Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/247

No. 2.] "It must be viewed as an actual and inclusive and divinely rational knowledge of all facts in their unity. And the very nature of facts, their very being as facts, must be determined by their presence as objects in the experience of this world-embracing insight."

But what has the all-wise knower of truth to do with our salvation? The recognition of an all-seeing insight, as something real, is in itself calming, sustaining, rationalizing. It awakens in us "the ideal of knowing ourselves even as we are known, and of guiding our lives in the light of such a view of ourselves." Such an ideal cannot remain wholly a matter of theory: it is from its very nature an appeal to the will. In fact, "there is no such thing as a purely intellectual form of assertion which has no element of action about it. An opinion is a deed." "If a man proposes to let his ideas be tested not by his momentary caprice, and not by any momentary datum of experience, but by what proves to be their workings in the long run, then already he is appealing to an essentially superhuman type of empirical test and estimate." A practical proof of absolute reality and absolute truth is the irrevocable deed. "The pragmatist who denies that there is any absolute truth accessible has never rightly considered the very most characteristic feature of the reasonable will, namely, that it is always counselling irrevocable deeds, and therefore is always giving counsel that is for its own determinate purpose irrevocably right or wrong precisely in so far as it is definite counsel."

The practical devotion to a cause implies the same reference to a super- individual reality as does the theoretical judgment. "The cause ... is some conceived, and yet also real, spiritual unity which links many individual lives in one, and which is therefore essentially superhuman, in exactly the sense in which we found the realities of the world of reason to be superhuman."

The last two lectures, somewhat less closely connected with the theme of the volume than the preceding five lectures, deal with the place of evil in human life, and with the definition of the invisible church. The book as a whole is a notable exhibition of Professor Royce's well-known dialectical skill, and abounds in passages of sustained eloquence. It is needless to say that it is an addition to our philosophical literature which is as valuable as it is welcome.

This book is based on a series of lectures given in Japan, Korea, and Hawaii during the academic year 1906-07. But these lectures have been specially prepared for an audience in the United States. After an introductory chapter, in which a serious philosophical point of view is clearly set forth, there follows the main body of the book which is divided into four parts. Part I, with the general title "The Function of the Teacher," includes five chapters which describe the function of the teacher as a species of intercourse between persons,