Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/466



present writing takes its occasion from the publication, in the autumn of 1902, of the volume entitled Personal Idealism, by eight members of the University of Oxford. By this noticeable event I am moved to express what I must frankly admit are “very mingled feelings” indeed.

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 also — 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