" is freed from the limitations of time nnd 
 space, from the peculiarities of individuals. Of course he 
 refers to actual or concrete life. I>ut because we must speak 
 of reality in the words and terms of wdiat is intellectual, there 
 is always the danger of mistaking this intellectual content, 
 as abstracted from time, these relations, etc., for actually exict- 
 ing selves. Xow if I would define a man I can say, — the name 
 he has is, etc., — he lives at, etc., — he has a certain business, 
 etc. But I can not say that when I have exhausted the re- 
 lations and activities or content of his life I have given the 
 individual. I have assumed him in every concrete situation. 
 I have described him but I have not constituted him as exis- 
 tent. The existent individual is treated bv the Absolutist 
 according to the needs of his argument. To maintain hi.s 
 actuality, the individual is spoken of as many concrete rela- 
 tions held in unity by some unifying principle. Then, to 
 provide for that self-transcendence which is the indication o.^* 
 the great and inclusive Absolute disjunctively embodied in the 
 many individuals, we have this unifying principle suddenly 
 growing more tangible and the various relations growing less 
 
 34. This is the term pi-eferred by Prof. Howison (See The Conception of God, p. 321 
 note). It does not seem to me to take into account the significance in life of 
 instincts and desires. 
 
I- 
 
 72 
 
 Iluycc aiLcl Indlcldualioiv 
 
 liojjce and Individual ion 
 
 ■7'> 
 
 SO. This seems to me an hypostasising of the formal and uni- 
 fying prinei])le. 
 
 Ikit we hold that the Absolute has not been demonstrated. 
 Can we not deny to thought its chaim to finding in its timeless 
 abstractions the^ essence of individuality? Thought is rather 
 a function of the whole life-process than an end in itself. 
 
 If we go to the facts of life for our data, we can-not igMore 
 the psychcdoijical elements for there can be no content without 
 ixsychologicai embodiment. Every psychological existence 
 takes place at a specific time in the stream of experience. Here 
 in this concrete, one must look for the individual and, for psy- 
 chological theory, the original datum is the orga'uism already 
 struggling to maintain and develop itself. It is from this 
 that^'the life of conscious experienc-e is slowly differentiated. 
 We can sav that ^Hhere are many centres of conscious exper- 
 ience, each' leading its own life, determined by its own ideals, 
 yet making itself eifective in a common order of expeneace, 
 and doing this by building up jointly with other intelligent 
 agents a common world oi ever increasiiu; richness and com- 
 i)lexitv.''"" Here v;e are not among rarelled abstractions or 
 timeless content. ^^The only true and real and independent 
 existences are minds together with that which they appre- 
 hend.'''*' The relational content found by the analysis of 
 knowledoe is of a merely logical character and we must n(»t 
 mistake the logical exposition of thought in general for a mcta- 
 ])hysieal determination of the object. 
 
 As we have already noted, language is the work of thought 
 and hence all that is expressed in language must be u'niversal. 
 But shall vv-e say that what cannot be uttered, feeling and ^en- 
 sation, etc., far from being the highest truth, is the most un- 
 important or untrue? This is what I mean when I define a 
 man in terms of the content of his life. I cannot mean that 
 the business, pleasure, home, etc., which make up the actual 
 content of his lifo are to be included literally. I have abstracr- 
 ed their essence. They are relations. But such reasoning 
 
 needs to know that "the real is inaccessible by way of ideas 
 
 We escape from ideas and from mere universals, by a reference 
 to the real which appears in perception."^' A mere glance at 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 nature suffices to ;show^ that its leading feature, as contrasted 
 with the logical necessity which links the different parts of a 
 rational system together, is its pure matter-of-factness. This 
 is not irrational. It is rather a non-rational or alocjical char- 
 acter. Things lie side by side in space or succeed one another 
 in time with perfect indifference. Of real existence one must 
 say "the parts seem to be shot out of a pistol at us. Each asserts 
 itself as a simple brute fact, uncalled for by the rest, which, 
 so far as we can see, might even make a better systc'in v/Idiout 
 it. Arbitrary, jolting, foreign, discontinuous, are the adjec- 
 tiv'es by which we are tempted to describe it.""*^ I'he Abso- 
 lutist w^ould acknowledge these concrete facts, w^ould term them 
 the Contingent and pass by v/ay of contrast to the limeless and 
 logical abstractions which he then liypostasiscs into an Absolute 
 Self Consciousness. ]^ow logical abstractions can not iJilcfcen 
 into real existences. The men'nest thing that exists has a life 
 of its own, absolutely unique and individual which we can 
 partly understand by terms borrowed from our own experiences, 
 but which is no more identical v.ith or in anv w-ay like the 
 description v/e give of it, than our own inner life is identical 
 with the description we give it in a book of philosophy. We 
 must not sweep existential reality off the board, under the 
 ])ersuasion that a full statement of all the thought-relation^ 
 that constitute our knowledge of the thing is equivalent to the 
 existent thing. It is our thought-equivalent. But something 
 has escaped the logical net. And that something is very im- 
 portant. 
 
 It is submitted that Royee, in common with till Al)s<d'itists, 
 seeks to evolve a fact from a conception."^ Even in the latest 
 book there is a very evident endeavor to make synonymous an 
 Absolute as Interpretation with a Divine Community of Inter- 
 preters. This latter seems no abstraction. The former is 
 such. If w^e conclude to ignore this continued insistence on 
 an Absolute and accept as an aJiernaiive the Community we 
 
 33 C M. Bftkowell. The Philosophical Review. toI. XX. p. 134. 
 
 36.* Ferrier (Institutes) as quoted by A. Seth, Hegehanism and Personality, p. 31. 
 
 37. F. H. Bradley. Principles of T-.ogio, 63, 69. 
 
 88. Wm. James. Mind, Vll, 187. 
 
 39. A. C. Armstrong in a review of The Problem of Christiauity in The Philosophical 
 Review (1914) p. 71 f- asks "Does the noetic ground compel the inference to the 
 metaphysical conclusion?" 
 
 In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 476, Royce tells us "Our special proof 
 for the existence of an Universal Thought has been based, in the foregoing, upon 
 
 an analysis of the nature of truth and error as necessary conceptions The 
 
 Universal Thought is infinite, and its existence is proved independently of ex- 
 perience." (Bhuk type mine). 
 
 John Dewey in The Philosophical Review, 1902, p. 406, saj's "Prof. Royce dives 
 arbitrari'y from tho regrinn of concepts into the chaotic sea of experience." 
 
7^ 
 
 lioyce and Individual ion 
 
 have retained in our construction, along with our logic of re- 
 lations, the alogical facts of real existences. 
 
 The idea of reality as substance, as substantial, is very 
 tenacious of life. This stubbornness points to this that reality 
 can never be wholly permeable to idea, and yet we do know 
 realitv. Keality is something beyond categories and predi- 
 
 cates. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Absolutist would detine iinitc individuality i'n terms of 
 contents and contents, to be described, nuist be stated in iatel- 
 lectual terms. They are, to that extent, abstractions. While 
 having a tj\^e of existence, they are descriptions of reality 
 rather than the actual things described. These intellectual 
 constructions can be easily merged by the intellect which made 
 them. Ilense compoundini^ of consciousnesses seems a fact oi* 
 at least a possibility. But this is solely in the realm of the 
 conceptual. Existences do not flow together. The transition 
 from the ideal to the actual is the tratisition*"* which is not clear. 
 
 Finite fact does not give us much light on this point. E.^- 
 perience presents to us two features as we have noted. The.e 
 is a present time-span and an ever increasing knowledge of 
 reality. When I remember a scene or a'n individual, the actual 
 and original experience is not present. Some copy or symbol 
 of it is there. The significant thing about this symbol is its 
 reference to that original but now past experience. To say 
 that if I can compare the copy with the original that I have 
 the original and hence do not need the copy, is no argument. 
 A fresh view of a scene always renews the representation which 
 I bear away and the reference to that scene is the significant 
 feature of it. This reference does not arise through compari- 
 son of the copy and the original. Tt is a constant feature of 
 the symbol and hence niav be assumed. 
 
 We have much knowledge that cannot be said to have come 
 into my experience even directly. A friend describes vividly 
 the inside form of his house. ' I get a picture of it which would 
 
 40 J Dewey in The Philosophical Review, 1902. p. 398. says, "In any case it I8 
 " not clear what justifies Prof. Royce suddenly to turn his back upon ideal con 
 Ktructions and fall back upon literal experiences,— seeing that his whole theory 
 of Being is based upon discounting literal experiences as fragmentary, mere^ nints. 
 glimpses, etc.. in favour of what, for our type of consciousness, must be, and must 
 remain, a wholly ideal construction." 
 
 lloijcc and Indii'idualion 
 
 i J 
 
 enable me to go about it in the dark. And 1 have not seen it 
 as yet. I have a knowledge of that house which lias not en- 
 tered my immediate experience. In my knowledge of reality 
 I have then some equivalent or representation of reality, not 
 realitv itself. 
 
 But when I examine further my direct experience 1 do not 
 find that sort of inclusive unity which is ascribed to the Abso- 
 lute. When I experience a house across the street, psychology 
 tells me of certain vibrations of the ether or other medium that 
 fall upon the retina of my eye. The result is a group of sen- 
 sations in my mind. Surely that which is concretely within 
 my mind is the sensation. The house is out there beyond my 
 eye. Of course this seems to ptit the mind, w^e are told, back 
 in the skull. Whatever the answer may be to that charge it 
 seems as if an attack on the skull has more immediate eU'jct 
 on the mind than the tearing down of the house. My dire<'-t 
 exj)erience of an object in the physical world is not a case of 
 my mind expanding to include it literally. Such elasticity 
 would call for explanation. And such an expansion ignores 
 the facts of vision. 
 
 The contention is made here that in both my direct or 
 present and my past exjxirience we have no concrete union 
 such as is ascribed to Thought, or Will. We have to distin- 
 guish two sorts of objects. There is the house across the street, 
 the shape and color of which I become aware of at a glance. 
 This is the actual physical object. Such objects make impress 
 sions on us through our senses. Or we get a knowledge of 
 them through such media. We have further the object^^ of 
 knowledge. This latter is that which holds over and become^ 
 my memory of the house. As stated, it exists with a specific 
 reference to the actual physical object. Or, if in my direct 
 experience I abstract from the experience my consciousness of 
 mental activity, the mental content remaining is this object. 
 The sense of vision is acted upon and I have a sensation. This 
 is what I really experience. I am on both sides of this relation 
 of knower and object. But the object is this mental content. 
 This object has, as noted, the reference outward. In the k?io\v- 
 
 41, On this distinction see A. K. Rogers in The Journal of Phil. Psy. and Sc. M., 
 March 30, 1916, on "A Statement of Epistemological Dualism.' He distinguishen 
 "between the content of knowledge, the object of knowledge, and the psychological 
 existence of the knowledge act." The 'content' of knowledge is "not only abstract 
 in the sense that it is unlocalizod in space; it is unlocalized also in time."' 
 
76 
 
 lloycc aud Indlculaation 
 
 lloijce and. IndlcldiuiUon 
 
 i i 
 
 ing relation of direct experience there is no such concrete 
 union of the knower and the actual physical object such as 
 1 ascribed to the All-Knower. There is a great deal of ex- 
 perience which is certainly not actually withrn my mind in 
 knowing. If I hold a ball in my hand I am unable to see the 
 f I rt her side. Yet I do not seem to have any psychological 
 evidence for believing that the side visible to me is concretely 
 present in a way the other is not. My k»nowing is of the ball 
 and the farther" side seems to be in the same sense over there 
 as well as the side next to me. I am thinking about the two 
 sides of the ball. The content or object in knowledge which 1 
 get in the sensation of the ball is such that I add rn imaginative 
 presentation the other side. In thought the ball is complete 
 though I have experienced directly but one side. 
 
 What I wish to submit here is that any reading of a knowing 
 experience in terms of an actual, bodily presence, i'n the unity 
 of my experience, of the physical object, seems untrue to the 
 facts of knowing which psychology presents to us. Neither in 
 my direct experience nor in that form in which experience 
 wiiich is past is found i'n me is there such physical presence. 
 My thought, experience, meaning, will, or interpretation all 
 alike lack this which is ascribed to the Absolute. An analogy 
 in finite experience, being absent, such experience of concrete 
 unio^i is unmeaning to us. 
 
 realm is freighted with all the obscurities of *the distinction 
 and yet relation' of the temporal and the eternal. 
 
 The attempt further to gain an ultimate and all-inclusive 
 unitv is ambiicnous. The unitv of a familv, a state or a cro^^d 
 is assumed. The mind of a state is found only in the indivi- 
 dual citizens. The genius of democracy is not unification but 
 harmonious differentiation. 
 
 Now it seems to me tliat the Absolutist reads experience in 
 terms of direct union with the actual objects. These actual 
 unities are then rarefied by translation from the temporal to 
 the eternal realm. We have timeless content and relations. 
 Such easily flow together and we have the Absolute — a direct 
 union of a self with all objects — a concrete self — consciousness. 
 
 Now 'no such union is even hinted at in finite consciousness 
 and aU-inclusivencss, as shown, is not an ideal for the time- 
 span of my direct experience, but of my knowledge of reality 
 which is intellectual or in some sense representational. 
 
 IX. 
 
 In the Hrst two periods of his work, Koycc is dealing with 
 the rehuion of a finite being to the infinite. I have contended 
 that the larger self which has been attained by contrast is not 
 an all-inclusive Absolute but the fi'nite self*' envisaged in con- 
 ceptual completeness. In the later period the relation with 
 which the period opens is the relation of men to one another 
 in society. Royce reads the self as in reality the Self, and so 
 here 'men in society' is read as, in reality, 'Community.' We 
 have here, I contend, no logical and existential fact but society 
 as we know it envisaged in conceptual completeness. It is 
 an ideal construction. To tra'iislate the social world as wo 
 know it from the actual time-process into some super-temporal 
 
 42. See W. E. Hocking. "The Meaning of God in Human Experience," p. 290. Also 
 G. H. Howison. "The Comeption of God," p. 104. 
 
78 lloyce and Indlvklaallon 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Sclf-A lie nation. 
 
 I 
 
 111 the philorioplij of Prof. Koyce we must not forget that 
 finite selves are not objects of the thought of the Absolute. 
 They are constituent elements of the Infinite as Subject. They 
 participate in the essential nature of the whole., lioyee re- 
 peatedly refers to them thus as 'parts' or 'fragment.s' of the 
 whole. As 'parts', the many have a measure of separateness 
 or of independence of each other. But they "freely unite to 
 constitute tlie whole."^ "When we urge or seek independence 
 of character, we must do so only l)ecause such independence 
 is a temporary means, whose ultimate aim is harmony and 
 unity of all men on a higher plane,"^ for "the One Will must 
 conquer."^ If one inquires of origin rather than goal, one is 
 tokl, "the Will individuates according to its own needs; and 
 and if it needs for its fulfilment free individuals it will possess 
 them and its life will be constituted by theirs.'-* Such in- 
 dividuation is not to be confused with the embodiment in ob- 
 jects of the thought of the Absolute. 
 
 As co'n^tituents parts of the whole, the career for each is to 
 serve** the cause of the whole. "Tlie free agents of a moral 
 world are free only in so far as their essential moral relations 
 ideally leave them free. They have their place and must stay 
 in it. They have their individuality and must subordinate 
 it.''® This nccessitv of 'subordination' is characteristic of 
 Royce's ethical theory in each period. While admitting that 
 possibly no philosopher has worked out so fully this necessary 
 side of a true life, the criticism is offered that the position is 
 one-sided and as such is abstract. 'Loyalty to loyalty' is a 
 merely formal principle." 
 
 6. 
 
 7. 
 
 The Conception of God. p. 270. 
 
 The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 216. 3, Ibid. p.. 217. 4. The Conception 
 
 of God, p. 271. 
 
 This subordination of the individual has already been traced to the necessity, in a 
 
 'finished' world where even novelties would be impossible, of the part seeking to 
 
 'appear' like reality. The part would thus seek to will the Universal Will. 
 
 The Conception of God, p. 321. 
 
 Royce, like Kant, sets tip an absolute principle of duty, so formal and spectral, 
 
 that it cannot be said to c <mraand anything in particular. 
 
 Royce 
 
 a I'd 
 
 liidiciiliudion 
 
 79 
 
 Itoyce has a way of drawing out a contrast'^ between tlie in- 
 dividual per se and objective human experience to the great 
 discrediting of the former. It would seem as if he seeks to 
 demonstrate the latter bv the discrcditino^ of the former.^ lie 
 identifies the individual with the private, and the private with 
 the merely private and this with the absolutely exclusive and 
 isolated. ^° This prepares the way for a declaration that this 
 isolated, private will must be subordinated to the Universal 
 Will. The criticism is offered here that if the contrast is to 
 be thus exaggerated to make the center of initiation the will 
 an empty assertion, then the other side in the contrast, ho\vever 
 rich in content, becomes a choMs without the cause-producing 
 initiative of the will. The contrast shows a nece?vsarv relation 
 
 c 
 
 and one which is not to be thought of as a pair of alternaUves 
 from which to choose. It is submitted that "the self -regarding 
 sentiment is the verv heart and kernel of our volition and 
 hence of our moral efforts."^^ This self-regarding sentiment 
 is not to be construed in terms of callous disregard of others. 
 To escape from selfishness one need not be unsclfed. "When 
 Aristotle says that man is l)y nature a political animal he means, 
 of course, that the individual is bv nature such as to find his 
 chief good in association with other men ; but he is very far 
 from meaning that the individual locates his chief good in the 
 good of others, or that his attitude is in any sense disinterest- 
 ed.". . . . "Xor is the grocer in business for his health, or for 
 mine. It is indeed true tlien, that the good of the individual 
 is to be found in social life; it is none the less true that he is 
 in sopietv for individual ends.''^^ 
 
 8. Martiueau (A Study of Religion, 2nd Ed., Vol. 1, p. 205) SHys of Royce. "So 
 long as the author is engaged in contrasting this consciousness that 'other life is 
 as my life' with the individualism' of the hedonist, of the sentimental cultivator 
 of his own 'beautiful soul', or of the defiant Titan towards all that resists his 
 fixed intent, he easily persuades us that it has the advantage over them of 'in- 
 sight' over partial blindness." 
 
 9. In the Hibbert Journal, vol. No. 1. Hy Jones, (reviewing The World and the 
 Individual') says that Royce, regarding the first three theories of Being as the 
 only possible rivals of the fourth which is his own, and noting the fourth's sur- 
 vival of the extinction of the three, assumes that therefore it is true. (Ser? The 
 World and the Individual, vol. I. p. 348 f.) 
 
 10. John Dewey in the Phil, Rev. XXI, p. 72 (in reviewing '"Wm. James and Other 
 Essays") charges Royce with this exaggeration of a contrast, in order to intro- 
 duce the Absolute as a necessity in order that the gap may be bridged. 
 
 11. J. E. Harrison in 'Alpha and Omega' p. 91. 
 
 12. W^amer Kite. Individualism, pp. U;8, 1C9. 
 
80 
 
 lloijce and Induuluatioii 
 
 IT. 
 
 In the earliest period, this self alienation is very evident. 
 The end that is sought is imitication of all life, not harmonious 
 differentiation of excellence. We have pictured to us the in- 
 dividualism of the hedonist, the beautiful soul, the Titan. The 
 unification of life is surely l>etter than these. The one alter- 
 native discredited, the other is credited with worth. ^'Ihe 
 universal will of the moral insight must aim at the destruction, 
 of all which separates us into a heap of different selves, and at 
 the attainment of some higher positive organic aim. The 
 'one tmdivided souF we are bound to make our ideal. And tlie 
 ideal of that soul cannot be the separate happiness of you and 
 of me, nor the negative fact of our freedom from hatred, but 
 must be something above up all, and yet very positive."'^ Each 
 must thus break the bounds of his own individuality. All the 
 many wills are to have equal footing or rather all are to coal- 
 esce in one. "Having made my self, as far as I am able, one 
 with all the conflicti'ng wills before me, I must act out the 
 resulting universal will as it then arises in me.'^'* There re- 
 «nlts "an organic union of life."^* Our reUtions to other 
 imnis are to change into fusion with them. The "one highc.u 
 
 impersmial work will be no more the work of so and so 
 
 many separate men, but it will be the work of man as num. 
 And the separate men will not know or care whether they 
 separately are happy."^« "A wholly impersonal devotion'' t) 
 "the impersonal organization of life'' is thus the true life. The 
 impassioned drama of personal life fades away as we try to 
 think of such impersonal de\t)tion.' "Such suppression ot 
 individuality in homage to an imi)ersonal social organisia is 
 a relapse into the ruder tribal life, out of which personality 
 is evolved as the higher stage, with its noble characteristics of 
 inalienable tnist and imperative Duty.'"^ 
 
 But ^'we are instruments and we must be ready to 
 
 sacrifice ourselves to the whole"^« for "the One Will must con- 
 quer."'° It must because it already is victor. "We know 
 onlvthat the highest Truth is already attained from all eter- 
 
 PiOljce and IndlciduaCion 
 
 81 
 
 13. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 193. 14. Ibid. p. 172 f. 15. Ibid. p. 
 
 194. 16. Ibid. p. 211 f. 
 17 Martineau. The Study of ReliRion, I, p. 206. 
 18. The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 215 f. 19. Ibid. p. 217. 20. Ibul. p. 
 
 478. 
 
 nity in the Infinite Thought, and that in and for that Thought 
 the victor V that overcometh the world is once for all won. 
 Whatever happens to our poor selves, we know that the whole 
 is perfect."^^ It is this comfort that is with us even though 
 "we know nothing of individual immortality." 
 
 If we have not here an altruism which sinks the self in the 
 service of others, we have an ideal in which the self is sunk in 
 the impersonal service of the Universal Will. It is submitted 
 that such unification of will can be but a formal principle or 
 will to have such a will. The \wrld is too big and complex 
 to get such a will in detail. But it is submitted further that 
 such depersonalizing of oneself cuts off life from the very 
 spring of all initiative. "Man is a being, whose life consists 
 in trying to attain what at the start is present to him only 
 as a demand, ami because this sense of himself takes the fonn 
 of a strong claim for satiisf action, the emotional accompanimen. 
 of this claim, the feeling a man has for his right to satisfac- 
 tion, has to be recognized. ''^^ The ultimate test of this ^Ilni- 
 versal WilF can be given only in terms of satisfactions to in- 
 dividuals since even social welfare is an end for me only as it 
 is my end. Even if we accept this ideal of a Universal V7ill, 
 it is a fact that the nearest we can come to it is a "mutual 
 realization of wills." It seems to me also that its moral 
 character exists only so long as this mutual life does not merge 
 or retreat into a unity.-" 
 
 This subordination of selfh(X)d is the story also in The 
 Spirit of Modern Philosophy'. "It is just endurance that is 
 the essence of spirituality. Eesignation is part of the truth. — 
 resignation of any hope of a final and private happiness."^^ 
 But in our finitude we have one 'comfort* for "if w^e have the 
 true insight of deeper idealism, we can turn from our chaos 
 to him, who is our own true and divine self, and can hear from 
 him wath absolute assurance this one word. '0 ye who des- 
 pair, I grieve with you. Your sorrow is mi'ne. I suffer it 
 all, for all things are mine: I bear it, and yet I trium])h,"-'* 
 It is not for us to have a private happiness when the '^Logos is 
 our own fulfilment."-"^ 
 
 21. A. K. Rogers "The Rijfhts of Man • in the International Journal of Ethics, vol. 
 22, p. 423. 
 
 22. See Martineau, Ibid. p. 205. 23. Ibid. p. 263. 
 
 24. The .Spirit of Modem Philosopohy, p. 470. 25. Ibid. 470.. 
 
82 
 
 lioycc ami IitdiriilHalion 
 
 111. 
 
 Iteferc'iice lias bceu made to Koyee's iise of contrast and 
 of rigid alternatives. If the individual per se is taket, a.s 
 absolutelv isolated and over against such possible life is placed 
 the rich* context of any actual life, one feels that the latter 
 iuu.-,i be chosen. It is agreed here that uothing of this rich 
 context is to be omitted. It is agreed further that most of 
 that which ^ve may call the content of any life is made up 
 of this context. All that is involved in vicarious happiness 
 is not to be slighted for an instant. The contention is that, 
 however lofty such a vicarious i.lc^d may be, it stops short 
 of the highest. 
 
 In actual life rigid alternatives are not so common asin 
 conceptual construction. No unmixed individualism exists 
 except in the constructions of thought. And no purely lii^pev- 
 sonal career exists except in the same realm of ideals. Actual 
 life shows a mingling of ideals. One may pursue one s way 
 indifferent largely to the welfare of others. While ruthless_in 
 competitive business one may show ideal home affection. Ihe 
 issue seems to lie not so much between a personal demand and 
 an impersonal service, as between personal demands and per- 
 sonal convictions as to how demands are to'be realized. 
 
 It may be that some relations in life seem impersonal, but 
 they are "rather such as are not consciously personal. Many 
 relations in life, when forming, are replete with personal feel- 
 in- but having been found acceptable and satisfactory, taey 
 haw taken an assui^d place in the habitual. The personal 
 sense has become implicit. It is contended that a cause which 
 becomes impersonal in reality soon ceases to command the ser- 
 vice of men. No imi)ersonal cause 'fascmates one. It is 
 evident that the distinction of selfish and unselfish is not 
 synonymous with the distinction of personal and impersonal. 
 Indeed th<> truly unselfish is the truly personal. 
 
 Psychology infomis us that every experience, from the sim- 
 plest up, is affectively toned. These primary elements e^iter 
 into complex forms such as feelings, emotions and sentiments. 
 It is hard to find any other finally decisive evidence that a 
 
 Bujjce and Indicidiiaiion 
 
 8.'] 
 
 certain course is the best thtni the personaP^ sense of satisfaction 
 and intellectual approval. The intellect might in theory 
 acquiesce in a sinking of the self. But it would be limited to 
 a theoretical approval. Keal choice is ever between personal 
 desires. The would-be conqueror is not happy in defeat. 
 Choice has not been his. The patriot is not happy in giving 
 up all personal satisfaction to love his country and to die for 
 it. The conqueror, in defeat, may study the value of resig- 
 nation. The dying patriot knows what renunciation means'^ 
 A happiness of a finer strain is his and he is not defeated even 
 in his death. AVitli a Xatban Hale, he could wish he had 
 more than one life to offer, for his highest desire is realized. 
 Xow, as noted before, the limitation in the view of Prof. Royce 
 is not that he does not mention the patriot, but that he deems 
 his death for his country an impersonal service or rather a 
 service of an impersonal cause. It is contended that life and 
 its interests up to the highest are personal. My country's 
 welfare is an end for me only as it is my end. 
 
 When I read that moral individuals ^'have their individual- 
 ity and must subordinate it,"^* it appears that Royce is using 
 the method of contrast and doing less than justice to the fact 
 that the springs of moral conduct are ever personal. It is not 
 a sufficient answer to this charge to point to the personal choos- 
 ing of such sulwrdination. To choose to ignore, to depersonalize 
 oneself, if possible at all, is to cut oneself off from that which 
 is at once the source of initiative and the ultimate test of that 
 which is acceptable. One might ask, if all choose the imper- 
 sonal, who will initiate a cause? Interest is a term with a 
 personal reference. Indeed pure altruism would be possible 
 only where great leaders were not pure altruists. 
 
 To substitute for personal satisfaction and personal happi- 
 ness in the temporal a resignation which takes comfort in the 
 somewhat intangible or super-temporal eternal triumph is to 
 do less than justice to the inherent sense of personal right. If 
 the temix>ral process or experience as such, is only a super- 
 ficial and negligible vehicle of eternal ends, why be even im- 
 personal? The very nen^e of our e'ndeavors in the time-pro- 
 
 20. A. K. Rogers in The Philosophical Review, 1915, p. 594. For the approviil of 
 new issues we must "go back of institutional reason to those personal springs of 
 conduct which, to be sure, need rationalizing, but which nevertheless in themselves 
 are ultimate facts, that set the direction and supply the motive power, of all our 
 
 ends.'' 
 
 27. Soo W. E. Hocking. The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 501. 
 
 28. The Conception of God. p. ?>21. 
 
84 
 
 Iloyce and Indlciduuiloa 
 
 I 
 
 cess is the cle^i^e to achieve something even there in the same 
 time-process. It is only in retreat that one seeks the comfort 
 of a second best. Even if ^^niy true comfort can never lie in 
 my temporal attainment of my goal,"'^'' it Avill be very 
 discouriioino- if I do not make some temporal achieve- 
 ment. J^sitive action, initiated by the conscious will, 
 cannot maintain itself if this sense of comfort per- 
 meates one's being. Comfort in an eternal triumph rather 
 than a temporal success will tend thus to the passive and as a 
 ]>rinciple markini? the highest attainment of the individual 
 it will lack -launching power."^" Life reveals that all ends 
 are glimpsed by i^ersons and pursued as personal ends. It 
 does not present the rigid alternatives which have an existence 
 in the doctrines of Royce. In a world too large for any one 
 to compass even in his thought, we seek a harmonious dilTev- 
 entiation of life rather than uniiication. Even if I attempt to 
 estimate the meani'ng or significance of the world's trend, my 
 account is very deeply influenced by my pre-possessions. These 
 are so largely outside of or beyond the reach of direct con- 
 sciousness that the attempt to be other than personal is surely 
 futile.^' 
 
 The bclf-alienatiiig ideal |X?rmeates the whole of the second 
 period. The ultimate ideal is unification. To this end the -elf 
 is subordinated. That life which is allowed to a subordinated 
 self is pictured in true Rcycean fashion as ever temporally m- 
 complete and disappointing. Over against this is the eternal 
 triumph. One gets a joy amid defeat and subordination m 
 that one shares in this eternal triumph. "In the Absolute I 
 I am fulfilled."'- Surely something of my zest in action will 
 ) be lost if I thus lose confidence in the worth of my temporal 
 Lr endeavors. 
 
 IV. 
 
 At all stages in his work Royce has made explicit that the 
 finite individual has the privilege of choice. In the earliest 
 
 r 
 
 29 The World and the Individual. IT, p. 407. 
 
 30' W E Hockinj? in The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 5<,0. 
 
 3l' E B McGilvary (in the Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1915, p. 59). 
 
 Writes "when we seek to see with open eye and to understand with open mind, 
 wo Bhiuld recognize that our noblest impartialities "f P^^-^f '^;^^^ ?.^^^^'^g'^- 
 Their nobility is derived by patent from our fundamental preference, p. 62 
 -That which we prefer above all else when we know all that we can know nbout 
 
 32. Tiie'worM and ihe'^lndividual. II. p. 409. This is the point of view of the whole 
 chapter on Evil HX.) 
 
 Tioijre and Indlridnalion 
 
 85 
 
 book we are told that the Divine Thought comes into the ^con- 
 sciousness' of the individuaP^ It is surely evident that it 
 does not come as a clear cut ideal, but rather as one teidatiidy 
 formulated and as one to be tested empiricaHy.^'^ There will be 
 no distinction between the ardor of service of ^one who has made 
 a mistaken interpretation and the ardor of one who has had 
 clearer insight. All sorts of charges and counter-charges will 
 be in order when these varied interpretations seek for universal 
 application. The plea of impartiality, of conscientiousncvsses, or 
 of disinterestedness will hardly avail to settle the positive points 
 under dispute. To one disputant, the position of another will 
 appear as biassed and personal.^'' One may decide to choose 
 impersonal ends and to afi'ect a detachment from all that is 
 merely personal, yet one's actions will be read by others in terms 
 of personal ideals and endeavors. 
 
 Now it does 'not appear to me that in a community ^unificr^- 
 tion' per se is the ideal. Hence a unitary, impersonal and 
 common aim is not the essential. An harmonious differentia- 
 tion of interests appears to be a better working ideal. The 
 individual then springs from the common life and in the find- 
 ing what his true nature i^ or what he is built to do or achieve, 
 his distinctiveness arises. The impulse toward individuality 
 has come from below not from above. I mean that in approach- 
 ing the question of individuality the biological is the starting 
 point. The endeavor to begin with the thinking and willing 
 of an Absolute, while productive of much in the way of idea, 
 seems to miss contact with realitv. 
 
 In the third period the natural ideal of morality foi a 
 community is vitiated by the effort to reconcile community with 
 the older absolutism. ^^ The all-inclusive communitv is at- 
 taine<l through lesser unities which are true individuals, with 
 minds, wills, etc. All this is to be attained in thought by the 
 individual consciousness, and having attained the vision of these 
 
 33. See the Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 470. 
 
 34. "If the issue between moral ideals is to be decided by the issue, why should one 
 ideal politely, nay, ignominiously, withdraw from the scene of conflict. And who 
 is to fight for my ideals but myself and those who share them with me? E, B. 
 MGilvray — Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1915. 
 
 35. The peace advocates on the Ford Armada soon found that great causes do not 
 voice themselves outside of the limitations of persons. No superhuman unitary 
 view was forthcoming. Even harmony existed only formally. 
 
 only formally. 
 
 36. J. E. Harrison in "Alpha and Omega" p. 195, says, "Royce intends his old mon- 
 ism. Yet his emphasis on the will, then on the community or herd, links him 
 back with the newer psychology of McDougall which is not monistic." lb. 29 
 "At the outset, what draws society together is sympathy, similarity, utiiformity." 
 
80 
 
 lloijcr ah(J Iixiiridiiafion 
 
 higher unities, one must choose to serve these impersonal ends. 
 We have noted the difficulty which arises in that the indivi- 
 dual is to be convinced in his own mind of the actual nature 
 of these unities and k^cause further his allegiance is ever a 
 matter of ])orsonal decision. Xo maiter what one may do, it 
 will lo.>k like personal origination and personal ambition. 
 
 The onlv I'cason that ioyalty to a cause' or Royalty to h)y- 
 alty' seems 'so unmixed a'iul so detached from all personal bias, 
 is because they remain in the region of the formal. In the 
 realm of objective conditions, some one always initiates causes, 
 and in so doing carries to an outsider the appearance of beir.g 
 personally interested. Xow it is submitted that this mxut be 
 so and being so is quite natural. If there is in men in society 
 the bare determination that there shall be a law, this bare will 
 is alike in all. It is a unitary attitude if one is longing for 
 unity. Ihit it is destined as it centers the world of affairs t^^ 
 break up into innumeral)le interpretations of its practical 
 meaning and application. It will be, no doubt, a good thin- 
 to have all resolved on unanimity rather than strife. But the 
 actual world is too large for the and)itious dream of one will 
 (Mnbodif'i]. 
 
 While the alternative po.-ition of the third period (»pcns the 
 way to a true principle of morality, the ideal of self-alienalion 
 is retained-' through the effort to retain the notion of an Al>so- 
 lute. In The Philosophy of Loyalty, in the chapter on Indivi- 
 dualism the idea of individuality is emptied of all contents ex- 
 cept the bare boast that one is such. The man who holds to 
 an individualistic principle in morals is shut off from the veal 
 world. He can but ^gesticulate'. Hence "there is only one 
 way to be an ethical individualist. That is to choose your 
 cause and then serve it, as the Samurai his feudal chief, as 
 the ideal knight of romantic story his lady,— in the spirit of 
 all the loyal."'' The individualist is one who seeks ''onh/ the 
 mere collection of liis private experiences of his personal thrills 
 of fascination." The loyal one seeks "success and from moment 
 to moment indeed thrills with a purely fragmentary and tem- 
 porary joy in the love of service. But the joy deix^nds on a 
 
 37 See "The Philosophy of Loyalty." p. 354 f. "Your true good can never be won 
 Rud verified by you in terms to which the present fonn and scope of our human 
 extrTemo i« ^«d^ouato. T>.o best that you can ^et lies in sclf-surrender nnd m 
 yoSr personal assurance that the cause to which you surrender y^'^^^'^^l^^ 
 fi'ood " lb p 389. "My success is real only m so far as some conscious ..le, 
 which includes rnv idea. oh.erves try success." Italics are mme. 
 
 Boijcc and Indiculaai'iun 
 
 bi 
 
 
 30 
 
 belief in a distinctly superhuman type of unity of life.'' 
 The criticism is offered here that unless a cause depends on 
 more than a belief, it is likely to obtain little more than the 
 intellectual assent. Further when I ask myself how far my 
 citizenship is based on a belief in a superhuman type of life, 
 I fail to find that such a theory figures much in the matter. 
 The life of a citizen may be superhuman, if I read the human 
 in terms of a life of a recluse or a hermit. But to the average 
 individual, life in society and the state is just human life. 
 When I look at society, it appears to me that individuals are 
 seeking each to live his owu life, trying to find out his own 
 powers and seeking to use such in accomplishing some line of 
 work which gives him true satisfaction. Where I find people 
 serving causes, I find individuals who deem those causes to be 
 tlie thing which they most desire. There is plenty of evidence 
 of unselfishness but none of the impersonal. 
 
 We are told that ''to have a conscience, then, is to hav»^ a 
 cause, to unify vour life by meaus of an ideal deteruiined bv 
 this cause, and to compare the ideal and the life."^° Heie 
 we have a situation struck off in such definite terms that the 
 doubt arises whether it deals with actual human life or moves 
 in the realm of intellectual construction. 'To have a cause* 
 seems to imply that causes some w^ay are given, are there. 
 One has but to cast over them a critical glance and choose. ^To 
 unify one's life by means of an ideal' seems an identical pre- 
 position. Surely a life being unified is a life wdiich is form- 
 ing an ideal. The doubt grows that Royce is here w^orking 
 among conceptions. Causes in real life are 'not given. Soire 
 personal faith and demand brings each new ideal into the field 
 of ex}>erimentation. There it must prove its worth and that in- 
 volves those who are ready to fight for it as an ideal. They 
 do this, not because reason has looked it all over and has given 
 its sanction, but because of some insistent inner compulsion. 
 ^'The force of an ideal depends, not on my finding it true, but 
 on my insistence that it shall be true."*^ Causes have their 
 birth back in individual impulses and desires. It is only in 
 
 38. The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 98. See another interpretation, J. E. Harrison in 
 'Alpha and Omega', p. 97 f. says "one secret of the intense joy in loving and 
 being loved is the immense reinforcement of one's own personality. Suddenly to 
 another, you become what you have always been to yourself, the centre of the 
 universe." 
 
 39. The Philosophy of Loj-alty, p. 330. 40. Ibid. p. 175. 
 
88 
 
 lluyce and Indie id ualioa 
 
 reflection after the event that the reasons come out clearly to 
 the light. When this stage of conseionsness is hypostasised as 
 aii absolute and supernatural Smght' we have the author of 
 the 'causes' which one is supposed to sample and to choose from. 
 The true 'ought' is personal and individual and while its 'lead- 
 ing' will need to be criticized in the light of past experience, 
 its"^ final or ultimate 'clearance papers' are validated and viseed 
 not so much by reason as by personal deuuind. Pn-adley has 
 told us that metaphysics is the tinding of bad reasons for what 
 wo believe on instinct. The Eeason^^ which is the universal 
 solvent of all problems and whose advocate is the absolutist, 
 is one which works in the timeless a'nd spaceless abstractions 
 of the intellect. There is the vision of eternal truth. Eeason 
 in actual life "is the progressive attempt to realize, by adjust- 
 ing it to tlie conditions of its exercise, a constant new stream 
 of^'appreciative insight into what shall have satisfying wort?i 
 for life."" This comes, not in a manipulating of intellectu^^l 
 concepts but "in the unfolding of an inner nature." 
 
 The ability theti to outline so sun-clear a statement of a man'j 
 duty in terms of loyalties and causes arises, it is submitted, 
 from the essentiallv intellectual realm m w^hich thought is 
 moving. The future which is already present to this eternal 
 consciousness is for us yet hidden in the movements of life 
 whose deepest current is found in the fundamental desires and 
 impulses of individuals. Eeason has its place as a function 
 making possible a more comprehc^nsive satisfaction and attain- 
 ment. In that event, to talk of 'impersonal causes, seems in- 
 deed unreal. "Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of if 
 are the issues of life."** 
 
 It appears to me Koyce's whole philosophy attempts to de- 
 fine the self in terms of content." For this reason the .elf. 
 
 41 \ K Rogers in The Philosophical Review, 1915, p. 589. 
 
 42 J E Harrison in 'Alpha and Omega' p. 134. "The tendency of the intellect 
 pura and simple is temporally to remove, to cut loose, from practical reaction, to 
 inducti sheor contemplation." 
 
 43 A K. Rogers, Phil. Rev. (1915) p. 592. See also J. E. H'^^moj^. z'^'f^Nf"! 
 Omeea' p liO. says Vintellect is never wholly and separately intellectual. It is 
 l^Thin, charged with, dependent on, arising out of emotional desire ... .we can 
 wat.-h tho physical ai:d emotional sides of knowing in our own mmds. 
 
 44. Provorbi 4/23. 
 
 45 Compare the W^orld and the Ii.dividual, I. p. 327, "We begin with perhaps a very 
 ind^finitu sort of restlessness, which arouses the question. What is it that I want? 
 
 I?re th^ construction of tho i-lea transforms tlu^ va^o TuT^'"^^'^^^ 
 a i>uroo3e It is a plan oi action— not the action. But lb. p. ^3. In t!.e same 
 se^o any conscious act at the moment v. hen y<.u perform it not merely expresses 
 but is in my present sense, an idea." Here idea is the action in concrete-not 
 
 lloycc and. Indicidualiun 
 
 80 
 
 with its roots back amid desires, impulses and instincts, seems 
 lost to sight. Reflection and interpretation work amid the 
 contents of thought, not directly on the actual physical world. 
 Hence ideals are presented full grown and in terms of the 
 objects or contents of thouglit. The self is alienated, not only 
 in that it is denied the full satisfactions that are its due, but 
 also because it finds its causes given. It is to 'find' not 'make' 
 truth. The evolutionists, against wdiose metaphysics Royce 
 reacted in his early life, w^ould show man as fixed in the grip 
 of a law of progress. Royce would start from the top^^' rather 
 than, with the scientist, from the bottom. But equally wdtli 
 the latter he has men in the grip of a lavr. Here it is Reason 
 or the Absolute. 
 
 Both sides need to look more closely at the facts of man's 
 life. The sense of sitting relatively loose from any law of 
 progress or any absolute is a psychological fact. Pro- 
 gress does "depend upon new and untried expressions of 
 creative spontaneity centering in individuals."^" This spon- 
 taneity in man is tempered ever by the presence of reason. 
 This in memorv and consciousness, is that which acts critically 
 by way of re-presentation on the urge of impulse a'nd desire. 
 Reason is critical of but not creative of values. The finite in- 
 dividual is a reasoning being, not reason. "Man is a part of 
 Mature, carried on by her forces to work the works of intelli- 
 irence. In him she bursts forth into sustained consciousness 
 
 of her own evolution He has grown out of Nature's 
 
 stuff, and been wrought in her workshop."*^ Consciousness in 
 man is no by-product but Nature's supreme device for con- 
 tinuing evolution beyond the limitations of mere groping exis- 
 tence. This being is in a world which he is learning to know\ 
 In such interaction not only is the world know^n but the onds 
 which appeal to him come to clear consciousness. Man is then 
 an empirical being, a spring of wants, impulses a'nd desires. 
 These show in active dispositions or tendencies to action. Our 
 thinking has ever something of a personal bias. 
 
 merely in plan. Royce thus notes a psychological fact and passes to another posii- 
 tion by this identification of experience as a purposive idea and experience as it 
 fulfils this purpose. Then ho defines the individual in terms of the lattcx'. But 
 surely tho identification is impossible. See on this point A. W. Moore, Studies 
 in Logirnl Theory, p. 349 f. 365. 
 
 46. The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 346. "Truth, means, as pragmatism asserts, the ful- 
 filment of a need. But we all need the superhuman, the city out of sight, the 
 union with all life, — the essentially eternal." Finding the 'need' emphasized i)y the 
 pragmitist, in trie superhuman is Roycf 's way of being empirical. 
 
 47. A. K. Rogers, The Philosophic.'il R-^v. Vol. 2 i, p. 591. 
 
 48. Woodbridge. The Hibbert Journnl, VI. pp. 16, I?. 
 
'JO 
 
 lluyce anti Indicuhuiiluu 
 
 Possibly no better instance of the self-alienating ideal in 
 Prof. Royce's position can be bad than the opening paragraph 
 of his speech on "The Duties of Americans, in the Present war'' 
 delivered in Tremont Temple, Jan. 30, 1916. He says "I 
 fully agree with those who believe that men cati reasonably 
 define their rights only in terms of their duties. I have moral 
 rights only in so far as I also have duties. I have a right to 
 inv life because it gives me my sole opportunity to do my duty. 
 I lav a right to happiness solely because a certain measure 
 of happiness is needed to adapt me to do the work of a man. 
 I have a right to possess some opportunity to fulfil the office 
 of a man: that is, I have a right to get some chance to do my 
 (lutv. That is, in fact, my sole inalienable right." 
 
 Ail this is admirable if one has a clear-cut and adequate 
 conception of ^the office of a man' or of *duty'. It is possible 
 that very many sincere people would agree thus far and yet dis- 
 agree with Prof. Royce in his application of his view given 
 above to a specific problem ; America's attitude to Germany i:i 
 t1,r r.resent war. Such difference of opinion reveals the essential- 
 ly ideal nature of S'ight' i>nd Vluty' as here correlated. They 
 are stated in the most general way as if the most formal stat.j- 
 ment had a very definite reference in the world of actual af- 
 fairs. ^Rights' and 'Duties' however are not there as 'given'. 
 Individuals have more to do than just declare their allegiance 
 to duties representing causes of wider scope than any private 
 interest. 
 
 It is submitted that here in this clear distinction of 'right' 
 and 'duty' we are in the realm of the conceptual. When Royco 
 seeks to connect with actual affairs, he sets forth what is a 
 quite debateable doctrine. The su-n-clear ideal does not give 
 guidance. One side, no doubt, would say Prof. Royce is right, 
 the other would, at the least, say, that he had stated his own 
 personal convictions. 
 
 What is right and hence what is our duty is only emerging 
 gradually in the natures of men. To make 'happiness' -nature's 
 mducement to entice the individual to his duty is to do less 
 than justice to the place of satisfaction in any man's life. 
 Some wav it is not objective reason, telling of duties clearly 
 ])laced bc'fore us, that settles the question of right or wrong for 
 us. That mav do for one who a(}rees with Royce. But how about 
 
 Jioijre ni:<l IiuJiridnafion 
 
 1)[ 
 
 one who disagrees. Some say that disagreement points to a 
 more ultimate court of approval and disapproval, the individinl 
 himself. It is doubtful if any duty stands in its claim apart 
 from individual interpretation and approval. The distinction 
 of right a'lid duty is another of the rigid distinctions which are 
 found so often in Rovce. In actual life my right to be truly 
 satisfied is my duty. I find no way to choose between claims 
 on my attention than some sense of personal satisfaction and 
 approval. No evidence which does not satisfy me commands 
 my acceptance. So far from my rights and my happiness be- 
 ing measured in terms of duty, the reverse seems nearer to the 
 actual. The rigid distinction drawn between the two and the 
 preeminence given to 'duty' seem to give an air of self-seeking 
 to the word 'right'. The choice however is never between a 
 personal and selfish right and a larger and impersonal duty, 
 with a small thrill of happiness allowed one in order that o?ie 
 may be enticed on to the larger path of duty. Even duty must 
 not be read in impersonal terms. A desire to further the wel- 
 fare of men about me, if it wins my service, does so only l)C- 
 cause it is that in which I find most satisfaction. It is not 
 im]>ersonal or something else than a right. It is my right and 
 it ffives me most satisfaction. 
 
 (H)NT'Lrsi()X. 
 
 1 
 
 The existence of the Absolute, I have contended, has not 
 been proved by Royce. Hence the individuation traced to the 
 thought or will of the Absolute hangs in the air. 
 
 It is contended further that the finite individual is defined 
 throughout in terms of 'content'. This 'content' is hypcstatised 
 as the individual. The union of 'consciousness' with its content 
 is taken as the union of thought with the actual objects of the 
 real world. The terms *solf' and 'experience' are also ab- 
 stractions of the intellect. The only change seems to be that 
 the latter term with 'will' marks a change of the 'content' froui 
 static to dynamic terms, from thought to thinking. Will, des- 
 pite its relation, as stated, to desire, is but a clearly defined 
 purpose, an intention to act, and hence is intellectual and ab- 
 stract. 'Interpretation' nls^o is ideal con^tructioiK 
 
92 
 
 Royce and Individuation 
 
 Xo clefi'nitlon or description of the individual in terms of 
 the ^content' of consciousness can give us reality as it is. Hence 
 such an approach to the nature of individuality casts little or 
 no light upon that nature. 
 
 II. 
 
 The rlieory of an Absolute and a defining of the individual 
 in terms of intellectual content going hand in hand, I have 
 traced to this untenable view the defining of the moral ideal 
 i'n terms which portray a vicarious or self alienating principle. 
 The mere unitv of consciousness and of ideal constructions is 
 not adequate to the facts of real life. In the human individual, 
 life is seen issuing from springs of desire and impulse and 
 these, as well as explicit reflective conscious'ness, I regard as 
 personal. The genius of community is harmonious differen- 
 tiation of interest, not mere unification 
 
 lloijce and Indlciduallon 
 
 0:> 
 
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 A review of 'The World and The IndividuaF in The 
 
 International Journal of Ethics, vol. 12. 
 Bergson, H. — 'Creative p]volution\ Trans. Mitchell, Xew 
 
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 Bible, The. 
 
 Bosanquet, B. — 'The Princi})le of Individuality and Value.' 
 Bradley, F. H. — 'The Principles of Logic\ 
 
 'Essavs on Truth ond Realitv'. 
 Browning, R. — "Paracelsus'. 
 Dewey, J. — 'German Philoso})by and Polities'. 
 
 'The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and other 
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 Reviews of Vols. I and II of 'The World and the In- 
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 'Experience and Objective Idealism' an article in The 
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 A review in The Phil. Rev., vol. XXI of 'Wm. James 
 and Other Essavs'. 
 Eerrier, J. E. — 'Institutes'. 
 Eite Warner — 'Individualism'. 
 Harrison, J. E. — 'Alpha grid Omega'. 
 
 Hocki'ng, W. E. — 'The Meaning of God in Human Experience' 
 Howison, G. II. — The Conception of God'. 
 
 The Journal of Phil. Psy. and Sci. Method, Feb. 17, 
 '16, p. 99. 
 Jacks, L. P. — A review of "The Problem of Christianitv' in 
 
 'The Hibbert-Journar vol. XII, X'o. 1. 
 James, Wm. — 'Mind, vol. VII. 
 
 'The Pluralistic Universe'. 
 
 'The Meaning of Truth'. 
 
 "The Will to Believe'. 
 Jones, H'y — A review of 'The World and the Individual' in 
 
 'The Hibbert Journal' vol. I, Xo. I. 
 Kant. — Letters. 
 Lovejoy, A. O. — ''The 0])solescence of the Eternal' in the 
 
 Philosophical Review, vol. XVIII. 
 
i>4 
 
 Roifcc and Individuation 
 
 Lowell, J. J{. — Poems. 
 
 ^i nilvarv, E. B.— The Warfare of Moral Ideals', in The 
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 .Macintosh, D. C. — 'The Problem of Knowledge'. 
 
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 lation of Time to Eternity', an a-ddress before the 
 
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 in Logical Theory' by J. Dowey, et al. 
 Miinsterberg, II. — Grundzuge der Psychologic. 
 
 Overstreet, H. A. — 'Change and the Changeless' in The Phil. 
 
 Rev., vol. XVIII. 
 Rogers, A. K. — 'Professor Rovce and Monism, The Phil. Rev. 
 vol. XII. 
 
 'Determination of Human Ends', The Phil. Rev. vol. 
 XXIV. 
 
 'Reason and Feeling in Ethics', The Phil. iCev. \'ol. 
 XXV. 
 'The Rights of Man', an article in The International 
 
 Journal of Ethics, vol. XXII. 
 ^Epistemological Dualism', an article in the Journal of 
 
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 lioyce, Josiah — The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 1885. 
 The Spirit of ^lodem Philosophy, 1892. 
 The Conception of G(k1, 1897. 
 
 The World and The Individual, 2 vols., 1899, 190L 
 The Philosophy of Loyalty, 1908. 
 The Sources of Religious Insight, 1911. 
 The Problem of Christianity, 2 vols., 1913. 
 Collected Essavs. 
 Studies in Good and Evil. 
 Wni. James and Other Essavs. 
 
 a 
 
 Santanyana, G. — The J. of Phil. Psy. and Sci. Method, Xov. 
 ^5, '15. 
 
 -Sidgwick, Hy. — 'Lectures on the Ethics of Green, Spencer and 
 Martineau\ 
 
 Sorlev, W. R. — A review of 'The Philosophy of Loyalty' in 
 'The Hibbert Journal', vol. VII, Xo. L 
 
 
 lioyce and Individual ion 
 
 95 
 
 Spinoza. — 'Ethics'. 
 
 Seth, A. — 'Hegelianism and Personality'. 
 
 Seth, J. — A review of The Conception of God' in The Phil. 
 
 Rev., vol. VII. 
 Tennyson — In Memoriam. 
 Thilly, F. — A review of 'The Philosophy of Loyalty' in The 
 
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 Woodbridge, F. J. E.— 'The Hibbert Journal' vol. II., Xo. I. 
 
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