THE ABSOLUTE AND THE INDIVIDUAL
INTRODUCTION
The public discussion at Berkeley, whose
documents the Philosophical Union published shortly
after the event, in pamphlet form, was, as a fact,
immediately succeeded by several more private
meetings, in which the leader of the original debate had
ample opportunity to reply to his critics, and to
expound further consequences of his theses. The
proceedings of these meetings remained unprinted.
More than a year has since passed. The Philosophical
Union now desires to give the whole discussion a
more permanent form, and in doing so kindly invites
the present writer to put on record his replies to his
critics, to extend and confirm, at his pleasure, his
main argument, and to expound some further
developments of his doctrine.
In accepting, once more, the hospitality of the Union, and in using it in the following pages, I feel it all the more my duty, as the guest thus invited to return to such pleasant company, not to mar a controversy, whose principal interest lies in the instructive contrast of the points of view adopted by the speakers, — not to mar this controversy, I say, through any idle effort to make, as it were, an end
