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T HE voluntarism which is so characteristic a part of Royce's mature philosophy had its beginnings in the very earliest stages of Royce's philosophical thinking. But whereas in the later stages it was called to do service to his absolutism, in the early stages it was made the basis of a relativistic, pragmatic philosophy. As such it colored all the various aspects of Royce's early philosophy and particularly his philosophy of religion. The religious consciousness, according to Royce, is primarily concerned with the problem of salvation. It is incumbent upon the philosopher of religion, therefore, to inquire into the nature and possibility of that salvation. Before the metaphysics of salvation can be adequately dealt with, however, it is necessary to enter into a discussion of the epistemological problem. In the year 1878, in his unpublished "Thought Diary," Royce wrote: Every man lives in a Present, and contemplates a Past and Future. In this consists his whole life. The Future.and Past are shadows both, the Present is the only real. Yet in the contemplation of the Shadows is the Real wholly occupied; and without the Shadows this Real has for us neither life nor value. No more universal fact of consciousness can be mentioned than this fact which therefore deserves a more honorable place in Philosophy than has been accorded to it.2

that has been going on for the last two generations leaves untouched the, essentials of Christian living. According to the sense in which this assertion is taken, it is either true or false. It is true in the sense that religion, flowing from perennial springs of human need, is a datum, not a mere consequence, of theology. It is false if it means that thinking about religion leaves religion just where it was before. Theology, like other thinking, is born of practical impulses, and its function, apart from the immediate pleasure of insight, is to assist these impulses to their goal. A reconstructed theology implies that the group of which it is one expression is changing, or has already changed, some part of its practical endeavor. The relation between thinking and living is excellently illustrated by the connection between the science of physiology and our pure-food laws. It is true that digestion goes on by virtue of forces resident in the body, not by logic; nevertheless, your actual digestion and mine, after all, are what they are partly because the science of physiology is what it is. How closely the newer type of theology is related to Christian morals may be gathered from three facts: (i) In large measure the movement consists in replacing the old speculative basis of doctrine by a foundation laid in the empirically known needs and satisfactions of moral beings. (2) Progressive theology is commonly associated with the social movement, while theological conservatism is found more often in the company of those who prefer the social or economic status quo. (3) The theological movement is part of a more general change in thought: the growth of historical sense and method; the Kantian emphasis upon the practical reason as against the theoretical; the evolutionary doctrine of progressive adaptation; voluntarism in psychology; the tendency 256

"New philosophy calls all in doubt," wrote John Donne, and thereby suggested a theory of intellectual transformation. Because the universe was of a piece, all its parts harmoniously connected, the Copernican revolution seemed to call into question not only Ptolemaic astronomy but also a whole series of related ideas having to do with order, not in the heavens but on earth. With the sun lost and the cosmos "all in pieces," "Prince, Subject, Father, Son are things forgot."' Suddenly, the very categories of social and political thought seemed empty anct useless. In a sense, Donne was right: later seventeenth-century writers like Hobbes and Locke were indeed compelled to work out anew the meanings of authority and subjection and to redefine political and familial obligation. But was he also right to suggest that this work was made necessary by the new philosophy? For other writers, it was the new religious ideas which had destroyed the perceived coherence of the social world. Machiavellian "atheism" and Protestant voluntarism, thought Richard Hooker, endangered the ancient, elaborate, and lawful structure of human

The revolution which Marx and Engels carried out in the social sciences 21 consists above all in the fact that they showed the non-existence of any mysterious, supernatural force in society, and showed that man himself is the creator of history… On the other hand, Marxism established that men do not arbitrarily create their history but do so on the basis of the objective, material conditions left to them by previous generations. Thereby voluntarism and subjectivism are eliminated and the way to the understanding of history as a law-bound process is open. (120)

We saw in Chapter I that the principle of philosophy of history, for Berdyaev, is Christ, Godmanhood. We observed, too, that the free will of man figures importantly. By studying Berdyaev’s doctrine of Godmanhood and his voluntarism we will be able to understand his philosophy of history. The present chapter studies the metaphysical subject-matter of philosophy of history especially as it is divine or religious.