INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR
The first volume of the projected Publications of
the Philosophical Union of the University of California,
delayed by unavoidable circumstances, here
at length appears, as promised at the time of issuing
the volume counted as second, — Professor Watson’s
Christianity and Idealism. It consists (1) of the documents
of the public discussion held at the seat of the
University in 1895, reprinted with only a very few
trifling verbal alterations, and, in Article IV, two or
three additional sentences; (2) of a new
Supplementary Essay by Professor Royce, in which he
developes his central doctrine in a more systematic
way, discusses afresh the long-neglected question of
Individuality, and, in conclusion, replies to his critics.
The contents of the book very rightly take the form of a discussion, for discussion is the method of philosophy. Of the three chief objects upon which philosophy directs its search, — God, Freedom, and Immortality, — notable as also the essential objects of religion, this discussion, in its outset, aimed only at the first — the nature and the reality of God. But the feature of eminent interest in it is, that in the direct pursuit of its chosen problem it presently becomes even more engaged on the problem of Freedom, and cannot forego, either, the consideration of Immortality; so true it is that the attempt to conceive God,
