Josiah Royce.

Of the three men who for years made the Philosophical Department at Harvard preeminent only George Herbert Palmer now survives. William James; pioneer in psychology, whose adventurous mind led him into unconventional regions of thought, a philosopher who raised common sense into a position both of dignity and interest, died six years ago. And now his and Professor Palmer's colleague Josiah Royce, has also died. There have been philosophers who treated philosophy as if it had no relation to life, and whose mental operations were as far removed from useful employment as the performance of an acrobat is from that of a skilled mechanic. It is because philosophy has seemed so often far removed from the realities of life that philosophy has had a bad name among the plain people. In reading what Professor Royce wrote one feels the assumption behind it all that its truth is to be tested by experience.

Different as these three men of Harvard were, they were alike, however, in being real philosophers, lovers of wisdom, searchers for the truth that lies in reality and real experiences. This is true of Royce's idealism. That which he thought and taught he made a basis of conduct.

Though he was a profound student of the history of philosophy, he was not a receiver, reporter, or compiler of secondhand opinions. Neither did he, as many philosophers have tried to do undertake to separate mental processes from moral considerations. He could not see any way to the truth except through loyalty. To think straight was, according to Professor Royce's philosophy, just another way of being straight.

A most iteresting illustration of this fact occurred when the war broke out in Europe. He had expounded a theory in a book called "The Process of Interpretation." He was to read an address before the Philosophical Union of the University of California late in August, 1914. The address that he prepared is called "War and Insurance," and it was written as he said during August, "under the immediate influence of impressions due to the events which each day's news then brought to the notice of us all; and yet with a longing to see how the theory of 'interpretation' . . . . would bear the test of an application to the new problems which the war brings to our minds."

True to his philosophy, his mind discerned the nature and character of the war and its issues. His words with regard to the wrong perpetrated by Germany were ringing words. Nothing that has been said concerning the colossal crime of Germany sinking the Lusitania has surpassed in vigor, incisiveness, and clearness what he said last January in a meeting in Boston, when he spoke of the spirit of Germany as bearing "the primal curse upon it--a brother's murder." Small in stature, with a Socratic kind of face, Professor Royce's outward appearance belied his intellectual stature. The youth who heard him lecture in his high strident tones might perhaps be pardoned for failing to recognize in this teacher one of the great and impressive men of the day.

It is hard to imagine the mind of Josiah Royce as the product of any other nation than the United States. No man in outward appearance could furnish a more complete contrast to the American of British literature, with his bragging and his materialism, than he. But we believe that it is in such a man as Josiah Royce that one can discern the real American. The Outlook.