Divine Existence

Abstract

THE choice of the title for this collection of the late Professor Kemp Smith’s articles and addresses calls for some explanation if not justification. In the first place I should say that although the selection and arrangement of papers was his own, he left no instructions about a title, the choice of which is therefore the responsibility of the Editors. Secondly the task of editing was entrusted ‘according to their availability’ to one or other of the three colleagues and former pupils whom he named in his will. When at last, after long and unavoidable delays, we met together to discuss the problems of editing and which of us should accept the responsibility, we found that while all of us retained the most vivid memory of Kemp Smith as a teacher and friend, we each of us would have given somewhat different versions of his philosophical influence, according to whether our own philosophical interests were predominantly historical, or logical or religious and, I had better add, metaphysical; certainly metaphysical, as he understood that word to mean the legitimate extension beyond the frontiers of sense perception of every inquiry into reality and truth. It seemed best therefore that an introduction, besides providing a biography as its principal aim, should reflect something of the manner in which his thought and personal beliefs had influenced his pupils, and this might emerge if we each contributed what we could from our understanding and personal recollection of his teaching and of conversations with him.