Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/36

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INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR
xxxv

legitimate descent from Kant, but which, it is useful to remember, Kant himself expressly repudiated. But the matter in controversy, especially now that Professor Royce, with the aim of adjusting Idealistic Monism to the demands of our moral reason, has supplemented his philosophy by this new and striking inquiry into the Principle of Individuation and the nature of Individuality, undoubtedly requires, somewhere, a systematic presentation of the proofs for the opposing Pluralistic Idealism; especially is the solution which this affords of the riddle of Individuality demanded. Professor Howison therefore hopes to offer, in a separate writing, and at a date not too remote, a thorough affirmative treatment of the theory here only suggested. In this the questions here started will appear in their proper setting, in the system of philosophy to which they belong.

One misapprehension of his position he feels it necessary to guard agains; particularly since Professor Royce himself, alert and exact thinker as he is, appears to have fallen into it. Professor Howison’s point is not at all to set the moral consciousness, simply as a “categorical imperative,” at odds with the theoretical, and merely have the “heart” breathe defiance to the “intellect”; not that the spirit cannot do this, as Carlyle does in Sartor Resartus, but that doing it doesn’t amount to philosophy. His position is by no means correctly apprehended as one side of “an antinomy between the claims of theory and the presuppositions of ethics.” Ethics, for him as for Professor Royce, can have no valid presuppositions except such as find their place in