disagree with him and yet seem to oneself at all reasonable. For he has a way of mounting his facts in a setting of stringent logic, and of driving home his conclusions with the persuasive power of a finished rhetoric. But by dint of long and strenuous effort to look at things for myself, I have succeeded in meeting his requirement that I should disagree with him, and I have some hope of persuading you, and possibly Professor Royce too, that my disagreements are solidly founded. But of that you shall now judge.
I
NO WORTH AND DIGNITY PROVED OF THE ABSOLUTE
In considering Professor Royce’s position, as outlined in the address we have just heard, I shall limit myself to two criticisms. My first, in a word, is this: I cannot agree with the Professor that the Being whose existence, as I freely admit, he has fully established, has been proved by him to be a being possessing worth and dignity. When he says, that, under pain of self-contradiction, we must assert that an Ultimate Being exists, that he is fully conscious, that his experience is organised, or, what amounts to the same thing, that within his experience there are to be found no unanswered questions and no unsatisfied desires, I find the reasoning compulsory, inevitable. A confusion, an unanswered problem, a thwarted desire, in order to be such, holds in solution its own clarification, answer, or satisfaction, as the case may be. All this Professor Royce has ex-
