SOURCE: "The Problem of Job" in Studies of Good and Evil: A Series of Essays upon Problems of Philosophy and of Life, D. Appleton and Company, 1898, pp. 1-28.

Royce was an American philosopher whose writings encompass the fields of mathematical logic, psychology, metaphysics, religion, and social ethics. He is noted for developing an idealist philosophy emphasizing individuality and the human will rather than intellect. In the following excerpt from his essay "The Problem of Job" in Studies of Good and Evil (1898), he examines the problem of suffering as depicted in The Book of Job, employing the tenets of philosophical idealism, by which God may be viewed as an entity that is interconnected with humans rather than as a separate being.

In speaking of the problem of Job, the present writer comes to the subject as a layman in theology, and as one ignorant of Hebrew scholarship. In referring...