Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/14

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PREFACE.
ix

marks, and Sections I., II., III., and V.; in Chapter X., to the introductory remarks, and Sections I., II., and IV.; in Chapter XI., to the introductory remarks, and the concluding section only; and then he may try the whole of Chapter XII. Thus he will not be troubled by the technical statement of the proof of our doctrine, and he will see the trend of our thought, which may at least amuse him. If he is then still curious, he may take his own risks and look farther.

The student of philosophy will find in this volume a doctrine that undertakes to be in certain significant respects independent and original, but that, without ceasing to be the author's own system, frankly belongs to the wide realm of Post-Kantian Idealism. Of course no true lover of philosophy ventures, when he calls a doctrine his own, to pretend to more than the very moderate degree of relative originality that the subject in our day permits; and of course the author for his own part feels very deeply how much what he has to offer is the product of what he has happened to read and remember about philosophy and its history. Most of all he feels his debt to Kant; then he knows how much he has gained from Fichte, from the modern Neo-Kantians in Germany, and from the revivers of idealism in recent years in England and America. To Hegel