Professor Royce lectured before a large audience last night in the lecture room of the Fogg Art Museum. His subject was Jean-Marie Guyau, the Philosopher.

After showing how his own temperament and the character of his home training induced Guyau, while still young, to follow the pursuit of philosophical studies, the lecturer dwelled for considerable time upon the philosopher's early promise and swift development. When nineteen he wrote a valuable book upon ethics and before he was thirty years of age he was considered the most prominent philosophical critic in France.

Guyau's fame does not rest upon his constructive ability. He really had no system of philosophy. The best that can be said of him is that he adhered consistently throughout his life to a few, disconnected fundamental principles of ethics and metaphysics. He was great as a critic and as an analyzer.

He is, perhaps, the best exponent of the French philosophical movement which started in 1870. The three great characteristics of this school are: a strong love of life combined with a coolness of observing our surroundings; clearness combined with an idea of the unity of things; and a cautious sense of human fallibility in philosophic speculation combined with the willingness to run the risk of blundering. The one great feature of Guyau's speculation is his fearlessness. He does not immediately fear that he may be wrong but he "lets himself go" until he has reached his conclusion.

Professor Royce then spoke of the man's character. He was frank above all things. He was a good husband and father. Troubled all his life with a malady, Guyau did not grumble as most invalids do, but was ever kind and loving. He believed that the one great tle which binds the universe together was love, and in this, as in all things, he practiced what he preached.

He died in 1888 at the young age of 33, his constitution ruined by over-work and by the disease, which would have made his whole life a tragedy but for his own buoyant nature.