 Royce was appointed Professor of the History of Philosophy at Harvard in 1892 and served as Chair of the Department of Philosophy from 1894–98. During these years Royce established himself as a leading figure in American academic philosophy with his many reviews, lectures and books, including The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892) and The Conception of God (1895). In 1898 Royce attended a series of lectures by Charles S. Peirce, “Reasoning and the Logic of Things,” which significantly influenced his understanding of the relation between logic and metaphysics.