APPENDIX B
THE SYSTEM IN ITS ETHICAL NECESSITY AND ITS PRACTICAL BEARINGS[1]
I have called the system set forth in this book Personal
Idealism because, as I undertake to show, it is alone
consistent with the existence of a world of genuine persons,
including a personal God. My object here is to give a
brief summary of it, and then to point out whatever importance
it may have for the aims of the higher ethical life.
The system is closely affiliated with another, advocated by the late Thomas Davidson, and called by him Apeiro-theism; that is, the doctrine of a divine nature, or ideal rationality, distributed in an indefinite number of individual minds. I mention this affiliation, because, although it is unmistakable, it came about from studies entirely independent, and without collusion or even conference. The agreement, so far as it exists (and it by no means exists throughout), must be explained as an encouraging coincidence, resting on a common connexion with the same foundations in the history of previous thought: two investigators, working quite apart upon a common problem, without any knowledge by either of what the other was doing, have come out upon a result in the main the same. And it is of great interest to note that a third thinker, remote from both of us, Mr. McTaggart, of the University of Cambridge,
- ↑ Reprinted, with omissions and minor alterations, from the International Journal of Ethics, July, 1903.
