The World and the Individual, Volume 1

The world and the individual Vol 1; Gifford lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen

PREFACE

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

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

World, the finite Individual, and the most fundamental relations that link them together. But these, as I sup pose, are the essential problems of the Philosophy of Religion.

The philosophy here set forth is the result of a good many years of reflection. As to the most essential argu ment regarding the true relations between our finite ideas and the ultimate nature of things, I have never varied, in spirit, from the view maintained in Chapter XI of my first book, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. 1 That chapter was entitled The Possibility of Error, and was intended to show that the very conditions which make finite error possible concerning objective truth, can be consistently expressed only by means of an idealistic theory of the Absolute, €" a theory whose outlines I there sketched. The argument in question has since been restated, and set into relations with other matters, without fundamental alteration of its character, and in several forms; 2 once in my Spirit of Modern Philosophy (in a shape intended for a popular audience, but with an extended discussion of the historic background of this argument) ; again, in the book called The Conception of Grod, where my own statement of the argument has the

1 Published in 1885 at Boston, Mass., by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

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

further advantages of Professor Howison's kindly expo sition and keen criticism ; and still 'again, in the paper called The Implications of Self-consciousness, published in the Studies of G-ood and Evil. In the present lectures this argument assumes a decidedly new form, not because I am in the least disposed to abandon the validity of the former statements, but because, in the present setting, the whole matter appears in new relations to other philo sophical problems, and becomes, as I hope, deepened in its significance by these relations.

While this central matter regarding the definition of Truth, and of our relation to truth, has not essentially changed its place in my mind,