A Sacramental Universe

A SACRAMENTAL UNIVERSE A SACRAMENTAL UNIVERSE Being A Study in the Metaphysics of Experience VANUXEM LECTURES BY ARCHIBALD ALLAN BOWMAN Sometime Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow Edited by J. W. SCOTT Prof ess or of Logic and Philosophy y University College, Cardiff Wales 1939 PRINCETON PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS PREFACE Vanuxem Lectureship at Princeton University was I founded by Louis Clark Vanuxem of the Class of 1879 for JL the annual delivery before the University of four to six lec tures on matters of current interest, including but not confined to topics of a scientific character and the late Professor Bowman of the University of Glasgow gave, in 1934, the philosophical course which forms the basis of the ensuing book. Of the Parts into which the book falls, only Part I an elaborate redaction of the first three lectures had been typewritten, ready for the press, at the time of the author s sudden and unexpected death, on the I 2th of June 1016. x- fbe duty of an editor in such cir ftmstances is always a responsible one but for various reasons it proved less onerous in the present in stance than it might easily have been. The following are the salient facts The lecturer spoke from notes. The book of notes which he had before him was available-, and from this it soon became clear what he had intended to give to his audience in his first three lectures nothing less, namely y than a condensation of the whole metaphysical thesis which he has argued out in full in the eight chapters comprising Part I of the present volume. Since the author had found it necessary, in preparing his spoken work for publication, todevelop his first three lectures to this extent, it was reasonable to suppose that he would also have expanded the re maining three. The opportunity to do this was denied him and the fact constituted a loss which no editor, however well equipped, could set him self to repair. At first sight, the only feasible plan seemed to be to discard the platform notes altogether, and let our Part I, embodying the first three lectures in expanded form, be the whole book, fbis, however, implied discarding half the Vanuxem course, and did not seem possible. It would have been to present as a fragment, although a highly impressive fragment, a series of addresses which was, in fact, very much more. It would not have been fair to either publisher, public or Foundation. After considerable discussion and trial of other ways of treating the material, three considerations served to precipitate what I think was the right decision. vi PREFACE Firstly, although the six lectures had not been simply read off by the speaker from a manuscript it occurred to me that most of them were nonetheless recoverable all, in fact, except number one in large part. They existed, not exactly as they were spoken, but as they were composed-, that is to say, in scattered notes in the platform book and elsewhere. The method which had been followed in their composition was clear. The author had a large and accumulating mass of manu script material which it was his habit, in a busy life, to keep in ex cellent order and down the margins of some of this, he had red-inked long passages for inclusion in these discourses. All which he had thus marked off, when inserted into its place among the connective material of his platform book, fitted perfectly. I therefore took the responsibility of so inserting it, and printing the result in its entirety, with a mini mum of editing, in the middle of this volume, as Part II. Part II con sists, therefore, of the notes for the spoken lectures, so far as they exist in writing. his scheme commended itself the more because, in the second place, these spoken lectures, being allowed to appear in all their unedited frankness and freedom, as Part II of this volume, do seem to me to have a real role to play...