One might have supposed that all this was settled beforehand, from the time of Locke. But in spite of its title, we find in the Oxford volume experientialism running at large and everywhere; we find, in fact, (1) empiristic epistemology, (2) an organised new assault upon a priori cognitions, (3) a voluntarism of the most pronounced order, (4) an ethical mysticism combating the mysticism of the intellect, and finally (5) a quasi-personalism resting upon the wholly experiential and purely temporal existence of conscious “individuals” added as a society to his own eternal being by the creative fiat of God. In short, not a single trait of systematic idealism is present; the heart of real individuality, of real personality, is not reached — nay, even the serious attempt to reach it is foregone; yet the whole is brought under the name of Personal Idealism. The force of misnomer could hardly farther go.
One good, however, we shall in all probability reap out of the issuance from Oxford of a coöperative book with this title and with the contents embraced: the attention of all the thoughtful in the English-speaking world, and even far beyond it, will now surely be drawn to the vital questions involved. Thence it may be hoped that the genuinely idealistic implications of freedom, of evolutional limits, of valid moral valuation, and of justified enthusiasm for the ideal, will more and more clearly come into view. Not until this occurs, certainly, shall we get finally rid of those plausible makeshifts in the way of philosophy that leave our chief ideal interests still at risk, and so only serve to prolong the weary procession of philosophic disputes.
