{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.046637211585665195, 'fraction_numerical': 0.027491408934707903, 'mean_word_length': 5.213414634146342, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Two Royces, Early and Late: A Critique of Oppenheim’s Concept of the “Mature Royce”

For the past fifty years, the linkage between Josiah Royce and Frank M. Oppenheim, S.J., has been both apt and irresistible. The mere mention of Oppenheim will immediately suggest Royce, and in any bibliography of Royce studies, Oppenheim’s contributions will stand out. He has published four books—each one a model of excellence in scholarship and critical insight.1 He has also published countless articles, reviews, introductions, and chapters in books. Beyond this record of his published work, he has exerted—as a priest, professor, mentor, and colleague—a powerful, unequaled influence on his contemporaries and a generation of younger scholars. The number of people who have been drawn to Royce by him and who have been guided by him to an understanding of Royce is enormous. A dominant theme in Oppenheim’s interpretation of Royce’s philosophy is the concept of the “Mature Royce.” This theme was first articulated in Oppenheim’s 1962 doctoral dissertation. In “A Roycean Road to Community,” a paper presented to a Jesuit convention in 1969, Oppenheim repeatedly described Royce’s late thought as “mature.” The word is sprinkled throughout Oppenheim’s publications, so that “late” generally also means “mature.” By this “mature” period of Royce’s thought, Oppenheim refers to the last four and a half years of his life (1912–1916). The Problem of Christianity is the principal “mature” work. Oppenheim also includes Royce’s articles on “Mind,” “Negation,” and “Order” in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1916–1917), the last—1915–1916—lectures in Philosophy 9 (published in 1998 as Metaphysics: His Philosophy 9 Course of 1915–1916), which Oppenheim edited with the help of William Ernest Hocking and Richard Hocking (see endnote 3), the Extension Course in Ethics (six lectures entitled “Introduction to Ethics” delivered at Boston University in the fall of 1915 through February of 1916), and the final posthumous essay, “The Hope of