Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/239

 IV. DISCUSSION. IN THE MATTER OF PERSONAL IDEALISM. THE present article takes its occasion from two very different events the review of my Limits of Evolution by Mr. McTaggart in the July number of MIND, and the publication, soon afterwards, of the volume entitled Personal Idealism, by eight members of the University of Oxford. By the former, I am moved to say some things that I now discover to be very much needed for making my own position in philosophy clearer than my reviewer seems to have found it ; by the latter, I am stirred to express what I must frankly admit are " very mingled feelings " indeed. As to the essays by the Oxford Eight, one whose fortune it had been to put before the public some fifteen months earlier a theory bearing the same title of " Personal Idealism " might naturally be expected to greet with lively interest the announcement of a second book under that rubric ; especially, a book issuing from the English seat of philosophy justly most venerated. This lively interest I have certainly felt, and I have accordingly turned upon the contents of the new volume, not merely with curiosity, but rather with the earnest hope of finding weighty auxiliaries for views which I count to be so inwrought with our greatest human concerns. I come back from the reading, in part fortified and encouraged, but in part, I fear in greater part, surprised and disappointed. I had supposed, of course, that the cardinal features of the system of Personal Idealism would be agreed about and accepted, if the title was accepted which had been chosen for it by its author. It is the adoption of the title in spite of rejecting essentials in the system, that surprises and in some measure discomposes me : and all the more when one finds his own lines of division for the dis- cussion, and even his own topical titles, running through the book. It is because I hope to prevent misunderstandings on -the part of the public, and to forestall a confusion of ideas in presence of an identical name used to cover very different conceptions, dealt with, above all, by very different methods, that I am prompted to comment on the Oxford volume, and to point out some of the more important divergencies between its conception of Idealism and that which I would call Personal. 15