Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/122

Rh speakers, while they go on in agreement with each other very far, at length diverge; and they diverge at a very early point from the way of interpreting idealistic philosophy that I have myself learned to use.

And, if I am not unaccountably mistaken, you have already had presented here to-night two considerably varying systems of Idealism, albeit they still go on together far above the foundations common to all idealistic philosophy. I say two; for, unless I mistake Professor Mezes, his view accords so nearly with that of Professor Royce as to permit us to neglect the differences and count the pair as one, setting it in contrast to the system of Dr. Le Conte. I speak here with hesitancy, however, and only with such positive evidences as our evening’s work has afforded; and I accordingly leave room for the supposition that Professor Mezes covers in his thinking a further variety of Monistic Idealism, though holding with Professor Royce to Monism. For the Professor has exercised such a fine reserve as to speak without much exposure of what his own philosophy is; he has confined himself very rigorously to a criticism of Professor Royce’s apparatus of argument, and has said next to nothing that tells what is his own conception of the Absolute Reality. Still, when he freely admits that Professor Royce’s argument inevitably proves an Ultimate Reality, and employs as an engine of criticism the premise that the inner life of our fellow-men — their aggregate of inner experiences, their feelings, thoughts, puzzles, aspirations; in short, their successive or simultaneous states of