Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/33

xxxii meaning and the fact of Individual Reality and Real Individuality, has in the pressure of the unavoidable course of philosophy long been left in abeyance. One might almost say, with truth, that no effective argumentation upon it has appeared since the memorable reasonings of Jonathan Edwards carried, apparently, such disaster upon the cause of human free-will, — disaster that the wide-spread theory of the total explanation of man by cosmic evolution seems to deepen beyond reprieve. At any rate, one can securely say that nothing of crucial import has come forward in the interest of human freedom since Kant started the inspiring but hitherto little fruitful conception of moral autonomy. Instead, as we have seen, the world’s thinking has been absorbed in questions that thus far have ended in a persuasion of the immanence of the Eternal in all things, — at best, the all-pervasive presence of an Immanent Spirit. Is it possible, now, for Kant’s kindling suggestion of our moral autonomy, so pregnant to the conscience disciplined in the higher traditional religion, — is it possible for this to be met by this monistic conception of the Absolute, even when this takes on its highest and most coherent, its most intelligible and most intellectual form in a monistic Idealism?

Professor Royce, in the pages ensuing, answers Yes, — with the proviso, however, that in answering there must be a critically discriminating knowledge of what moral autonomy in truth can mean; and he devotes his Supplementary Essay to a searching analysis of (1) the conception of an absolute Unity of Self-Consciousness, which he argues is required for the