DEATH OF PROF. JOSIAH ROYCE

After an illness of two weeks, Professor Josiah Royce, Alford Professor of natural religion, moral philosophy, and civil polity, died from arterio sclerosis, at his home in Cambridge on September 14. The funeral was held in Appleton Chapel last Saturday, Professor James Hardy Ropes of the Divinity School officiating.

Professor Royce was born in Grass Valley, California, on November 20, 1855, and was graduated from the University of California in 1875. After receiving a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University he became, in 1878, instructor in English literature and logic in the University of California. He was instructor in philosophy at California in 1882 and assistant professor from 1885 to 1892. In that year he came to the University as professor of the history of philosophy.

The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon Professor Royce by the University of Aberdeen in 1900, and by Yale in 1911. He received the degree of Litt, D. from Harvard in 1911 and D.Sc. from Oxford in 1913.

He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Institute of Arts and Letters, American Philosophical Society, American Psychology Association, and American Philosophical Association. He was a member of the Colonial Club of this city and of the Authors' Club of Boston and the Authors' Club of New York.

He was the author of a considerable number of books, beginning with the Religious Aspect of Philosophy, published in 1885. His work on the Problem of Christianity, in two volumes, was published in 1913. Between these two dates he wrote a number of books dealing with historical, philosophical, religious and psychological subjects.

Professor Royce is survived by his wife, who was Miss Katharine Head, and by two sons, Edward Royce, who is an instructor in music at Ithaca, N. Y., and Stephen Royce, of Ironwood, Mich. He also leaves two sisters, Miss Ruth Royce and Mrs. Edward Barney, both of Berkeley, Cal.

Professor William P. Montague of Columbia University paid the following tribue to Professor Royce:

"Although Royce has a number of disciples who follow his scheme of thought in its essentials, he has a far larger constituency of those who disagreed with him and yet feel that they owe what is best in their thought to his stimulus.

"I may add that he conceived of philosophy as a religious duty. He had somewhat the attitude of Socrates, who felt that it was the highest duty of man to rationalize his life, but he did not take philosophy so impersonally as Socrates.

HIS PLACE IN PHILOSOPHY.

"Of his place in philosophy, it may be said, I think, that he was the greatest representative in America, and, with the exception of F. H. Bradley, of Oxford, the greatest representative on the later nineteenth century of the idealistic tradition. As the greatest modern idealist, he differed from others in his respect for science and in his mastery of the fundamentals of the sciences. Of the almost captious contempt which other idealists showed for the work of the sciences, he had none. There was room in his mind for all the contributions of materialism and science."

The New York Evening Post comments editorially on him:

"With the death of Josiah Royce, there passes away the second of the two men who, during the past quarter-century, have represented at its highest philosophical thought in America. The eminence of William James was more widely and impressively recognized in Europe than even in his own country, as was amply evidenced in the remarkable tributes paid to him on the occasion of his death by the most distinguished philosophical writers of the Old World. If the name of Royce is less conspicuous, this may perhaps be sufficiently accounted for by the more abstruse character of the subjects with which he dealt and of the theses which he upheld. A rare and high personality as well as an extraordinary intellect. Josiah Royce was one of the most potent influences in the domain of high thinking in America