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Our Contributors' Page

DR. GEORGE W. ROESCH is the latest addition to our list of contributors. He is a successful Connecticut pastor, a former student of Dr. Bowne who in the midst of busy pastorates keeps burning the fires of philosophical endeavor. His discussion of pragmatism is certain to create interest.

RICHARD BURTON has so wide a reputation as writer and literary critic as to make superfluous an introduction to any scholarly audience anywhere. The bit of verse printed was his particular greeting to the University of Southern California at the dedication of the great new building which marks the opening of a new era of educational service.

DR. JAMES MAIN DIXON, F.R.S.E., shows his usual versatility in an examination of the Bhagavad-Gita.

In epigrammatic phrase, DR. W. E. TILROE, Professor of Homiletics in the Maclay College of Theology of the University of Southern California presents his first contribution to THE PERSONALIST.

PROFESSOR EDGAR S. BRIGHTMAN, PH.D., Dr. Bowne's successor at Boston University presents the second half of his important survey of the tasks of personalism.

To the Gentle Personalist

We repeat our suggested credo of the Personalist :

"I BELIEVE in personality as the power of self-conscious

ness and self-direction.

I believe in personality as the World-ground, the evercreative source of all things, immanent yet transcendent.

I believe in personality as the fundamental reality of life, man's highest possession, the source of all creativity, the perfect realization of which is his supreme goal.

I believe that human personality is fully realized only as it comprehends and gives itself to the will of the Infinite Personality, or God, "in whom we live, and move and have our being."

Here is one from F. M. Bennett of Youngstown, Ohio.

"I BELIEVE in the natural supernatural as distinguished from the miraculous or magical supernatural.

I believe that this supernatural is shown to men in the three forms of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

I believe that these are but aspects of One Great Reality which we may call Spirit, or Infinite Personality.

I believe that man in his spiritual life may share in a free fellowship the reality, the worth and purpose of the Infinite Personality.

I believe that a man best realizes his life by giving himself and all his conscious powers to fulfilling these purposes of Infinite Personality.

I believe he is free to do this in the exercise of mind, morals and religion.

I believe the greatest human example of this fellowship in the divine life is that of Jesus of Nazareth who most fully realized the divine will and love.

I believe that because he found this Father of Spirits, we, as sons of the Spirit, can find the same spiritual Life through experience with the world.

Write us your interpretation. A year's subscription for the best one. We will hold the contest open for another quarter.

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PHILOSOPHY, like man had not lived long in the world. before it discovered that much which was widely hailed as truth was only the relative view-point of the observer. Aunt Fannie, bent upon the scandal of the neighborhood, sees many things which exist nowhere but in her own eye. Yet she can bring you the confirmatory shreds of evidence. What is evidence enough for the utter condemnation of our enemies would be laughed to scorn if anyone should apply it to our friends. We see very largely what we want to see, we find exactly what we expect to find. Which fact continues the life of the patent medicine almanac, and saves the life of the patent medicine vendor as well as a whole lot of "philosophies," "isms," "ologies" and "sciences" that now afflict the world. One comes at last in the wisdom of age to know the futility of argument which changes no minds, adds no wisdom, but only embitters and estranges. It was the first glimpse of this fact that set the Sophists on their wild career which ended in the denial that there was any truth except that of the moment, the occasion, and the individual. It was the first

breath of the skepticism of knowledge, the breakdown of confidence in man's own ability to understand the world and, as is usual in such cases, from Sophism to Lombroso and Freud, the theory fell into the hands of the unscrupulous and self-interested.

Can we come to the possession of truth? To the unthinking the answer is so easy as to make the question appear ridiculous. Such overshoot the mark altogether and are unconscious of their treasure of lies. Some wearied of finding the answer anew day by day upon the plains of life seek out the friendly creeds of "they say" or "it is customary," "our kind think thus and so," or "this is the new or old philosophy of life", or here we rest, in book, or creed, or institution. That result is sometimes the outcome of struggle but more often of mental laziness, a sort of mental auto-intoxication arising from failure to consume certain gaseous and heady ideas.

The Ring and The Book is Browning's answer to the question of truth and if one will read with thoughtful patience till the end he will discover, not only that which even the cynic thinks he discovers, the great rarity of truth, but likewise that which comes only to the wise man that truth is no possession but a self-conquest-not a prize but an insight.

The event

Count Guido Franceschini the Aretine,

Descended of an ancient house, though poor,

A beaked-nosed bushy-bearded black-haired lord,
Lean, pallid, low of stature yet robust,
Fifty years old-having four years ago
Married Pompilia Comparini, young,

Good, beautiful, at Rome, where she was born,
And brought her to Arezzo, where they lived,
Unhappy lives, whatever curse the cause,-
This husband, taking four accomplices,

Followed this wife to Rome, where she was fled
From their Arezzo to find peace again,

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