Published as the conclusion in a Festschrift edited by Leroy S. Rouner, "History and the Absolute" is, according to a note, "a recently revised summary of the Second Series of Professor Hocking's Gifford Lectures, 1938–1939." The note continues: "See President Gilman's Bibliography, pp 484–485, No 138, below." (p. 423) On p. 484 n.138 under the year 1938 we read:

"Fact and Destiny." Glasgow: Mimeographed only, 1938. 17 pp. This is the outline of the first five lectures in the first series of Gifford Lectures, given at Glasgow University in 1938. The completed lectures have not yet appeared in published form, although they are currently being prepared for publication.

The note goes on, listing translation of this preliminary draft, and then explains:

During the period in which these lectures were delivered at Glasgow, Hocking supplied representatives of the press (notably the Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman, of Edinburgh) with fairly full condensations of the individual lectures in advance. The Glasgow Herald printed them practically in full, with introductory remarks and an occasional change of verbs into indirect discourse, while the series in the Scotsman was more substantially abridged. The tens lectures of the First Series in 1938 appeared in the Glasgow Herald on the following dates (reporting the previous days lecture): January 18, January 21, January 28, February 4, February 11, February 18, February 25, March 4, March 11, and March 17. The ten lectures of the Second Series in 1938–1939 appeared in the same newspaper on the following dates: November 30, December 3, December 7, December 10, December 14, December 17, January 11, January 14, January 18, and January 21. A recently revised summary of the Second Series appears in the present volume under the title "History and the Absolute."

In that revision, each of the lectures is summarized in 3–6 pages. The reader interested in Hocking's lectures should thus consult the Glasgow Herald on the dates listed above (for condensations of the first series), and William Ernest Hocking, "History and the Absolute," in Philosophy, Religion, and the Coming World Civilization: Essays in Honor of William Ernest Hocking, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), 423–63 (for summaries of the second series).