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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:38:35 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11984-0.txt b/11984-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a33c277 --- /dev/null +++ b/11984-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7743 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11984 *** + +A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE + + +Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in +Philosophy + + +BY WILLIAM JAMES + + + + +1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +LECTURE I + +THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING 1 + + Our age is growing philosophical again, 3. Change of tone since 1860, 4. + Empiricism and Rationalism defined, 7. The process of Philosophizing: + Philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, 8. + They seek to make it seem less strange, 11. Their temperamental + differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency + to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of + vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought, + 21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23. + Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and + leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The + contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand + to be essential in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: The 'each- + form' and the 'all-form' of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks + quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the + finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite + still remains outside of absolute reality, 40. + + +LECTURE II + +MONISTIC IDEALISM 41 + + Recapitulation, 43. Radical Pluralism is to be the thesis of these + lectures, 44. Most philosophers contemn it, 45. Foreignness to us of + Bradley's Absolute, 46. Spinoza and 'quatenus,'47. Difficulty of + sympathizing with the Absolute, 48. Idealistic attempt to interpret it, + 50. Professor Jones quoted, 52. Absolutist refutations of Pluralism, 54. + Criticism of Lotze's proof of Monism by the analysis of what interaction + involves, 55. Vicious intellectualism defined, 60. Royce's alternative: + either the complete disunion or the absolute union of things, 61. + Bradley's dialectic difficulties with relations, 69. Inefficiency of the + Absolute as a rationalizing remedy, 71. Tendency of Rationalists to fly + to extremes, 74. The question of 'external' relations, 79. Transition to + Hegel, 91. + + +LECTURE III + +HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 83 + + Hegel's influence. 85. The type of his vision is impressionistic, 87. + The 'dialectic' element in reality, 88. Pluralism involves possible + conflicts among things, 90. Hegel explains conflicts by the mutual + contradictoriness of concepts, 91. Criticism of his attempt to transcend + ordinary logic, 92. Examples of the 'dialectic' constitution of things, + 95. The rationalistic ideal: propositions self-securing by means of + double negation, 101. Sublimity of the conception, 104. Criticism of + Hegel's account: it involves vicious intellectualism, 105. Hegel is a + seer rather than a reasoner, 107. 'The Absolute' and 'God' are two + different notions, 110. Utility of the Absolute in conferring mental + peace, 114. But this is counterbalanced by the peculiar paradoxes which + it introduces into philosophy, 116. Leibnitz and Lotze on the 'fall' + involved in the creation of the finite, 119. Joachim on the fall of + truth into error, 121. The world of the absolutist cannot be perfect, + 123. Pluralistic conclusions, 125. + + +LECTURE IV + +CONCERNING FECHNER 131 + + Superhuman consciousness does not necessarily imply an absolute + mind, 134. Thinness of contemporary absolutism, 135. The + tone of Fechner's empiricist pantheism contrasted with that of the + rationalistic sort, 144. Fechner's life, 145. His vision, the 'daylight + view,' 150. His way of reasoning by analogy, 151. The whole universe + animated, 152. His monistic formula is unessential, 153. The + Earth-Soul, 156. Its differences from our souls, 160. The earth as + an angel, 164. The Plant-Soul, 165. The logic used by Fechner, + 168. His theory of immortality, 170. The 'thickness' of his imagination, + 173. Inferiority of the ordinary transcendentalist pantheism, + to his vision, 174. + + +LECTURE V + +THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS 179 + The assumption that states of mind may compound themselves, 181. This + assumption is held in common by naturalistic psychology, by + transcendental idealism, and by Fechner, 184. Criticism of it by the + present writer in a former book, 188. Physical combinations, so-called, + cannot be invoked as analogous, 194. Nevertheless, combination must be + postulated among the parts of the Universe, 197. The logical objections + to admitting it, 198. Rationalistic treatment of the question brings us + to an _impasse_, 208. A radical breach with intellectualism is required, + 212. Transition to Bergson's philosophy, 214. Abusive use of concepts, + 219. + + +LECTURE VI + +BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 223 + + Professor Bergson's personality, 225. Achilles and the tortoise, 228. + Not a sophism, 229. We make motion unintelligible when we treat it by + static concepts, 233. Conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense + practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives an essentially + static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240. + No rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life, + 244. The function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247. + Bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the + understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What Bergson means by + this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really exists + is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson's + originality, 264. Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a + universe where change is continuous, 267. Livingly, things _are_ their + own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel's logic is true, + 270. + + +LECTURE VII + +THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275 + + Green's critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately + felt as terms are, 280. The union of things is given in the immediate + flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux's aboriginal + incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles of continuity, + 284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete + units of experience are 'their own others,' 287. Reality is confluent + from next to next, 290. Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced, + 291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis, 292. Fechner's God is not the + Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, 296. + Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298. + + +LECTURE VIII + +CONCLUSIONS 301 + + Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304. + They corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part, + 308. This life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of + monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better + ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger + mind may open the door to superstitions, 315. But this objection + should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form parts of reality, + 317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least + foreign, 318. The word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the + word 'intimacy,' 319. Monism and pluralism distinguished and + defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All men use + the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330. + + +NOTES 333 + + +APPENDICES + + A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 847 + + B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 870 + + C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING 895 + + +INDEX 401 + + + + +LECTURE I + + +THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING + +As these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed +all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general +interest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing +philosophical again--still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford, +long the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by +Kant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different +way of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest +in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It +looks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of +fashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming +itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as +if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh. + +Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying +every one we meet under some general head. As these heads usually +suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life +of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and +complaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up, +and, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both Oxford +and Harvard are partly to be thanked. As I look back into the sixties, +Mill, Bain, and Hamilton were the only official philosophers in +Britain. Spencer, Martineau, and Hodgson were just beginning. In +France, the pupils of Cousin were delving into history only, and +Renouvier alone had an original system. In Germany, the hegelian +impetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship, +nothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as +Büchner and Ulrici as its champions. Lotze and Fechner were the sole +original thinkers, and Fechner was not a professional philosopher at +all. + +The general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of +small subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. Amateurishness was +rampant. Samuel Bailey's 'letters on the philosophy of the human +mind,' published in 1855, are one of the ablest expressions of english +associationism, and a book of real power. Yet hear how he writes of +Kant: 'No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to +hear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years +of study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the +speculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if they had. +In or about 1818, Lord Grenville, when visiting the Lakes of England, +observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of Kant's +philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, +about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of +my own. "I am endeavoring," exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the +irritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, "to understand this +accursed german philosophy."[1] + +What Oxford thinker would dare to print such _naïf_ and +provincial-sounding citations of authority to-day? + +The torch of learning passes from land to land as the spirit bloweth +the flame. The deepening of philosophic consciousness came to us +english folk from Germany, as it will probably pass back ere long. +Ferrier, J.H. Stirling, and, most of all, T.H. Green are to be +thanked. If asked to tell in broad strokes what the main doctrinal +change has been, I should call it a change from the crudity of the +older english thinking, its ultra-simplicity of mind, both when it was +religious and when it was anti-religious, toward a rationalism +derived in the first instance from Germany, but relieved from german +technicality and shrillness, and content to suggest, and to remain +vague, and to be, in, the english fashion, devout. + +By the time T.H. Green began at Oxford, the generation seemed to +feel as if it had fed on the chopped straw of psychology and of +associationism long enough, and as if a little vastness, even though +it went with vagueness, as of some moist wind from far away, reminding +us of our pre-natal sublimity, would be welcome. + +Green's great point of attack was the disconnectedness of the reigning +english sensationalism. _Relating_ was the great intellectual activity +for him, and the key to this relating was believed by him to +lodge itself at last in what most of you know as Kant's unity of +apperception, transformed into a living spirit of the world. + +Hence a monism of a devout kind. In some way we must be fallen angels, +one with intelligence as such; and a great disdain for empiricism +of the sensationalist sort has always characterized this school of +thought, which, on the whole, has reigned supreme at Oxford and in the +Scottish universities until the present day. + +But now there are signs of its giving way to a wave of revised +empiricism. I confess that I should be glad to see this latest wave +prevail; so--the sooner I am frank about it the better--I hope to +have my voice counted in its favor as one of the results of this +lecture-course. + +What do the terms empiricism and rationalism mean? Reduced to their +most pregnant difference, _empiricism means the habit of explaining +wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts +by wholes_. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since +wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic +views. No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a +picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of +the perspective of events. And the first thing to notice is this, that +the only material we have at our disposal for making a picture of the +whole world is supplied by the various portions of that world of +which we have already had experience. We can invent no new forms of +conception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested +originally by the parts. All philosophers, accordingly, have conceived +of the whole world after the analogy of some particular feature of it +which has particularly captivated their attention. Thus, the theists +take their cue from manufacture, the pantheists from growth. For one +man, the world is like a thought or a grammatical sentence in which a +thought is expressed. For such a philosopher, the whole must logically +be prior to the parts; for letters would never have been invented +without syllables to spell, or syllables without words to utter. + +Another man, struck by the disconnectedness and mutual accidentality +of so many of the world's details, takes the universe as a whole to +have been such a disconnectedness originally, and supposes order to +have been superinduced upon it in the second instance, possibly +by attrition and the gradual wearing away by internal friction of +portions that originally interfered. + +Another will conceive the order as only a statistical appearance, and +the universe will be for him like a vast grab-bag with black and white +balls in it, of which we guess the quantities only probably, by the +frequency with which we experience their egress. + +For another, again, there is no really inherent order, but it is we +who project order into the world by selecting objects and tracing +relations so as to gratify our intellectual interests. We _carve out_ +order by leaving the disorderly parts out; and the world is conceived +thus after the analogy of a forest or a block of marble from which +parks or statues may be produced by eliminating irrelevant trees or +chips of stone. + +Some thinkers follow suggestions from human life, and treat the +universe as if it were essentially a place in which ideals are +realized. Others are more struck by its lower features, and for them, +brute necessities express its character better. + +All follow one analogy or another; and all the analogies are with some +one or other of the universe's subdivisions. Every one is nevertheless +prone to claim that his conclusions are the only logical ones, that +they are necessities of universal reason, they being all the while, at +bottom, accidents more or less of personal vision which had far better +be avowed as such; for one man's vision may be much more valuable than +another's, and our visions are usually not only our most interesting +but our most respectable contributions to the world in which we play +our part. What was reason given to men for, said some eighteenth +century writer, except to enable them to find reasons for what they +want to think and do?--and I think the history of philosophy largely +bears him out, 'The aim of knowledge,' says Hegel,[2] 'is to divest +the objective world of its strangeness, and to make us more at home +in it.' Different men find their minds more at home in very different +fragments of the world. + +Let me make a few comments, here, on the curious antipathies which +these partialities arouse. They are sovereignly unjust, for all the +parties are human beings with the same essential interests, and no one +of them is the wholly perverse demon which another often imagines him +to be. Both are loyal to the world that bears them; neither wishes to +spoil it; neither wishes to regard it as an insane incoherence; both +want to keep it as a universe of some kind; and their differences are +all secondary to this deep agreement. They may be only propensities to +emphasize differently. Or one man may care for finality and security +more than the other. Or their tastes in language may be different. +One may like a universe that lends itself to lofty and exalted +characterization. To another this may seem sentimental or rhetorical. +One may wish for the right to use a clerical vocabulary, another a +technical or professorial one. A certain old farmer of my acquaintance +in America was called a rascal by one of his neighbors. He immediately +smote the man, saying,'I won't stand none of your diminutive +epithets.' Empiricist minds, putting the parts before the whole, +appear to rationalists, who start from the whole, and consequently +enjoy magniloquent privileges, to use epithets offensively diminutive. +But all such differences are minor matters which ought to be +subordinated in view of the fact that, whether we be empiricists or +rationalists, we are, ourselves, parts of the universe and share the +same one deep concern in its destinies. We crave alike to feel more +truly at home with it, and to contribute our mite to its amelioration. +It would be pitiful if small aesthetic discords were to keep honest +men asunder. + +I shall myself have use for the diminutive epithets of empiricism. But +if you look behind the words at the spirit, I am sure you will not +find it matricidal. I am as good a son as any rationalist among you to +our common mother. What troubles me more than this misapprehension is +the genuine abstruseness of many of the matters I shall be obliged +to talk about, and the difficulty of making them intelligible at one +hearing. But there two pieces, 'zwei stücke,' as Kant would have said, +in every philosophy--the final outlook, belief, or attitude to which +it brings us, and the reasonings by which that attitude is reached and +mediated. A philosophy, as James Ferrier used to tell us, must indeed +be true, but that is the least of its requirements. One may be true +without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelation. +What distinguishes a philosopher's truth is that it is _reasoned_. +Argument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession. Common +men find themselves inheriting their beliefs, they know not how. They +jump into them with both feet, and stand there. Philosophers must +do more; they must first get reason's license for them; and to the +professional philosophic mind the operation of procuring the license +is usually a thing of much more pith and moment than any particular +beliefs to which the license may give the rights of access. Suppose, +for example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will. +That a common man alongside of him should also share that belief, +possessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man +to the philosopher at all--he may even be ashamed to be associated +with such a man. What interests the philosopher is the particular +premises on which the free-will he believes in is established, the +sense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties +it takes account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner +and technical apparatus that goes with the belief in question. +A philosopher across the way who should use the same technical +apparatus, making the same distinctions, etc., but drawing opposite +conclusions and denying free-will entirely, would fascinate the first +philosopher far more than would the _naïf_ co-believer. Their common +technical interests would unite them more than their opposite +conclusions separate them. Each would feel an essential consanguinity +in the other, would think of him, write _at_ him, care for his good +opinion. The simple-minded believer in free-will would be disregarded +by either. Neither as ally nor as opponent would his vote be counted. + +In a measure this is doubtless as it should be, but like all +professionalism it can go to abusive extremes. The end is after all +more than the way, in most things human, and forms and methods may +easily frustrate their own purpose. The abuse of technicality is +seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, +metaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits. +Almost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain, +the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. Alternatives are wrapped +in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The +late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about +this. 'Thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something +for so-called philosophers only or for professed thinkers. The best +philosopher is the man who can think most _simply_. ... I wish that +people would consider that thought--and philosophy is no more than +good and methodical thought--is a matter _intimate_ to them, a portion +of their real selves ... that they would _value_ what they think, and +be interested in it.... In my own opinion,' he goes on, 'there is +something depressing in this weight of learning, with nothing that can +come into one's mind but one is told, Oh, that is the opinion of such +and such a person long ago. ... I can conceive of nothing more noxious +for students than to get into the habit of saying to themselves about +their ordinary philosophic thought, Oh, somebody must have thought it +all before.'[3] Yet this is the habit most encouraged at our seats of +learning. You must tie your opinion to Aristotle's or Spinoza's; you +must define it by its distance from Kant's; you must refute your +rival's view by identifying it with Protagoras's. Thus does all +spontaneity of thought, all freshness of conception, get destroyed. +Everything you touch is shopworn. The over-technicality and consequent +dreariness of the younger disciples at our american universities is +appalling. It comes from too much following of german models and +manners. Let me fervently express the hope that in this country you +will hark back to the more humane english tradition. American students +have to regain direct relations with our subject by painful individual +effort in later life. Some of us have done so. Some of the younger +ones, I fear, never will, so strong are the professional shop-habits +already. + +In a subject like philosophy it is really fatal to lose connexion with +the open air of human nature, and to think in terms of shop-tradition +only. In Germany the forms are so professionalized that anybody who +has gained a teaching chair and written a book, however distorted and +eccentric, has the legal right to figure forever in the history of the +subject like a fly in amber. All later comers have the duty of quoting +him and measuring their opinions with his opinion. Such are the rules +of the professorial game--they think and write from each other and for +each other and at each other exclusively. With this exclusion of the +open air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count +as much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance +any one writes popularly and about results only, with his mind +directly focussed on the subject, it is reckoned _oberflächliches +zeug_ and _ganz unwissenschaftlich_. Professor Paulsen has recently +written some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from +the reign of which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being +'literary,' have suffered loss of credit. Philosophy, he says, has +long assumed in Germany the character of being an esoteric and +occult science. There is a genuine fear of popularity. Simplicity of +statement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. He +recalls an old professor saying to him once: 'Yes, we philosophers, +whenever we wish, can go so far that in a couple of sentences we can +put ourselves where nobody can follow us.' The professor said this +with conscious pride, but he ought to have been ashamed of it. Great +as technique is, results are greater. To teach philosophy so that the +pupils' interest in technique exceeds that in results is surely a +vicious aberration. It is bad form, not good form, in a discipline +of such universal human interest. Moreover, technique for technique, +doesn't David Hume's technique set, after all, the kind of pattern +most difficult to follow? Isn't it the most admirable? The english +mind, thank heaven, and the french mind, are still kept, by their +aversion to crude technique and barbarism, closer to truth's natural +probabilities. Their literatures show fewer obvious falsities and +monstrosities than that of Germany. Think of the german literature of +aesthetics, with the preposterousness of such an unaesthetic personage +as Immanuel Kant enthroned in its centre! Think of german books on +_religions-philosophie_, with the heart's battles translated into +conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of +questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the +religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly +little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working +philosophy, individual Germans should preserve any spontaneity of +mind at all. That they still manifest freshness and originality in so +eminent a degree, proves the indestructible richness of the german +cerebral endowment. + +Let me repeat once more that a man's vision is the great fact about +him. Who cares for Carlyle's reasons, or Schopenhauer's, or Spencer's? +A philosophy is the expression of a man's intimate character, and all +definitions of the universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions +of human characters upon it. In the recent book from which I quoted +the words of Professor Paulsen, a book of successive chapters by +various living german philosophers,[4] we pass from one idiosyncratic +personal atmosphere into another almost as if we were turning over a +photograph album. + +If we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce +themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage +in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so +many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole +drift of life, forced on one by one's total character and experience, +and on the whole _preferred_--there is no other truthful word--as +one's best working attitude. Cynical characters take one general +attitude, sympathetic characters another. But no general attitude +is possible towards the world as a whole, until the intellect has +developed considerable generalizing power and learned to take pleasure +in synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly +any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. +It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and +shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical +powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but +Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is +likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the +wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest is all whispering with +witchery and danger. The eeriness of the world, the mischief and the +manyness, the littleness of the forces, the magical surprises, the +unaccountability of every agent, these surely are the characters most +impressive at that stage of culture, these communicate the thrills +of curiosity and the earliest intellectual stirrings. Tempests and +conflagrations, pestilences and earthquakes, reveal supramundane +powers, and instigate religious terror rather than philosophy. Nature, +more demonic than divine, is above all things _multifarious_. So many +creatures that feed or threaten, that help or crush, so many beings +to hate or love, to understand or start at--which is on top and which +subordinate? Who can tell? They are co-ordinate, rather, and to adapt +ourselves to them singly, to 'square' the dangerous powers and keep +the others friendly, regardless of consistency or unity, is the chief +problem. The symbol of nature at this stage, as Paulsen well says, +is the sphinx, under whose nourishing breasts the tearing claws are +visible. + +But in due course of time the intellect awoke, with its passion for +generalizing, simplifying, and subordinating, and then began those +divergences of conception which all later experience seems rather +to have deepened than to have effaced, because objective nature has +contributed to both sides impartially, and has let the thinkers +emphasize different parts of her, and pile up opposite imaginary +supplements. + +Perhaps the most interesting opposition is that which results from the +clash between what I lately called the sympathetic and the cynical +temper. Materialistic and spiritualistic philosophies are the rival +types that result: the former defining the world so as to leave man's +soul upon it as a soil of outside passenger or alien, while the latter +insists that the intimate and human must surround and underlie the +brutal. This latter is the spiritual way of thinking. + +Now there are two very distinct types or stages in spiritualistic +philosophy, and my next purpose in this lecture is to make their +contrast evident. Both types attain the sought-for intimacy of view, +but the one attains it somewhat less successfully than the other. + +The generic term spiritualism, which I began by using merely as the +opposite of materialism, thus subdivides into two species, the more +intimate one of which is monistic and the less intimate dualistic. The +dualistic species is the _theism_ that reached its elaboration in the +scholastic philosophy, while the monistic species is the _pantheism_ +spoken of sometimes simply as idealism, and sometimes as +'post-kantian' or 'absolute' idealism. Dualistic theism is professed +as firmly as ever at all catholic seats of learning, whereas it has +of late years tended to disappear at our british and american +universities, and to be replaced by a monistic pantheism more or less +open or disguised. I have an impression that ever since T.H. Green's +time absolute idealism has been decidedly in the ascendent at Oxford. +It is in the ascendent at my own university of Harvard. + +Absolute idealism attains, I said, to the more intimate point of view; +but the statement needs some explanation. So far as theism represents +the world as God's world, and God as what Matthew Arnold called a +magnified non-natural man, it would seem as if the inner quality of +the world remained human, and as if our relations with it might be +intimate enough--for what is best in ourselves appears then also +outside of ourselves, and we and the universe are of the same +spiritual species. So far, so good, then; and one might consequently +ask, What more of intimacy do you require? To which the answer is +that to be like a thing is not as intimate a relation as to be +substantially fused into it, to form one continuous soul and body with +it; and that pantheistic idealism, making us entitatively one with +God, attains this higher reach of intimacy. + +The theistic conception, picturing God and his creation as entities +distinct from each other, still leaves the human subject outside of +the deepest reality in the universe. God is from eternity complete, it +says, and sufficient unto himself; he throws off the world by a free +act and as an extraneous substance, and he throws off man as a third +substance, extraneous to both the world and himself. Between them, God +says 'one,' the world says 'two,' and man says 'three,'--that is the +orthodox theistic view. And orthodox theism has been so jealous of +God's glory that it has taken pains to exaggerate everything in the +notion of him that could make for isolation and separateness. Page +upon page in scholastic books go to prove that God is in no sense +implicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. That his +relation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to +him, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a +pantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. I said a moment ago that +theism treats us and God as of the same species, but from the orthodox +point of view that was a slip of language. God and his creatures +are _toto genere_ distinct in the scholastic theology, they have +absolutely _nothing_ in common; nay, it degrades God to attribute to +him any generic nature whatever; he can be classed with nothing. There +is a sense, then, in which philosophic theism makes us outsiders and +keeps us foreigners in relation to God, in which, at any rate, his +connexion with us appears as unilateral and not reciprocal. His action +can affect us, but he can never be affected by our reaction. Our +relation, in short, is not a strictly social relation. Of course in +common men's religion the relation is believed to be social, but that +is only one of the many differences between religion and theology. + +This essential dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of +collateral consequences. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to +God, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the +field. God is not heart of our heart and reason of our reason, but our +magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however +strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of +criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our +relations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the +same externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist +thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in +scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established +without our help, complete apart from our knowing; and the most we +can do is to acknowledge it passively and adhere to it, altho such +adhesion as ours can make no jot of difference to what is adhered to. +The situation here again is radically dualistic. It is not as if the +world came to know itself, or God came to know himself, partly through +us, as pantheistic idealists have maintained, but truth exists _per +se_ and absolutely, by God's grace and decree, no matter who of us +knows it or is ignorant, and it would continue to exist unaltered, +even though we finite knowers were all annihilated. + +It has to be confessed that this dualism and lack of intimacy has +always operated as a drag and handicap on Christian thought. Orthodox +theology has had to wage a steady fight within the schools against the +various forms of pantheistic heresy which the mystical experiences +of religious persons, on the one hand, and the formal or aesthetic +superiorities of monism to dualism, on the other, kept producing. God +as intimate soul and reason of the universe has always seemed to some +people a more worthy conception than God as external creator. So +conceived, he appeared to unify the world more perfectly, he made +it less finite and mechanical, and in comparison with such a God an +external creator seemed more like the product of a childish fancy. I +have been told by Hindoos that the great obstacle to the spread +of Christianity in their country is the puerility of our dogma +of creation. It has not sweep and infinity enough to meet the +requirements of even the illiterate natives of India. + +Assuredly most members of this audience are ready to side with +Hinduism in this matter. Those of us who are sexagenarians have +witnessed in our own persons one of those gradual mutations of +intellectual climate, due to innumerable influences, that make the +thought of a past generation seem as foreign to its successor as if +it were the expression of a different race of men. The theological +machinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, with its finite age +of the world, its creation out of nothing, its juridical morality and +eschatology, its relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of +God as an external contriver, an 'intelligent and moral governor,' +sounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish savage +religion. The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, +and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type +of our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or +obsolescent. The place of the divine in the world must be more organic +and intimate. An external creator and his institutions may still be +verbally confessed at Church in formulas that linger by their mere +inertia, but the life is out of them, we avoid dwelling on them, the +sincere heart of us is elsewhere. I shall leave cynical materialism +entirely out of our discussion as not calling for treatment before +this present audience, and I shall ignore old-fashioned dualistic +theism for the same reason. Our contemporary mind having once for all +grasped the possibility of a more intimate _Weltanschauung_, the only +opinions quite worthy of arresting our attention will fall within the +general scope of what may roughly be called the pantheistic field of +vision, the vision of God as the indwelling divine rather than the +external creator, and of human life as part and parcel of that deep +reality. + +As we have found that spiritualism in general breaks into a more +intimate and a less intimate species, so the more intimate species +itself breaks into two subspecies, of which the one is more monistic, +the other more pluralistic in form. I say in form, for our vocabulary +gets unmanageable if we don't distinguish between form and substance +here. The inner life of things must be substantially akin anyhow to +the tenderer parts of man's nature in any spiritualistic philosophy. +The word 'intimacy' probably covers the essential difference. +Materialism holds the foreign in things to be more primary and +lasting, it sends us to a lonely corner with our intimacy. The brutal +aspects overlap and outwear; refinement has the feebler and more +ephemeral hold on reality. + +From a pragmatic point of view the difference between living against +a background of foreignness and one of intimacy means the difference +between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. One might call +it a social difference, for after all, the common _socius_ of us all +is the great universe whose children we are. If materialistic, we +must be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. If +spiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and keep no ultimate fear. + +The contrast is rough enough, and can be cut across by all sorts +of other divisions, drawn from other points of view than that of +foreignness and intimacy. We have so many different businesses with +nature that no one of them yields us an all-embracing clasp. The +philosophic attempt to define nature so that no one's business is left +out, so that no one lies outside the door saying 'Where do _I_ come +in?' is sure in advance to fail. The most a philosophy can hope for is +not to lock out any interest forever. No matter what doors it closes, +it must leave other doors open for the interests which it neglects. +I have begun by shutting ourselves up to intimacy and foreignness +because that makes so generally interesting a contrast, and because it +will conveniently introduce a farther contrast to which I wish this +hour to lead. + +The majority of men are sympathetic. Comparatively few are cynics +because they like cynicism, and most of our existing materialists are +such because they think the evidence of facts impels them, or because +they find the idealists they are in contact with too private and +tender-minded; so, rather than join their company, they fly to the +opposite extreme. I therefore propose to you to disregard materialists +altogether for the present, and to consider the sympathetic party +alone. + +It is normal, I say, to be sympathetic in the sense in which I use the +term. Not to demand intimate relations with the universe, and not to +wish them satisfactory, should be accounted signs of something wrong. +Accordingly when minds of this type reach the philosophic level, and +seek some unification of their vision, they find themselves compelled +to correct that aboriginal appearance of things by which savages are +not troubled. That sphinx-like presence, with its breasts and claws, +that first bald multifariousness, is too discrepant an object for +philosophic contemplation. The intimacy and the foreignness cannot be +written down as simply coexisting. An order must be made; and in that +order the higher side of things must dominate. The philosophy of the +absolute agrees with the pluralistic philosophy which I am going +to contrast with it in these lectures, in that both identify human +substance with the divine substance. But whereas absolutism thinks +that the said substance becomes fully divine only in the form of +totality, and is not its real self in any form but the _all_-form, the +pluralistic view which I prefer to adopt is willing to believe that +there may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance +of reality may never get totally collected, that some of it may +remain outside of the largest combination of it ever made, and that +a distributive form of reality, the _each_-form, is logically as +acceptable and empirically as probable as the all-form commonly +acquiesced in as so obviously the self-evident thing. The contrast +between these two forms of a reality which we will agree to suppose +substantially spiritual is practically the topic of this course of +lectures. You see now what I mean by pantheism's two subspecies. If +we give to the monistic subspecies the name of philosophy of the +absolute, we may give that of radical empiricism to its pluralistic +rival, and it may be well to distinguish them occasionally later by +these names. + +As a convenient way of entering into the study of their differences, +I may refer to a recent article by Professor Jacks of Manchester +College. Professor Jacks, in some brilliant pages in the 'Hibbert +Journal' for last October, studies the relation between the universe +and the philosopher who describes and defines it for us. You may +assume two cases, he says. Either what the philosopher tells us is +extraneous to the universe he is accounting for, an indifferent +parasitic outgrowth, so to speak; or the fact of his philosophizing +is itself one of the things taken account of in the philosophy, and +self-included in the description. In the former case the philosopher +means by the universe everything _except_ what his own presence +brings; in the latter case his philosophy is itself an intimate +part of the universe, and may be a part momentous enough to give a +different turn to what the other parts signify. It may be a +supreme reaction of the universe upon itself by which it rises to +self-comprehension. It may handle itself differently in consequence of +this event. + +Now both empiricism and absolutism bring the philosopher inside +and make man intimate, but the one being pluralistic and the other +monistic, they do so in differing ways that need much explanation. Let +me then contrast the one with the other way of representing the status +of the human thinker. + +For monism the world is no collection, but one great all-inclusive +fact outside of which is nothing--nothing is its only alternative. +When the monism is idealistic, this all-enveloping fact is represented +as an absolute mind that makes the partial facts by thinking them, +just as we make objects in a dream by dreaming them, or personages in +a story by imagining them. To _be_, on this scheme, is, on the part of +a finite thing, to be an object for the absolute; and on the part of +the absolute it is to be the thinker of that assemblage of objects. If +we use the word 'content' here, we see that the absolute and the world +have an identical content. The absolute is nothing but the knowledge +of those objects; the objects are nothing but what the absolute knows. +The world and the all-thinker thus compenetrate and soak each other +up without residuum. They are but two names for the same identical +material, considered now from the subjective, and now from the +objective point of view--gedanke and gedachtes, as we would say if we +were Germans. We philosophers naturally form part of the material, on +the monistic scheme. The absolute makes us by thinking us, and if we +ourselves are enlightened enough to be believers in the absolute, one +may then say that our philosophizing is one of the ways in which the +absolute is conscious of itself. This is the full pantheistic scheme, +the _identitätsphilosophie_, the immanence of God in his creation, a +conception sublime from its tremendous unity. And yet that unity is +incomplete, as closer examination will show. + +The absolute and the world are one fact, I said, when materially +considered. Our philosophy, for example, is not numerically distinct +from the absolute's own knowledge of itself, not a duplicate and copy +of it, it is part of that very knowledge, is numerically identical +with as much of it as our thought covers. The absolute just _is_ our +philosophy, along with everything else that is known, in an act of +knowing which (to use the words of my gifted absolutist colleague +Royce) forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious +moment. + +But one as we are in this material sense with the absolute substance, +that being only the whole of us, and we only the parts of it, yet in a +formal sense something like a pluralism breaks out. When we speak of +the absolute we _take_ the one universal known material collectively +or integrally; when we speak of its objects, of our finite selves, +etc., we _take_ that same identical material distributively and +separately. But what is the use of a thing's _being_ only once if it +can be _taken_ twice over, and if being taken in different ways makes +different things true of it? As the absolute takes me, for example, I +appear _with_ everything else in its field of perfect knowledge. As +I take myself, I appear _without_ most other things in my field +of relative ignorance. And practical differences result from its +knowledge and my ignorance. Ignorance breeds mistake, curiosity, +misfortune, pain, for me; I suffer those consequences. The absolute +knows of those things, of course, for it knows me and my suffering, +but it doesn't itself suffer. It can't be ignorant, for simultaneous +with its knowledge of each question goes its knowledge of each answer. +It can't be patient, for it has to wait for nothing, having everything +at once in its possession. It can't be surprised; it can't be guilty. +No attribute connected with succession can be applied to it, for it +is all at once and wholly what it is, 'with the unity of a single +instant,' and succession is not of it but in it, for we are +continually told that it is 'timeless.' + +Things true of the world in its finite aspects, then, are not true of +it in its infinite capacity. _Quâ_ finite and plural its accounts of +itself to itself are different from what its account to itself _quâ_ +infinite and one must be. + +With this radical discrepancy between the absolute and the relative +points of view, it seems to me that almost as great a bar to intimacy +between the divine and the human breaks out in pantheism as that which +we found in monarchical theism, and hoped that pantheism might not +show. We humans are incurably rooted in the temporal point of view. +The eternal's ways are utterly unlike our ways. 'Let us imitate the +All,' said the original prospectus of that admirable Chicago quarterly +called the 'Monist.' As if we could, either in thought or conduct! +We are invincibly parts, let us talk as we will, and must always +apprehend the absolute as if it were a foreign being. If what I mean +by this is not wholly clear to you at this point, it ought to grow +clearer as my lectures proceed. + + + + +LECTURE II + + +MONISTIC IDEALISM + +Let me recall to you the programme which I indicated to you at our +last meeting. After agreeing not to consider materialism in any +shape, but to place ourselves straightway upon a more spiritualistic +platform, I pointed out three kinds of spiritual philosophy between +which we are asked to choose. The first way was that of the older +dualistic theism, with ourselves represented as a secondary order of +substances created by God. We found that this allowed of a degree of +intimacy with the creative principle inferior to that implied in the +pantheistic belief that we are substantially one with it, and that the +divine is therefore the most intimate of all our possessions, heart of +our heart, in fact. But we saw that this pantheistic belief could be +held in two forms, a monistic form which I called philosophy of the +absolute, and a pluralistic form which I called radical empiricism, +the former conceiving that the divine exists authentically only when +the world is experienced all at once in its absolute totality, whereas +radical empiricism allows that the absolute sum-total of things may +never be actually experienced or realized in that shape at all, and +that a disseminated, distributed, or incompletely unified appearance +is the only form that reality may yet have achieved. + +I may contrast the monistic and pluralistic forms in question as +the 'all-form' and the 'each-form.' At the end of the last hour I +animadverted on the fact that the all-form is so radically different +from the each-form, which is our human form of experiencing the +world, that the philosophy of the absolute, so far as insight and +understanding go, leaves us almost as much outside of the divine being +as dualistic theism does. I believe that radical empiricism, on the +contrary, holding to the each-form, and making of God only one of the +eaches, affords the higher degree of intimacy. The general thesis of +these lectures I said would be a defence of the pluralistic against +the monistic view. Think of the universe as existing solely in the +each-form, and you will have on the whole a more reasonable and +satisfactory idea of it than if you insist on the all-form being +necessary. The rest of my lectures will do little more than make this +thesis more concrete, and I hope more persuasive. + +It is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had +from philosophers. Whether materialistically or spiritualistically +minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with +which the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical +and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether +these were morally elevated or only intellectually neat they were +at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at +ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of +inner structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures, +the pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry +appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without +a sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. Those of you +who are accustomed to the classical constructions of reality may be +excused if your first reaction upon it be absolute contempt--a +shrug of the shoulders as if such ideas were unworthy of explicit +refutation. But one must have lived some time with a system to +appreciate its merits. Perhaps a little more familiarity may mitigate +your first surprise at such a programme as I offer. + +First, one word more than what I said last time about the relative +foreignness of the divine principle in the philosophy of the absolute. +Those of you who have read the last two chapters of Mr. Bradley's +wonderful book, 'Appearance and reality,' will remember what an +elaborately foreign aspect _his_ absolute is finally made to assume. +It is neither intelligence nor will, neither a self nor a collection +of selves, neither truthful, good, nor beautiful, as we understand +these terms. It is, in short, a metaphysical monster, all that we are +permitted to say of it being that whatever it is, it is at any rate +_worth_ more (worth more to itself, that is) than if any eulogistic +adjectives of ours applied to it. It is us, and all other appearances, +but none of us _as such_, for in it we are all 'transmuted,' and its +own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether. + +Spinoza was the first great absolutist, and the impossibility of being +intimate with _his_ God is universally recognized. _Quatenus infinitus +est_ he is other than what he is _quatenus humanam mentem constituit_. +Spinoza's philosophy has been rightly said to be worked by the word +_quatenus_. Conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs play indeed the +vital part in all philosophies; and in contemporary idealism the words +'as' and 'quâ' bear the burden of reconciling metaphysical unity with +phenomenal diversity. Quâ absolute the world is one and perfect, quâ +relative it is many and faulty, yet it is identically the self-same +world--instead of talking of it as many facts, we call it one fact in +many aspects. + +_As_ absolute, then, or _sub specie eternitatis_, or _quatenus +infinitus est_, the world repels our sympathy because it has no +history. _As such_, the absolute neither acts nor suffers, nor loves +nor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or +successes, friends or enemies, victories or defeats. All such things +pertain to the world quâ relative, in which our finite experiences +lie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our interest. +What boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and +to exhort me, as Emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its style, and +manners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition? I am +finite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up +with the finite world _as such_, and with things that have a history. +'Aus dieser erde quellen meine freuden, und ihre sonne scheinet meinen +leiden.' I have neither eyes nor ears nor heart nor mind for anything +of an opposite description, and the stagnant felicity of the +absolute's own perfection moves me as little as I move it. If we were +_readers_ only of the cosmic novel, things would be different: we +should then share the author's point of view and recognize villains to +be as essential as heroes in the plot. But we are not the readers but +the very personages of the world-drama. In your own eyes each of you +here is its hero, and the villains are your respective friends or +enemies. The tale which the absolute reader finds so perfect, we spoil +for one another through our several vital identifications with the +destinies of the particular personages involved. + +The doctrine on which the absolutists lay most stress is the +absolute's 'timeless' character. For pluralists, on the other hand, +time remains as real as anything, and nothing in the universe is great +or static or eternal enough not to have some history. But the world +that each of us feels most intimately at home with is that of beings +with histories that play into our history, whom we can help in their +vicissitudes even as they help us in ours. This satisfaction the +absolute denies us; we can neither help nor hinder it, for it stands +outside of history. It surely is a merit in a philosophy to make the +very life we lead seem real and earnest. Pluralism, in exorcising the +absolute, exorcises the great de-realizer of the only life we are +at home in, and thus redeems the nature of reality from essential +foreignness. Every end, reason, motive, object of desire or aversion, +ground of sorrow or joy that we feel is in the world of finite +multifariousness, for only in that world does anything really happen, +only there do events come to pass. + +In one sense this is a far-fetched and rather childish objection, for +so much of the history of the finite is as formidably foreign to us as +the static absolute can possibly be--in fact that entity derives its +own foreignness largely from the bad character of the finite which it +simultaneously is--that this sentimental reason for preferring the +pluralistic view seems small.[1] I shall return to the subject in my +final lecture, and meanwhile, with your permission, I will say no more +about this objection. The more so as the necessary foreignness of the +absolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of _totality_, +which is universally considered to carry the further attribute of +_perfection_ in its train. 'Philosophy,' says a recent american +philosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality,' and there is no doubt +that most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is +inspiring. 'I yielded myself to the perfect whole,' writes Emerson; +and where can you find a more mind-dilating object? A certain loyalty +is called forth by the idea; even if not proved actual, it must be +believed in somehow. Only an enemy of philosophy can speak lightly +of it. Rationalism starts from the idea of such a whole and builds +downward. Movement and change are absorbed into its immutability as +forms of mere appearance. When you accept this beatific vision of +what _is_, in contrast with what _goes on_, you feel as if you had +fulfilled an intellectual duty. 'Reality is not in its truest nature +a process,' Mr. McTaggart tells us, 'but a stable and timeless +state.'[2] 'The true knowledge of God begins,' Hegel writes, 'when +we know that things as they immediately are have no truth.'[3] 'The +consummation of the infinite aim,' he says elsewhere, 'consists merely +in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. Good +and absolute goodness is eternally accomplishing itself in the world: +and the result is that it needs not wait upon _us_, but is already ... +accomplished. It is an illusion under which we live. ... In the course +of its process the Idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an +antithesis to confront it, and its action consists in getting rid of +the illusion which it has created.'[4] + +But abstract emotional appeals of any kind sound amateurish in the +business that concerns us. Impressionistic philosophizing, like +impressionistic watchmaking or land-surveying, is intolerable to +experts. Serious discussion of the alternative before us forces +me, therefore, to become more technical. The great _claim_ of the +philosophy of the absolute is that the absolute is no hypothesis, but +a presupposition implicated in all thinking, and needing only a little +effort of analysis to be seen as a logical necessity. I will therefore +take it in this more rigorous character and see whether its claim is +in effect so coercive. + +It has seemed coercive to an enormous number of contemporaneous +thinkers. Professor Henry Jones thus describes the range and influence +of it upon the social and political life of the present time:[5] 'For +many years adherents of this way of thought have deeply interested the +british public by their writings. Almost more important than their +writings is the fact that they have occupied philosophical chairs in +almost every university in the kingdom. Even the professional critics +of idealism are for the most part idealists--after a fashion. And when +they are not, they are as a rule more occupied with the refutation of +idealism than with the construction of a better theory. It follows +from their position of academic authority, were it from nothing else, +that idealism exercises an influence not easily measured upon the +youth of the nation--upon those, that is, who from the educational +opportunities they enjoy may naturally be expected to become the +leaders of the nation's thought and practice.... Difficult as it is +to measure the forces ... it is hardly to be denied that the power +exercised by Bentham and the utilitarian school has, for better or +for worse, passed into the hands of the idealists.... "The Rhine has +flowed into the Thames" is the warning note rung out by Mr. Hobhouse. +Carlyle introduced it, bringing it as far as Chelsea. Then Jowett +and Thomas Hill Green, and William Wallace and Lewis Nettleship, and +Arnold Toynbee and David Eitchie--to mention only those teachers whose +voices now are silent--guided the waters into those upper reaches +known locally as the Isis. John and Edward Caird brought them up the +Clyde, Hutchison Stirling up the Firth of Forth. They have passed up +the Mersey and up the Severn and Dee and Don. They pollute the bay of +St. Andrews and swell the waters of the Cam, and have somehow crept +overland into Birmingham. The stream of german idealism has been +diffused over the academical world of Great Britain. The disaster is +universal.' + +Evidently if weight of authority were all, the truth of absolutism +would be thus decided. But let us first pass in review the general +style of argumentation of that philosophy. + +As I read it, its favorite way of meeting pluralism and empiricism is +by a _reductio ad absurdum_ framed somewhat as follows: You contend, +it says to the pluralist, that things, though in some respects +connected, are in other respects independent, so that they are not +members of one all-inclusive individual fact. Well, your position is +absurd on either point. For admit in fact the slightest modicum of +independence, and you find (if you will only think accurately) that +you have to admit more and more of it, until at last nothing but an +absolute chaos, or the proved impossibility of any connexion whatever +between the parts of the universe, remains upon your hands. Admit, on +the other hand, the most incipient minimum of relation between any two +things, and again you can't stop until you see that the absolute unity +of all things is implied. + +If we take the latter _reductio ad absurdum_ first, we find a good +example of it in Lotze's well-known proof of monism from the fact of +interaction between finite things. Suppose, Lotze says in effect, and +for simplicity's sake I have to paraphrase him, for his own words are +too long to quote--many distinct beings _a, b, c_, etc., to exist +independently of each other: _can a in that case ever act on b_? + +What is it to act? Is it not to exert an influence? Does the influence +detach itself from _a_ and find _b_? If so, it is a third fact, and +the problem is not how _a_ acts, but how its 'influence' acts on _b_. +By another influence perhaps? And how in the end does the chain of +influences find _b_ rather than _c_ unless _b_ is somehow prefigured +in them already? And when they have found _b_, how do they make _b_ +respond, if _b_ has nothing in common with them? Why don't they go +right through _b_? The change in _b_ is a _response_, due to _b_'s +capacity for taking account of _a_'s influence, and that again seems +to prove that _b_'s nature is somehow fitted to _a_'s nature in +advance. _A_ and _b_, in short, are not really as distinct as we at +first supposed them, not separated by a void. Were this so they would +be mutually impenetrable, or at least mutually irrelevant. They would +form two universes each living by itself, making no difference to each +other, taking no account of each other, much as the universe of your +day dreams takes no account of mine. They must therefore belong +together beforehand, be co-implicated already, their natures must have +an inborn mutual reference each to each. + +Lotze's own solution runs as follows: The multiple independent things +supposed cannot be real in that shape, but all of them, if reciprocal +action is to be possible between them, must be regarded as parts of a +single real being, M. The pluralism with which our view began has +to give place to a monism; and the 'transeunt' interaction, +being unintelligible as such, is to be understood as an immanent +operation.[6] + +The words 'immanent operation' seem here to mean that the single real +being M, of which _a_ and _b_ are members, is the only thing that +changes, and that when it changes, it changes inwardly and all over at +once. When part _a_ in it changes, consequently, part _b_ must also +change, but without the whole M changing this would not occur. + +A pretty argument, but a purely verbal one, as I apprehend it. _Call_ +your _a_ and _b_ distinct, they can't interact; _call_ them one, +they can. For taken abstractly and without qualification the words +'distinct' and 'independent' suggest only disconnection. If this be +the only property of your _a_ and _b_ (and it is the only property +your words imply), then of course, since you can't deduce their mutual +influence from _it_, you can find no ground of its occurring between +them. Your bare word 'separate,' contradicting your bare word +'joined,' seems to exclude connexion. + +Lotze's remedy for the impossibility thus verbally found is to change +the first word. If, instead of calling _a_ and _b_ independent, we now +call them 'interdependent,' 'united,' or 'one,' he says, _these_ words +do not contradict any sort of mutual influence that may be proposed. +If _a_ and _b_ are 'one,' and the one changes, _a_ and _b_ of course +must co-ordinately change. What under the old name they couldn't do, +they now have license to do under the new name. + +But I ask you whether giving the name of 'one' to the former 'many' +makes us really understand the modus operandi of interaction any +better. We have now given verbal permission to the many to change all +together, if they can; we have removed a verbal impossibility +and substituted a verbal possibility, but the new name, with the +possibility it suggests, tells us nothing of the actual process by +which real things that are one can and do change at all. In point +of fact abstract oneness as such _doesn't_ change, neither has it +parts--any more than abstract independence as such interacts. But then +neither abstract oneness nor abstract independence _exists_; only +concrete real things exist, which add to these properties the other +properties which they possess, to make up what we call their total +nature. To construe any one of their abstract names as _making their +total nature impossible_ is a misuse of the function of naming. The +real way of rescue from the abstract consequences of one name is not +to fly to an opposite name, equally abstract, but rather to correct +the first name by qualifying adjectives that restore some concreteness +to the case. Don't take your 'independence' _simpliciter_, as Lotze +does, take it _secundum quid_. Only when we know what the process of +interaction literally and concretely _consists_ in can we tell whether +beings independent _in definite respects_, distinct, for example, in +origin, separate in place, different in kind, etc., can or cannot +interact. + +_The treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the +name's definition fails positively to include, is what I call +'vicious intellectualism_.' Later I shall have more to say about this +intellectualism, but that Lotze's argument is tainted by it I hardly +think we can deny. As well might you contend (to use an instance from +Sigwart) that a person whom you have once called an 'equestrian' is +thereby forever made unable to walk on his own feet. + +I almost feel as if I should apologize for criticising such subtle +arguments in rapid lectures of this kind. The criticisms have to be as +abstract as the arguments, and in exposing their unreality, take +on such an unreal sound themselves that a hearer not nursed in the +intellectualist atmosphere knows not which of them to accuse. But +_le vin est versé, il faut le boire_, and I must cite a couple more +instances before I stop. + +If we are empiricists and go from parts to wholes, we believe that +beings may first exist and feed so to speak on their own existence, +and then secondarily become known to one another. But philosophers of +the absolute tell us that such independence of being from being known +would, if once admitted, disintegrate the universe beyond all hope of +mending. The argument is one of Professor Royce's proofs that the only +alternative we have is to choose the complete disunion of all things +or their complete union in the absolute One. + +Take, for instance, the proverb 'a cat may look at a king' and adopt +the realistic view that the king's being is independent of the cat's +witnessing. This assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make +no essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject +cognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even +be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,--this assumption, I +say, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead to the absurd +practical consequence that the two beings _can_ never later acquire +any possible linkages or connexions, but must remain eternally as if +in different worlds. For suppose any connexion whatever to ensue, this +connexion would simply be a third being additional to the cat and the +king, which would itself have to be linked to both by additional links +before it could connect them, and so on _ad infinitum_, the argument, +you see, being the same as Lotze's about how _a_'s influence does its +influencing when it influences _b_. + +In Royce's own words, if the king can be without the cat knowing him, +then king and cat 'can have no common features, no ties, no true +relations; they are separated, each from the other, by absolutely +impassable chasms. They can never come to get either ties or community +of nature; they are not in the same space, nor in the same time, nor +in the same natural or spiritual order.'[7] They form in short two +unrelated universes,--which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ required. + +To escape this preposterous state of things we must accordingly revoke +the original hypothesis. The king and the cat are not indifferent to +each other in the way supposed. But if not in that way, then in no +way, for connexion in that way carries connexion in other ways; so +that, pursuing the reverse line of reasoning, we end with the +absolute itself as the smallest fact that can exist. Cat and king are +co-involved, they are a single fact in two names, they can never have +been absent from each other, and they are both equally co-implicated +with all the other facts of which the universe consists. + +Professor Royce's proof that whoso admits the cat's witnessing the +king at all must thereupon admit the integral absolute, may be briefly +put as follows:-- + +First, to know the king, the cat must intend _that_ king, must somehow +pass over and lay hold of him individually and specifically. The cat's +idea, in short, must transcend the cat's own separate mind and somehow +include the king, for were the king utterly outside and independent of +the cat, the cat's pure other, the beast's mind could touch the king +in no wise. This makes the cat much less distinct from the king than +we had at first naïvely supposed. There must be some prior continuity +between them, which continuity Royce interprets idealistically as +meaning a higher mind that owns them both as objects, and owning them +can also own any relation, such as the supposed witnessing, that may +obtain between them. Taken purely pluralistically, neither of them can +own any part of a _between_, because, so taken, each is supposed shut +up to itself: the fact of a _between_ thus commits us to a higher +knower. + +But the higher knower that knows the two beings we start with proves +to be the same knower that knows everything else. For assume any third +being, the queen, say, and as the cat knew the king, so let the king +know his queen, and let this second knowledge, by the same reasoning, +require a higher knower as its presupposition. That knower of the +king's knowing must, it is now contended, be the same higher knower +that was required for the cat's knowing; for if you suppose otherwise, +you have no longer the _same king_. This may not seem immediately +obvious, but if you follow the intellectualistic logic employed in all +these reasonings, I don't see how you can escape the admission. If it +be true that the independent or indifferent cannot be related, for +the abstract words 'independent' or 'indifferent' as such imply no +relation, then it is just as true that the king known by the cat +cannot be the king that knows the queen, for taken merely 'as such,' +the abstract term 'what the cat knows' and the abstract term 'what +knows the queen' are logically distinct. The king thus logically +breaks into two kings, with nothing to connect them, until a higher +knower is introduced to recognize them as the self-same king concerned +in any previous acts of knowledge which he may have brought about. +This he can do because he possesses all the terms as his own objects +and can treat them as he will. Add any fourth or fifth term, and you +get a like result, and so on, until at last an all-owning knower, +otherwise called the absolute, is reached. The co-implicated +'through-and-through' world of monism thus stands proved by +irrefutable logic, and all pluralism appears as absurd. + +The reasoning is pleasing from its ingenuity, and it is almost a pity +that so straight a bridge from abstract logic to concrete fact should +not bear our weight. To have the alternative forced upon us of +admitting either finite things each cut off from all relation with +its environment, or else of accepting the integral absolute with no +environment and all relations packed within itself, would be too +delicious a simplification. But the purely verbal character of the +operation is undisguised. Because the _names_ of finite things and +their relations are disjoined, it doesn't follow that the realities +named need a _deus ex machina_ from on high to conjoin them. The same +things disjoined in one respect _appear_ as conjoined in another. +Naming the disjunction doesn't debar us from also naming the +conjunction in a later modifying statement, for the two are absolutely +co-ordinate elements in the finite tissue of experience. When at +Athens it was found self-contradictory that a boy could be both tall +and short (tall namely in respect of a child, short in respect of a +man), the absolute had not yet been thought of, but it might just as +well have been invoked by Socrates as by Lotze or Royce, as a relief +from his peculiar intellectualistic difficulty. + +Everywhere we find rationalists using the same kind of reasoning. The +primal whole which is their vision must be there not only as a +fact but as a logical necessity. It must be the minimum that can +exist--either that absolute whole is there, or there is absolutely +nothing. The logical proof alleged of the irrationality of supposing +otherwise, is that you can deny the whole only in words that +implicitly assert it. If you say 'parts,' of _what_ are they parts? If +you call them a 'many,' that very word unifies them. If you suppose +them unrelated in any particular respect, that 'respect' connects +them; and so on. In short you fall into hopeless contradiction. You +must stay either at one extreme or the other.[8] 'Partly this and +partly that,' partly rational, for instance, and partly irrational, +is no admissible description of the world. If rationality be in it at +all, it must be in it throughout; if irrationality be in it anywhere, +that also must pervade it throughout. It must be wholly rational or +wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or nulliverse; and +reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to +remain doubtful. The individual absolute, with its parts co-implicated +through and through, so that there is nothing in any part by which +any other part can remain inwardly unaffected, is the only rational +supposition. Connexions of an external sort, by which the many became +merely continuous instead of being consubstantial, would be an +irrational supposition. + +Mr. Bradley is the pattern champion of this philosophy _in extremis_, +as one might call it, for he shows an intolerance to pluralism so +extreme that I fancy few of his readers have been able fully to share +it. His reasoning exemplifies everywhere what I call the vice of +intellectualism, for abstract terms are used by him as positively +excluding all that their definition fails to include. Some Greek +sophists could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they +said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word _is_ +can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley +revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally +qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the +substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is +only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic +procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally +irrational, an example of the desperation of our finite intellectual +estate, infected and undermined as that is by the separatist +discursive forms which are our only categories, but which absolute +reality must somehow absorb into its unity and overcome. + +Readers of 'Appearance and reality' will remember how Mr. Bradley +suffers from a difficulty identical with that to which Lotze and Royce +fall a prey--how shall an influence influence? how shall a relation +relate? Any conjunctive relation between two phenomenal experiences +_a_ and _b_ must, in the intellectualist philosophy of these authors, +be itself a third entity; and as such, instead of bridging the one +original chasm, it can only create two smaller chasms, each to be +freshly bridged. Instead of hooking _a_ to _b_, it needs itself to be +hooked by a fresh relation _rÂ’_ to _a_ and by another _r”_ to _b_. +These new relations are but two more entities which themselves require +to be hitched in turn by four still newer relations--so behold the +vertiginous _regressus ad infinitum_ in full career. + +Since a _regressus ad infinitum_ is deemed absurd, the notion that +relations come 'between' their terms must be given up. No mere +external go-between can logically connect. What occurs must be more +intimate. The hooking must be a penetration, a possession. The +relation must _involve_ the terms, each term must involve _it_, and +merging thus their being in it, they must somehow merge their being in +each other, tho, as they seem still phenomenally so separate, we can +never conceive exactly how it is that they are inwardly one. The +absolute, however, must be supposed able to perform the unifying feat +in his own inscrutable fashion. + +In old times, whenever a philosopher was assailed for some +particularly tough absurdity in his system, he was wont to parry the +attack by the argument from the divine omnipotence. 'Do you mean to +limit God's power?' he would reply: 'do you mean to say that God could +not, if he would, do this or that?' This retort was supposed to close +the mouths of all objectors of properly decorous mind. The functions +of the bradleian absolute are in this particular identical with those +of the theistic God. Suppositions treated as too absurd to pass muster +in the finite world which we inhabit, the absolute must be able to +make good 'somehow' in his ineffable way. First we hear Mr. Bradley +convicting things of absurdity; next, calling on the absolute to vouch +for them _quand même_. Invoked for no other duty, that duty it must +and shall perform. + +The strangest discontinuity of our world of appearance with the +supposed world of absolute reality is asserted both by Bradley and +by Royce; and both writers, the latter with great ingenuity, seek to +soften the violence of the jolt. But it remains violent all the same, +and is felt to be so by most readers. Whoever feels the violence +strongly sees as on a diagram in just what the peculiarity of all this +philosophy of the absolute consists. First, there is a healthy faith +that the world must be rational and self-consistent. 'All science, all +real knowledge, all experience presuppose,' as Mr. Ritchie writes, 'a +coherent universe.' Next, we find a loyal clinging to the rationalist +belief that sense-data and their associations are incoherent, and that +only in substituting a conceptual order for their order can truth +be found. Third, the substituted conceptions are treated +intellectualistically, that is as mutually exclusive and +discontinuous, so that the first innocent continuity of the flow of +sense-experience is shattered for us without any higher conceptual +continuity taking its place. Finally, since this broken state of +things is intolerable, the absolute _deus ex machina_ is called on to +mend it in his own way, since we cannot mend it in ours. + +Any other picture than this of post-kantian absolutism I am unable +to frame. I see the intellectualistic criticism destroying the +immediately given coherence of the phenomenal world, but unable to +make its own conceptual substitutes cohere, and I see the resort to +the absolute for a coherence of a higher type. The situation has +dramatic liveliness, but it is inwardly incoherent throughout, and the +question inevitably comes up whether a mistake may not somewhere have +crept in in the process that has brought it about. May not the remedy +lie rather in revising the intellectualist criticism than in first +adopting it and then trying to undo its consequences by an arbitrary +act of faith in an unintelligible agent. May not the flux of sensible +experience itself contain a rationality that has been overlooked, +so that the real remedy would consist in harking back to it more +intelligently, and not in advancing in the opposite direction away +from it and even away beyond the intellectualist criticism that +disintegrates it, to the pseudo-rationality of the supposed absolute +point of view. I myself believe that this is the real way to keep +rationality in the world, and that the traditional rationalism has +always been facing in the wrong direction. I hope in the end to make +you share, or at any rate respect, this belief, but there is much to +talk of before we get to that point. + +I employed the word 'violent' just now in describing the dramatic +situation in which it pleases the philosophy of the absolute to make +its camp. I don't see how any one can help being struck in absolutist +writings by that curious tendency to fly to violent extremes of which +I have already said a word. The universe must be rational; well +and good; but _how_ rational? in what sense of that eulogistic but +ambiguous word?--this would seem to be the next point to bring up. +There are surely degrees in rationality that might be discriminated +and described. Things can be consistent or coherent in very diverse +ways. But no more in its conception of rationality than in its +conception of relations can the monistic mind suffer the notion of +more or less. Rationality is one and indivisible: if not rational +thus indivisibly, the universe must be completely irrational, and no +shadings or mixtures or compromises can obtain. Mr. McTaggart writes, +in discussing the notion of a mixture: 'The two principles, of +rationality and irrationality, to which the universe is then referred, +will have to be absolutely separate and independent. For if there were +any common unity to which they should be referred, it would be that +unity and not its two manifestations which would be the ultimate +explanation ... and the theory, having thus become monistic,'[9] would +resolve itself into the same alternative once more: is the single +principle rational through and through or not? + +'Can a plurality of reals be possible?' asks Mr. Bradley, and answers, +'No, impossible.' For it would mean a number of beings not dependent +on each other, and this independence their plurality would contradict. +For to be 'many' is to be related, the word having no meaning unless +the units are somehow taken together, and it is impossible to take +them in a sort of unreal void, so they must belong to a larger +reality, and so carry the essence of the units beyond their proper +selves, into a whole which possesses unity and is a larger system.[10] +Either absolute independence or absolute mutual dependence--this, +then, is the only alternative allowed by these thinkers. Of course +'independence,' if absolute, would be preposterous, so the only +conclusion allowable is that, in Ritchie's words, 'every single event +is ultimately related to every other, and determined by the whole +to which it belongs.' The whole complete block-universe +through-and-through, therefore, or no universe at all! + +Professor Taylor is so _naïf_ in this habit of thinking only in +extremes that he charges the pluralists with cutting the ground from +under their own feet in not consistently following it themselves. What +pluralists say is that a universe really connected loosely, after the +pattern of our daily experience, is possible, and that for certain +reasons it is the hypothesis to be preferred. What Professor Taylor +thinks they naturally must or should say is that any other sort of +universe is logically impossible, and that a totality of things +interrelated like the world of the monists is not an hypothesis that +can be seriously thought out at all.[11] + +Meanwhile no sensible pluralist ever flies or wants to fly to this +dogmatic extreme. + +If chance is spoken of as an ingredient of the universe, absolutists +interpret it to mean that double sevens are as likely to be thrown out +of a dice box as double sixes are. If free-will is spoken of, that +must mean that an english general is as likely to eat his prisoners +to-day as a Maori chief was a hundred years ago. It is as likely--I am +using Mr. McTaggart's examples--that a majority of Londoners will +burn themselves alive to-morrow as that they will partake of food, as +likely that I shall be hanged for brushing my hair as for committing +a murder,[12] and so forth, through various suppositions that no +indeterminist ever sees real reason to make. + +This habit of thinking only in the most violent extremes reminds me +of what Mr. Wells says of the current objections to socialism, in his +wonderful little book, 'New worlds for old.' The commonest vice of the +human mind is its disposition to see everything as yes or no, as black +or white, its incapacity for discrimination of intermediate shades. +So the critics agree to some hard and fast impossible definition of +socialism, and extract absurdities from it as a conjurer gets rabbits +from a hat. Socialism abolishes property, abolishes the family, and +the rest. The method, Mr. Wells continues, is always the same: It +is to assume that whatever the socialist postulates as desirable is +wanted without limit of qualification,--for socialist read pluralist +and the parallel holds good,--it is to imagine that whatever proposal +is made by him is to be carried out by uncontrolled monomaniacs, and +so to make a picture of the socialist dream which can be presented to +the simple-minded person in doubt--'This is socialism'--or pluralism, +as the case may be. 'Surely!--SURELY! you don't want _this!_' + +How often have I been replied to, when expressing doubts of the +logical necessity of the absolute, of flying to the opposite extreme: +'But surely, SURELY there must be _some_ connexion among things!' As +if I must necessarily be an uncontrolled monomanic insanely denying +any connexion whatever. The whole question revolves in very truth +about the word 'some.' Radical empiricism and pluralism stand out for +the legitimacy of the notion of _some_: each part of the world is in +some ways connected, in some other ways not connected with its other +parts, and the ways can be discriminated, for many of them are +obvious, and their differences are obvious to view. Absolutism, on its +side, seems to hold that 'some' is a category ruinously infected +with self-contradictoriness, and that the only categories inwardly +consistent and therefore pertinent to reality are 'all' and 'none.' + +The question runs into the still more general one with which Mr. +Bradley and later writers of the monistic school have made us +abundantly familiar--the question, namely, whether all the relations +with other things, possible to a being, are pre-included in its +intrinsic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to +some of these relations, it can _be_ without reference to them, and, +if it ever does enter into them, do so adventitiously and as it +were by an after-thought. This is the great question as to whether +'external' relations can exist. They seem to, undoubtedly. My +manuscript, for example, is 'on' the desk. The relation of being 'on' +doesn't seem to implicate or involve in any way the inner meaning +of the manuscript or the inner structure of the desk--these objects +engage in it only by their outsides, it seems only a temporary +accident in their respective histories. Moreover, the 'on' fails to +appear to our senses as one of those unintelligible 'betweens' that +have to be separately hooked on the terms they pretend to connect. +All this innocent sense-appearance, however, we are told, cannot pass +muster in the eyes of reason. It is a tissue of self-contradiction +which only the complete absorption of the desk and the manuscript into +the higher unity of a more absolute reality can overcome. + +The reasoning by which this conclusion is supported is too subtle and +complicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you +will thank me for not inviting you to consider it at all.[13] I feel +the more free to pass it by now as I think that the cursory account of +the absolutistic attitude which I have already given is sufficient for +our present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of +the absolute as 'not proven'--please observe that I go no farther +now--need not be backed by argument at every special point. Flanking +operations are less costly and in some ways more effective than +frontal attacks. Possibly you will yourselves think after hearing my +remaining lectures that the alternative of an universe absolutely +rational or absolutely irrational is forced and strained, and that +a _via media_ exists which some of you may agree with me is to +be preferred. _Some_ rationality certainly does characterize our +universe; and, weighing one kind with another, we may deem that the +incomplete kinds that appear are on the whole as acceptable as +the through-and-through sort of rationality on which the monistic +systematizers insist. + +All the said systematizers who have written since Hegel have owed +their inspiration largely to him. Even when they have found no use +for his particular triadic dialectic, they have drawn confidence +and courage from his authoritative and conquering tone. I have said +nothing about Hegel in this lecture, so I must repair the omission in +the next. + + + + +LECTURE III + + +HEGEL AND HIS METHOD + +Directly or indirectly, that strange and powerful genius Hegel has +done more to strengthen idealistic pantheism in thoughtful circles +than all other influences put together. I must talk a little about him +before drawing my final conclusions about the cogency of the arguments +for the absolute. In no philosophy is the fact that a philosopher's +vision and the technique he uses in proof of it are two different +things more palpably evident than in Hegel. The vision in his case +was that of a world in which reason holds all things in solution and +accounts for all the irrationality that superficially appears by +taking it up as a 'moment' into itself. This vision was so intense in +Hegel, and the tone of authority with which he spoke from out of the +midst of it was so weighty, that the impression he made has never been +effaced. Once dilated to the scale of the master's eye, the disciples' +sight could not contract to any lesser prospect. The technique which +Hegel used to prove his vision was the so-called dialectic method, but +here his fortune has been quite contrary. Hardly a recent disciple has +felt his particular applications of the method to be satisfactory. +Many have let them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of +provisional stop-gap, symbolic of what might some day prove possible +of execution, but having no literal cogency or value now. Yet these +very same disciples hold to the vision itself as a revelation that can +never pass away. The case is curious and worthy of our study. + +It is still more curious in that these same disciples, altho they are +usually willing to abandon any particular instance of the dialectic +method to its critics, are unshakably sure that in some shape the +dialectic method is the key to truth. What, then, is the dialectic +method? It is itself a part of the hegelian vision or intuition, and +a part that finds the strongest echo in empiricism and common sense. +Great injustice is done to Hegel by treating him as primarily a +reasoner. He is in reality a naïvely observant man, only beset with a +perverse preference for the use of technical and logical jargon. He +plants himself in the empirical flux of things and gets the impression +of what happens. His mind is in very truth _impressionistic_; and his +thought, when once you put yourself at the animating centre of it, is +the easiest thing in the world to catch the pulse of and to follow. + +Any author is easy if you can catch the centre of his vision. From +the centre in Hegel come those towering sentences of his that are +comparable only to Luther's, as where, speaking of the ontological +proof of God's existence from the concept of him as the _ens +perfectissimum_ to which no attribute can be lacking, he says: 'It +would be strange if the Notion, the very heart of the mind, or, in +a word, the concrete totality we call God, were not rich enough +to embrace so poor a category as Being, the very poorest and most +abstract of all--for nothing can be more insignificant than Being.' +But if Hegel's central thought is easy to catch, his abominable habits +of speech make his application of it to details exceedingly difficult +to follow. His passion for the slipshod in the way of sentences, +his unprincipled playing fast and loose with terms; his dreadful +vocabulary, calling what completes a thing its 'negation,' for +example; his systematic refusal to let you know whether he is talking +logic or physics or psychology, his whole deliberately adopted policy +of ambiguity and vagueness, in short: all these things make his +present-day readers wish to tear their hair--or his--out in +desperation. Like Byron's corsair, he has left a name 'to other times, +linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.' + +The virtue was the vision, which was really in two parts. The first +part was that reason is all-inclusive, the second was that things +are 'dialectic.' Let me say a word about this second part of Hegel's +vision. + +The impression that any _naïf_ person gets who plants himself +innocently in the flux of things is that things are off their balance. +Whatever equilibriums our finite experiences attain to are but +provisional. Martinique volcanoes shatter our wordsworthian +equilibrium with nature. Accidents, either moral, mental, or physical, +break up the slowly built-up equilibriums men reach in family life +and in their civic and professional relations. Intellectual enigmas +frustrate our scientific systems, and the ultimate cruelty of the +universe upsets our religious attitudes and outlooks. Of no special +system of good attained does the universe recognize the value as +sacred. Down it tumbles, over it goes, to feed the ravenous appetite +for destruction, of the larger system of history in which it stood +for a moment as a landing-place and stepping-stone. This dogging of +everything by its negative, its fate, its undoing, this perpetual +moving on to something future which shall supersede the present, +this is the hegelian intuition of the essential provisionality, and +consequent unreality, of everything empirical and finite. Take any +concrete finite thing and try to hold it fast. You cannot, for so +held, it proves not to be concrete at all, but an arbitrary extract or +abstract which you have made from the remainder of empirical reality. +The rest of things invades and overflows both it and you together, +and defeats your rash attempt. Any partial view whatever of the world +tears the part out of its relations, leaves out some truth concerning +it, is untrue of it, falsifies it. The full truth about anything +involves more than that thing. In the end nothing less than the whole +of everything can be the truth of anything at all. + +Taken so far, and taken in the rough, Hegel is not only harmless, but +accurate. There is a dialectic movement in things, if such it please +you to call it, one that the whole constitution of concrete life +establishes; but it is one that can be described and accounted for in +terms of the pluralistic vision of things far more naturally than in +the monistic terms to which Hegel finally reduced it. Pluralistic +empiricism knows that everything is in an environment, a surrounding +world of other things, and that if you leave it to work there it will +inevitably meet with friction and opposition from its neighbors. Its +rivals and enemies will destroy it unless it can buy them off by +compromising some part of its original pretensions. + +But Hegel saw this undeniable characteristic of the world we live in +in a non-empirical light. Let the _mental idea_ of the thing work in +your thought all alone, he fancied, and just the same consequences +will follow. It will be negated by the opposite ideas that dog it, +and can survive only by entering, along with them, into some kind +of treaty. This treaty will be an instance of the so-called 'higher +synthesis' of everything with its negative; and Hegel's originality +lay in transporting the process from the sphere of percepts to that of +concepts and treating it as the universal method by which every kind +of life, logical, physical, or psychological, is mediated. Not to the +sensible facts as such, then, did Hegel point for the secret of what +keeps existence going, but rather to the conceptual way of treating +them. Concepts were not in his eyes the static self-contained things +that previous logicians had supposed, but were germinative, and passed +beyond themselves into each other by what he called their immanent +dialectic. In ignoring each other as they do, they virtually exclude +and deny each other, he thought, and thus in a manner introduce each +other. So the dialectic logic, according to him, had to supersede the +'logic of identity' in which, since Aristotle, all Europe had been +brought up. + +This view of concepts is Hegel's revolutionary performance; but so +studiously vague and ambiguous are all his expressions of it that one +can hardly tell whether it is the concepts as such, or the sensible +experiences and elements conceived, that Hegel really means to work +with. The only thing that is certain is that whatever you may say of +his procedure, some one will accuse you of misunderstanding it. I make +no claim to understanding it, I treat it merely impressionistically. + +So treating it, I regret that he should have called it by the name of +logic. Clinging as he did to the vision of a really living world, and +refusing to be content with a chopped-up intellectualist picture +of it, it is a pity that he should have adopted the very word that +intellectualism had already pre-empted. But he clung fast to the old +rationalist contempt for the immediately given world of sense and all +its squalid particulars, and never tolerated the notion that the form +of philosophy might be empirical only. His own system had to be a +product of eternal reason, so the word 'logic,' with its suggestions +of coercive necessity, was the only word he could find natural. He +pretended therefore to be using the _a priori_ method, and to be +working by a scanty equipment of ancient logical terms--position, +negation, reflection, universal, particular, individual, and the like. +But what he really worked by was his own empirical perceptions, which +exceeded and overflowed his miserably insufficient logical categories +in every instance of their use. + +What he did with the category of negation was his most original +stroke. The orthodox opinion is that you can advance logically through +the field of concepts only by going from the same to the same. Hegel +felt deeply the sterility of this law of conceptual thought; he +saw that in a fashion negation also relates things; and he had the +brilliant idea of transcending the ordinary logic by treating advance +from the different to the different as if it were also a necessity of +thought. 'The so-called maxim of identity,' he wrote, 'is supposed to +be accepted by the consciousness of every one. But the language which +such a law demands, "a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism, +mind is mind," deserves to be called silliness. No mind either speaks +or thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this law, and no +existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. We must never view +identity as abstract identity, to the exclusion of all difference. +That is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what +alone deserves the name of philosophy. If thinking were no more than +registering abstract identities, it would be a most superfluous +performance. Things and concepts are identical with themselves only in +so far as at the same time they involve distinction.'[1] + +The distinction that Hegel has in mind here is naturally in the first +instance distinction from all other things or concepts. But in his +hands this quickly develops into contradiction of them, and finally, +reflected back upon itself, into self-contradiction; and the immanent +self-contradictoriness of all finite concepts thenceforth becomes the +propulsive logical force that moves the world.[2] 'Isolate a thing +from all its relations,' says Dr. Edward Caird,[3] expounding Hegel, +'and try to assert it by itself; you find that it has negated itself +as well as its relations. The thing in itself is nothing.' Or, to +quote Hegel's own words: 'When we suppose an existent A, and another, +B, B is at first defined as the other. But A is just as much the other +of B. Both are others in the same fashion.... "Other" is the other by +itself, therefore the other of every other, consequently the other of +itself, the simply unlike itself, the self-negator, the self-alterer,' +etc.[4] Hegel writes elsewhere: 'The finite, as implicitly other than +what it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural being, +and to turn suddenly into its opposite.... Dialectic is the universal +and irresistible power before which nothing can stay.... _Summum jus, +summa injuria_--to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit +injustice.... Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one +another. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy +brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[5] To which one well +might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and +professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by +becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in +view. + +Once catch well the knack of this scheme of thought and you are lucky +if you ever get away from it. It is all you can see. Let any one +pronounce anything, and your feeling of a contradiction being implied +becomes a habit, almost a motor habit in some persons who symbolize by +a stereotyped gesture the position, sublation, and final reinstatement +involved. If you say 'two' or 'many,' your speech betrayeth you, for +the very name collects them into one. If you express doubt, your +expression contradicts its content, for the doubt itself is not +doubted but affirmed. If you say 'disorder,' what is that but a +certain bad kind of order? if you say 'indetermination,' you are +determining just _that_. If you say 'nothing but the unexpected +happens,' the unexpected becomes what you expect. If you say 'all +things are relative,' to what is the all of them itself relative? If +you say 'no more,' you have said more already, by implying a region +in which no more is found; to know a limit as such is consequently +already to have got beyond it; And so forth, throughout as many +examples as one cares to cite. + +Whatever you posit appears thus as one-sided, and negates its other, +which, being equally one-sided, negates _it_; and, since this +situation remains unstable, the two contradictory terms have together, +according to Hegel, to engender a higher truth of which they both +appear as indispensable members, mutually mediating aspects of that +higher concept of situation in thought. + +Every higher total, however provisional and relative, thus reconciles +the contradictions which its parts, abstracted from it, prove +implicitly to contain. Rationalism, you remember, is what I called the +way of thinking that methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so +Hegel here is rationalistic through and through. The only whole by +which _all_ contradictions are reconciled is for him the absolute +whole of wholes, the all-inclusive reason to which Hegel himself gave +the name of the absolute Idea, but which I shall continue to call 'the +absolute' purely and simply, as I have done hitherto. + +Empirical instances of the way in which higher unities reconcile +contradictions are innumerable, so here again Hegel's vision, taken +merely impressionistically, agrees with countless facts. Somehow life +does, out of its total resources, find ways of satisfying opposites +at once. This is precisely the paradoxical aspect which much of our +civilization presents. Peace we secure by armaments, liberty by laws +and constitutions; simplicity and naturalness are the consummate +result of artificial breeding and training; health, strength, and +wealth are increased only by lavish use, expense, and wear. Our +mistrust of mistrust engenders our commercial system of credit; our +tolerance of anarchistic and revolutionary utterances is the only way +of lessening their danger; our charity has to say no to beggars in +order not to defeat its own desires; the true epicurean has to observe +great sobriety; the way to certainty lies through radical doubt; +virtue signifies not innocence but the knowledge of sin and its +overcoming; by obeying nature, we command her, etc. The ethical and +the religious life are full of such contradictions held in solution. +You hate your enemy?--well, forgive him, and thereby heap coals of +fire on his head; to realize yourself, renounce yourself; to save your +soul, first lose it; in short, die to live. + +From such massive examples one easily generalizes Hegel's vision. +Roughly, his 'dialectic' picture is a fair account of a good deal of +the world. It sounds paradoxical, but whenever you once place yourself +at the point of view; of any higher synthesis, you see exactly how +it does in a fashion take up opposites into itself. As an example, +consider the conflict between our carnivorous appetites and hunting +instincts and the sympathy with animals which our refinement is +bringing in its train. We have found how to reconcile these opposites +most effectively by establishing game-laws and close seasons and by +keeping domestic herds. The creatures preserved thus are preserved for +the sake of slaughter, truly, but if not preserved for that reason, +not one of them would be alive at all. Their will to live and our +will to kill them thus harmoniously combine in this peculiar higher +synthesis of domestication. + +Merely as a reporter of certain empirical aspects of the actual, +Hegel, then, is great and true. But he aimed at being something far +greater than an empirical reporter, so I must say something about that +essential aspect of his thought. Hegel was dominated by the notion of +a truth that should prove incontrovertible, binding on every one, +and certain, which should be _the_ truth, one, indivisible, eternal, +objective, and necessary, to which all our particular thinking +must lead as to its consummation. This is the dogmatic ideal, +the postulate, uncriticised, undoubted, and unchallenged, of all +rationalizers in philosophy. '_I have never doubted_,' a recent Oxford +writer says, that truth is universal and single and timeless, a single +content or significance, one and whole and complete.[6] Advance in +thinking, in the hegelian universe, has, in short, to proceed by the +apodictic words _must be_ rather than by those inferior hypothetic +words _may be_, which are all that empiricists can use. + +Now Hegel found that his idea of an immanent movement through +the field of concepts by way of 'dialectic' negation played most +beautifully into the hands of this rationalistic demand for something +absolute and _inconcussum_ in the way of truth. It is easy to see how. +If you affirm anything, for example that A is, and simply leave the +matter thus, you leave it at the mercy of any one who may supervene +and say 'not A, but B is.' If he does say so, your statement doesn't +refute him, it simply contradicts him, just as his contradicts you. +The only way of making your affirmation about A _self-securing_ is by +getting it into a form which will by implication negate all possible +negations in advance. The mere absence of negation is not enough; it +must be present, but present with its fangs drawn. What you posit as A +must already have cancelled the alternative or made it innocuous, by +having negated it in advance. Double negation is the only form of +affirmation that fully plays into the hands of the dogmatic ideal. +Simply and innocently affirmative statements are good enough for +empiricists, but unfit for rationalist use, lying open as they do to +every accidental contradictor, and exposed to every puff of doubt. +The _final_ truth must be something to which there is no imaginable +alternative, because it contains all its possible alternatives inside +of itself as moments already taken account of and overcome. Whatever +involves its own alternatives as elements of itself is, in a phrase +often repeated, its 'own other,' made so by the _methode der absoluten +negativität_. + +Formally, this scheme of an organism of truth that has already fed as +it were on its own liability to death, so that, death once dead +for it, there's no more dying then, is the very fulfilment of the +rationalistic aspiration. That one and only whole, with all its +parts involved in it, negating and making one another impossible if +abstracted and taken singly, but necessitating and holding one another +in place if the whole of them be taken integrally, is the literal +ideal sought after; it is the very diagram and picture of that notion +of _the_ truth with no outlying alternative, to which nothing can be +added, nor from it anything withdrawn, and all variations from which +are absurd, which so dominates the human imagination. Once we have +taken in the features of this diagram that so successfully solves +the world-old problem, the older ways of proving the necessity of +judgments cease to give us satisfaction. Hegel's way we think must +be the right way. The true must be essentially the self-reflecting +self-contained recurrent, that which secures itself by including its +own other and negating it; that makes a spherical system with no loose +ends hanging out for foreignness to get a hold upon; that is forever +rounded in and closed, not strung along rectilinearly and open at its +ends like that universe of simply collective or additive form which +Hegel calls the world of the bad infinite, and which is all that +empiricism, starting with simply posited single parts and elements, is +ever able to attain to. + +No one can possibly deny the sublimity of this hegelian conception. +It is surely in the grand style, if there be such a thing as a grand +style in philosophy. For us, however, it remains, so far, a merely +formal and diagrammatic conception; for with the actual content +of absolute truth, as Hegel materially tries to set it forth, few +disciples have been satisfied, and I do not propose to refer at all to +the concreter parts of his philosophy. The main thing now is to grasp +the generalized vision, and feel the authority of the abstract scheme +of a statement self-secured by involving double negation. Absolutists +who make no use of Hegel's own technique are really working by his +method. You remember the proofs of the absolute which I instanced in +my last lecture, Lotze's and Royce's proofs by _reductio ad absurdum_, +to the effect that any smallest connexion rashly supposed in things +will logically work out into absolute union, and any minimal +disconnexion into absolute disunion,--these are really arguments +framed on the hegelian pattern. The truth is that which you implicitly +affirm in the very attempt to deny it; it is that from which every +variation refutes itself by proving self-contradictory. This is the +supreme insight of rationalism, and to-day the best _must-be's_ of +rationalist argumentation are but so many attempts to communicate it +to the hearer. + +Thus, you see, my last lecture and this lecture make connexion again +and we can consider Hegel and the other absolutists to be supporting +the same system. The next point I wish to dwell on is the part played +by what I have called vicious intellectualism in this wonderful +system's structure. + +Rationalism in general thinks it gets the fulness of truth by turning +away from sensation to conception, conception obviously giving the +more universal and immutable picture. Intellectualism in the vicious +sense I have already defined as the habit of assuming that a concept +_ex_cludes from any reality conceived by its means everything not +included in the concept's definition. I called such intellectualism +illegitimate as I found it used in Lotze's, Royce's, and Bradley's +proofs of the absolute (which absolute I consequently held to be +non-proven by their arguments), and I left off by asserting my own +belief that a pluralistic and incompletely integrated universe, +describable only by the free use of the word 'some,' is a legitimate +hypothesis. + +Now Hegel himself, in building up his method of double negation, +offers the vividest possible example of this vice of intellectualism. +Every idea of a finite thing is of course a concept of _that_ thing +and not a concept of anything else. But Hegel treats this not being a +concept of anything else as if it were _equivalent to the concept of +anything else not being_, or in other words as if it were a denial +or negation of everything else. Then, as the other things, thus +implicitly contradicted by the thing first conceived, also by the same +law contradict _it_, the pulse of dialectic commences to beat and the +famous triads begin to grind out the cosmos. If any one finds +the process here to be a luminous one, he must be left to the +illumination, he must remain an undisturbed hegelian. What others feel +as the intolerable ambiguity, verbosity, and unscrupulousness of the +master's way of deducing things, he will probably ascribe--since +divine oracles are notoriously hard to interpret--to the 'difficulty' +that habitually accompanies profundity. For my own part, there seems +something grotesque and _saugrenu_ in the pretension of a style so +disobedient to the first rules of sound communication between minds, +to be the authentic mother-tongue of reason, and to keep step more +accurately than any other style does with the absolute's own ways +of thinking. I do not therefore take Hegel's technical apparatus +seriously at all. I regard him rather as one of those numerous +original seers who can never learn how to articulate. His would-be +coercive logic counts for nothing in my eyes; but that does not in +the least impugn the philosophic importance of his conception of the +absolute, if we take it merely hypothetically as one of the great +types of cosmic vision. + +Taken thus hypothetically, I wish to discuss it briefly. But before +doing so I must call your attention to an odd peculiarity in the +hegelian procedure. The peculiarity is one which will come before us +again for a final judgment in my seventh lecture, so at present I only +note it in passing. Hegel, you remember, considers that the immediate +finite data of experience are 'untrue' because they are not their own +others. They are negated by what is external to them. The absolute +is true because it and it only has no external environment, and has +attained to being its own other. (These words sound queer enough, but +those of you who know something of Hegel's text will follow them.) +Granting his premise that to be true a thing must in some sort be its +own other, everything hinges on whether he is right in holding that +the several pieces of finite experience themselves cannot be said +to be in any wise _their_ own others. When conceptually or +intellectualistically treated, they of course cannot be their own +others. Every abstract concept as such excludes what it doesn't +include, and if such concepts are adequate substitutes for +reality's concrete pulses, the latter must square themselves with +intellectualistic logic, and no one of them in any sense can claim to +be its own other. If, however, the conceptual treatment of the flow of +reality should prove for any good reason to be inadequate and to have +a practical rather than a theoretical or speculative value, then an +independent empirical look into the constitution of reality's pulses +might possibly show that some of them _are_ their own others, and +indeed are so in the self-same sense in which the absolute is +maintained to be so by Hegel. When we come to my sixth lecture, +on Professor Bergson, I shall in effect defend this very view, +strengthening my thesis by his authority. I am unwilling to say +anything more about the point at this time, and what I have just said +of it is only a sort of surveyor's note of where our present position +lies in the general framework of these lectures. + +Let us turn now at last to the great question of fact, _Does the +absolute exist or not_? to which all our previous discussion has been +preliminary. I may sum up that discussion by saying that whether +there really be an absolute or not, no one makes himself absurd +or self-contradictory by doubting or denying it. The charges of +self-contradiction, where they do not rest on purely verbal reasoning, +rest on a vicious intellectualism. I will not recapitulate my +criticisms. I will simply ask you to change the _venue_, and to +discuss the absolute now as if it were only an open hypothesis. As +such, is it more probable or more improbable? + +But first of all I must parenthetically ask you to distinguish the +notion of the absolute carefully from that of another object with +which it is liable to become heedlessly entangled. That other object +is the 'God' of common people in their religion, and the creator-God +of orthodox christian theology. Only thoroughgoing monists or +pantheists believe in the absolute. The God of our popular +Christianity is but one member of a pluralistic system. He and we +stand outside of each other, just as the devil, the saints, and the +angels stand outside of both of us. I can hardly conceive of anything +more different from the absolute than the God, say, of David or of +Isaiah. _That_ God is an essentially finite being _in_ the cosmos, +not with the cosmos in him, and indeed he has a very local habitation +there, and very one-sided local and personal attachments. If it should +prove probable that the absolute does not exist, it will not follow in +the slightest degree that a God like that of David, Isaiah, or Jesus +may not exist, or may not be the most important existence in the +universe for us to acknowledge. I pray you, then, not to confound the +two ideas as you listen to the criticisms I shall have to proffer. +I hold to the finite God, for reasons which I shall touch on in the +seventh of these lectures; but I hold that his rival and competitor--I +feel almost tempted to say his enemy--the absolute, is not only not +forced on us by logic, but that it is an improbable hypothesis. + +The great claim made for the absolute is that by supposing it we make +the world appear more rational. Any hypothesis that does that will +always be accepted as more probably true than an hypothesis that makes +the world appear irrational. Men are once for all so made that they +prefer a rational world to believe in and to live in. But rationality +has at least four dimensions, intellectual, aesthetical, moral, and +practical; and to find a world rational to the maximal degree _in all +these respects simultaneously_ is no easy matter. Intellectually, the +world of mechanical materialism is the most rational, for we subject +its events to mathematical calculation. But the mechanical world +is ugly, as arithmetic is ugly, and it is non-moral. Morally, +the theistic world is rational enough, but full of intellectual +frustrations. The practical world of affairs, in its turn, so +supremely rational to the politician, the military man, or the man of +conquering business-faculty that he never would vote to change the +type of it, is irrational to moral and artistic temperaments; so that +whatever demand for rationality we find satisfied by a philosophic +hypothesis, we are liable to find some other demand for rationality +unsatisfied by the same hypothesis. The rationality we gain in one +coin we thus pay for in another; and the problem accordingly seems at +first sight to resolve itself into that of getting a conception which +will yield the largest _balance_ of rationality rather than one which +will yield perfect rationality of every description. In general, it +may be said that if a man's conception of the world lets loose any +action in him that is easy, or any faculty which he is fond of +exercising, he will deem it rational in so far forth, be the faculty +that of computing, fighting, lecturing, classifying, framing schematic +tabulations, getting the better end of a bargain, patiently waiting +and enduring, preaching, joke-making, or what you like. Albeit the +absolute is defined as being necessarily an embodiment of objectively +perfect rationality, it is fair to its english advocates to say that +those who have espoused the hypothesis most concretely and seriously +have usually avowed the irrationality to their own minds of certain +elements in it. + +Probably the weightiest contribution to our feeling of the rationality +of the universe which the notion of the absolute brings is the +assurance that however disturbed the surface may be, at bottom all is +well with the cosmos--central peace abiding at the heart of endless +agitation. This conception is rational in many ways, beautiful +aesthetically, beautiful intellectually (could we only follow it into +detail), and beautiful morally, if the enjoyment of security can be +accounted moral. Practically it is less beautiful; for, as we saw in +our last lecture, in representing the deepest reality of the world as +static and without a history, it loosens the world's hold upon our +sympathies and leaves the soul of it foreign. Nevertheless it does +give _peace_, and that kind of rationality is so paramountly demanded +by men that to the end of time there will be absolutists, men who +choose belief in a static eternal, rather than admit that the finite +world of change and striving, even with a God as one of the strivers, +is itself eternal. For such minds Professor Royce's words will always +be the truest: 'The very presence of ill in the temporal order is the +condition of the perfection of the eternal order.... We long for the +absolute only in so far as in us the absolute also longs, and seeks +through our very temporal striving, the peace that is nowhere in time, +but only, and yet absolutely, in eternity. Were there no longing in +time there would be no peace in eternity.... God [_i.e._ the absolute] +who here in me aims at what I now temporally miss, not only possesses +in the eternal world the goal after which I strive, but comes to +possess it even through and because of my sorrow. Through this my +tribulation the absolute triumph then is won.... In the absolute I am +fulfilled. Yet my very fulfilment demands and therefore can transcend +this sorrow.'[7] Royce is particularly felicitous in his ability to +cite parts of finite experience to which he finds his picture of this +absolute experience analogous. But it is hard to portray the absolute +at all without rising into what might be called the 'inspired' style +of language--I use the word not ironically, but prosaically and +descriptively, to designate the only literary form that goes with the +kind of emotion that the absolute arouses. One can follow the pathway +of reasoning soberly enough,[8] but the picture itself has to be +effulgent. This admirable faculty of transcending, whilst inwardly +preserving, every contrariety, is the absolute's characteristic form +of rationality. We are but syllables in the mouth of the Lord; if the +whole sentence is divine, each syllable is absolutely what it should +be, in spite of all appearances. In making up the balance for or +against absolutism, this emotional value weights heavily the credit +side of the account. + +The trouble is that we are able to see so little into the positive +detail of it, and that if once admitted not to be coercively proven +by the intellectualist arguments, it remains only a hypothetic +possibility. + +On the debit side of the account the absolute, taken seriously, and +not as a mere name for our right occasionally to drop the strenuous +mood and take a moral holiday, introduces all those tremendous +irrationalities into the universe which a frankly pluralistic theism +escapes, but which have been flung as a reproach at every form of +monistic theism or pantheism. It introduces a speculative 'problem +of evil' namely, and leaves us wondering why the perfection of the +absolute should require just such particular hideous forms of life as +darken the day for our human imaginations. If they were forced on it +by something alien, and to 'overcome' them the absolute had still to +keep hold of them, we could understand its feeling of triumph, though +we, so far as we were ourselves among the elements overcome, could +acquiesce but sullenly in the resultant situation, and would never +just have chosen it as the most rational one conceivable. But the +absolute is represented as a being without environment, upon which +nothing alien can be forced, and which has spontaneously chosen from +within to give itself the spectacle of all that evil rather than a +spectacle with less evil in it.[9] Its perfection is represented as +the source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is +the tremendous imperfection of all finite experience. In whatever +sense the word 'rationality' may be taken, it is vain to contend that +the impression made on our finite minds by such a way of representing +things is altogether rational. Theologians have felt its irrationality +acutely, and the 'fall,' the predestination, and the election which +the situation involves have given them more trouble than anything else +in their attempt to pantheize Christianity. The whole business remains +a puzzle, both intellectually and morally. + +Grant that the spectacle or world-romance offered to itself by the +absolute is in the absolute's eyes perfect. Why would not the world be +more perfect by having the affair remain in just those terms, and +by not having any finite spectators to come in and add to what was +perfect already their innumerable imperfect manners of seeing the same +spectacle? Suppose the entire universe to consist of one superb copy +of a book, fit for the ideal reader. Is that universe improved or +deteriorated by having myriads of garbled and misprinted separate +leaves and chapters also created, giving false impressions of the book +to whoever looks at them? To say the least, the balance of rationality +is not obviously in favor of such added mutilations. So this question +becomes urgent: Why, the absolute's own total vision of things +being so rational, was it necessary to comminute it into all these +coexisting inferior fragmentary visions? + +Leibnitz in his theodicy represents God as limited by an antecedent +reason in things which makes certain combinations logically +incompatible, certain goods impossible. He surveys in advance all the +universes he might create, and by an act of what Leibnitz calls his +antecedent will he chooses our actual world as the one in which the +evil, unhappily necessary anyhow, is at its minimum. It is the best of +all the worlds that are possible, therefore, but by no means the most +abstractly desirable world. Having made this mental choice, God next +proceeds to what Leibnitz calls his act of consequent or decretory +will: he says '_Fiat_' and the world selected springs into objective +being, with all the finite creatures in it to suffer from its +imperfections without sharing in its creator's atoning vision. + +Lotze has made some penetrating remarks on this conception of +Leibnitz's, and they exactly fall in with what I say of the absolutist +conception. The world projected out of the creative mind by the +_fiat_, and existing in detachment from its author, is a sphere of +being where the parts realize themselves only singly. If the divine +value of them is evident only when they are collectively looked at, +then, Lotze rightly says, the world surely becomes poorer and not +richer for God's utterance of the _fiat_. He might much better have +remained contented with his merely antecedent choice of the scheme, +without following it up by a creative decree. The scheme _as such_ was +admirable; it could only lose by being translated into reality.[10] +Why, I similarly ask, should the absolute ever have lapsed from the +perfection of its own integral experience of things, and refracted +itself into all our finite experiences? + +It is but fair to recent english absolutists to say that many of them +have confessed the imperfect rationality of the absolute from this +point of view. Mr. McTaggart, for example, writes: 'Does not our very +failure to perceive the perfection of the universe destroy it? ... In +so far as we do not see the perfection of the universe, we are not +perfect ourselves. And as we are parts of the universe, that cannot be +perfect.'[11] + +And Mr. Joachim finds just the same difficulty. Calling the hypothesis +of the absolute by the name of the 'coherence theory of truth,' he +calls the problem of understanding how the complete coherence of all +things in the absolute should involve as a necessary moment in +its self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds, a +self-assertion which in its extreme form is error,--he calls this +problem, I say, an insoluble puzzle. If truth be the universal _fons +et origo_, how does error slip in? 'The coherence theory of truth,' he +concludes, 'may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very +entrance of the harbor.'[12] Yet in spite of this rather bad form +of irrationality, Mr. Joachim stoutly asserts his 'immediate +certainty'[13] of the theory shipwrecked, the correctness of which +he says he has 'never doubted.' This candid confession of a fixed +attitude of faith in the absolute, which even one's own criticisms and +perplexities fail to disturb, seems to me very significant. Not only +empiricists, but absolutists also, would all, if they were as candid +as this author, confess that the prime thing in their philosophy +is their vision of a truth possible, which they then employ their +reasoning to convert, as best it can, into a certainty or probability. + +I can imagine a believer in the absolute retorting at this point that +_he_ at any rate is not dealing with mere probabilities, but that +the nature of things logically requires the multitudinous erroneous +copies, and that therefore the universe cannot be the absolute's book +alone. For, he will ask, is not the absolute defined as the total +consciousness of everything that is? Must not its field of view +consist of parts? And what can the parts of a total consciousness be +unless they be fractional consciousnesses? Our finite minds _must_ +therefore coexist with the absolute mind. We are its constituents, and +it cannot live without us.--But if any one of you feels tempted to +retort in this wise, let me remind you that you are frankly employing +pluralistic weapons, and thereby giving up the absolutist cause. The +notion that the absolute is made of constituents on which its being +depends is the rankest empiricism. The absolute as such has _objects_, +not constituents, and if the objects develop selfhoods upon their own +several accounts, those selfhoods must be set down as facts additional +to the absolute consciousness, and not as elements implicated in its +definition. The absolute is a rationalist conception. Rationalism +goes from wholes to parts, and always assumes wholes to be +self-sufficing.[14] + +My conclusion, so far, then, is this, that altho the hypothesis of the +absolute, in yielding a certain kind of religious peace, performs +a most important rationalizing function, it nevertheless, from +the intellectual point of view, remains decidedly irrational. The +_ideally_ perfect whole is certainly that whole of which the _parts +also are perfect_--if we can depend on logic for anything, we can +depend on it for that definition. The absolute is defined as the +ideally perfect whole, yet most of its parts, if not all, are +admittedly imperfect. Evidently the conception lacks internal +consistency, and yields us a problem rather than a solution. It +creates a speculative puzzle, the so-called mystery of evil and of +error, from which a pluralistic metaphysic is entirely free. + +In any pluralistic metaphysic, the problems that evil presents are +practical, not speculative. Not why evil should exist at all, but how +we can lessen the actual amount of it, is the sole question we need +there consider. 'God,' in the religious life of ordinary men, is the +name not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal +tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to +co-operate in his purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. +He works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When +John Mill said that the notion of God's omnipotence must be given up, +if God is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately +right; yet so prevalent is the lazy monism that idly haunts the region +of God's name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally +treated as a paradox: God, it was said, _could_ not be finite. I +believe that the only God worthy of the name _must_ be finite, and I +shall return to this point in a later lecture. If the absolute exist +in addition--and the hypothesis must, in spite of its irrational +features, still be left open--then the absolute is only the wider +cosmic whole of which our God is but the most ideal portion, and which +in the more usual human sense is hardly to be termed a religious +hypothesis at all. 'Cosmic emotion' is the better name for the +reaction it may awaken. + +Observe that all the irrationalities and puzzles which the absolute +gives rise to, and from which the finite God remains free, are due to +the fact that the absolute has nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of +itself. The finite God whom I contrast with it may conceivably have +_almost_ nothing outside of himself; he may already have triumphed +over and absorbed all but the minutest fraction of the universe; but +that fraction, however small, reduces him to the status of a +relative being, and in principle the universe is saved from all the +irrationalities incidental to absolutism. The only irrationality left +would be the irrationality of which pluralism as such is accused, and +of this I hope to say a word more later. + +I have tired you with so many subtleties in this lecture that I will +add only two other counts to my indictment. + +First, then, let me remind you that _the absolute is useless for +deductive purposes_. It gives us absolute safety if you will, but +it is compatible with every relative danger. You cannot enter the +phenomenal world with the notion of it in your grasp, and name +beforehand any detail which you are likely to meet there. Whatever the +details of experience may prove to be, _after the fact of them_ +the absolute will adopt them. It is an hypothesis that functions +retrospectively only, not prospectively. _That_, whatever it may be, +will have been in point of fact the sort of world which the absolute +was pleased to offer to itself as a spectacle. + +Again, the absolute is always represented idealistically, as the +all-knower. Thinking this view consistently out leads one to frame +an almost ridiculous conception of the absolute mind, owing to the +enormous mass of unprofitable information which it would then seem +obliged to carry. One of the many _reductiones ad absurdum_ of +pluralism by which idealism thinks it proves the absolute One is as +follows: Let there be many facts; but since on idealist principles +facts exist only by being known, the many facts will therefore mean +many knowers. But that there are so many knowers is itself a fact, +which in turn requires _its_ knower, so the one absolute knower has +eventually to be brought in. _All_ facts lead to him. If it be a fact +that this table is not a chair, not a rhinoceros, not a logarithm, not +a mile away from the door, not worth five hundred pounds sterling, not +a thousand centuries old, the absolute must even now be articulately +aware of all these negations. Along with what everything is it must +also be conscious of everything which it is not. This infinite +atmosphere of explicit negativity--observe that it has to be +explicit--around everything seems to us so useless an encumbrance as +to make the absolute still more foreign to our sympathy. Furthermore, +if it be a fact that certain ideas are silly, the absolute has to have +already thought the silly ideas to establish them in silliness. The +rubbish in its mind would thus appear easily to outweigh in amount the +more desirable material. One would expect it fairly to burst with such +an obesity, plethora, and superfoetation of useless information.[15] + +I will spare you further objections. The sum of it all is that the +absolute is not forced on our belief by logic, that it involves +features of irrationality peculiar to itself, and that a thinker +to whom it does not come as an 'immediate certainty' (to use Mr. +Joachim's words), is in no way bound to treat it as anything but an +emotionally rather sublime hypothesis. As such, it might, with all its +defects, be, on account of its peace-conferring power and its formal +grandeur, more rational than anything else in the field. But meanwhile +the strung-along unfinished world in time is its rival: _reality MAY +exist in distributive form, in the shape not of an all but of a set of +eaches, just as it seems to_--this is the anti-absolutist hypothesis. +_Prima facie_ there is this in favor of the eaches, that they are at +any rate real enough to have made themselves at least _appear_ to +every one, whereas the absolute has as yet appeared immediately to +only a few mystics, and indeed to them very ambiguously. The advocates +of the absolute assure us that any distributive form of being is +infected and undermined by self-contradiction. If we are unable to +assimilate their arguments, and we have been unable, the only course +we can take, it seems to me, is to let the absolute bury the absolute, +and to seek reality in more promising directions, even among the +details of the finite and the immediately given. + +If these words of mine sound in bad taste to some of you, or even +sacrilegious, I am sorry. Perhaps the impression may be mitigated by +what I have to say in later lectures. + + + + +LECTURE IV + + +CONCERNING FECHNER + +The prestige of the absolute has rather crumbled in our hands. +The logical proofs of it miss fire; the portraits which its best +court-painters show of it are featureless and foggy in the extreme; +and, apart from the cold comfort of assuring us that with _it_ all is +well, and that to see that all is well with us also we need only rise +to its eternal point of view, it yields us no relief whatever. It +introduces, on the contrary, into philosophy and theology certain +poisonous difficulties of which but for its intrusion we never should +have heard. + +But if we drop the absolute out of the world, must we then conclude +that the world contains nothing better in the way of consciousness +than our consciousness? Is our whole instinctive belief in higher +presences, our persistent inner turning towards divine companionship, +to count for nothing? Is it but the pathetic illusion of beings with +incorrigibly social and imaginative minds? + +Such a negative conclusion would, I believe, be desperately hasty, +a sort of pouring out of the child with the bath. Logically it is +possible to believe in superhuman beings without identifying them with +the absolute at all. The treaty of offensive and defensive alliance +which certain groups of the Christian clergy have recently made with +our transcendentalist philosophers seems to me to be based on a +well-meaning but baleful mistake. Neither the Jehovah of the old +testament nor the heavenly father of the new has anything in common +with the absolute except that they are all three greater than man; +and if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of +Abraham, of David, and of Jesus, after first developing into each +other, were inevitably destined to develop into in more reflective +and modern minds, I reply that although in certain specifically +philosophical minds this may have been the case, in minds more +properly to be termed religious the development has followed quite +another path. The whole history of evangelical Christianity is there +to prove it. I propose in these lectures to plead for that other line +of development. To set the doctrine of the absolute in its proper +framework, so that it shall not fill the whole welkin and exclude all +alternative possibilities of higher thought--as it seems to do for +many students who approach it with a limited previous acquaintance +with philosophy--I will contrast it with a system which, abstractly +considered, seems at first to have much in common with absolutism, but +which, when taken concretely and temperamentally, really stands at the +opposite pole. I refer to the philosophy of Gustav Theodor Fechner, a +writer but little known as yet to English readers, but destined, I am +persuaded, to wield more and more influence as time goes on. + +It is the intense concreteness of Fechner, his fertility of detail, +which fills me with an admiration which I should like to make this +audience share. Among the philosophic cranks of my acquaintance in the +past was a lady all the tenets of whose system I have forgotten except +one. Had she been born in the Ionian Archipelago some three thousand +years ago, that one doctrine would probably have made her name sure +of a place in every university curriculum and examination paper. The +world, she said, is composed of only two elements, the Thick, namely, +and the Thin. No one can deny the truth of this analysis, as far as it +goes (though in the light of our contemporary knowledge of nature it +has itself a rather 'thin' sound), and it is nowhere truer than in +that part of the world called philosophy. I am sure, for example, that +many of you, listening to what poor account I have been able to +give of transcendental idealism, have received an impression of its +arguments being strangely thin, and of the terms it leaves us with +being shiveringly thin wrappings for so thick and burly a world as +this. Some of you of course will charge the thinness to my exposition; +but thin as that has been, I believe the doctrines reported on to have +been thinner. From Green to Haldane the absolute proposed to us to +straighten out the confusions of the thicket of experience in which +our life is passed remains a pure abstraction which hardly any one +tries to make a whit concreter. If we open Green, we get nothing but +the transcendental ego of apperception (Kant's name for the fact that +to be counted in experience a thing has to be witnessed), blown up +into a sort of timeless soap-bubble large enough to mirror the whole +universe. Nature, Green keeps insisting, consists only in +relations, and these imply the action of a mind that is eternal; +a self-distinguishing consciousness which itself escapes from the +relations by which it determines other things. Present to whatever is +in succession, it is not in succession itself. If we take the Cairds, +they tell us little more of the principle of the universe--it is +always a return into the identity of the self from the difference of +its objects. It separates itself from them and so becomes conscious of +them in their separation from one another, while at the same time it +binds them together as elements in one higher self-consciousness. + +This seems the very quintessence of thinness; and the matter hardly +grows thicker when we gather, after enormous amounts of reading, that +the great enveloping self in question is absolute reason as such, and +that as such it is characterized by the habit of using certain jejune +'categories' with which to perform its eminent relating work. The +whole active material of natural fact is tried out, and only the +barest intellectualistic formalism remains. + +Hegel tried, as we saw, to make the system concreter by making the +relations between things 'dialectic,' but if we turn to those who use +his name most worshipfully, we find them giving up all the particulars +of his attempt, and simply praising his intention--much as in our +manner we have praised it ourselves. Mr. Haldane, for example, in his +wonderfully clever Gifford lectures, praises Hegel to the skies, but +what he tells of him amounts to little more than this, that 'the +categories in which the mind arranges its experiences, and gives +meaning to them, the universals in which the particulars are grasped +in the individual, are a logical chain, in which the first presupposes +the last, and the last is its presupposition and its truth.' He hardly +tries at all to thicken this thin logical scheme. He says indeed +that absolute mind in itself, and absolute mind in its hetereity or +otherness, under the distinction which it sets up of itself from +itself, have as their real _prius_ absolute mind in synthesis; and, +this being absolute mind's true nature, its dialectic character must +show itself in such concrete forms as Goethe's and Wordsworth's +poetry, as well as in religious forms. 'The nature of God, the nature +of absolute mind, is to exhibit the triple movement of dialectic, and +so the nature of God as presented in religion must be a triplicity, +a trinity.' But beyond thus naming Goethe and Wordsworth and +establishing the trinity, Mr. Haldane's Hegelianism carries us hardly +an inch into the concrete detail of the world we actually inhabit. + +Equally thin is Mr. Taylor, both in his principles and in their +results. Following Mr. Bradley, he starts by assuring us that reality +cannot be self-contradictory, but to be related to anything really +outside of one's self is to be self-contradictory, so the ultimate +reality must be a single all-inclusive systematic whole. Yet all he +can say of this whole at the end of his excellently written book is +that the notion of it 'can make no addition to our information and can +of itself supply no motives for practical endeavor.' + +Mr. McTaggart treats us to almost as thin a fare. 'The main practical +interest of Hegel's philosophy,' he says, 'is to be found in the +abstract certainty which the logic gives us that all reality is +rational and righteous, even when we cannot see in the least how it is +so.... Not that it shows us how the facts around us are good, not that +it shows us how we can make them better, but that it proves that they, +like other reality, are _sub specie eternitatis_, perfectly good, and +_sub specie temporis_, destined to become perfectly good.' + +Here again, no detail whatever, only the abstract certainty that +whatever the detail may prove to be, it will be good. Common +non-dialectical men have already this certainty as a result of the +generous vital enthusiasm about the universe with which they are born. +The peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is its sovereign contempt +for merely vital functions like enthusiasm, and its pretension to turn +our simple and immediate trusts and faiths into the form of logically +mediated certainties, to question which would be absurd. But the whole +basis on which Mr. McTaggart's own certainty so solidly rests, settles +down into the one nutshell of an assertion into which he puts Hegel's +gospel, namely, that in every bit of experience and thought, however +finite, the whole of reality (the absolute idea, as Hegel calls it) is +'implicitly present.' + +This indeed is Hegel's _vision_, and Hegel thought that the details of +his dialectic proved its truth. But disciples who treat the details of +the proof as unsatisfactory and yet cling to the vision, are surely, +in spite of their pretension to a more rational consciousness, no +better than common men with their enthusiasms or deliberately adopted +faiths. We have ourselves seen some of the weakness of the monistic +proofs. Mr. McTaggart picks plenty of holes of his own in Hegel's +logic, and finally concludes that 'all true philosophy must be +mystical, not indeed in its methods but in its final conclusions,' +which is as much as to say that the rationalistic methods leave us +in the lurch, in spite of all their superiority, and that in the end +vision and faith must eke them out. But how abstract and thin is +here the vision, to say nothing of the faith! The whole of reality, +explicitly absent from our finite experiences, must nevertheless +be present in them all implicitly, altho no one of us can ever see +how--the bare word 'implicit' here bearing the whole pyramid of the +monistic system on its slender point. Mr. Joachim's monistic system of +truth rests on an even slenderer point.--_I have never doubted_,' +he says, 'that universal and timeless truth is a single content or +significance, one and whole and complete,' and he candidly confesses +the failure of rationalistic attempts 'to raise this immediate +certainty' to the level of reflective knowledge. There is, in short, +no mediation for him between the Truth in capital letters and all +the little 'lower-case' truths--and errors--which life presents. The +psychological fact that he never has 'doubted' is enough. + +The whole monistic pyramid, resting on points as thin as these, seems +to me to be a _machtspruch_, a product of will far more than one of +reason. Unity is good, therefore things _shall_ cohere; they _shall_ +be one; there _shall_ be categories to make them one, no matter what +empirical disjunctions may appear. In Hegel's own writings, the +_shall-be_ temper is ubiquitous and towering; it overrides verbal and +logical resistances alike. Hegel's error, as Professor Royce so well +says, 'lay not in introducing logic into passion,' as some people +charge, 'but in conceiving the logic of passion as the only logic.... +He is [thus] suggestive,' Royce says, 'but never final. His system as +a system has crumbled, but his vital comprehension of our life remains +forever.'[1] + +That vital comprehension we have already seen. It is that there is a +sense in which real things are not merely their own bare selves, but +may vaguely be treated as also their own others, and that ordinary +logic, since it denies this, must be overcome. Ordinary logic denies +this because it substitutes concepts for real things, and concepts +_are_ their own bare selves and nothing else. What Royce calls Hegel's +'system' was Hegel's attempt to make us believe that he was working +by concepts and grinding out a higher style of logic, when in reality +sensible experiences, hypotheses, and passion furnished him with all +his results. + +What I myself may mean by things being their own others, we shall see +in a later lecture. It is now time to take our look at Fechner, whose +thickness is a refreshing contrast to the thin, abstract, indigent, +and threadbare appearance, the starving, school-room aspect, which the +speculations of most of our absolutist philosophers present. + +There is something really weird and uncanny in the contrast between +the abstract pretensions of rationalism and what rationalistic methods +concretely can do. If the 'logical prius' of our mind were really the +'implicit presence' of the whole 'concrete universal,' the whole of +reason, or reality, or spirit, or the absolute idea, or whatever it +may be called, in all our finite thinking, and if this reason worked +(for example) by the dialectical method, doesn't it seem odd that +in the greatest instance of rationalization mankind has known, in +'science,' namely, the dialectical method should never once have been +tried? Not a solitary instance of the use of it in science occurs +to my mind. Hypotheses, and deductions from these, controlled by +sense-observations and analogies with what we know elsewhere, are to +be thanked for all of science's results. + +Fechner used no methods but these latter ones in arguing for his +metaphysical conclusions about reality--but let me first rehearse a +few of the facts about his life. + +Born in 1801, the son of a poor country pastor in Saxony, he lived +from 1817 to 1887, when he died, seventy years therefore, at Leipzig, +a typical _gelehrter_ of the old-fashioned german stripe. His means +were always scanty, so his only extravagances could be in the way +of thought, but these were gorgeous ones. He passed his medical +examinations at Leipzig University at the age of twenty-one, but +decided, instead of becoming a doctor, to devote himself to physical +science. It was ten years before he was made professor of physics, +although he soon was authorized to lecture. Meanwhile, he had to make +both ends meet, and this he did by voluminous literary labors. He +translated, for example, the four volumes of Biot's treatise on +physics, and the six of Thénard's work on chemistry, and took care of +their enlarged editions later. He edited repertories of chemistry +and physics, a pharmaceutical journal, and an encyclopaedia in eight +volumes, of which he wrote about one third. He published physical +treatises and experimental investigations of his own, especially in +electricity. Electrical measurements, as you know, are the basis of +electrical science, and Fechner's measurements in galvanism, performed +with the simplest self-made apparatus, are classic to this day. +During this time he also published a number of half-philosophical, +half-humorous writings, which have gone through several editions, +under the name of Dr. Mises, besides poems, literary and artistic +essays, and other occasional articles. + +But overwork, poverty, and an eye-trouble produced by his observations +on after-images in the retina (also a classic piece of investigation) +produced in Fechner, then about thirty-eight years old, a terrific +attack of nervous prostration with painful hyperaesthesia of all the +functions, from which he suffered three years, cut off entirely from +active life. Present-day medicine would have classed poor Fechner's +malady quickly enough, as partly a habit-neurosis, but its +severity was such that in his day it was treated as a visitation +incomprehensible in its malignity; and when he suddenly began to get +well, both Fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine +miracle. This illness, bringing Fechner face to face with inner +desperation, made a great crisis in his life. 'Had I not then clung to +the faith,' he writes, 'that clinging to faith would somehow or other +work its reward, _so hätte ich jene zeit nicht ausgehalten_.' His +religious and cosmological faiths saved him--thenceforward one great +aim with him was to work out and communicate these faiths to the +world. He did so on the largest scale; but he did many other things +too ere he died. + +A book on the atomic theory, classic also; four elaborate mathematical +and experimental volumes on what he called psychophysics--many persons +consider Fechner to have practically founded scientific psychology in +the first of these books; a volume on organic evolution, and two works +on experimental aesthetics, in which again Fechner is considered by +some judges to have laid the foundations of a new science, must be +included among these other performances. Of the more religious and +philosophical works, I shall immediately give a further account. + +All Leipzig mourned him when he died, for he was the pattern of the +ideal german scholar, as daringly original in his thought as he was +homely in his life, a modest, genial, laborious slave to truth and +learning, and withal the owner of an admirable literary style of the +vernacular sort. The materialistic generation, that in the fifties and +sixties called his speculations fantastic, had been replaced by one +with greater liberty of imagination, and a Preyer, a Wundt, a Paulsen, +and a Lasswitz could now speak of Fechner as their master. + +His mind was indeed one of those multitudinously organized cross-roads +of truth which are occupied only at rare intervals by children of men, +and from which nothing is either too far or too near to be seen in due +perspective. Patientest observation, exactest mathematics, shrewdest +discrimination, humanest feeling, flourished in him on the largest +scale, with no apparent detriment to one another. He was in fact a +philosopher in the 'great' sense, altho he cared so much less than +most philosophers care for abstractions of the 'thin' order. For him +the abstract lived in the concrete, and the hidden motive of all he +did was to bring what he called the daylight view of the world into +ever greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole +universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and +envelopments, is everywhere alive and conscious. It has taken fifty +years for his chief book, 'Zend-avesta,' to pass into a second edition +(1901). 'One swallow,' he cheerfully writes, 'does not make a summer. +But the first swallow would not come unless the summer were coming; +and for me that summer means my daylight view some time prevailing.' + +The original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and +our scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the +spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. +Instead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater +life, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, +which must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence +than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies +outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only; or if we +believe in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless, +and nature as soulless on the other. What comfort, or peace, Fechner +asks, can come from such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, +the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit +and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature +turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is +treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns +between us and all that is higher than ourselves; and God becomes a +thin nest of abstractions. + +Fechner's great instrument for vivifying the daylight view is +analogy; not a rationalistic argument is to be found in all his +many pages--only reasonings like those which men continually use in +practical life. For example: My house is built by some one, the world +too is built by some one. The world is greater than my house, it +must be a greater some one who built the world. My body moves by the +influence of my feeling and will; the sun, moon, sea, and wind, being +themselves more powerful, move by the influence of some more powerful +feeling and will. I live now, and change from one day to another; I +shall live hereafter, and change still more, etc. + +Bain defines genius as the power of seeing analogies. The number +that Fechner could perceive was prodigious; but he insisted on the +differences as well. Neglect to make allowance for these, he said, is +the common fallacy in analogical reasoning. Most of us, for example, +reasoning justly that, since all the minds we know are connected with +bodies, therefore God's mind should be connected with a body, proceed +to suppose that that body must be just an animal body over again, and +paint an altogether human picture of God. But all that the analogy +comports is _a_ body--the particular features of _our_ body are +adaptations to a habitat so different from God's that if God have +a physical body at all, it must be utterly different from ours in +structure. Throughout his writings Fechner makes difference and +analogy walk abreast, and by his extraordinary power of noticing +both, he converts what would ordinarily pass for objections to his +conclusions into factors of their support. + +The vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. The +entire earth on which we live must have, according to Fechner, its own +collective consciousness. So must each sun, moon, and planet; so must +the whole solar system have its own wider consciousness, in which the +consciousness of our earth plays one part. So has the entire starry +system as such its consciousness; and if that starry system be not the +sum of all that _is_, materially considered, then that whole system, +along with whatever else may be, is the body of that absolutely +totalized consciousness of the universe to which men give the name of +God. + +Speculatively Fechner is thus a monist in his theology; but there is +room in his universe for every grade of spiritual being between man +and the final all-inclusive God; and in suggesting what the positive +content of all this super-humanity may be, he hardly lets his +imagination fly beyond simple spirits of the planetary order. The +earth-soul he passionately believes in; he treats the earth as our +special human guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to +their saints; but I think that in his system, as in so many of the +actual historic theologies, the supreme God marks only a sort of limit +of enclosure of the worlds above man. He is left thin and abstract in +his majesty, men preferring to carry on their personal transactions +with the many less remote and abstract messengers and mediators whom +the divine order provides. + +I shall ask later whether the abstractly monistic turn which Fechner's +speculations took was necessitated by logic. I believe it not to have +been required. Meanwhile let me lead you a little more into the +detail of his thought. Inevitably one does him miserable injustice +by summarizing and abridging him. For altho the type of reasoning he +employs is almost childlike for simplicity, and his bare conclusions +can be written on a single page, the _power_ of the man is due +altogether to the profuseness of his concrete imagination, to the +multitude of the points which he considers successively, to the +cumulative effect of his learning, of his thoroughness, and of the +ingenuity of his detail, to his admirably homely style, to the +sincerity with which his pages glow, and finally to the impression he +gives of a man who doesn't live at second-hand, but who _sees_, who in +fact speaks as one having authority, and not as if he were one of the +common herd of professorial philosophic scribes. + +Abstractly set down, his most important conclusion for my purpose in +these lectures is that the constitution of the world is identical +throughout. In ourselves, visual consciousness goes with our eyes, +tactile consciousness with our skin. But altho neither skin nor eye +knows aught of the sensations of the other, they come together and +figure in some sort of relation and combination in the more inclusive +consciousness which each of us names his _self_. Quite similarly, +then, says Fechner, we must suppose that my consciousness of myself +and yours of yourself, altho in their immediacy they keep separate +and know nothing of each other, are yet known and used together in a +higher consciousness, that of the human race, say, into which they +enter as constituent parts. Similarly, the whole human and animal +kingdoms come together as conditions of a consciousness of still wider +scope. This combines in the soul of the earth with the consciousness +of the vegetable kingdom, which in turn contributes its share of +experience to that of the whole solar system, and so on from synthesis +to synthesis and height to height, till an absolutely universal +consciousness is reached. + +A vast analogical series, in which the basis of the analogy consists +of facts directly observable in ourselves. + +The supposition of an earth-consciousness meets a strong instinctive +prejudice which Fechner ingeniously tries to overcome. Man's mind is +the highest consciousness upon the earth, we think--the earth itself +being in all ways man's inferior. How should its consciousness, if it +have one, be superior to his? + +What are the marks of superiority which we are tempted to use here? If +we look more carefully into them, Fechner points out that the earth +possesses each and all of them more perfectly than we. He considers in +detail the points of difference between us, and shows them all to +make for the earth's higher rank. I will touch on only a few of these +points. + +One of them of course is independence of other external beings. +External to the earth are only the other heavenly bodies. All the +things on which we externally depend for life--air, water, plant and +animal food, fellow men, etc.--are included in her as her constituent +parts. She is self-sufficing in a million respects in which we are not +so. We depend on her for almost everything, she on us for but a small +portion of her history. She swings us in her orbit from winter to +summer and revolves us from day into night and from night into day. + +Complexity in unity is another sign of superiority. The total earth's +complexity far exceeds that of any organism, for she includes all our +organisms in herself, along with an infinite number of things that our +organisms fail to include. Yet how simple and massive are the phases +of her own proper life! As the total bearing of any animal is sedate +and tranquil compared with the agitation of its blood corpuscles, so +is the earth a sedate and tranquil being compared with the animals +whom she supports. + +To develop from within, instead of being fashioned from without, is +also counted as something superior in men's eyes. An egg is a higher +style of being than a piece of clay which an external modeler makes +into the image of a bird. Well, the earth's history develops from +within. It is like that of a wonderful egg which the sun's heat, like +that of a mother-hen, has stimulated to its cycles of evolutionary +change. + +Individuality of type, and difference from other beings of its type, +is another mark of rank. The earth differs from every other planet, +and as a class planetary beings are extraordinarily distinct from +other beings. + +Long ago the earth was called an animal; but a planet is a higher +class of being than either man or animal; not only quantitatively +greater, like a vaster and more awkward whale or elephant, but a being +whose enormous size requires an altogether different plan of life. Our +animal organization comes from our inferiority. Our need of moving to +and fro, of stretching our limbs and bending our bodies, shows only +our defect. What are our legs but crutches, by means of which, with +restless efforts, we go hunting after the things we have not inside +of ourselves. But the earth is no such cripple; why should she who +already possesses within herself the things we so painfully pursue, +have limbs analogous to ours? Shall she mimic a small part of herself? +What need has she of arms, with nothing to reach for? of a neck, with +no head to carry? of eyes or nose when she finds her way through space +without either, and has the millions of eyes of all her animals to +guide their movements on her surface, and all their noses to smell the +flowers that grow? For, as we are ourselves a part of the earth, so +our organs are her organs. She is, as it were, eye and ear over her +whole extent--all that we see and hear in separation she sees and +hears at once. She brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon +her surface, and their multitudinous conscious relations with each +other she takes up into her higher and more general conscious life. + +Most of us, considering the theory that the whole terrestrial mass is +animated as our bodies are, make the mistake of working the analogy +too literally, and allowing for no differences. If the earth be a +sentient organism, we say, where are her brain and nerves? What +corresponds to her heart and lungs? In other words, we expect +functions which she already performs through us, to be performed +outside of us again, and in just the same way. But we see perfectly +well how the earth performs some of these functions in a way unlike +our way. If you speak of circulation, what need has she of a heart +when the sun keeps all the showers of rain that fall upon her and all +the springs and brooks and rivers that irrigate her, going? What need +has she of internal lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in +living commerce with the atmosphere that clings to it? + +The organ that gives us most trouble is the brain. All the +consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains.--Can there be +consciousness, we ask, where there is no brain? But our brain, which +primarily serves to correlate our muscular reactions with the external +objects on which we depend, performs a function which the earth +performs in an entirely different way. She has no proper muscles or +limbs of her own, and the only objects external to her are the other +stars. To these her whole mass reacts by most exquisite alterations in +its total gait, and by still more exquisite vibratory responses in +its substance. Her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as in a mighty +mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monstrous lens, the +clouds and snow-fields combine them into white, the woods and flowers +disperse them into colors. Polarization, interference, absorption, +awaken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to +take any note. + +For these cosmic relations of hers, then, she no more needs a special +brain than she needs eyes or ears. _Our_ brains do indeed unify and +correlate innumerable functions. Our eyes know nothing of sound, our +ears nothing of light, but, having brains, we can feel sound and light +together, and compare them. We account for this by the fibres which in +the brain connect the optical with the acoustic centre, but just how +these fibres bring together not only the sensations, but the centres, +we fail to see. But if fibres are indeed all that is needed to do that +trick, has not the earth pathways, by which you and I are physically +continuous, more than enough to do for our two minds what the +brain-fibres do for the sounds and sights in a single mind? Must every +higher means of unification between things be a literal _brain_-fibre, +and go by that name? Cannot the earth-mind know otherwise the contents +of our minds together? + +Fechner's imagination, insisting on the differences as well as on the +resemblances, thus tries to make our picture of the whole earth's life +more concrete. He revels in the thought of its perfections. To carry +her precious freight through the hours and seasons what form could be +more excellent than hers--being as it is horse, wheels, and wagon all +in one. Think of her beauty--a shining ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over +one half, the other bathed in starry night, reflecting the heavens +from all her waters, myriads of lights and shadows in the folds of her +mountains and windings of her valleys, she would be a spectacle of +rainbow glory, could one only see her from afar as we see parts of her +from her own mountain-tops. Every quality of landscape that has a +name would then be visible in her at once--all that is delicate or +graceful, all that is quiet, or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or +cheerful, or luxuriant, or fresh. That landscape is her face--a +peopled landscape, too, for men's eyes would appear in it like +diamonds among the dew-drops. Green would be the dominant color, but +the blue atmosphere and the clouds would enfold her as a bride is +shrouded in her veil--a veil the vapory transparent folds of which +the earth, through her ministers the winds, never tires of laying and +folding about herself anew. + +Every element has its own living denizens. Can the celestial ocean of +ether, whose waves are light, in which the earth herself floats, not +have hers, higher by as much as their element is higher, swimming +without fins, flying without wings, moving, immense and tranquil, as +by a half-spiritual force through the half-spiritual sea which they +inhabit, rejoicing in the exchange of luminous influence with one +another, following the slightest pull of one another's attraction, and +harboring, each of them, an inexhaustible inward wealth? + +Men have always made fables about angels, dwelling in the light, +needing no earthly food or drink, messengers between ourselves and +God. Here are actually existent beings, dwelling in the light and +moving through the sky, needing neither food nor drink, intermediaries +between God and us, obeying his commands. So, if the heavens really +are the home of angels, the heavenly bodies must be those very angels, +for other creatures _there_ are none. Yes! the earth is our great +common guardian angel, who watches over all our interests combined. + +In a striking page Fechner relates one of his moments of direct vision +of this truth. + +'On a certain spring morning I went out to walk. The fields were +green, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here +and there a man appeared; a light as of transfiguration lay on all +things. It was only a little bit of the earth; it was only one moment +of her existence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it +seemed to me not only so beautiful an idea, but so true and clear +a fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and +flower-like, and yet going her round in the skies so firmly and so +at one with herself, turning her whole living face to Heaven, and +carrying me along with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself how +the opinions of men could ever have so spun themselves away from life +so far as to deem the earth only a dry clod, and to seek for angels +above it or about it in the emptiness of the sky,--only to find them +nowhere.... But such an experience as this passes for fantastic. The +earth is a globular body, and what more she may be, one can find in +mineralogical cabinets.'[2] + +Where there is no vision the people perish. Few professorial +philosophers have any vision. Fechner had vision, and that is why one +can read him over and over again, and each time bring away a fresh +sense of reality. + +His earliest book was a vision of what the inner life of plants may be +like. He called it 'Nanna.' In the development of animals the nervous +system is the central fact. Plants develop centrifugally, spread their +organs abroad. For that reason people suppose that they can have no +consciousness, for they lack the unity which the central nervous +system provides. But the plant's consciousness may be of another type, +being connected with other structures. Violins and pianos give out +sounds because they have strings. Does it follow that nothing but +strings can give out sound? How then about flutes and organ-pipes? +Of course their sounds are of a different quality, and so may the +consciousness of plants be of a quality correlated exclusively with +the kind of organization that | they possess. Nutrition, respiration, +propagation take place in them without nerves. In us these functions +are conscious only in unusual states, normally their consciousness is +eclipsed by that which goes with the brain. No such eclipse occurs in +plants, and their lower consciousness may therefore be all the more +lively. With nothing to do but to drink the light and air with their +leaves, to let their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw +the sap, is it conceivable that they should not consciously suffer +if water, light, and air are suddenly withdrawn? or that when the +flowering and fertilization which are the culmination of their life +take place, they should not feel their own existence more intensely +and enjoy something like what we call pleasure in ourselves? Does +the water-lily, rocking in her triple bath of water, air, and light, +relish in no wise her own beauty? When the plant in our room turns to +the light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds to our watering +or pruning by increase of size or change of shape and bloom, who has +the right to say she does not feel, or that she plays a purely passive +part? Truly plants can foresee nothing, neither the scythe of the +mower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. They can neither +run away nor cry out. But this only proves how different their modes +of feeling life must be from those of animals that live by eyes and +ears and locomotive organs, it does not prove that they have no mode +of feeling life at all. + +How scanty and scattered would sensation be on our globe, if the +feeling-life of plants were blotted from existence. Solitary would +consciousness move through the woods in the shape of some deer or +other quadruped, or fly about the flowers in that of some insect, but +can we really suppose that the Nature through which God's breath blows +is such a barren wilderness as this? + +I have probably by this time said enough to acquaint those of you who +have never seen these metaphysical writings of Fechner with their more +general characteristics, and I hope that some of you may now feel like +reading them yourselves.[3] The special thought of Fechner's with +which in these lectures I have most practical concern, is his +belief that the more inclusive forms of consciousness are in part +_constituted_ by the more limited forms. Not that they are the mere +sum of the more limited forms. As our mind is not the bare sum of +our sights plus our sounds plus our pains, but in adding these terms +together also finds relations among them and weaves them into schemes +and forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate +knows anything, so the earth-soul traces relations between the +contents of my mind and the contents of yours of which neither of +our separate minds is conscious. It has schemes, forms, and objects +proportionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far too +narrow to cognize. By ourselves we are simply out of relation with +each other, for it we are both of us there, and _different_ from each +other, which is a positive relation. What we are without knowing, it +knows that we are. We are closed against its world, but that world is +not closed against us. It is as if the total universe of inner life +had a sort of grain or direction, a sort of valvular structure, +permitting knowledge to flow in one way only, so that the wider might +always have the narrower under observation, but never the narrower the +wider. + +Fechner's great analogy here is the relation of the senses to our +individual minds. When our eyes are open their sensations enter into +our general mental life, which grows incessantly by the addition of +what they see. Close the eyes, however, and the visual additions stop, +nothing but thoughts and memories of the past visual experiences +remain--in combination of course with the enormous stock of other +thoughts and memories, and with the data coming in from the senses +not yet closed. Our eye-sensations of themselves know nothing of this +enormous life into which they fall. Fechner thinks, as any common man +would think, that they are taken into it directly when they occur, +and form part of it just as they are. They don't stay outside and +get represented inside by their copies. It is only the memories and +concepts of them that are copies; the sensible perceptions themselves +are taken in or walled out in their own proper persons according as +the eyes are open or shut. + +Fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many +sense-organs of the earth's soul. We add to its perceptive life so +long as our own life lasts. It absorbs our perceptions, just as they +occur, into its larger sphere of knowledge, and combines them with the +other data there. When one of us dies, it is as if an eye of the world +were closed, for all _perceptive_ contributions from that particular +quarter cease. But the memories and conceptual relations that have +spun themselves round the perceptions of that person remain in the +larger earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations and grow +and develop throughout all the future, in the same way in which our +own distinct objects of thought, once stored in memory, form new +relations and develop throughout our whole finite life. This is +Fechner's theory of immortality, first published in the little +'Büchlein des lebens nach dem tode,' in 1836, and re-edited in greatly +improved shape in the last volume of his 'Zend-avesta.' + +We rise upon the earth as wavelets rise upon the ocean. We grow out of +her soil as leaves grow from a tree. The wavelets catch the sunbeams +separately, the leaves stir when the branches do not move. They +realize their own events apart, just as in our own consciousness, when +anything becomes emphatic, the background fades from observation. Yet +the event works back upon the background, as the wavelet works upon +the waves, or as the leaf's movements work upon the sap inside the +branch. The whole sea and the whole tree are registers of what has +happened, and are different for the wave's and the leaf's action +having occurred. A grafted twig may modify its stock to the roots:--so +our outlived private experiences, impressed on the whole earth-mind as +memories, lead the immortal life of ideas there, and become parts of +the great system, fully distinguished from one another, just as we +ourselves when alive were distinct, realizing themselves no longer +isolatedly, but along with one another as so many partial systems, +entering thus into new combinations, being affected by the perceptive +experiences of those living then, and affecting the living in their +turn--altho they are so seldom recognized by living men to do so. + +If you imagine that this entrance after the death of the body into a +common life of higher type means a merging and loss of our distinct +personality, Fechner asks you whether a visual sensation of our own +exists in any sense _less for itself_ or _less distinctly_, when +it enters into our higher relational consciousness and is there +distinguished and defined. + +--But here I must stop my reporting and send you to his volumes. Thus +is the universe alive, according to this philosopher! I think you +will admit that he makes it more _thickly_ alive than do the other +philosophers who, following rationalistic methods solely, gain the +same results, but only in the thinnest outlines. Both Fechner and +Professor Royce, for example, believe ultimately in one all-inclusive +mind. Both believe that we, just as we stand here, are constituent +parts of that mind. No other _content_ has it than us, with all the +other creatures like or unlike us, and the relations which it finds +between us. Our eaches, collected into one, are substantively +identical with its all, tho the all is perfect while no each is +perfect, so that we have to admit that new qualities as well as +unperceived relations accrue from the collective form. It is thus +superior to the distributive form. But having reached this result, +Royce (tho his treatment of the subject on its moral side seems to +me infinitely richer and thicker than that of any other contemporary +idealistic philosopher) leaves us very much to our own devices. +Fechner, on the contrary, tries to trace the superiorities due to the +more collective form in as much detail as he can. He marks the various +intermediary stages and halting places of collectivity,--as we are to +our separate senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system +to the earth, etc.,--and if, in order to escape an infinitely long +summation, he posits a complete God as the all-container and leaves +him about as indefinite in feature as the idealists leave their +absolute, he yet provides us with a very definite gate of approach to +him in the shape of the earth-soul, through which in the nature of +things we must first make connexion with all the more enveloping +superhuman realms, and with which our more immediate religious +commerce at any rate has to be carried on. + +Ordinary monistic idealism leaves everything intermediary out. It +recognizes only the extremes, as if, after the first rude face of the +phenomenal world in all its particularity, nothing but the supreme in +all its perfection could be found. First, you and I, just as we are in +this room; and the moment we get below that surface, the unutterable +absolute itself! Doesn't this show a singularly indigent imagination? +Isn't this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in +it for a long hierarchy of beings? Materialistic science makes it +infinitely richer in terms, with its molecules, and ether, and +electrons, and what not. Absolute idealism, thinking of reality only +under intellectual forms, knows not what to do with _bodies_ of +any grade, and can make no use of any psychophysical analogy or +correspondence. The resultant thinness is startling when compared with +the thickness and articulation of such a universe as Fechner paints. +May not satisfaction with the rationalistic absolute as the alpha +and omega, and treatment of it in all its abstraction as an adequate +religious object, argue a certain native poverty of mental demand? +Things reveal themselves soonest to those who most passionately want +them, for our need sharpens our wit. To a mind content with little, +the much in the universe may always remain hid. + +To be candid, one of my reasons for saying so much about Fechner has +been to make the thinness of our current transcendentalism appear +more evident by an effect of contrast. Scholasticism ran thick; Hegel +himself ran thick; but english and american transcendentalisms run +thin. If philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of +logic,--and I believe it is, logic only finding reasons for the vision +afterwards,--must not such thinness come either from the vision being +defective in the disciples, or from their passion, matched with +Fechner's or with Hegel's own passion, being as moonlight unto +sunlight or as water unto wine?[4] + +But I have also a much deeper reason for making Fechner a part of my +text. His _assumption that conscious experiences freely compound and +separate themselves_, the same assumption by which absolutism explains +the relation of our minds to the eternal mind, and the same by +which empiricism explains the composition of the human mind out of +subordinate mental elements, is not one which we ought to let pass +without scrutiny. I shall scrutinize it in the next lecture. + + + + +LECTURE V + + +THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS + +In my last lecture I gave a miserably scanty outline of the way +of thinking of a philosopher remarkable for the almost unexampled +richness of his imagination of details. I owe to Fechner's shade an +apology for presenting him in a manner so unfair to the most essential +quality of his genius; but the time allotted is too short to say more +about the particulars of his work, so I proceed to the programme +I suggested at the end of our last hour. I wish to discuss the +assumption that states of consciousness, so-called, can separate and +combine themselves freely, and keep their own identity unchanged while +forming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope. + +Let me first explain just what I mean by this. While you listen to +my voice, for example, you are perhaps inattentive to some bodily +sensation due to your clothing or your posture. Yet that sensation +would seem probably to be there, for in an instant, by a change of +attention, you can have it in one field of consciousness with the +voice. It seems as if it existed first in a separate form, and then as +if, without itself changing, it combined with your other co-existent +sensations. It is after this analogy that pantheistic idealism thinks +that we exist in the absolute. The absolute, it thinks, makes the +world by knowing the whole of it at once in one undivided eternal +act.[1] To 'be,' _really_ to be, is to be as it knows us to be, along +with everything else, namely, and clothed with the fulness of our +meaning. Meanwhile we _are_ at the same time not only really and as it +knows us, but also apparently, for to our separate single selves we +appear _without_ most other things and unable to declare with +any fulness what our own meaning is. Now the classic doctrine of +pantheistic idealism, from the Upanishads down to Josiah Royce, is +that the finite knowers, in spite of their apparent ignorance, are one +with the knower of the all. In the most limited moments of our private +experience, the absolute idea, as Dr. McTaggart told us, is implicitly +contained. The moments, as Royce says, exist only in relation to it. +They are true or erroneous only through its overshadowing presence. Of +the larger self that alone eternally is, they are the organic parts. +They _are_, only inasmuch as they are implicated in its being. + +There is thus in reality but this one self, consciously inclusive of +all the lesser selves, _logos_, problem-solver, and all-knower; and +Royce ingeniously compares the ignorance that in our persons breaks +out in the midst of its complete knowledge and isolates me from you +and both of us from it, to the inattention into which our finite minds +are liable to fall with respect to such implicitly present details as +those corporeal sensations to which I made allusion just now. Those +sensations stand to our total private minds in the same relation in +which our private minds stand to the absolute mind. Privacy means +ignorance--I still quote Royce--and ignorance means inattention. We +are finite because our wills, as such, are only fragments of the +absolute will; because will means interest, and an incomplete will +means an incomplete interest; and because incompleteness of interest +means inattention to much that a fuller interest would bring us to +perceive.[2] + +In this account Royce makes by far the manliest of the post-hegelian +attempts to read some empirically apprehensible content into the +notion of our relation to the absolute mind. + +I have to admit, now that I propose to you to scrutinize this +assumption rather closely, that trepidation seizes me. The subject is +a subtle and abstruse one. It is one thing to delve into subtleties by +one's self with pen in hand, or to study out abstruse points in +books, but quite another thing to make a popular lecture out of them. +Nevertheless I must not flinch from my task here, for I think that +this particular point forms perhaps the vital knot of the present +philosophic situation, and I imagine that the times are ripe, or +almost ripe, for a serious attempt to be made at its untying. + +It may perhaps help to lessen the arduousness of the subject if I put +the first part of what I have to say in the form of a direct personal +confession. + +In the year 1890 I published a work on psychology in which it became +my duty to discuss the value of a certain explanation of our higher +mental states that had come into favor among the more biologically +inclined psychologists. Suggested partly by the association of ideas, +and partly by the analogy of chemical compounds, this opinion was +that complex mental states are resultants of the self-compounding of +simpler ones. The Mills had spoken of mental chemistry; Wundt of a +'psychic synthesis,' which might develop properties not contained in +the elements; and such writers as Spencer, Taine, Fiske, Barratt, and +Clifford had propounded a great evolutionary theory in which, in the +absence of souls, selves, or other principles of unity, primordial +units of mind-stuff or mind-dust were represented as summing +themselves together in successive stages of compounding and +re-compounding, and thus engendering our higher and more complex +states of mind. The elementary feeling of A, let us say, and the +elementary feeling of B, when they occur in certain conditions, +combine, according to this doctrine, into a feeling of A-plus-B, and +this in turn combines with a similarly generated feeling of C-plus-D, +until at last the whole alphabet may appear together in one field of +awareness, without any other witnessing principle or principles beyond +the feelings of the several letters themselves, being supposed to +exist. What each of them witnesses separately, 'all' of them are +supposed to witness in conjunction. But their distributive knowledge +doesn't _give rise_ to their collective knowledge by any act, it _is_ +their collective knowledge. The lower forms of consciousness 'taken +together' _are_ the higher. It, 'taken apart,' consists of nothing +and _is_ nothing but them. This, at least, is the most obvious way +of understanding the doctrine, and is the way I understood it in the +chapter in my psychology. + +Superficially looked at, this seems just like the combination of H_2 +and O into water, but looked at more closely, the analogy halts badly. +When a chemist tells us that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen +combine themselves of their own accord into the new compound substance +'water,' he knows (if he believes in the mechanical view of nature) +that this is only an elliptical statement for a more complex fact. +That fact is that when H_2 and O, instead of keeping far apart, get +into closer quarters, say into the position H-O-H, they _affect +surrounding bodies differently_: they now wet our skin, dissolve +sugar, put out fire, etc., which they didn't in their former +positions. 'Water' is but _our name_ for what acts thus peculiarly. +But if the skin, sugar, and fire were absent, no witness would speak +of water at all. He would still talk of the H and O distributively, +merely noting that they acted now in the new position H-O-H. + +In the older psychologies the soul or self took the place of the +sugar, fire, or skin. The lower feelings produced _effects on it_, +and their apparent compounds were only its reactions. As you tickle +a man's face with a feather, and he laughs, so when you tickle his +intellectual principle with a retinal feeling, say, and a muscular +feeling at once, it laughs responsively by its category of 'space,' +but it would be false to treat the space as simply made of those +simpler feelings. It is rather a new and unique psychic creation which +their combined action on the mind is able to evoke. + +I found myself obliged, in discussing the mind-dust theory, to urge +this last alternative view. The so-called mental compounds are simple +psychic reactions of a higher type. The form itself of them, I said, +is something new. We can't say that awareness of the alphabet as +such is nothing more than twenty-six awarenesses, each of a separate +letter; for those are twenty-six distinct awarenesses, of single +letters _without_ others, while their so-called sum is one awareness, +of every letter _with_ its comrades. There is thus something new in +the collective consciousness. It knows the same letters, indeed, but +it knows them in this novel way. It is safer, I said (for I fought shy +of admitting a self or soul or other agent of combination), to treat +the consciousness of the alphabet as a twenty-seventh fact, the +substitute and not the sum of the twenty-six simpler consciousnesses, +and to say that while under certain physiological conditions they +alone are produced, other more complex physiological conditions result +in its production instead. Do not talk, therefore, I said, of the +higher states _consisting_ of the simpler, or _being_ the same with +them; talk rather of their _knowing the same things_. They are +different mental facts, but they apprehend, each in its own peculiar +way, the same objective A, B, C, and D. + +The theory of combination, I was forced to conclude, is thus +untenable, being both logically nonsensical and practically +unnecessary. Say what you will, twelve thoughts, each of a single +word, are not the self-same mental thing as one thought of the whole +sentence. The higher thoughts, I insisted, are psychic units, not +compounds; but for all that, they may know together as a collective +multitude the very same objects which under other conditions are known +separately by as many simple thoughts. + +For many years I held rigorously to this view,[3] and the reasons for +doing so seemed to me during all those years to apply also to the +opinion that the absolute mind stands to our minds in the relation of +a whole to its parts. If untenable in finite psychology, that opinion +ought to be untenable in metaphysics also. The great transcendentalist +metaphor has always been, as I lately reminded you, a grammatical +sentence. Physically such a sentence is of course composed of clauses, +these of words, the words of syllables, and the syllables of letters. +We may take each word in, yet not understand the sentence; but if +suddenly the meaning of the whole sentence flashes, the sense of each +word is taken up into that whole meaning. Just so, according to +our transcendentalist teachers, the absolute mind thinks the whole +sentence, while we, according to our rank as thinkers, think a clause, +a word, a syllable, or a letter. Most of us are, as I said, mere +syllables in the mouth of Allah. And as Allah comes first in the order +of being, so comes first the entire sentence, the _logos_ that forms +the eternal absolute thought. Students of language tell us that speech +began with men's efforts to make _statements_. The rude synthetic +vocal utterances first used for this effect slowly got stereotyped, +and then much later got decomposed into grammatical parts. It is not +as if men had first invented letters and made syllables of them, then +made words of the syllables and sentences of the words;--they actually +followed the reverse order. So, the transcendentalists affirm, the +complete absolute thought is the pre-condition of our thoughts, and +we finite creatures _are_ only in so far as it owns us as its verbal +fragments. + +The metaphor is so beautiful, and applies, moreover, so literally to +such a multitude of the minor wholes of experience, that by merely +hearing it most of us are convinced that it must apply universally. +We see that no smallest raindrop can come into being without a whole +shower, no single feather without a whole bird, neck and crop, beak +and tail, coming into being simultaneously: so we unhesitatingly lay +down the law that no part of anything can be except so far as the +whole also is. And then, since everything whatever is part of the +whole universe, and since (if we are idealists) nothing, whether part +or whole, exists except for a witness, we proceed to the conclusion +that the unmitigated absolute as witness of the whole is the one sole +ground of being of every partial fact, the fact of our own existence +included. We think of ourselves as being only a few of the feathers, +so to speak, which help to constitute that absolute bird. Extending +the analogy of certain wholes, of which we have familiar experience, +to the whole of wholes, we easily become absolute idealists. + +But if, instead of yielding to the seductions of our metaphor, be +it sentence, shower, or bird, we analyze more carefully the notion +suggested by it that we are constituent parts of the absolute's +eternal field of consciousness, we find grave difficulties arising. +First, the difficulty I found with the mind-dust theory. If the +absolute makes us by knowing us, how can we exist otherwise than _as_ +it knows us? But it knows each of us indivisibly from everything else. +Yet if to exist means nothing but to be experienced, as idealism +affirms, we surely exist otherwise, for we experience _ourselves_ +ignorantly and in division. We indeed differ from the absolute not +only by defect, but by excess. Our ignorances, for example, bring +curiosities and doubts by which it cannot be troubled, for it owns +eternally the solution of every problem. Our impotence entails pains, +our imperfection sins, which its perfection keeps at a distance. What +I said of the alphabet-form and the letters holds good of the absolute +experience and our experiences. Their relation, whatever it may be, +seems not to be that of identity. + +It is impossible to reconcile the peculiarities of our experience with +our being only the absolute's mental objects. A God, as distinguished +from the absolute, creates things by projecting them beyond himself as +so many substances, each endowed with _perseity_, as the scholastics +call it. But objects of thought are not things _per se_. They are +there only _for_ their thinker, and only _as_ he thinks them. How, +then, can they become severally alive on their own accounts and think +themselves quite otherwise than as he thinks them? It is as if the +characters in a novel were to get up from the pages, and walk away and +transact business of their own outside of the author's story. + +A third difficulty is this: The bird-metaphor is physical, but we +see on reflection that in the _physical_ world there is no real +compounding. 'Wholes' are not realities there, parts only are +realities. 'Bird' is only our _name_ for the physical fact of a +certain grouping of organs, just as 'Charles's Wain' is our name for a +certain grouping of stars. The 'whole,' be it bird or constellation, +is nothing but our vision, nothing but an effect on our sensorium when +a lot of things act on it together. It is not realized by any organ +or any star, or experienced apart from the consciousness of an +onlooker.[4] In the physical world taken by itself there _is_ thus no +'all,' there are only the 'eaches'--at least that is the 'scientific' +view. + +In the mental world, on the contrary, wholes do in point of fact +realize themselves _per se_. The meaning of the whole sentence is +just as much a real experience as the feeling of each word is; the +absolute's experience _is_ for itself, as much as yours is for +yourself or mine for myself. So the feather-and-bird analogy won't +work unless you make the absolute into a distinct sort of mental agent +with a vision produced in it _by_ our several minds analogous to the +'bird'-vision which the feathers, beak, etc., produce _in_ those same +minds. The 'whole,' which is _its_ experience, would then be its +unifying reaction on our experiences, and not those very experiences +self-combined. Such a view as this would go with theism, for the +theistic God is a separate being; but it would not go with pantheistic +idealism, the very essence of which is to insist that we are literally +_parts_ of God, and he only ourselves in our totality--the word +'ourselves' here standing of course for all the universe's finite +facts. + +I am dragging you into depths unsuitable, I fear, for a rapid lecture. +Such difficulties as these have to be teased out with a needle, so to +speak, and lecturers should take only bird's-eye views. The practical +upshot of the matter, however, so far as I am concerned, is this, that +if I had been lecturing on the absolute a very few years ago, I should +unhesitatingly have urged these difficulties, and developed them at +still greater length, to show that the hypothesis of the absolute +was not only non-coercive from the logical point of view, but +self-contradictory as well, its notion that parts and whole are only +two names for the same thing not bearing critical scrutiny. If you +stick to purely physical terms like stars, there is no whole. If you +call the whole mental, then the so-called whole, instead of being one +fact with the parts, appears rather as the integral reaction on those +parts of an independent higher witness, such as the theistic God is +supposed to be. + +So long as this was the state of my own mind, I could accept the +notion of self-compounding in the supernal spheres of experience no +more easily than in that chapter on mind-dust I had accepted it in +the lower spheres. I found myself compelled, therefore, to call +the absolute impossible; and the untrammelled freedom with which +pantheistic or monistic idealists stepped over the logical barriers +which Lotze and others had set down long before I had--I had done +little more than quote these previous critics in my chapter--surprised +me not a little, and made me, I have to confess, both resentful and +envious. Envious because in the bottom of my heart I wanted the same +freedom myself, for motives which I shall develop later; and resentful +because my absolutist friends seemed to me to be stealing the +privilege of blowing both hot and cold. To establish their absolute +they used an intellectualist type of logic which they disregarded when +employed against it. It seemed to me that they ought at least to have +mentioned the objections that had stopped me so completely. I had +yielded to them against my 'will to believe,' out of pure logical +scrupulosity. They, professing to loathe the will to believe and to +follow purest rationality, had simply ignored them. The method was +easy, but hardly to be called candid. Fechner indeed was candid +enough, for he had never thought of the objections, but later writers, +like Royce, who should presumably have heard them, had passed them by +in silence. I felt as if these philosophers were granting their will +to believe in monism too easy a license. My own conscience would +permit me no such license. + +So much for the personal confession by which you have allowed me to +introduce the subject. Let us now consider it more objectively. + +The fundamental difficulty I have found is the number of +contradictions which idealistic monists seem to disregard. In the +first place they attribute to all existence a mental or experiential +character, but I find their simultaneous belief that the higher and +the lower in the universe are entitatively identical, incompatible +with this character. Incompatible in consequence of the generally +accepted doctrine that, whether Berkeley were right or not in saying +of material existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_, it is undoubtedly +right to say of _mental_ existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_ or +_experiri_. If I feel pain, it is just pain that I feel, however I +may have come by the feeling. No one pretends that pain as such only +appears like pain, but in itself is different, for to be as a mental +experience _is_ only to appear to some one. + +The idealists in question ought then to do one of two things, but they +do neither. They ought either to refute the notion that as mental +states appear, so they are; or, still keeping that notion, they +ought to admit a distinct agent of unification to do the work of +the all-knower, just as our respective souls or selves in popular +philosophy do the work of partial knowers. Otherwise it is like a +joint-stock company all shareholders and no treasurer or director. If +our finite minds formed a billion facts, then its mind, knowing our +billion, would make a universe composed of a billion and one facts. +But transcendental idealism is quite as unfriendly to active +principles called souls as physiological psychology is, Kant having, +as it thinks, definitively demolished them. And altho some disciples +speak of the transcendental ego of apperception (which they celebrate +as Kant's most precious legacy to posterity) as if it were a combining +agent, the drift of monistic authority is certainly in the direction +of treating it as only an all-witness, whose field of vision we finite +witnesses do not cause, but constitute rather. We are the letters, it +is the alphabet; we are the features, it is the face; not indeed as if +either alphabet or face were something additional to the letters or +the features, but rather as if it were only another name for the very +letters or features themselves. The all-form assuredly differs from +the each-form, but the _matter_ is the same in both, and the each-form +only an unaccountable appearance. + +But this, as you see, contradicts the other idealist principle, of +a mental fact being just what it appears to be. If their forms +of appearance are so different, the all and the eaches cannot be +identical. + +The way out (unless, indeed, we are willing to discard the logic of +identity altogether) would seem to be frankly to write down the all +and the eaches as two distinct orders of witness, each minor witness +being aware of its own 'content' solely, while the greater witness +knows the minor witnesses, knows their whole content pooled together, +knows their relations to one another, and knows of just how much each +one of them is ignorant. + +The two types of witnessing are here palpably non-identical. We get a +pluralism, not a monism, out of them. In my psychology-chapter I +had resorted openly to such pluralism, treating each total field of +consciousness as a distinct entity, and maintaining that the higher +fields merely supersede the lower functionally by knowing more about +the same objects. + +The monists themselves writhe like worms on the hook to escape +pluralistic or at least dualistic language, but they cannot escape it. +They speak of the eternal and the temporal 'points of view'; of the +universe in its infinite 'aspect' or in its finite 'capacity'; they +say that '_quâ_ absolute' it is one thing, '_quâ_ relative' another; +they contrast its 'truth' with its appearances; they distinguish the +total from the partial way of 'taking' it, etc.; but they forget that, +on idealistic principles, to make such distinctions is tantamount to +making different beings, or at any rate that varying points of view, +aspects, appearances, ways of taking, and the like, are meaningless +phrases unless we suppose outside of the unchanging content of reality +a diversity of witnesses who experience or take it variously, the +absolute mind being just the witness that takes it most completely. + +For consider the matter one moment longer, if you can. Ask what this +notion implies, of appearing differently from different points of +view. If there be no outside witness, a thing can appear only to +itself, the eaches or parts to their several selves temporally, the +all or whole to itself eternally. Different 'selves' thus break out +inside of what the absolutist insists to be intrinsically one fact. +But how can what is _actually_ one be _effectively_ so many? Put your +witnesses anywhere, whether outside or inside of what is witnessed, +in the last resort your witnesses must on idealistic principles be +distinct, for what is witnessed is different. + +I fear that I am expressing myself with terrible obscurity--some of +you, I know, are groaning over the logic-chopping. Be a pluralist or +be a monist, you say, for heaven's sake, no matter which, so long as +you stop arguing. It reminds one of Chesterton's epigram that the only +thing that ever drives human beings insane is logic. But whether I be +sane or insane, you cannot fail, even tho you be transcendentalists +yourselves, to recognize to some degree by my trouble the difficulties +that beset monistic idealism. What boots it to call the parts and the +whole the same body of experience, when in the same breath you have to +say that the all 'as such' means one sort of experience and each part +'as such' means another? + +Difficulties, then, so far, but no stable solution as yet, for I have +been talking only critically. You will probably be relieved to hear, +then, that having rounded this corner, I shall begin to consider what +may be the possibilities of getting farther. + +To clear the path, I beg you first to note one point. What has so +troubled my logical conscience is not so much the absolute by itself +as the whole class of suppositions of which it is the supreme +example, collective experiences namely, claiming identity with their +constituent parts, yet experiencing things quite differently from +these latter. If _any_ such collective experience can be, then of +course, so far as the mere logic of the case goes, the absolute may +be. In a previous lecture I have talked against the absolute from +other points of view. In this lecture I have meant merely to take it +as the example most prominent at Oxford of the thing which has given +me such logical perplexity. I don't logically see how a collective +experience of any grade whatever can be treated as logically identical +with a lot of distributive experiences. They form two different +concepts. The absolute happens to be the only collective experience +concerning which Oxford idealists have urged the identity, so I took +it as my prerogative instance. But Fechner's earth-soul, or any stage +of being below or above that, would have served my purpose just +as well: the same logical objection applies to these collective +experiences as to the absolute. + +So much, then, in order that you may not be confused about my +strategical objective. The real point to defend against the logic that +I have used is the identity of the collective and distributive anyhow, +not the particular example of such identity known as the absolute. + +So now for the directer question. Shall we say that every complex +mental fact is a separate psychic entity succeeding upon a lot of +other psychic entities which are erroneously called its parts, and +superseding them in function, but not literally being composed of +them? This was the course I took in my psychology; and if followed in +theology, we should have to deny the absolute as usually conceived, +and replace it by the 'God' of theism. We should also have to deny +Fechner's 'earth-soul' and all other superhuman collections of +experience of every grade, so far at least as these are held to be +compounded of our simpler souls in the way which Fechner believed +in; and we should have to make all these denials in the name of the +incorruptible logic of self-identity, teaching us that to call a thing +and its other the same is to commit the crime of self-contradiction. + +But if we realize the whole philosophic situation thus produced, +we see that it is almost intolerable. Loyal to the logical kind of +rationality, it is disloyal to every other kind. It makes the universe +discontinuous. These fields of experience that replace each other +so punctually, each knowing the same matter, but in ever-widening +contexts, from simplest feeling up to absolute knowledge, _can_ +they have no _being_ in common when their cognitive function is so +manifestly common? The regular succession of them is on such terms an +unintelligible miracle. If you reply that their common _object_ is +of itself enough to make the many witnesses continuous, the same +implacable logic follows you--how _can_ one and the same object appear +so variously? Its diverse appearances break it into a plurality; and +our world of objects then falls into discontinuous pieces quite as +much as did our world of subjects. The resultant irrationality is +really intolerable. + +I said awhile ago that I was envious of Fechner and the other +pantheists because I myself wanted the same freedom that I saw them +unscrupulously enjoying, of letting mental fields compound themselves +and so make the universe more continuous, but that my conscience held +me prisoner. In my heart of hearts, however, I knew that my situation +was absurd and could be only provisional. That secret of a continuous +life which the universe knows by heart and acts on every instant +cannot be a contradiction incarnate. If logic says it is one, so +much the worse for logic. Logic being the lesser thing, the static +incomplete abstraction, must succumb to reality, not reality to logic. +Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in its +chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the +universe that engendered it. Fechner, Royce, and Hegel seem on the +truer path. Fechner has never heard of logic's veto, Royce hears the +voice but cannily ignores the utterances, Hegel hears them but to +spurn them--and all go on their way rejoicing. Shall we alone obey the +veto? + +Sincerely, and patiently as I could, I struggled with the problem for +years, covering hundreds of sheets of paper with notes and memoranda +and discussions with myself over the difficulty. How can many +consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? How can one and +the same identical fact experience itself so diversely? The struggle +was vain; I found myself in an _impasse_. I saw that I must either +forswear that 'psychology without a soul' to which my whole +psychological and kantian education had committed me,--I must, in +short, bring back distinct spiritual agents to know the mental states, +now singly and now in combination, in a word bring back scholasticism +and common sense--or else I must squarely confess the solution of +the problem impossible, and then either give up my intellectualistic +logic, the logic of identity, and adopt some higher (or lower) form +of rationality, or, finally, face the fact that life is logically +irrational. + +Sincerely, this is the actual trilemma that confronts every one of us. +Those of you who are scholastic-minded, or simply common-sense minded, +will smile at the elaborate groans of my parturient mountain resulting +in nothing but this mouse. Accept the spiritual agents, for heaven's +sake, you will say, and leave off your ridiculous pedantry. Let but +our 'souls' combine our sensations by their intellectual faculties, +and let but 'God' replace the pantheistic world-soul, and your wheels +will go round again--you will enjoy both life and logic together. + +This solution is obvious and I know that many of you will adopt it. It +is comfortable, and all our habits of speech support it. Yet it is not +for idle or fantastical reasons that the notion of the substantial +soul, so freely used by common men and the more popular philosophies, +has fallen upon such evil days, and has no prestige in the eyes of +critical thinkers. It only shares the fate of other unrepresentable +substances and principles. They are without exception all so barren +that to sincere inquirers they appear as little more than names +masquerading--Wo die begriffe fehlen da stellt ein wort zur rechten +zeit sich ein. You see no deeper into the fact that a hundred +sensations get compounded or known together by thinking that a 'soul' +does the compounding than you see into a man's living eighty years by +thinking of him as an octogenarian, or into our having five fingers by +calling us pentadactyls. Souls have worn out both themselves and +their welcome, that is the plain truth. Philosophy ought to get the +manifolds of experience unified on principles less empty. Like the +word 'cause,' the word 'soul' is but a theoretic stop-gap--it marks a +place and claims it for a future explanation to occupy. + +This being our post-humian and post-kantian state of mind, I will ask +your permission to leave the soul wholly out of the present discussion +and to consider only the residual dilemma. Some day, indeed, souls may +get their innings again in philosophy--I am quite ready to admit that +possibility--they form a category of thought too natural to the human +mind to expire without prolonged resistance. But if the belief in the +soul ever does come to life after the many funeral-discourses which +humian and kantian criticism have preached over it, I am sure it will +be only when some one has found in the term a pragmatic significance +that has hitherto eluded observation. When that champion speaks, as +he well may speak some day, it will be time to consider souls more +seriously. + +Let us leave out the soul, then, and confront what I just called +the residual dilemma. Can we, on the one hand, give up the logic +of identity?--can we, on the other, believe human experience to be +fundamentally irrational? Neither is easy, yet it would seem that we +must do one or the other. + +Few philosophers have had the frankness fairly to admit the necessity +of choosing between the 'horns' offered. Reality must be rational, +they have said, and since the ordinary intellectualist logic is +the only usual test of rationality, reality and logic must agree +'somehow.' Hegel was the first non-mystical writer to face the +dilemma squarely and throw away the ordinary logic, saving a +pseudo-rationality for the universe by inventing the higher logic of +the 'dialectic process.' Bradley holds to the intellectualist logic, +and by dint of it convicts the human universe of being irrationality +incarnate. But what must be and can be, is, he says; there must and +can be relief from _that_ irrationality; and the absolute must already +have got the relief in secret ways of its own, impossible for us to +guess at. _We_ of course get no relief, so Bradley's is a rather +ascetic doctrine. Royce and Taylor accept similar solutions, only they +emphasize the irrationality of our finite universe less than Bradley +does; and Royce in particular, being unusually 'thick' for an +idealist, tries to bring the absolute's secret forms of relief more +sympathetically home to our imagination. + +Well, what must we do in this tragic predicament? For my own part, I +have finally found myself compelled to _give up the logic_, fairly, +squarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in human life, +but that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the +essential nature of reality--just what it is I can perhaps suggest +to you a little later. Reality, life, experience, concreteness, +immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and +surrounds it. If you like to employ words eulogistically, as most +men do, and so encourage confusion, you may say that reality obeys a +higher logic, or enjoys a higher rationality. But I think that +even eulogistic words should be used rather to distinguish than +to commingle meanings, so I prefer bluntly to call reality if not +irrational then at least non-rational in its constitution,--and by +reality here I mean reality where things _happen_, all temporal +reality without exception. I myself find no good warrant for even +suspecting the existence of any reality of a higher denomination than +that distributed and strung-along and flowing sort of reality which we +finite beings swim in. That is the sort of reality given us, and that +is the sort with which logic is so incommensurable. If there be any +higher sort of reality--the 'absolute,' for example--that sort, by +the confession of those who believe in it, is still less amenable +to ordinary logic; it transcends logic and is therefore still less +rational in the intellectualist sense, so it cannot help us to save +our logic as an adequate definer and confiner of existence. + +These sayings will sound queer and dark, probably they will sound +quite wild or childish in the absence of explanatory comment. Only the +persuasion that I soon can explain them, if not satisfactorily to all +of you, at least intelligibly, emboldens me to state them thus baldly +as a sort of programme. Please take them as a thesis, therefore, to be +defended by later pleading. + +I told you that I had long and sincerely wrestled with the dilemma. I +have now to confess (and this will probably re-animate your interest) +that I should not now be emancipated, not now subordinate logic with +so very light a heart, or throw it out of the deeper regions of +philosophy to take its rightful and respectable place in the world of +simple human practice, if I had not been influenced by a comparatively +young and very original french writer, Professor Henri Bergson. +Reading his works is what has made me bold. If I had not read +Bergson, I should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper +privately, in the hope of making ends meet that were never meant to +meet, and trying to discover some mode of conceiving the behavior of +reality which should leave no discrepancy between it and the accepted +laws of the logic of identity. It is certain, at any rate, that +without the confidence which being able to lean on Bergson's authority +gives me I should never have ventured to urge these particular views +of mine upon this ultra-critical audience. + +I must therefore, in order to make my own views more intelligible, +give some preliminary account of the bergsonian philosophy. But here, +as in Fechner's case, I must confine myself only to the features +that are essential to the present purpose, and not entangle you in +collateral details, however interesting otherwise. For our present +purpose, then, the essential contribution of Bergson to philosophy +is his criticism of intellectualism. In my opinion he has killed +intellectualism definitively and without hope of recovery. I don't +see how it can ever revive again in its ancient platonizing rôle of +claiming to be the most authentic, intimate, and exhaustive definer +of the nature of reality. Others, as Kant for example, have denied +intellectualism's pretensions to define reality _an sich_ or in its +absolute capacity; but Kant still leaves it laying down laws--and laws +from which there is no appeal--to all our human experience; while what +Bergson denies is that its methods give any adequate account of this +human experience in its very finiteness. Just how Bergson accomplishes +all this I must try to tell in my imperfect way in the next lecture; +but since I have already used the words 'logic,' 'logic of identity, +intellectualistic logic,' and 'intellectualism' so often, and +sometimes used them as if they required no particular explanation, it +will be wise at this point to say at greater length than heretofore in +what sense I take these terms when I claim that Bergson has refuted +their pretension to decide what reality can or cannot be. Just what I +mean by intellectualism is therefore what I shall try to give a fuller +idea of during the remainder of this present hour. + +In recent controversies some participants have shown resentment +at being classed as intellectualists. I mean to use the word +disparagingly, but shall be sorry if it works offence. Intellectualism +has its source in the faculty which gives us our chief superiority to +the brutes, our power, namely, of translating the crude flux of our +merely feeling-experience into a conceptual order. An immediate +experience, as yet unnamed or classed, is a mere _that_ that we +undergo, a thing that asks, '_What_ am I?' When we name and class it, +we say for the first time what it is, and all these whats are abstract +names or concepts. Each concept means a particular _kind_ of thing, +and as things seem once for all to have been created in kinds, a far +more efficient handling of a given bit of experience begins as soon as +we have classed the various parts of it. Once classed, a thing can be +treated by the law of its class, and the advantages are endless. Both +theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts +is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives. We come back +into the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an +increase both of vision and of power. It is no wonder that earlier +thinkers, forgetting that concepts are only man-made extracts from the +temporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type +of being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in +nature to the turbid, restless lower world. The latter then appears as +but their corruption and falsification. + +Intellectualism in the vicious sense began when Socrates and Plato +taught that what a thing really is, is told us by its _definition_. +Ever since Socrates we have been taught that reality consists of +essences, not of appearances, and that the essences of things are +known whenever we know their definitions. So first we identify +the thing with a concept and then we identify the concept with a +definition, and only then, inasmuch as the thing _is_ whatever the +definition expresses, are we sure of apprehending the real essence of +it or the full truth about it. + +So far no harm is done. The misuse of concepts begins with the habit +of employing them privatively as well as positively, using them not +merely to assign properties to things, but to deny the very properties +with which the things sensibly present themselves. Logic can extract +all its possible consequences from any definition, and the logician +who is _unerbittlich consequent_ is often tempted, when he cannot +extract a certain property from a definition, to deny that the +concrete object to which the definition applies can possibly possess +that property. The definition that fails to yield it must exclude or +negate it. This is Hegel's regular method of establishing his system. + +It is but the old story, of a useful practice first becoming a method, +then a habit, and finally a tyranny that defeats the end it was used +for. Concepts, first employed to make things intelligible, are clung +to even when they make them unintelligible. Thus it comes that when +once you have conceived things as 'independent,' you must proceed to +deny the possibility of any connexion whatever among them, because +the notion of connexion is not contained in the definition of +independence. For a like reason you must deny any possible forms or +modes of unity among things which you have begun by defining as a +'many.' We have cast a glance at Hegel's and Bradley's use of this +sort of reasoning, and you will remember Sigwart's epigram that +according to it a horseman can never in his life go on foot, or a +photographer ever do anything but photograph. + +The classic extreme in this direction is the denial of the possibility +of change, and the consequent branding of the world of change as +unreal, by certain philosophers. The definition of A is changeless, +so is the definition of B. The one definition cannot change into +the other, so the notion that a concrete thing A should change into +another concrete thing B is made Out to be contrary to reason. In Mr. +Bradley's difficulty in seeing how sugar can be sweet intellectualism +outstrips itself and becomes openly a sort of verbalism. Sugar is just +sugar and sweet is just sweet; neither is the other; nor can the +word 'is' ever be understood to join any subject to its predicate +rationally. Nothing 'between' things can connect them, for 'between' +is just that third thing, 'between,' and would need itself to be +connected to the first and second things by two still finer betweens, +and so on ad infinitum. + +The particular intellectualistic difficulty that had held my own +thought so long in a vise was, as we have seen at such tedious length, +the impossibility of understanding how 'your' experience and 'mine,' +which 'as such' are defined as not conscious of each other, can +nevertheless at the same time be members of a world-experience defined +expressly as having all its parts co-conscious, or known together. The +definitions are contradictory, so the things defined can in no way be +united. You see how unintelligible intellectualism here seems to make +the world of our most accomplished philosophers. Neither as they +use it nor as we use it does it do anything but make nature look +irrational and seem impossible. + +In my next lecture, using Bergson as my principal topic, I shall enter +into more concrete details and try, by giving up intellectualism +frankly, to make, if not the world, at least my own general thesis, +less unintelligible. + + + + +LECTURE VI + + +BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM + +I gave you a very stiff lecture last time, and I fear that this one +can be little less so. The best way of entering into it will be to +begin immediately with Bergson's philosophy, since I told you that +that was what had led me personally to renounce the intellectualistic +method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of +what can or cannot be. + +Professor Henri Bergson is a young man, comparatively, as influential +philosophers go, having been born at Paris in 1859. His career has +been the perfectly routine one of a successful french professor. +Entering the école normale supérieure at the age of twenty-two, he +spent the next seventeen years teaching at _lycées_, provincial or +parisian, until his fortieth year, when he was made professor at the +said école normale. Since 1900 he has been professor at the College de +France, and member of the Institute since 1900. So far as the outward +facts go, Bergson's career has then been commonplace to the utmost. +Neither one of Taine's famous principles of explanation of great +men, _the race, the environment, or the moment_, no, nor all three +together, will explain that peculiar way of looking at things that +constitutes his mental individuality. Originality in men dates from +nothing previous, other things date from it, rather. I have to confess +that Bergson's originality is so profuse that many of his ideas baffle +me entirely. I doubt whether any one understands him all over, so to +speak; and I am sure that he would himself be the first to see that +this must be, and to confess that things which he himself has not yet +thought out clearly, had yet to be mentioned and have a tentative +place assigned them in his philosophy. Many of us are profusely +original, in that no man can understand us--violently peculiar ways +of looking at things are no great rarity. The rarity is when great +peculiarity of vision is allied with great lucidity and unusual +command of all the classic expository apparatus. Bergson's resources +in the way of erudition are remarkable, and in the way of expression +they are simply phenomenal. This is why in France, where _l'art de +bien dire_ counts for so much and is so sure of appreciation, he has +immediately taken so eminent a place in public esteem. Old-fashioned +professors, whom his ideas quite fail to satisfy, nevertheless speak +of his talent almost with bated breath, while the youngsters flock to +him as to a master. + +If anything can make hard things easy to follow, it is a style like +Bergson's. A 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lately +called it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a +flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a +crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movements +of one's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of putting things is what +all readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in +advance to become his disciple. It is a miracle, and he a real +magician. + +M. Bergson, if I am rightly informed, came into philosophy through the +gateway of mathematics. The old antinomies of the infinite were, +I imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their +dogmatic slumber. You all remember Zeno's famous paradox, or sophism, +as many of our logic books still call it, of Achilles and the +tortoise. Give that reptile ever so small an advance and the swift +runner Achilles can never overtake him, much less get ahead of him; +for if space and time are infinitely divisible (as our intellects +tell us they must be), by the time Achilles reaches the tortoise's +starting-point, the tortoise has already got ahead of _that_ +starting-point, and so on _ad infinitum_, the interval between the +pursuer and the pursued growing endlessly minuter, but never becoming +wholly obliterated. The common way of showing up the sophism here is +by pointing out the ambiguity of the expression 'never can overtake.' +What the word 'never' falsely suggests, it is said, is an infinite +duration of time; what it really means is the inexhaustible number of +the steps of which the overtaking must consist. But if these steps are +infinitely short, a finite time will suffice for them; and in point of +fact they do rapidly converge, whatever be the original interval +or the contrasted speeds, toward infinitesimal shortness. This +proportionality of the shortness of the times to that of the spaces +required frees us, it is claimed, from the sophism which the word +'never' suggests. + +But this criticism misses Zeno's point entirely. Zeno would have been +perfectly willing to grant that if the tortoise can be overtaken at +all, he can be overtaken in (say) twenty seconds, but he would still +have insisted that he can't be overtaken at all. Leave Achilles and +the tortoise out of the account altogether, he would have said--they +complicate the case unnecessarily. Take any single process of change +whatever, take the twenty seconds themselves elapsing. If time be +infinitely divisible, and it must be so on intellectualist principles, +they simply cannot elapse, their end cannot be reached; for no matter +how much of them has already elapsed, before the remainder, however +minute, can have wholly elapsed, the earlier half of it must first +have elapsed. And this ever re-arising need of making the earlier half +elapse _first_ leaves time with always something to do _before_ the +last thing is done, so that the last thing never gets done. Expressed +in bare numbers, it is like the convergent series 1/2 plus 1/4 plus +1/8..., of which the limit is one. But this limit, simply because it +is a limit, stands outside the series, the value of which approaches +it indefinitely but never touches it. If in the natural world there +were no other way of getting things save by such successive addition +of their logically involved fractions, no complete units or whole +things would ever come into being, for the fractions' sum would always +leave a remainder. But in point of fact nature doesn't make eggs by +making first half an egg, then a quarter, then an eighth, etc., and +adding them together. She either makes a whole egg at once or none +at all, and so of all her other units. It is only in the sphere of +change, then, where one phase of a thing must needs come into being +before another phase can come that Zeno's paradox gives trouble. + +And it gives trouble then only if the succession of steps of change +be infinitely divisible. If a bottle had to be emptied by an infinite +number of successive decrements, it is mathematically impossible that +the emptying should ever positively terminate. In point of fact, +however, bottles and coffee-pots empty themselves by a finite number +of decrements, each of definite amount. Either a whole drop emerges or +nothing emerges from the spout. If all change went thus drop-wise, +so to speak, if real time sprouted or grew by units of duration of +determinate amount, just as our perceptions of it grow by pulses, +there would be no zenonian paradoxes or kantian antinomies to trouble +us. All our sensible experiences, as we get them immediately, do thus +change by discrete pulses of perception, each of which keeps us saying +'more, more, more,' or 'less, less, less,' as the definite increments +or diminutions make themselves felt. The discreteness is still more +obvious when, instead of old things changing, they cease, or when +altogether new things come. Fechner's term of the 'threshold,' which +has played such a part in the psychology of perception, is only one +way of naming the quantitative discreteness in the change of all our +sensible experiences. They come to us in drops. Time itself comes in +drops. + +Our ideal decomposition of the drops which are all that we feel into +still finer fractions is but an incident in that great transformation +of the perceptual order into a conceptual order of which I spoke in +my last lecture. It is made in the interest of our rationalizing +intellect solely. The times directly _felt_ in the experiences of +living subjects have originally no common measure. Let a lump of sugar +melt in a glass, to use one of M. Bergson's instances. We feel the +time to be long while waiting for the process to end, but who knows +how long or how short it feels to the sugar? All _felt_ times coexist +and overlap or compenetrate each other thus vaguely, but the artifice +of plotting them on a common scale helps us to reduce their aboriginal +confusion, and it helps us still more to plot, against the same scale, +the successive possible steps into which nature's various changes may +be resolved, either sensibly or conceivably. We thus straighten out +the aboriginal privacy and vagueness, and can date things publicly, as +it were, and by each other. The notion of one objective and 'evenly +flowing' time, cut into numbered instants, applies itself as a common +measure to all the steps and phases, no matter how many, into which we +cut the processes of nature. They are now definitely contemporary, +or later or earlier one than another, and we can handle them +mathematically, as we say, and far better, practically as well as +theoretically, for having thus correlated them one to one with each +other on the common schematic or conceptual time-scale. + +Motion, to take a good example, is originally a turbid sensation, of +which the native shape is perhaps best preserved in the phenomenon of +vertigo. In vertigo we feel that movement _is_, and is more or less +violent or rapid, more or less in this direction or that, more or less +alarming or sickening. But a man subject to vertigo may gradually +learn to co-ordinate his felt motion with his real position and that +of other things, and intellectualize it enough to succeed at last in +walking without staggering. The mathematical mind similarly organizes +motion in its way, putting it into a logical definition: motion is now +conceived as 'the occupancy of serially successive points of space +at serially successive instants of time.' With such a definition we +escape wholly from the turbid privacy of sense. But do we not also +escape from sense-reality altogether? Whatever motion really may be, +it surely is not static; but the definition we have gained is of the +absolutely static. It gives a set of one-to-one relations between +space-points and time-points, which relations themselves are as fixed +as the points are. It gives _positions_ assignable ad infinitum, but +how the body gets from one position to another it omits to mention. +The body gets there by moving, of course; but the conceived positions, +however numerously multiplied, contain no element of movement, so +Zeno, using nothing but them in his discussion, has no alternative +but to say that our intellect repudiates motion as a non-reality. +Intellectualism here does what I said it does--it makes experience +less instead of more intelligible. + +We of course need a stable scheme of concepts, stably related with +one another, to lay hold of our experiences and to co-ordinate them +withal. When an experience comes with sufficient saliency to stand +out, we keep the thought of it for future use, and store it in our +conceptual system. What does not of itself stand out, we learn to +_cut_ out; so the system grows completer, and new reality, as it +comes, gets named after and conceptually strung upon this or that +element of it which we have already established. The immutability +of such an abstract system is its great practical merit; the same +identical terms and relations in it can always be recovered and +referred to--change itself is just such an unalterable concept. But +all these abstract concepts are but as flowers gathered, they are only +moments dipped out from the stream of time, snap-shots taken, as by +a kinetoscopic camera, at a life that in its original coming is +continuous. Useful as they are as samples of the garden, or to +re-enter the stream with, or to insert in our revolving lantern, they +have no value but these practical values. You cannot explain by them +what makes any single phenomenon be or go--you merely dot out the path +of appearances which it traverses. For you cannot make continuous +being out of discontinuities, and your concepts are discontinuous. The +stages into which you analyze a change are _states_, the change itself +goes on between them. It lies along their intervals, inhabits what +your definition fails to gather up, and thus eludes conceptual +explanation altogether. + +'When the mathematician,' Bergson writes, 'calculates the state of +a system at the end of a time _t_, nothing need prevent him from +supposing that betweenwhiles the universe vanishes, in order suddenly +to appear again at the due moment in the new configuration. It is +only the _t_-th moment that counts--that which flows throughout the +intervals, namely real time, plays no part in his calculation.... In +short, the world on which the mathematician operates is a world which +dies and is born anew at every instant, like the world which Descartes +thought of when he spoke of a continued creation.' To know adequately +what really _happens_ we ought, Bergson insists, to see into the +intervals, but the mathematician sees only their extremities. He +fixes only a few results, he dots a curve and then interpolates, he +substitutes a tracing for a reality. + +This being so undeniably the case, the history of the way in which +philosophy has dealt with it is curious. The ruling tradition in +philosophy has always been the platonic and aristotelian belief that +fixity is a nobler and worthier thing than change. Reality must be one +and unalterable. Concepts, being themselves fixities, agree best with +this fixed nature of truth, so that for any knowledge of ours to be +quite true it must be knowledge by universal concepts rather than +by particular experiences, for these notoriously are mutable and +corruptible. This is the tradition known as rationalism in philosophy, +and what I have called intellectualism is only the extreme application +of it. In spite of sceptics and empiricists, in spite of Protagoras, +Hume, and James Mill, rationalism has never been seriously questioned, +for its sharpest critics have always had a tender place in their +hearts for it, and have obeyed some of its mandates. They have not +been consistent; they have played fast and loose with the enemy; and +Bergson alone has been radical. + +To show what I mean by this, let me contrast his procedure with that +of some of the transcendentalist philosophers whom I have lately +mentioned. Coming after Kant, these pique themselves on being +'critical,' on building in fact upon Kant's 'critique' of pure reason. +What that critique professed to establish was this, that concepts do +not apprehend reality, but only such appearances as our senses +feed out to them. They give immutable intellectual forms to these +appearances, it is true, but the reality _an sich_ from which in +ultimate resort the sense-appearances have to come remains forever +unintelligible to our intellect. Take motion, for example. Sensibly, +motion comes in drops, waves, or pulses; either some actual amount of +it, or none, being apprehended. This amount is the datum or _gabe_ +which reality feeds out to our intellectual faculty; but our intellect +makes of it a task or _aufgabe_--this pun is one of the most memorable +of Kant's formulas--and insists that in every pulse of it an infinite +number of successive minor pulses shall be ascertainable. These minor +pulses _we_ can indeed _go on_ to ascertain or to compute indefinitely +if we have patience; but it would contradict the definition of an +infinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually +counted _themselves_ out piecemeal. Zeno made this manifest; so the +infinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus +a future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of +structure. The datum after it has made itself must be decompos_able_ +ad infinitum by our conception, but of the steps by which that +structure actually got composed we know nothing. Our intellect casts, +in short, no ray of light on the processes by which experiences _get +made_. + +Kant's monistic successors have in general found the data of immediate +experience even more self-contradictory, when intellectually treated, +than Kant did. Not only the character of infinity involved in the +relation of various empirical data to their 'conditions,' but the very +notion that empirical things should be related to one another at all, +has seemed to them, when the intellectualistic fit was upon them, full +of paradox and contradiction. We saw in a former lecture numerous +instances of this from Hegel, Bradley, Royce, and others. We saw also +where the solution of such an intolerable state of things was sought +for by these authors. Whereas Kant had placed it outside of and +_before_ our experience, in the _dinge an sich_ which are the causes +of the latter, his monistic successors all look for it either _after_ +experience, as its absolute completion, or else consider it to be even +now implicit within experience as its ideal signification. Kant and +his successors look, in short, in diametrically opposite directions. +Do not be misled by Kant's admission of theism into his system. +His God is the ordinary dualistic God of Christianity, to whom his +philosophy simply opens the door; he has nothing whatsoever in common +with the 'absolute spirit' set up by his successors. So far as this +absolute spirit is logically derived from Kant, it is not from his +God, but from entirely different elements of his philosophy. First +from his notion that an unconditioned totality of the conditions of +any experience must be assignable; and then from his other notion that +the presence of some witness, or ego of apperception, is the most +universal of all the conditions in question. The post-kantians make +of the witness-condition what is called a concrete universal, an +individualized all-witness or world-self, which shall imply in its +rational constitution each and all of the other conditions put +together, and therefore necessitate each and all of the conditioned +experiences. + +Abridgments like this of other men's opinions are very unsatisfactory, +they always work injustice; but in this case those of you who are +familiar with the literature will see immediately what I have in mind; +and to the others, if there be any here, it will suffice to say that +what I am trying so pedantically to point out is only the fact that +monistic idealists after Kant have invariably sought relief from the +supposed contradictions of our world of sense by looking forward +toward an _ens rationis_ conceived as its integration or logical +completion, while he looked backward toward non-rational _dinge an +sich_ conceived as its cause. Pluralistic empiricists, on the other +hand, have remained in the world of sense, either naïvely and because +they overlooked the intellectualistic contradictions, or because, not +able to ignore them, they thought they could refute them by a superior +use of the same intellectualistic logic. Thus it is that John Mill +pretends to refute the Achilles-tortoise fallacy. + +The important point to notice here is the intellectualist logic. Both +sides treat it as authoritative, but they do so capriciously: the +absolutists smashing the world of sense by its means, the empiricists +smashing the absolute--for the absolute, they say, is the quintessence +of all logical contradictions. Neither side attains consistency. +The Hegelians have to invoke a higher logic to supersede the purely +destructive efforts of their first logic. The empiricists use their +logic against the absolute, but refuse to use it against finite +experience. Each party uses it or drops it to suit the vision it has +faith in, but neither impugns in principle its general theoretic +authority. + +Bergson alone challenges its theoretic authority in principle. He +alone denies that mere conceptual logic can tell us what is impossible +or possible in the world of being or fact; and he does so for reasons +which at the same time that they rule logic out from lordship over the +whole of life, establish a vast and definite sphere of influence where +its sovereignty is indisputable. Bergson's own text, felicitous as +it is, is too intricate for quotation, so I must use my own inferior +words in explaining what I mean by saying this. + +In the first place, logic, giving primarily the relations between +concepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only +secondarily or so far as the facts have been already identified with +concepts and defined by them, must of course stand or fall with the +conceptual method. But the conceptual method is a transformation which +the flux of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice +essentially and only subordinately in the interests of theory. We +live forward, we understand backward, said a danish writer; and to +understand life by concepts is to arrest its movement, cutting it up +into bits as if with scissors, and immobilizing these in our logical +herbarium where, comparing them as dried specimens, we can ascertain +which of them statically includes or excludes which other. This +treatment supposes life to have already accomplished itself, for the +concepts, being so many views taken after the fact, are retrospective +and post mortem. Nevertheless we can draw conclusions from them and +project them into the future. We cannot learn from them how life made +itself go, or how it will make itself go; but, on the supposition that +its ways of making itself go are unchanging, we can calculate what +positions of imagined arrest it will exhibit hereafter under given +conditions. We can compute, for instance, at what point Achilles +will be, and where the tortoise will be, at the end of the twentieth +minute. Achilles may then be at a point far ahead; but the full detail +of how he will have managed practically to get there our logic never +gives us--we have seen, indeed, that it finds that its results +contradict the facts of nature. The computations which the other +sciences make differ in no respect from those of mathematics. The +concepts used are all of them dots through which, by interpolation or +extrapolation, curves are drawn, while along the curves other dots are +found as consequences. The latest refinements of logic dispense +with the curves altogether, and deal solely with the dots and their +correspondences each to each in various series. The authors of these +recent improvements tell us expressly that their aim is to abolish the +last vestiges of intuition, _videlicet_ of concrete reality, from the +field of reasoning, which then will operate literally on mental dots +or bare abstract units of discourse, and on the ways in which they may +be strung in naked series. + +This is all very esoteric, and my own understanding of it is most +likely misunderstanding. So I speak here only by way of brief reminder +to those who know. For the rest of us it is enough to recognize this +fact, that altho by means of concepts cut out from the sensible flux +of the past, we can re-descend upon the future flux and, making +another cut, say what particular thing is likely to be found there; +and that altho in this sense concepts give us knowledge, and may be +said to have some theoretic value (especially when the particular +thing foretold is one in which we take no present practical interest); +yet in the deeper sense of giving _insight_ they have no theoretic +value, for they quite fail to connect us with the inner life of the +flux, or with the causes that govern its direction. Instead of being +interpreters of reality, concepts negate the inwardness of reality +altogether. They make the whole notion of a causal influence between +finite things incomprehensible. No real activities and indeed no real +connexions of any kind can obtain if we follow the conceptual logic; +for to be distinguishable, according to what I call intellectualism, +is to be incapable of connexion. The work begun by Zeno, and continued +by Hume, Kant, Herbart, Hegel, and Bradley, does not stop till +sensible reality lies entirely disintegrated at the feet of 'reason.' + +Of the 'absolute' reality which reason proposes to substitute for +sensible reality I shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile you see +what Professor Bergson means by insisting that the function of the +intellect is practical rather than theoretical. Sensible reality is +too concrete to be entirely manageable--look at the narrow range of it +which is all that any animal, living in it exclusively as he does, is +able to compass. To get from one point in it to another we have to +plough or wade through the whole intolerable interval. No detail is +spared us; it is as bad as the barbed-wire complications at Port +Arthur, and we grow old and die in the process. But with our faculty +of abstracting and fixing concepts we are there in a second, almost as +if we controlled a fourth dimension, skipping the intermediaries as +by a divine winged power, and getting at the exact point we require +without entanglement with any context. What we do in fact is to +_harness up_ reality in our conceptual systems in order to drive it +the better. This process is practical because all the termini to which +we drive are _particular_ termini, even when they are facts of the +mental order. But the sciences in which the conceptual method chiefly +celebrates its triumphs are those of space and matter, where the +transformations of external things are dealt with. To deal with moral +facts conceptually, we have first to transform them, substitute +brain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests +as mechanical forces, our conscious 'selves' as 'streams,' and the +like. Paradoxical effect! as Bergson well remarks, if our intellectual +life were not practical but destined to reveal the inner natures. +One would then suppose that it would find itself most at home in the +domain of its own intellectual realities. But it is precisely there +that it finds itself at the end of its tether. We know the inner +movements of our spirit only perceptually. We feel them live in us, +but can give no distinct account of their elements, nor definitely +predict their future; while things that lie along the world of space, +things of the sort that we literally _handle_, are what our intellects +cope with most successfully. Does not this confirm us in the view that +the original and still surviving function of our intellectual life +is to guide us in the practical adaptation of our expectancies and +activities? + +One can easily get into a verbal mess at this point, and my own +experience with pragmatism' makes me shrink from the dangers that lie +in the word 'practical,' and far rather than stand out against you for +that word, I am quite willing to part company with Professor Bergson, +and to ascribe a primarily theoretical function to our intellect, +provided you on your part then agree to discriminate 'theoretic' or +scientific knowledge from the deeper 'speculative' knowledge aspired +to by most philosophers, and concede that theoretic knowledge, +which is knowledge _about_ things, as distinguished from living or +sympathetic acquaintance with them, touches only the outer surface of +reality. The surface which theoretic knowledge taken in this sense +covers may indeed be enormous in extent; it may dot the whole diameter +of space and time with its conceptual creations; but it does not +penetrate a millimeter into the solid dimension. That inner dimension +of reality is occupied by the _activities_ that keep it going, but the +intellect, speaking through Hume, Kant & Co., finds itself obliged to +deny, and persists in denying, that activities have any intelligible +existence. What exists for _thought_, we are told, is at most the +results that we illusorily ascribe to such activities, strung along +the surfaces of space and time by _regeln der verknüpfung_, laws of +nature which state only coexistences and successions.[1] + +Thought deals thus solely with surfaces. It can name the thickness +of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is +essential and permanent, not temporary. + +The only way in which to apprehend reality's thickness is either to +experience it directly by being a part of reality one's self, or to +evoke it in imagination by sympathetically divining some one else's +inner life. But what we thus immediately experience or concretely +divine is very limited in duration, whereas abstractly we are able to +conceive eternities. Could we feel a million years concretely as we +now feel a passing minute, we should have very little employment for +our conceptual faculty. We should know the whole period fully at every +moment of its passage, whereas we must now construct it laboriously by +means of concepts which we project. Direct acquaintance and conceptual +knowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the +other's defects. If what we care most about be the synoptic treatment +of phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered +like, we must follow the conceptual method. But if, as metaphysicians, +we are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what +really makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts +altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing +moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points +of which they occasionally rest and perch. + +Professor Bergson thus inverts the traditional platonic doctrine +absolutely. Instead of intellectual knowledge being the profounder, +he calls it the more superficial. Instead of being the only adequate +knowledge, it is grossly inadequate, and its only superiority is the +practical one of enabling us to make short cuts through experience +and thereby to save time. The one thing it cannot do is to reveal the +nature of things--which last remark, if not clear already, will become +clearer as I proceed. Dive back into the flux itself, then, Bergson +tells us, if you wish to _know_ reality, that flux which Platonism, in +its strange belief that only the immutable is excellent, has always +spurned; turn your face toward sensation, that flesh-bound thing which +rationalism has always loaded with abuse.--This, you see, is exactly +the opposite remedy from that of looking forward into the absolute, +which our idealistic contemporaries prescribe. It violates our mental +habits, being a kind of passive and receptive listening quite contrary +to that effort to react noisily and verbally on everything, which is +our usual intellectual pose. + +What, then, are the peculiar features in the perceptual flux which the +conceptual translation so fatally leaves out? + +The essence of life is its continuously changing character; but our +concepts are all discontinuous and fixed, and the only mode of making +them coincide with life is by arbitrarily supposing positions of +arrest therein. With such arrests our concepts may be made congruent. +But these concepts are not _parts_ of reality, not real positions +taken by it, but _suppositions_ rather, notes taken by ourselves, and +you can no more dip up the substance of reality with them than you can +dip up water with a net, however finely meshed. + +When we conceptualize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything +but what we have fixed. A concept means a _that-and-no-other_. +Conceptually, time excludes space; motion and rest exclude each other; +approach excludes contact; presence excludes absence; unity excludes +plurality; independence excludes relativity; 'mine' excludes 'yours'; +this connexion excludes that connexion--and so on indefinitely; +whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences +compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is +excluded and what not. Past and future, for example, conceptually +separated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined +as being the opposite sides of that cut, are to some extent, however +brief, co-present with each other throughout experience. The literally +present moment is a purely verbal supposition, not a position; the +only present ever realized concretely being the 'passing moment' in +which the dying rearward of time and its dawning future forever mix +their lights. Say 'now' and it _was_ even while you say it. + +It is just intellectualism's attempt to substitute static cuts +for units of experienced duration that makes real motion so +unintelligible. The conception of the first half of the interval +between Achilles and the tortoise excludes that of the last half, and +the mathematical necessity of traversing it separately before the last +half is traversed stands permanently in the way of the last half ever +being traversed. Meanwhile the living Achilles (who, for the purposes +of this discussion, is only the abstract name of one phenomenon of +impetus, just as the tortoise is of another) asks no leave of logic. +The velocity of his acts is an indivisible nature in them like the +expansive tension in a spring compressed. We define it conceptually as +[_s/t_], but the _s_ and _t_ are only artificial cuts made after the +fact, and indeed most artificial when we treat them in both runners +as the same tracts of 'objective' space and time, for the experienced +spaces and times in which the tortoise inwardly lives are probably +as different as his velocity from the same things in Achilles. The +impetus of Achilles is one concrete fact, and carries space, time, and +conquest over the inferior creature's motion indivisibly in it. He +perceives nothing, while running, of the mathematician's homogeneous +time and space, of the infinitely numerous succession of cuts in both, +or of their order. End and beginning come for him in the one onrush, +and all that he actually experiences is that, in the midst of a +certain intense effort of his own, the rival is in point of fact +outstripped. + +We are so inveterately wedded to the conceptual decomposition of life +that I know that this will seem to you like putting muddiest confusion +in place of clearest thought, and relapsing into a molluscoid state +of mind. Yet I ask you whether the absolute superiority of our higher +thought is so very clear, if all that it can find is impossibility in +tasks which sense-experience so easily performs. + +What makes you call real life confusion is that it presents, as +if they were dissolved in one another, a lot of differents which +conception breaks life's flow by keeping apart. But _are_ not +differents actually dissolved in one another? Hasn't every bit of +experience its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity, +its urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which +can exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it? +They exist only _durcheinander_. Reality always is, in M. Bergson's +phrase, an endosmosis or conflux of the same with the different: they +compenetrate and telescope. For conceptual logic, the same is nothing +but the same, and all sames with a third thing are the same with each +other. Not so in concrete experience. Two spots on our skin, each of +which feels the same as a third spot when touched along with it, are +felt as different from each other. Two tones, neither distinguishable +from a third tone, are perfectly distinct from each other. The whole +process of life is due to life's violation of our logical axioms. +Take its continuity as an example. Terms like A and C appear to be +connected by intermediaries, by B for example. Intellectualism calls +this absurd, for 'B-connected-with-A' is, 'as such,' a different term +from 'B-connected-with-C.' But real life laughs at logic's veto. +Imagine a heavy log which takes two men to carry it. First A and B +take it. Then C takes hold and A drops off; then D takes hold and B +drops off, so that C and D now bear it; and so on. The log meanwhile +never drops, and keeps its sameness throughout the journey. Even so +it is with all our experiences. Their changes are not complete +annihilations followed by complete creations of something absolutely +novel. There is partial decay and partial growth, and all the while a +nucleus of relative constancy from which what decays drops off, and +which takes into itself whatever is grafted on, until at length +something wholly different has taken its place. In such a process we +are as sure, in spite of intellectualist logic with its 'as suches,' +that it _is_ the same nucleus which is able now to make connexion with +what goes and again with what comes, as we are sure that the same +point can lie on diverse lines that intersect there. Without being one +throughout, such a universe is continuous. Its members interdigitate +with their next neighbors in manifold directions, and there are no +clean cuts between them anywhere. + +The great clash of intellectualist logic with sensible experience is +where the experience is that of influence exerted. Intellectualism +denies (as we saw in lecture ii) that finite things can act on one +another, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up +to themselves. To act on anything means to get into it somehow; but +that would mean to get out of one's self and be one's other, which is +self-contradictory, etc. Meanwhile each of us actually _is_ his own +other to that extent, livingly knowing how to perform the trick which +logic tells us can't be done. My thoughts animate and actuate this +very body which you see and hear, and thereby influence your thoughts. +The dynamic current somehow does get from me to you, however numerous +the intermediary conductors may have to be. Distinctions may be +insulators in logic as much as they like, but in life distinct things +can and do commune together every moment. + +The conflict of the two ways of knowing is best summed up in the +intellectualist doctrine that 'the same cannot exist in many +relations.' This follows of course from the concepts of the two +relations being so distinct that 'what-is-in-the-one' means 'as such' +something distinct from what 'what-is-in-the-other' means. It is like +Mill's ironical saying, that we should not think of Newton as both an +Englishman and a mathematician, because an Englishman as such is not +a mathematician and a mathematician as such is not an Englishman. But +the real Newton was somehow both things at once; and throughout the +whole finite universe each real thing proves to be many differents +without undergoing the necessity of breaking into disconnected +editions of itself. + +These few indications will perhaps suffice to put you at the +bergsonian point of view. The immediate experience of life solves the +problems which so baffle our conceptual intelligence: How can what is +manifold be one? how can things get out of themselves? how be their +own others? how be both distinct and connected? how can they act on +one another? how be for others and yet for themselves? how be absent +and present at once? The intellect asks these questions much as we +might ask how anything can both separate and unite things, or how +sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. If +you already know space sensibly, you can answer the former question by +pointing to any interval in it, long or short; if you know the musical +scale, you can answer the latter by sounding an octave; but then you +must first have the sensible knowledge of these realities. Similarly +Bergson answers the intellectualist conundrums by pointing back to our +various finite sensational experiences and saying, 'Lo, even thus; +even so are these other problems solved livingly.' + +When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can +reconstruct it in its wholeness. Out of no amount of discreteness +can you manufacture the concrete. But place yourself at a bound, or +_d'emblée_, as M. Bergson says, inside of the living, moving, active +thickness of the real, and all the abstractions and distinctions +are given into your hand: you can now make the intellectualist +substitutions to your heart's content. Install yourself in phenomenal +movement, for example, and velocity, succession, dates, positions, and +innumerable other things are given you in the bargain. But with only +an abstract succession of dates and positions you can never patch up +movement itself. It slips through their intervals and is lost. + +So it is with every concrete thing, however complicated. Our +intellectual handling of it is a retrospective patchwork, a +post-mortem dissection, and can follow any order we find most +expedient. We can make the thing seem self-contradictory whenever +we wish to. But place yourself at the point of view of the thing's +interior _doing_, and all these back-looking and conflicting +conceptions lie harmoniously in your hand. Get at the expanding centre +of a human character, the _élan vital_ of a man, as Bergson calls it, +by living sympathy, and at a stroke you see how it makes those who see +it from without interpret it in such diverse ways. It is something +that breaks into both honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, +stupidity and insight, at the touch of varying circumstances, and you +feel exactly why and how it does this, and never seek to identify +it stably with any of these single abstractions. Only your +intellectualist does that,--and you now also feel why _he_ must do it +to the end. + +Place yourself similarly at the centre of a man's philosophic vision +and you understand at once all the different things it makes him write +or say. But keep outside, use your post-mortem method, try to build +the philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then +another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You +crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling +into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but +inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope +that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have +had something different from this intellectualist type of criticism +applied to their own works! + +What really _exists_ is not things made but things in the making. Once +made, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative conceptual +decompositions can be used in defining them. But put yourself _in the +making_ by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the +whole range of possible decompositions coming at once into your +possession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of +them is the more absolutely true. Reality _falls_ in passing into +conceptual analysis; it _mounts_ in living its own undivided life--it +buds and bourgeons, changes and creates. Once adopt the movement of +this life in any given instance and you know what Bergson calls the +_devenir réel_ by which the thing evolves and grows. Philosophy should +seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality, +not follow science in vainly patching together fragments of its dead +results. + +Thus much of M. Bergson's philosophy is sufficient for my purpose in +these lectures, so here I will stop, leaving unnoticed all its other +constituent features, original and interesting tho they be. You may +say, and doubtless some of you now are saying inwardly, that his +remanding us to sensation in this wise is only a regress, a return to +that ultra-crude empiricism which your own idealists since Green +have buried ten times over. I confess that it is indeed a return to +empiricism, but I think that the return in such accomplished shape +only proves the latter's immortal truth. What won't stay buried must +have some genuine life. _Am anfang war die tat_; fact is a _first_; to +which all our conceptual handling comes as an inadequate second, +never its full equivalent. When I read recent transcendentalist +literature--I must partly except my colleague Royce!--I get nothing +but a sort of marking of time, champing of jaws, pawing of the ground, +and resettling into the same attitude, like a weary horse in a stall +with an empty manger. It is but turning over the same few threadbare +categories, bringing the same objections, and urging the same answers +and solutions, with never a new fact or a new horizon coming into +sight. But open Bergson, and new horizons loom on every page you read. +It is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells +of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded +professors have written about what other previous professors have +thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. + +That he gives us no closed-in system will of course be fatal to him in +intellectualist eyes. He only evokes and invites; but he first annuls +the intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with +a philosophical conscience never quite set free before. As a french +disciple of his well expresses it: 'Bergson claims of us first of all +a certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a +logical revolution. But those who have once found themselves flexible +enough for the execution of such a psychological change of front, +discover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient +attitude of mind. They are now Bergsonians ... and possess the +principal thoughts of the master all at once. They have understood in +the fashion in which one loves, they have caught the whole melody and +can thereafter admire at their leisure the originality, the fecundity, +and the imaginative genius with which its author develops, transposes, +and varies in a thousand ways by the orchestration of his style and +dialectic, the original theme.'[2] + +This, scant as it is, is all I have to say about Bergson on this +occasion--I hope it may send some of you to his original text. I must +now turn back to the point where I found it advisable to appeal to his +ideas. You remember my own intellectualist difficulties in the last +lecture, about how a lot of separate consciousnesses can at the same +time be one collective thing. How, I asked, can one and the same +identical content of experience, of which on idealist principles the +_esse_ is to be felt, be felt so diversely if itself be the only +feeler? The usual way of escape by 'quatenus' or 'as such' won't +help us here if we are radical intellectualists, I said, for +appearance-together is as such _not_ appearance-apart, the world _quâ_ +many is not the world _quâ_ one, as absolutism claims. If we hold to +Hume's maxim, which later intellectualism uses so well, that whatever +things are distinguished are as separate as if there were no manner of +connexion between them, there seemed no way out of the difficulty save +by stepping outside of experience altogether and invoking different +spiritual agents, selves or souls, to realize the diversity required. +But this rescue by 'scholastic entities' I was unwilling to accept any +more than pantheistic idealists accept it. + +Yet, to quote Fechner's phrase again, 'nichts wirkliches kann +unmöglich sein,' the actual cannot be impossible, and what _is_ actual +at every moment of our lives is the sort of thing which I now +proceed to remind you of. You can hear the vibration of an electric +contact-maker, smell the ozone, see the sparks, and feel the thrill, +co-consciously as it were or in one field of experience. But you can +also isolate any one of these sensations by shutting out the rest. If +you close your eyes, hold your nose, and remove your hand, you can get +the sensation of sound alone, but it seems still the same sensation +that it was; and if you restore the action of the other organs, the +sound coalesces with the feeling, the sight, and the smell sensations +again. Now the natural way of talking of all this[3] is to say that +certain sensations are experienced, now singly, and now together +with other sensations, in a common conscious field. Fluctuations of +attention give analogous results. We let a sensation in or keep it out +by changing our attention; and similarly we let an item of memory in +or drop it out. [Please don't raise the question here of how these +changes _come to pass_. The immediate condition is probably cerebral +in every instance, but it would be irrelevant now to consider it, for +now we are thinking only of results, and I repeat that the natural way +of thinking of them is that which intellectualist criticism finds so +absurd.] + +The absurdity charged is that the self-same should function so +differently, now with and now without something else. But this it +sensibly seems to do. This very desk which I strike with my hand +strikes in turn your eyes. It functions at once as a physical object +in the outer world and as a mental object in our sundry mental worlds. +The very body of mine that _my_ thought actuates is the body whose +gestures are _your_ visual object and to which you give my name. The +very log which John helped to carry is the log now borne by James. The +very girl you love is simultaneously entangled elsewhere. The very +place behind me is in front of you. Look where you will, you gather +only examples of the same amid the different, and of different +relations existing as it were in solution in the same thing. _Quâ_ +this an experience is not the same as it is _quâ_ that, truly enough; +but the _quâs_ are conceptual shots of ours at its post-mortem +remains, and in its sensational immediacy everything is all at once +whatever different things it is at once at all. It is before C and +after A, far from you and near to me, without this associate and with +that one, active and passive, physical and mental, a whole of +parts and part of a higher whole, all simultaneously and without +interference or need of doubling-up its being, so long as we keep to +what I call the 'immediate' point of view, the point of view in which +we follow our sensational life's continuity, and to which all living +language conforms. It is only when you try--to continue using the +hegelian vocabulary--to 'mediate' the immediate, or to substitute +concepts for sensational life, that intellectualism celebrates +its triumph and the immanent-self-contradictoriness of all this +smooth-running finite experience gets proved. + +Of the oddity of inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences +resulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object +called an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions +unreduced, I will say something in the next lecture. The absolute is +said to perform its feats by taking up its other into itself. But +that is exactly what is done when every individual morsel of the +sensational stream takes up the adjacent morsels by coalescing with +them. This is just what we mean by the stream's sensible continuity. +No element _there_ cuts itself off from any other element, as concepts +cut themselves from concepts. No part _there_ is so small as not to be +a place of conflux. No part there is not really _next_ its neighbors; +which means that there is literally nothing between; which means +again that no part goes exactly so far and no farther; that no part +absolutely excludes another, but that they compenetrate and are +cohesive; that if you tear out one, its roots bring out more with +them; that whatever is real is telescoped and diffused into other +reals; that, in short, every minutest thing is already its hegelian +'own other,' in the fullest sense of the term. + +Of course this _sounds_ self-contradictory, but as the immediate facts +don't sound at all, but simply _are_, until we conceptualize and name +them vocally, the contradiction results only from the conceptual +or discursive form being substituted for the real form. But if, as +Bergson shows, that form is superimposed for practical ends only, in +order to let us jump about over life instead of wading through it; +and if it cannot even pretend to reveal anything of what life's inner +nature is or ought to be; why then we can turn a deaf ear to its +accusations. The resolve to turn the deaf ear is the inner crisis or +'catastrophe' of which M. Bergson's disciple whom I lately quoted +spoke. We are so subject to the philosophic tradition which treats +_logos_ or discursive thought generally as the sole avenue to truth, +that to fall back on raw unverbalized life as more of a revealer, and +to think of concepts as the merely practical things which Bergson +calls them, comes very hard. It is putting off our proud maturity of +mind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of +reason. But difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way, +I believe, to the possession of reality, and I permit myself to hope +that some of you may share my opinion after you have heard my next +lecture. + + + + +LECTURE VII + + +THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE + +I fear that few of you will have been able to obey Bergson's call upon +you to look towards the sensational life for the fuller knowledge of +reality, or to sympathize with his attempt to limit the divine right +of concepts to rule our mind absolutely. It is too much like looking +downward and not up. Philosophy, you will say, doesn't lie flat on its +belly in the middle of experience, in the very thick of its sand and +gravel, as this Bergsonism does, never getting a peep at anything from +above. Philosophy is essentially the vision of things from above. +It doesn't simply feel the detail of things, it comprehends their +intelligible plan, sees their forms and principles, their categories +and rules, their order and necessity. It takes the superior point of +view of the architect. Is it conceivable that it should ever forsake +that point of view and abandon itself to a slovenly life of immediate +feeling? To say nothing of your traditional Oxford devotion to +Aristotle and Plato, the leaven of T.H. Green probably works still +too strongly here for his anti-sensationalism to be outgrown quickly. +Green more than any one realized that knowledge _about_ things was +knowledge of their relations; but nothing could persuade him that our +sensational life could contain any relational element. He followed +the strict intellectualist method with sensations. What they were not +expressly defined as including, they must exclude. Sensations are not +defined as relations, so in the end Green thought that they could +get related together only by the action on them from above of a +'self-distinguishing' absolute and eternal mind, present to that which +is related, but not related itself. 'A relation,' he said, 'is not +contingent with the contingency of feeling. It is permanent with +the permanence of the combining and comparing thought which alone +constitutes it.'[1] In other words, relations are purely conceptual +objects, and the sensational life as such cannot relate itself +together. Sensation in itself, Green wrote, is fleeting, momentary, +unnameable (because, while we name it, it has become another), and for +the same reason unknowable, the very negation of knowability. Were +there no permanent objects of conception for our sensations to be +'referred to,' there would be no significant names, but only noises, +and a consistent sensationalism must be speechless.[2] Green's +intellectualism was so earnest that it produced a natural and an +inevitable effect. But the atomistic and unrelated sensations which he +had in mind were purely fictitious products of his rationalist fancy. +The psychology of our own day disavows them utterly,[3] and Green's +laborious belaboring of poor old Locke for not having first seen that +his ideas of sensation were just that impracticable sort of thing, and +then fled to transcendental idealism as a remedy,--his belaboring of +poor old Locke for this, I say, is pathetic. Every examiner of the +sensible life _in concreto_ must see that relations of every sort, of +time, space, difference, likeness, change, rate, cause, or what not, +are just as integral members of the sensational flux as terms are, and +that conjunctive relations are just as true members of the flux as +disjunctive relations are.[4] This is what in some recent writings of +mine I have called the 'radically empiricist' doctrine (in distinction +from the doctrine of mental atoms which the name empiricism so +often suggests). Intellectualistic critics of sensation insist that +sensations are _disjoined_ only. Radical empiricism insists +that conjunctions between them are just as immediately given as +disjunctions are, and that relations, whether disjunctive or +conjunctive, are in their original sensible givenness just as fleeting +and momentary (in Green's words), and just as 'particular,' as terms +are. Later, both terms and relations get universalized by being +conceptualized and named.[5] But all the thickness, concreteness, and +individuality of experience exists in the immediate and relatively +unnamed stages of it, to the richness of which, and to the standing +inadequacy of our conceptions to match it, Professor Bergson so +emphatically calls our attention. And now I am happy to say that we +can begin to gather together some of the separate threads of our +argument, and see a little better the general kind of conclusion +toward which we are tending. Pray go back with me to the lecture +before the last, and recall what I said about the difficulty of seeing +how states of consciousness can compound themselves. The difficulty +seemed to be the same, you remember, whether we took it in psychology +as the composition of finite states of mind out of simpler finite +states, or in metaphysics as the composition of the absolute mind out +of finite minds in general. It is the general conceptualist difficulty +of any one thing being the same with many things, either at once or +in succession, for the abstract concepts of oneness and manyness must +needs exclude each other. In the particular instance that we have +dwelt on so long, the one thing is the all-form of experience, the +many things are the each-forms of experience in you and me. To call +them the same we must treat them as if each were simultaneously +its own other, a feat on conceptualist principles impossible of +performance. + +On the principle of going behind the conceptual function altogether, +however, and looking to the more primitive flux of the sensational +life for reality's true shape, a way is open to us, as I tried in my +last lecture to show. Not only the absolute is its own other, but the +simplest bits of immediate experience are their own others, if that +hegelian phrase be once for all allowed. The concrete pulses of +experience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual +substitutes for them are confined by. They run into one another +continuously and seem to interpenetrate. What in them is relation and +what is matter related is hard to discern. You feel no one of them as +inwardly simple, and no two as wholly without confluence where they +touch. There is no datum so small as not to show this mystery, if +mystery it be. The tiniest feeling that we can possibly have comes +with an earlier and a later part and with a sense of their continuous +procession. Mr. Shadworth Hodgson showed long ago that there is +literally no such object as the present moment except as an unreal +postulate of abstract thought.[6] The 'passing' moment is, as I +already have reminded you, the minimal fact, with the 'apparition of +difference' inside of it as well as outside. If we do not feel both +past and present in one field of feeling, we feel them not at all. We +have the same many-in-one in the matter that fills the passing time. +The rush of our thought forward through its fringes is the everlasting +peculiarity of its life. We realize this life as something always off +its balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a +darkness through a dawn into a brightness that we feel to be the dawn +fulfilled. In the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as +an alteration. 'Yes,' we say at the full brightness, '_this_ is what I +just meant.' 'No,' we feel at the dawning, 'this is not yet the full +meaning, there is more to come.' In every crescendo of sensation, in +every effort to recall, in every progress towards the satisfaction +of desire, this succession of an emptiness and fulness that have +reference to each other and are one flesh is the essence of the +phenomenon. In every hindrance of desire the sense of an ideal +presence which is absent in fact, of an absent, in a word, which the +only function of the present is to _mean_, is even more notoriously +there. And in the movement of pure thought we have the same +phenomenon. When I say _Socrates is mortal_, the moment _Socrates_ is +incomplete; it falls forward through the _is_ which is pure movement, +into the _mortal_ which is indeed bare mortal on the tongue, but +for the mind is _that mortal_, the _mortal Socrates_, at last +satisfactorily disposed of and told off.[7] + +Here, then, inside of the minimal pulses of experience, is realized +that very inner complexity which the transcendentalists say only the +absolute can genuinely possess. The gist of the matter is always the +same--something ever goes indissolubly with something else. You cannot +separate the same from its other, except by abandoning the real +altogether and taking to the conceptual system. What is immediately +given in the single and particular instance is always something pooled +and mutual, something with no dark spot, no point of ignorance. No one +elementary bit of reality is eclipsed from the next bit's point of +view, if only we take reality sensibly and in small enough pulses--and +by us it has to be taken pulse-wise, for our span of consciousness is +too short to grasp the larger collectivity of things except nominally +and abstractly. No more of reality collected together at once is +extant anywhere, perhaps, than in my experience of reading this page, +or in yours of listening; yet within those bits of experience as +they come to pass we get a fulness of content that no conceptual +description can equal. Sensational experiences _are_ their 'own +others,' then, both internally and externally. Inwardly they are one +with their parts, and outwardly they pass continuously into their next +neighbors, so that events separated by years of time in a man's life +hang together unbrokenly by the intermediary events. Their _names_, +to be sure, cut them into separate conceptual entities, but no cuts +existed in the continuum in which they originally came. + +If, with all this in our mind, we turn to our own particular +predicament, we see that our old objection to the self-compounding of +states of consciousness, our accusation that it was impossible for +purely logical reasons, is unfounded in principle. Every smallest +state of consciousness, concretely taken, overflows its own +definition. Only concepts are self-identical; only 'reason' deals with +closed equations; nature is but a name for excess; every point in +her opens out and runs into the more; and the only question, with +reference to any point we may be considering, is how far into the +rest of nature we may have to go in order to get entirely beyond its +overflow. In the pulse of inner life immediately present now in each +of us is a little past, a little future, a little awareness of our own +body, of each other's persons, of these sublimities we are trying to +talk about, of the earth's geography and the direction of history, +of truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how much more? +Feeling, however dimly and subconsciously, all these things, your +pulse of inner life is continuous with them, belongs to them and they +to it. You can't identify it with either one of them rather than with +the others, for if you let it develop into no matter which of those +directions, what it develops into will look back on it and say, 'That +was the original germ of me.' + +In _principle_, then, the real units of our immediately-felt life are +unlike the units that intellectualist logic holds to and makes its +calculations with. They are not separate from their own others, and +you have to take them at widely separated dates to find any two of +them that seem unblent. Then indeed they do appear separate even as +their concepts are separate; a chasm yawns between them; but the chasm +itself is but an intellectualist fiction, got by abstracting from the +continuous sheet of experiences with which the intermediary time was +filled. It is like the log carried first by William and Henry, then +by William, Henry, and John, then by Henry and John, then by John and +Peter, and so on. All real units of experience _overlap_. Let a row of +equidistant dots on a sheet of paper symbolize the concepts by which +we intellectualize the world. Let a ruler long enough to cover at +least three dots stand for our sensible experience. Then the conceived +changes of the sensible experience can be symbolized by sliding the +ruler along the line of dots. One concept after another will apply to +it, one after another drop away, but it will always cover at least two +of them, and no dots less than three will ever adequately cover _it_. +You falsify it if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots. + +What is true here of successive states must also be true of +simultaneous characters. They also overlap each other with their +being. My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a +fringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious more. I use three +separate terms here to describe, this fact; but I might as well use +three hundred, for the fact is all shades and no boundaries. Which +part of it properly is in my consciousness, which out? If I name what +is out, it already has come in. The centre works in one way while the +margins work in another, and presently overpower the centre and are +central themselves. What we conceptually identify ourselves with and +say we are thinking of at any time is the centre; but our _full_ self +is the whole field, with all those indefinitely radiating subconscious +possibilities of increase that we can only feel without conceiving, +and can hardly begin to analyze. The collective and the distributive +ways of being coexist here, for each part functions distinctly, makes +connexion with its own peculiar region in the still wider rest of +experience and tends to draw us into that line, and yet the whole is +somehow felt as one pulse of our life,--not conceived so, but felt so. + +In principle, then, as I said, intellectualism's edge is broken; it +can only approximate to reality, and its logic is inapplicable to our +inner life, which spurns its vetoes and mocks at its impossibilities. +Every bit of us at every moment is part and parcel of a wider self, it +quivers along various radii like the wind-rose on a compass, and the +actual in it is continuously one with possibles not yet in our present +sight.[8] And just as we are co-conscious with our own momentary +margin, may not we ourselves form the margin of some more really +central self in things which is co-conscious with the whole of us? May +not you and I be confluent in a higher consciousness, and confluently +active there, tho we now know it not? + +I am tiring myself and you, I know, by vainly seeking to describe +by concepts and words what I say at the same time exceeds either +conceptualization or verbalization. As long as one continues +_talking_, intellectualism remains in undisturbed possession of the +field. The return to life can't come about by talking. It is an _act_; +to make you return to life, I must set an example for your imitation, +I must deafen you to talk, or to the importance of talk, by showing +you, as Bergson does, that the concepts we talk with are made for +purposes of _practice_ and not for purposes of insight. Or I must +_point_, point to the mere _that_ of life, and you by inner sympathy +must fill out the _what_ for yourselves. The minds of some of you, +I know, will absolutely refuse to do so, refuse to think in +non-conceptualized terms. I myself absolutely refused to do so +for years together, even after I knew that the denial of +manyness-in-oneness by intellectualism must be false, for the same +reality does perform the most various functions at once. But I hoped +ever for a revised intellectualist way round the difficulty, and it +was only after reading Bergson that I saw that to continue using the +intellectualist method was itself the fault. I saw that philosophy had +been on a false scent ever since the days of Socrates and Plato, that +an _intellectual_ answer to the intellectualist's difficulties will +never come, and that the real way out of them, far from consisting in +the discovery of such an answer, consists in simply closing one's ears +to the question. When conceptualism summons life to justify itself +in conceptual terms, it is like a challenge addressed in a foreign +language to some one who is absorbed in his own business; it is +irrelevant to him altogether--he may let it lie unnoticed. I went thus +through the 'inner catastrophe' of which I spoke in the last lecture; +I had literally come to the end of my conceptual stock-in-trade, I was +bankrupt intellectualistically, and had to change my base. No words +of mine will probably convert you, for words can be the names only of +concepts. But if any of you try sincerely and pertinaciously on your +own separate accounts to intellectualize reality, you may be similarly +driven to a change of front. I say no more: I must leave life to teach +the lesson. + +We have now reached a point of view from which the self-compounding of +mind in its smaller and more accessible portions seems a certain +fact, and in which the speculative assumption of a similar but wider +compounding in remoter regions must be reckoned with as a legitimate +hypothesis. The absolute is not the impossible being I once thought +it. Mental facts do function both singly and together, at once, and we +finite minds may simultaneously be co-conscious with one another in a +superhuman intelligence. It is only the extravagant claims of coercive +necessity on the absolute's part that have to be denied by _a priori_ +logic. As an hypothesis trying to make itself probable on analogical +and inductive grounds, the absolute is entitled to a patient hearing. +Which is as much as to say that our serious business from now onward +lies with Fechner and his method, rather than with Hegel, Royce, or +Bradley. Fechner treats the superhuman consciousness he so fervently +believes in as an hypothesis only, which he then recommends by all the +resources of induction and persuasion. + +It is true that Fechner himself is an absolutist in his books, not +actively but passively, if I may say so. He talks not only of the +earth-soul and of the star-souls, but of an integrated soul of all +things in the cosmos without exception, and this he calls God just +as others call it the absolute. Nevertheless he _thinks_ only of +the subordinate superhuman souls, and content with having made his +obeisance once for all to the august total soul of the cosmos, he +leaves it in its lonely sublimity with no attempt to define its +nature. Like the absolute, it is 'out of range,' and not an object for +distincter vision. Psychologically, it seems to me that Fechner's +God is a lazy postulate of his, rather than a part of his system +positively thought out. As we envelop our sight and hearing, so the +earth-soul envelops us, and the star-soul the earth-soul, until--what? +Envelopment can't go on forever; it must have an _abschluss_, a total +envelope must terminate the series, so God is the name that Fechner +gives to this last all-enveloper. But if nothing escapes this +all-enveloper, he is responsible for everything, including evil, and +all the paradoxes and difficulties which I found in the absolute +at the end of our third lecture recur undiminished. Fechner tries +sincerely to grapple with the problem of evil, but he always solves it +in the leibnitzian fashion by making his God non-absolute, placing +him under conditions of 'metaphysical necessity' which even his +omnipotence cannot violate. His will has to struggle with conditions +not imposed on that will by itself. He tolerates provisionally what he +has not created, and then with endless patience tries to overcome it +and live it down. He has, in short, a history. Whenever Fechner tries +to represent him clearly, his God becomes the ordinary God of theism, +and ceases to be the absolutely totalized all-enveloper.[9] In this +shape, he represents the ideal element in things solely, and is our +champion and our helper and we his helpers, against the bad parts of +the universe. + +Fechner was in fact too little of a metaphysician to care for perfect +formal consistency in these abstract regions. He believed in God in +the pluralistic manner, but partly from convention and partly from +what I should call intellectual laziness, if laziness of any kind +could be imputed to a Fechner, he let the usual monistic talk about +him pass unchallenged. I propose to you that we should discuss the +question of God without entangling ourselves in advance in the +monistic assumption. Is it probable that there is any superhuman +consciousness at all, in the first place? When that is settled, the +further question whether its form be monistic or pluralistic is in +order. + +Before advancing to either question, however, and I shall have to deal +with both but very briefly after what has been said already, let me +finish our retrospective survey by one more remark about the curious +logical situation of the absolutists. For what have they invoked the +absolute except as a being the peculiar inner form of which shall +enable it to overcome the contradictions with which intellectualism +has found the finite many as such to be infected? The many-in-one +character that, as we have seen, every smallest tract of finite +experience offers, is considered by intellectualism to be fatal to the +reality of finite experience. What can be distinguished, it tells us, +is separate; and what is separate is unrelated, for a relation, being +a 'between,' would bring only a twofold separation. Hegel, Royce, +Bradley, and the Oxford absolutists in general seem to agree about +this logical absurdity of manyness-in-oneness in the only places where +it is empirically found. But see the curious tactics! Is the absurdity +_reduced_ in the absolute being whom they call in to relieve it? Quite +otherwise, for that being shows it on an infinitely greater scale, and +flaunts it in its very definition. The fact of its not being related +to any outward environment, the fact that all relations are inside of +itself, doesn't save it, for Mr. Bradley's great argument against the +finite is that _in_ any given bit of it (a bit of sugar, for instance) +the presence of a plurality of characters (whiteness and sweetness, +for example) is self-contradictory; so that in the final end all that +the absolute's name appears to stand for is the persistent claim of +outraged human nature that reality _shall_ not be called +absurd. _Somewhere_ there must be an aspect of it guiltless of +self-contradiction. All we can see of the absolute, meanwhile, is +guilty in the same way in which the finite is. Intellectualism sees +what it calls the guilt, when comminuted in the finite object; but +is too near-sighted to see it in the more enormous object. Yet the +absolute's constitution, if imagined at all, has to be imagined after +the analogy of some bit of finite experience. Take any _real_ bit, +suppress its environment and then magnify it to monstrosity, and you +get identically the type of structure of the absolute. It is obvious +that all your difficulties here remain and go with you. If the +relative experience was inwardly absurd, the absolute experience is +infinitely more so. Intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat, +but swallows the whole camel. But this polemic against the absolute +is as odious to me as it is to you, so I will say no more about that +being. It is only one of those wills of the wisp, those lights that +do mislead the morn, that have so often impeded the clear progress of +philosophy, so I will turn to the more general positive question of +whether superhuman unities of consciousness should be considered as +more probable or more improbable. + +In a former lecture I went over some of the fechnerian reasons for +their plausibility, or reasons that at least replied to our more +obvious grounds of doubt concerning them. The numerous facts of +divided or split human personality which the genius of certain medical +men, as Janet, Freud, Prince, Sidis, and others, have unearthed were +unknown in Fechner's time, and neither the phenomena of automatic +writing and speech, nor of mediumship and 'possession' generally, had +been recognized or studied as we now study them, so Fechner's stock of +analogies is scant compared with our present one. He did the best with +what he had, however. For my own part I find in some of these abnormal +or supernormal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior +co-consciousness being possible. I doubt whether we shall ever +understand some of them without using the very letter of Fechner's +conception of a great reservoir in which the memories of earth's +inhabitants are pooled and preserved, and from which, when the +threshold lowers or the valve opens, information ordinarily shut out +leaks into the mind of exceptional individuals among us. But those +regions of inquiry are perhaps too spook-haunted to interest an +academic audience, and the only evidence I feel it now decorous to +bring to the support of Fechner is drawn from ordinary religious +experience. I think it may be asserted that there _are_ religious +experiences of a specific nature, not deducible by analogy or +psychological reasoning from our other sorts of experience. I think +that they point with reasonable probability to the continuity of +our consciousness with a wider spiritual environment from which +the ordinary prudential man (who is the only man that scientific +psychology, so called, takes cognizance of) is shut off. I shall begin +my final lecture by referring to them again briefly. + + + + +LECTURE VIII + + +CONCLUSIONS + +At the close of my last lecture I referred to the existence of +religious experiences of a specific nature. I must now explain just +what I mean by such a claim. Briefly, the facts I have in mind may +all be described as experiences of an unexpected life succeeding upon +death. By this I don't mean immortality, or the death of the body. I +mean the deathlike termination of certain mental processes within the +individual's experience, processes that run to failure, and in some +individuals, at least, eventuate in despair. Just as romantic love +seems a comparatively recent literary invention, so these experiences +of a life that supervenes upon despair seem to have played no great +part in official theology till Luther's time; and possibly the best +way to indicate their character will be to point to a certain contrast +between the inner life of ourselves and of the ancient Greeks and +Romans. + +Mr. Chesterton, I think, says somewhere, that the Greeks and Romans, +in all that concerned their moral life, were an extraordinarily solemn +set of folks. The Athenians thought that the very gods must admire the +rectitude of Phocion and Aristides; and those gentlemen themselves +were apparently of much the same opinion. Cato's veracity was so +impeccable that the extremest incredulity a Roman could express of +anything was to say, 'I would not believe it even if Cato had told +me.' Good was good, and bad was bad, for these people. Hypocrisy, +which church-Christianity brought in, hardly existed; the naturalistic +system held firm; its values showed no hollowness and brooked no +irony. The individual, if virtuous enough, could meet all possible +requirements. The pagan pride had never crumbled. Luther was the first +moralist who broke with any effectiveness through the crust of all +this naturalistic self-sufficiency, thinking (and possibly he was +right) that Saint Paul had done it already. Religious experience of +the lutheran type brings all our naturalistic standards to bankruptcy. +You are strong only by being weak, it shows. You cannot live on pride +or self-sufficingness. There is a light in which all the naturally +founded and currently accepted distinctions, excellences, and +safeguards of our characters appear as utter childishness. Sincerely +to give up one's conceit or hope of being good in one's own right is +the only door to the universe's deeper reaches. + +These deeper reaches are familiar to evangelical Christianity and +to what is nowadays becoming known as 'mind-cure' religion or 'new +thought.' The phenomenon is that of new ranges of life succeeding on +our most despairing moments. There are resources in us that naturalism +with its literal and legal virtues never recks of, possibilities that +take our breath away, of another kind of happiness and power, based on +giving up our own will and letting something higher work for us, and +these seem to show a world wider than either physics or philistine +ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in _spite_ +of certain forms of death, indeed _because_ of certain forms of +death--death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, +of fear and worry, competency and desert, death of everything that +paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their +trust to. + +Reason, operating on our other experiences, even our psychological +experiences, would never have inferred these specifically religious +experiences in advance of their actual coming. She could not suspect +their existence, for they are discontinuous with the 'natural' +experiences they succeed upon and invert their values. But as they +actually come and are given, creation widens to the view of their +recipients. They suggest that our natural experience, our strictly +moralistic and prudential experience, may be only a fragment of real +human experience. They soften nature's outlines and open out the +strangest possibilities and perspectives. + +This is why it seems to me that the logical understanding, working in +abstraction from such specifically religious experiences, will always +omit something, and fail to reach completely adequate conclusions. +Death and failure, it will always say, _are_ death and failure +simply, and can nevermore be one with life; so religious experience, +peculiarly so called, needs, in my opinion, to be carefully considered +and interpreted by every one who aspires to reason out a more complete +philosophy. + +The sort of belief that religious experience of this type naturally +engenders in those who have it is fully in accord with Fechner's +theories. To quote words which I have used elsewhere, the believer +finds that the tenderer parts of his personal life are continuous +with a _more_ of the same quality which is operative in the universe +outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a +fashion get on board of and save himself, when all his lower being has +gone to pieces in the wreck. In a word, the believer is continuous, +to his own consciousness, at any rate, with a wider self from which +saving experiences flow in. Those who have such experiences distinctly +enough and often enough to live in the light of them remain quite +unmoved by criticism, from whatever quarter it may come, be it +academic or scientific, or be it merely the voice of logical +common sense. They have had their vision and they _know_--that is +enough--that we inhabit an invisible spiritual environment from which +help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose +instruments we are. + +One may therefore plead, I think, that Fechner's ideas are not without +direct empirical verification. There is at any rate one side of life +which would be easily explicable if those ideas were true, but of +which there appears no clear explanation so long as we assume either +with naturalism that human consciousness is the highest consciousness +there is, or with dualistic theism that there is a higher mind in the +cosmos, but that it is discontinuous with our own. It has always been +a matter of surprise with me that philosophers of the absolute should +have shown so little interest in this department of life, and so +seldom put its phenomena in evidence, even when it seemed obvious that +personal experience of some kind must have made their confidence in +their own vision so strong. The logician's bias has always been too +much with them. They have preferred the thinner to the thicker method, +dialectical abstraction being so much more dignified and academic than +the confused and unwholesome facts of personal biography. + +In spite of rationalism's disdain for the particular, the personal, +and the unwholesome, the drift of all the evidence we have seems to +me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form +of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be +co-conscious. We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our +libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having +no inkling of the meaning of it all. The intellectualist objections +to this fall away when the authority of intellectualist logic is +undermined by criticism, and then the positive empirical evidence +remains. The analogies with ordinary psychology and with the facts of +pathology, with those of psychical research, so called, and with those +of religious experience, establish, when taken together, a decidedly +_formidable_ probability in favor of a general view of the world +almost identical with Fechner's. The outlines of the superhuman +consciousness thus made probable must remain, however, very vague, and +the number of functionally distinct 'selves' it comports and carries +has to be left entirely problematic. It may be polytheistically or +it may be monotheistically conceived of. Fechner, with his distinct +earth-soul functioning as our guardian angel, seems to me clearly +polytheistic; but the word 'polytheism' usually gives offence, so +perhaps it is better not to use it. Only one thing is certain, and +that is the result of our criticism of the absolute: the only way +to escape from the paradoxes and perplexities that a consistently +thought-out monistic universe suffers from as from a species of +auto-intoxication--the mystery of the 'fall' namely, of reality +lapsing into appearance, truth into error, perfection into +imperfection; of evil, in short; the mystery of universal determinism, +of the block-universe eternal and without a history, etc.;--the only +way of escape, I say, from all this is to be frankly pluralistic and +assume that the superhuman consciousness, however vast it may be, has +itself an external environment, and consequently is finite. Present +day monism carefully repudiates complicity with spinozistic monism. In +that, it explains, the many get dissolved in the one and lost, whereas +in the improved idealistic form they get preserved in all their +manyness as the one's eternal object. The absolute itself is thus +represented by absolutists as having a pluralistic object. But if even +the absolute has to have a pluralistic vision, why should we ourselves +hesitate to be pluralists on our own sole account? Why should we +envelop our many with the 'one' that brings so much poison in its +train? + +The line of least resistance, then, as it seems to me, both in +theology and in philosophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman +consciousness, the notion that it is not all-embracing, the notion, +in other words, that there is a God, but that he is finite, either in +power or in knowledge, or in both at once. These, I need hardly tell +you, are the terms in which common men have usually carried on their +active commerce with God; and the monistic perfections that make the +notion of him so paradoxical practically and morally are the colder +addition of remote professorial minds operating _in distans_ upon +conceptual substitutes for him alone. + +Why cannot 'experience' and 'reason' meet on this common ground? Why +cannot they compromise? May not the godlessness usually but needlessly +associated with the philosophy of immediate experience give way to a +theism now seen to follow directly from that experience more widely +taken? and may not rationalism, satisfied with seeing her _a priori_ +proofs of God so effectively replaced by empirical evidence, abate +something of her absolutist claims? Let God but have the least +infinitesimal _other_ of any kind beside him, and empiricism and +rationalism might strike hands in a lasting treaty of peace. Both +might then leave abstract thinness behind them, and seek together, as +scientific men seek, by using all the analogies and data within reach, +to build up the most probable approximate idea of what the divine +consciousness concretely may be like. I venture to beg the younger +Oxford idealists to consider seriously this alternative. Few men are +as qualified by their intellectual gifts to reap the harvests that +seem certain to any one who, like Fechner and Bergson, will leave the +thinner for the thicker path. + +Compromise and mediation are inseparable from the pluralistic +philosophy. Only monistic dogmatism can say of any of its hypotheses, +'It is either that or nothing; take it or leave it just as it stands.' +The type of monism prevalent at Oxford has kept this steep and brittle +attitude, partly through the proverbial academic preference for thin +and elegant logical solutions, partly from a mistaken notion that the +only solidly grounded basis for religion was along those lines. If +Oxford men could be ignorant of anything, it might almost seem that +they had remained ignorant of the great empirical movement towards +a pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe, into which our own +generation has been drawn, and which threatens to short-circuit their +methods entirely and become their religious rival unless they are +willing to make themselves its allies. Yet, wedded as they seem to +be to the logical machinery and technical apparatus of absolutism, +I cannot but believe that their fidelity to the religious ideal in +general is deeper still. Especially do I find it hard to believe that +the more clerical adherents of the school would hold so fast to its +particular machinery if only they could be made to think that religion +could be secured in some other way. Let empiricism once become +associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange +misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I +believe that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be +ready to begin. That great awakening of a new popular interest in +philosophy, which is so striking a phenomenon at the present day in +all countries, is undoubtedly due in part to religious demands. As +the authority of past tradition tends more and more to crumble, men +naturally turn a wistful ear to the authority of reason or to the +evidence of present fact. They will assuredly not be disappointed if +they open their minds to what the thicker and more radical empiricism +has to say. I fully believe that such an empiricism is a more natural +ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. It +is true that superstitions and wild-growing over-beliefs of all +sorts will undoubtedly begin to abound if the notion of higher +consciousnesses enveloping ours, of fechnerian earth-souls and the +like, grows orthodox and fashionable; still more will they superabound +if science ever puts her approving stamp on the phenomena of which +Frederic Myers so earnestly advocated the scientific recognition, the +phenomena of psychic research so-called--and I myself firmly believe +that most of these phenomena are rooted in reality. But ought one +seriously to allow such a timid consideration as that to deter one +from following the evident path of greatest religious promise? Since +when, in this mixed world, was any good thing given us in purest +outline and isolation? One of the chief characteristics of life is +life's redundancy. The sole condition of our having anything, no +matter what, is that we should have so much of it, that we are +fortunate if we do not grow sick of the sight and sound of it +altogether. Everything is smothered in the litter that is fated to +accompany it. Without too much you cannot have enough, of anything. +Lots of inferior books, lots of bad statues, lots of dull speeches, of +tenth-rate men and women, as a condition of the few precious specimens +in either kind being realized! The gold-dust comes to birth with the +quartz-sand all around it, and this is as much a condition of religion +as of any other excellent possession. There must be extrication; there +must be competition for survival; but the clay matrix and the noble +gem must first come into being unsifted. Once extricated, the gem can +be examined separately, conceptualized, defined, and insulated. But +this process of extrication cannot be short-circuited--or if it is, +you get the thin inferior abstractions which we have seen, either +the hollow unreal god of scholastic theology, or the unintelligible +pantheistic monster, instead of the more living divine reality with +which it appears certain that empirical methods tend to connect men in +imagination. + +Arrived at this point, I ask you to go back to my first lecture and +remember, if you can, what I quoted there from your own Professor +Jacks--what he said about the philosopher himself being taken up into +the universe which he is accounting for. This is the fechnerian as +well as the hegelian view, and thus our end rejoins harmoniously our +beginning. Philosophies are intimate parts of the universe, they +express something of its own thought of itself. A philosophy may +indeed be a most momentous reaction of the universe upon itself. It +may, as I said, possess and handle itself differently in consequence +of us philosophers, with our theories, being here; it may trust itself +or mistrust itself the more, and, by doing the one or the other, +deserve more the trust or the mistrust. What mistrusts itself deserves +mistrust. + +This is the philosophy of humanism in the widest sense. Our +philosophies swell the current of being, add their character to it. +They are part of all that we have met, of all that makes us be. As +a French philosopher says, 'Nous sommes du réel dans le réel.' Our +thoughts determine our acts, and our acts redetermine the previous +nature of the world. + +Thus does foreignness get banished from our world, and far more so +when we take the system of it pluralistically than when we take it +monistically. We are indeed internal parts of God and not external +creations, on any possible reading of the panpsychic system. Yet +because God is not the absolute, but is himself a part when the system +is conceived pluralistically, his functions can be taken as not wholly +dissimilar to those of the other smaller parts,--as similar to our +functions consequently. + +Having an environment, being in time, and working out a history just +like ourselves, he escapes from the foreignness from all that is +human, of the static timeless perfect absolute. + +Remember that one of our troubles with that was its essential +foreignness and monstrosity--there really is no other word for it than +that. Its having the all-inclusive form gave to it an essentially +heterogeneous _nature_ from ourselves. And this great difference +between absolutism and pluralism demands no difference in the +universe's material content--it follows from a difference in the form +alone. The all-form or monistic form makes the foreignness result, the +each-form or pluralistic form leaves the intimacy undisturbed. + +No matter what the content of the universe may be, if you only allow +that it is _many_ everywhere and always, that _nothing_ real escapes +from having an environment; so far from defeating its rationality, as +the absolutists so unanimously pretend, you leave it in possession of +the maximum amount of rationality practically attainable by our minds. +Your relations with it, intellectual, emotional, and active, remain +fluent and congruous with your own nature's chief demands. + +It would be a pity if the word 'rationality' were allowed to give us +trouble here. It is one of those eulogistic words that both sides +claim--for almost no one is willing to advertise his philosophy as a +system of irrationality. But like most of the words which people used +eulogistically, the word 'rational' carries too many meanings. The +most objective one is that of the older logic--the connexion between +two things is rational when you can infer one from the other, mortal +from Socrates, _e.g.;_ and you can do that only when they have a +quality in common. But this kind of rationality is just that logic +of identity which all disciples of Hegel find insufficient. They +supersede it by the higher rationality of negation and contradiction +and make the notion vague again. Then you get the aesthetic or +teleologic kinds of rationality, saying that whatever fits in any way, +whatever is beautiful or good, whatever is purposive or gratifies +desire, is rational in so far forth. Then again, according to Hegel, +whatever is 'real' is rational. I myself said awhile ago that whatever +lets loose any action which we are fond of exerting seems rational. It +would be better to give up the word 'rational' altogether than to get +into a merely verbal fight about who has the best right to keep it. + +Perhaps the words 'foreignness' and 'intimacy,' which I put forward +in my first lecture, express the contrast I insist on better than the +words 'rationality' and 'irrationality'--let us stick to them, then. +I now say that the notion of the 'one' breeds foreignness and that of +the 'many' intimacy, for reasons which I have urged at only too great +length, and with which, whether they convince you or not, I may +suppose that you are now well acquainted. But what at bottom is meant +by calling the universe many or by calling it one? + +Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is +many means only that the sundry parts of reality _may be externally +related_. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has +on the pluralistic view a genuinely 'external' environment of some +sort or amount. Things are 'with' one another in many ways, but +nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word +'and' trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. +'Ever not quite' has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in +the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is +thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. +However much may be collected, however much may report itself as +present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something +else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity. + +Monism, on the other hand, insists that when you come down to reality +as such, to the reality of realities, everything is present +to _everything_ else in one vast instantaneous co-implicated +completeness--nothing can in _any_ sense, functional or substantial, +be really absent from anything else, all things interpenetrate and +telescope together in the great total conflux. + +For pluralism, all that we are required to admit as the constitution +of reality is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every +minimum of finite life. Briefly it is this, that nothing real is +absolutely simple, that every smallest bit of experience is a _multum +in parvo_ plurally related, that each relation is one aspect, +character, or function, way of its being taken, or way of its taking +something else; and that a bit of reality when actively engaged in one +of these relations is not _by that very fact_ engaged in all the other +relations simultaneously. The relations are not _all_ what the French +call _solidaires_ with one another. Without losing its identity a +thing can either take up or drop another thing, like the log I spoke +of, which by taking up new carriers and dropping old ones can travel +anywhere with a light escort. + +For monism, on the contrary, everything, whether we realize it or not, +drags the whole universe along with itself and drops nothing. The log +starts and arrives with all its carriers supporting it. If a thing +were once disconnected, it could never be connected again, according +to monism. The pragmatic difference between the two systems is thus a +definite one. It is just thus, that if _a_ is once out of sight of _b_ +or out of touch with it, or, more briefly, 'out' of it at all, then, +according to monism, it must always remain so, they can never get +together; whereas pluralism admits that on another occasion they may +work together, or in some way be connected again. Monism allows for +no such things as 'other occasions' in reality--in _real_ or absolute +reality, that is. + +The difference I try to describe amounts, you see, to nothing more +than the difference between what I formerly called the each-form and +the all-form of reality. Pluralism lets things really exist in the +each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or +collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. The all-form +allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the +parts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. In the each-form, +on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with +a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It +is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not +necessarily actualized at the moment. They depend on which actual path +of intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word 'or' names +a genuine reality. Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead _or_ to the +right _or_ to the left, and in either case the intervening space and +air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of +this audience. My being here is independent of any one set of these +faces. + +If the each-form be the eternal form of reality no less than it is the +form of temporal appearance, we still have a coherent world, and not +an incarnate incoherence, as is charged by so many absolutists. Our +'multiverse' still makes a 'universe'; for every part, tho it may not +be in actual or immediate connexion, is nevertheless in some possible +or mediated connexion, with every other part however remote, through +the fact that each part hangs together with its very next neighbors in +inextricable interfusion. The type of union, it is true, is different +here from the monistic type of _all-einheit_. It is not a universal +co-implication, or integration of all things _durcheinander_. It is +what I call the strung-along type, the type of continuity, contiguity, +or concatenation. If you prefer greek words, you may call it the +synechistic type. At all events, you see that it forms a definitely +conceivable alternative to the through-and-through unity of all things +at once, which is the type opposed to it by monism. You see also that +it stands or falls with the notion I have taken such pains to defend, +of the through-and-through union of adjacent minima of experience, of +the confluence of every passing moment of concretely felt experience +with its immediately next neighbors. The recognition of this fact of +coalescence of next with next in concrete experience, so that all +the insulating cuts we make there are artificial products of the +conceptualizing faculty, is what distinguishes the empiricism which +I call 'radical,' from the bugaboo empiricism of the traditional +rationalist critics, which (rightly or wrongly) is accused of chopping +up experience into atomistic sensations, incapable of union with one +another until a purely intellectual principle has swooped down upon +them from on high and folded them in its own conjunctive categories. + +Here, then, you have the plain alternative, and the full mystery of +the difference between pluralism and monism, as clearly as I can +set it forth on this occasion. It packs up into a nutshell:--Is the +manyness in oneness that indubitably characterizes the world we +inhabit, a property only of the absolute whole of things, so that you +must postulate that one-enormous-whole indivisibly as the _prius_ +of there being any many at all--in other words, start with the +rationalistic block-universe, entire, unmitigated, and complete?--or +can the finite elements have their own aboriginal forms of manyness in +oneness, and where they have no immediate oneness still be continued +into one another by intermediary terms--each one of these terms being +one with its next neighbors, and yet the total 'oneness' never getting +absolutely complete? + +The alternative is definite. It seems to me, moreover, that the two +horns of it make pragmatically different ethical appeals--at least +they _may_ do so, to certain individuals. But if you consider the +pluralistic horn to be intrinsically irrational, self-contradictory, +and absurd, I can now say no more in its defence. Having done what +I could in my earlier lectures to break the edge of the +intellectualistic _reductiones ad absurdum_, I must leave the issue +in your hands. Whatever I may say, each of you will be sure to take +pluralism or leave it, just as your own sense of rationality moves and +inclines. The only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it is a +fully co-ordinate hypothesis with monism. This world _may_, in the +last resort, be a block-universe; but on the other hand it _may_ be a +universe only strung-along, not rounded in and closed. Reality _may_ +exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that +possibility I do insist. + +One's general vision of the probable usually decides such +alternatives. They illustrate what I once wrote of as the 'will to +believe.' In some of my lectures at Harvard I have spoken of what +I call the 'faith-ladder,' as something quite different from the +_sorites_ of the logic-books, yet seeming to have an analogous form. I +think you will quickly recognize in yourselves, as I describe it, the +mental process to which I give this name. + +A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it +true or not? you ask. + +It _might_ be true somewhere, you say, for it is not +self-contradictory. + +It _may_ be true, you continue, even here and now. + +It is _fit_ to be true, it would be _well if it were true_, it _ought_ +to be true, you presently feel. + +It _must_ be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and +then--as a final result-- + +It shall be _held for true_, you decide; it _shall be_ as if true, for +_you_. + +And your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making +it securely true in the end. + +Not one step in this process is logical, yet it is the way in which +monists and pluralists alike espouse and hold fast to their visions. +It is life exceeding logic, it is the practical reason for which the +theoretic reason finds arguments after the conclusion is once there. +In just this way do some of us hold to the unfinished pluralistic +universe; in just this way do others hold to the timeless universe +eternally complete. + +Meanwhile the incompleteness of the pluralistic universe, thus assumed +and held to as the most probable hypothesis, is also represented by +the pluralistic philosophy as being self-reparative through us, as +getting its disconnections remedied in part by our behavior. 'We use +what we are and have, to know; and what we know, to be and have still +more.'[1] Thus do philosophy and reality, theory and action, work in +the same circle indefinitely. + + +I have now finished these poor lectures, and as you look back on them, +they doubtless seem rambling and inconclusive enough. My only hope is +that they may possibly have proved suggestive; and if indeed they have +been suggestive of one point of method, I am almost willing to let +all other suggestions go. That point is that _it is high time for the +basis of discussion in these questions to be broadened and thickened +up_. It is for that that I have brought in Fechner and Bergson, and +descriptive psychology and religious experiences, and have ventured +even to hint at psychical research and other wild beasts of the +philosophic desert. Owing possibly to the fact that Plato and +Aristotle, with their intellectualism, are the basis of philosophic +study here, the Oxford brand of transcendentalism seems to me to have +confined itself too exclusively to thin logical considerations, that +would hold good in all conceivable worlds, worlds of an empirical +constitution entirely different from ours. It is as if the actual +peculiarities of the world that is were entirely irrelevant to the +content of truth. But they cannot be irrelevant; and the philosophy +of the future must imitate the sciences in taking them more and more +elaborately into account. I urge some of the younger members of +this learned audience to lay this hint to heart. If you can do so +effectively, making still more concrete advances upon the path which +Fechner and Bergson have so enticingly opened up, if you can gather +philosophic conclusions of any kind, monistic or pluralistic, from +the _particulars of life_, I will say, as I now do say, with the +cheerfullest of hearts, 'Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, but +ring the fuller minstrel in.' + + + + +NOTES + + +LECTURE I + +Note 1, page 5.--Bailey: _op. cit._, First Series, p. 52. + +Note 2, page 11.--_Smaller Logic_, § 194. + +Note 3, page 16.--_Exploratio philosophica_, Part I, 1865, pp. +xxxviii, 130. + +Note 4, page 20.--Hinneberg: _Die Kultur der Gegenwart: Systematische +Philosophie_. Leipzig: Teubner, 1907. + + +LECTURE II + +Note 1, page 50.--The difference is that the bad parts of this finite +are eternal and essential for absolutists, whereas pluralists may hope +that they will eventually get sloughed off and become as if they had +not been. + +Note 2, page 51.--Quoted by W. Wallace: _Lectures and Essays_, Oxford, +1898, p. 560. + +Note 3, page 51.--_Logic_, tr. Wallace, 1874, p. 181. + +Note 4, page 52.--_Ibid._, p. 304. + +Note 5, page 53.--_Contemporary Review_, December, 1907, vol. 92, p. +618. + +Note 6, page 57.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 69 ff. + +Note 7, page 62.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. i, pp. 131-132. + +Note 8, page 67.--A good illustration of this is to be found in a +controversy between Mr. Bradley and the present writer, in _Mind_ +for 1893, Mr. Bradley contending (if I understood him rightly) that +'resemblance' is an illegitimate category, because it admits of +degrees, and that the only real relations in comparison are absolute +identity and absolute non-comparability. + +Note 9, page 75.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 184. + +Note 10, page 75.--_Appearance and Reality_, 1893, pp. 141-142. + +Note 11, page 76.--Cf. _Elements of Metaphysics_, p. 88. + +Note 12, page 77.--_Some Dogmas of Religion_, p. 184. + +Note 13, page 80.--For a more detailed criticism of Mr. Bradley's +intellectualism, see Appendix A. + + +LECTURE III + +Note 1, page 94.--Hegel, _Smaller Logic_, pp. 184-185. + +Note 2, page 95.--Cf. Hegel's fine vindication of this function of +contradiction in his _Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. ii, sec. 1, chap, +ii, C, Anmerkung 3. + +Note 3, page 95--_Hegel_, in _Blackwood's Philosophical Classics_, p. +162. + +Note 4, page 95--_Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. i, sec. 1, chap, ii, B, +a. + +Note 5, page 96--Wallace's translation of the _Smaller Logic_, p. 128. + +Note 6, page 101--Joachim, _The Nature of Truth_, Oxford, 1906, pp. +22, 178. The argument in case the belief should be doubted would be +the higher synthetic idea: if two truths were possible, the duality of +that possibility would itself be the one truth that would unite them. + +Note 7, page 115.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 385, +386, 409. + +Note 8, page 116.--The best _un_inspired argument (again not +ironical!) which I know is that in Miss M.W. Calkins's excellent book, +_The Persistent Problems of Philosophy_, Macmillan, 1902. + +Note 9, page 117.--Cf. Dr. Fuller's excellent article,' Ethical monism +and the problem of evil,' in the _Harvard Journal of Theology_, vol. +i, No. 2, April, 1908. + +Note 10, page 120.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 79. + +Note 11, page 121.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, secs. 150, +153. + +Note 12, page 121.--_The Nature of Truth_, 1906, pp. 170-171. + +Note 13, page 121.--_Ibid._, p. 179. + +Note 14, page 123.--The psychological analogy that certain finite +tracts of consciousness are composed of isolable parts added together, +cannot be used by absolutists as proof that such parts are essential +elements of all consciousness. Other finite fields of consciousness +seem in point of fact not to be similarly resolvable into isolable +parts. + +Note 15, page 128.--Judging by the analogy of the relation which our +central consciousness seems to bear to that of our spinal cord, lower +ganglia, etc., it would seem natural to suppose that in whatever +superhuman mental synthesis there may be, the neglect and elimination +of certain contents of which we are conscious on the human level might +be as characteristic a feature as is the combination and interweaving +of other human contents. + + +LECTURE IV + +Note 1, page 143.--_The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 227. + +Note 2, page 165.--Fechner: _Ãœber die Seelenfrage_, 1861, p. 170. + +Note 3, page 168.--Fechner's latest summarizing of his views, _Die +Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht_, Leipzig, 1879, is now, I +understand, in process of translation. His _Little Book of Life after +Death_ exists already in two American versions, one published by +Little, Brown & Co., Boston, the other by the Open Court Co., Chicago. + +Note 4, page 176.--Mr. Bradley ought to be to some degree exempted +from my attack in these last pages. Compare especially what he says of +non-human consciousness in his _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 269-272. + + +LECTURE V + +Note 1, page 182.--Royce: _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 379. + +Note 2, page 184.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 58-62. + +Note 3, page 190.--I hold to it still as the best description of +an enormous number of our higher fields of consciousness. They +demonstrably do not _contain_ the lower states that know the same +objects. Of other fields, however this is not so true; so, in the +_Psychological Review_ for 1895, vol. ii, p. 105 (see especially pp. +119-120), I frankly withdrew, in principle, my former objection to +talking of fields of consciousness being made of simpler 'parts,' +leaving the facts to decide the question in each special case. + +Note 4, page 194.--I abstract from the consciousness attached to the +whole itself, if such consciousness be there. + + +LECTURE VI + +Note 1, page 250.--For a more explicit vindication of the notion of +activity, see Appendix B, where I try to defend its recognition as +a definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic +critics. + +I subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible critics +of Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings +of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement +that concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. Understood +in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we +certainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a +theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in +its train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of +his own mouth. His philosophy pretends, if anything, to give a better +insight into truth than rationalistic philosophies give: yet what is +it in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its author not reason by +concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no +insight? + +To this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply. +In using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of +concepts generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary +emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for +they serve in his hands only to 'orient' us, to show us to what +quarter we must _practically turn_ if we wish to gain that completer +insight into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs +our hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. _What +he reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude_. He +but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our +naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense. +This service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which +we may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with +a good philosophic conscience!--who ever conferred on us so valuable a +freedom before? + +By making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the +other counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new order, +with particular relations between them. These relations are just as +much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the +distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it. +Conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of +perception, then; and when the results of these are written down, +we get those bodies of 'mental truth' (as Locke called it) known as +mathematics, logic, and _a priori_ metaphysics. To know all this truth +is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the +relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static +ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or +contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing _happens_ in the realm +of concepts; relations there are 'eternal' only. The theoretic gain +fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real +world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and +history. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right +in turning us away from conception and towards perception. + +By combining concepts with percepts, _we can draw maps of the +distribution_ of other percepts in distant space and time. To know +this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the +achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without +percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. From +maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the +slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming +our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous +practical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists. + +But concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths +of comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new +_values_ into life. In their mapping function they stand to perception +in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to +touch--Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory +touch. But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent +glory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement +of life's value follows. Even so does the conceptual world bring new +ranges of value and of motivation to our life. Its maps not only serve +us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures +is of itself an inspiring good. New interests and incitements, and +feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused. + +Abstractness _per se_ seems to have a touch of ideality. ROYCE'S +'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'Causes,' as +anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their +sordid particulars. The veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to +cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE +contends, in his _Philosophy of Loyalty_, appears another thing +altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe. +It transcends in value all those 'expediencies,' and is something to +live for, whether expedient or inexpedient. Truth with a big T is a +'momentous issue'; truths in detail are 'poor scraps,' mere 'crumbling +successes.' (_Op. cit._, Lecture VII, especially § v.) + +Is, now, such bringing into existence of a new _value_ to be regarded +as a theoretic achievement? The question is a nice one, for altho a +value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of +that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being +a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. So far as their +value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts +connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life, +so here again Bergson's formulation seems unobjectionable. Persons who +have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own +vital careers differently. It doesn't necessarily follow that they +understand other vital careers more intimately. + +Again it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones, +conceiving thus such realities as the ether, God, souls, or what not, +of which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant. +This surely is an increase of our knowledge, and may well be called +a theoretical achievement. Yet here again Bergson's criticisms hold +good. Much as conception may tell us _about_ such invisible objects, +it sheds no ray of light into their interior. The completer, indeed, +our definitions of ether-waves, atoms, Gods, or souls become, the less +instead of the more intelligible do they appear to us. The learned +in such things are consequently beginning more and more to ascribe a +solely instrumental value to our concepts of them. Ether and molecules +may be like co-ordinates and averages, only so many crutches by the +help of which we practically perform the operation of getting about +among our sensible experiences. + +We see from these considerations how easily the question of whether +the function of concepts is theoretical or practical may grow into +a logomachy. It may be better from this point of view to refuse to +recognize the alternative as a sharp one. The sole thing that is +certain in the midst of it all is that Bergson is absolutely right +in contending that the whole life of activity and change is inwardly +impenetrable to conceptual treatment, and that it opens itself only to +sympathetic apprehension at the hands of immediate feeling. All the +_whats_ as well as the _thats_ of reality, relational as well as +terminal, are in the end contents of immediate concrete perception. +Yet the remoter unperceived _arrangements_, temporal, spatial, and +logical, of these contents, are also something that we need to know as +well for the pleasure of the knowing as for the practical help. We may +call this need of arrangement a theoretic need or a practical need, +according as we choose to lay the emphasis; but Bergson is accurately +right when he limits conceptual knowledge to arrangement, and when he +insists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of +what we ought to know. + +Note 2, page 266.--Gaston Rageot, _Revue Philosophique_, vol. lxiv, p. +85 (July, 1907). + +Note 3, page 268.--I have myself talked in other ways as plausibly +as I could, in my _Psychology_, and talked truly (as I believe) in +certain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way invincibly +comes back. + + +LECTURE VII + +Note 1, page 278.--_Introduction to Hume_, 1874, p. 151. + +Note 2, page 279.--_Ibid._, pp. 16, 21, 36, _et passim_. + +Note 3, page 279.--See, _inter alia_, the chapter on the 'Stream of +Thought' in my own Psychologies; H. Cornelius, _Psychologie_, 1897, +chaps, i and iii; G.H. Luquet, _Idées Générales de Psychologie_, 1906, +_passim_. + +Note 4, page 280.--Compare, as to all this, an article by the present +writer, entitled 'A world of pure experience,' in the _Journal of +Philosophy_, New York, vol. i, pp. 533, 561 (1905). + +Note 5, page 280.--Green's attempt to discredit sensations by +reminding us of their 'dumbness,' in that they do not come already +_named_, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how intellectualism +is dominated by verbality. The unnamed appears in Green as synonymous +with the unreal. + +Note 6, page 283.--_Philosophy of Reflection_, i, 248 ff. + +Note 7, page 284.--Most of this paragraph is extracted from an address +of mine before the American Psychological Association, printed in the +_Psychological Review_, vol. ii, p. 105. I take pleasure in the +fact that already in 1895 I was so far advanced towards my present +bergsonian position. + +Note 8, page 289.--The conscious self of the moment, the central self, +is probably determined to this privileged position by its functional +connexion with the body's imminent or present acts. It is the present +_acting_ self. Tho the more that surrounds it may be 'subconscious' +to us, yet if in its 'collective capacity' it also exerts an active +function, it may be conscious in a wider way, conscious, as it were, +over our heads. + +On the relations of consciousness to action see Bergson's _Matière +et Mémoire, passim_, especially chap. i. Compare also the hints in +Münsterberg's _Grundzüge der Psychologie_, chap, xv; those in my own +_Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii, pp. 581-592; and those in W. +McDougall's _Physiological Psychology_, chap. vii. + +Note 9, page 295.--Compare _Zend-Avesta_, 2d edition, vol. i, pp. 165 +ff., 181, 206, 244 ff., etc.; _Die Tagesansicht_, etc., chap, v, § 6; +and chap. xv. + + +LECTURE VIII + +Note 1, page 330.--Blondel: _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, June, +1906, p. 241. + + + + +APPENDICES + + +APPENDIX A + +THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS[1] + +Experience in its immediacy seems perfectly fluent. The active +sense of living which we all enjoy, before reflection shatters our +instinctive world for us, is self-luminous and suggests no paradoxes. +Its difficulties are disappointments and uncertainties. They are not +intellectual contradictions. + +When the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers +incomprehensibilities in the flowing process. Distinguishing its +elements and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus +disjoins it cannot easily put together. Pyrrhonism accepts the +irrationality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. Other +philosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by +turning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first +negations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let +redemption take the place of innocence. The perfection with which any +philosophy may do this is the measure of its human success and of its +importance in philosophic history. In an article entitled 'A world of +pure experience,[2] I tried my own hand sketchily at + +[Footnote 1: Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, +and Scientific Methods_, vol. ii, New York, 1905, with slight verbal +revision.] + +[Footnote 2: _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods_, vol. i, No. 20, p. 566.] + +the problem, resisting certain first steps of dialectics by insisting +in a general way that the immediately experienced conjunctive +relations are as real as anything else. If my sketch is not to appear +too _näif_, I must come closer to details, and in the present essay I +propose to do so. + + +I + +'Pure experience' is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of +life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its +conceptual categories. Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma +from sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an +experience pure in the literal sense of a _that_ which is not yet any +definite _what_, tho ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of +oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don't appear; changing +throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no +points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure +experience in this state is but another name for feeling or sensation. +But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with +emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and +abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with +adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is +only a relative term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized +sensation which it still embodies. + +Far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that +of things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space, +and the self envelop everything, betwixt them, and flow together +without interfering. The things that they envelop come as separate in +some ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with +some ideas, and others are irreconcilable. Qualities compenetrate one +space, or exclude each other from it. They cling together persistently +in groups that move as units, or else they separate. Their changes are +abrupt or discontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as +they do so, they fall into either even or irregular series. + +In all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely +co-ordinate matters of immediate feeling. The conjunctions are +as primordial elements of 'fact' as are the distinctions and +disjunctions. In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute +is a new pulse of my life, I feel that the old life continues into it, +and the feeling of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous +feeling of a novelty. They, too, compenetrate harmoniously. +Prepositions, copulas, and conjunctions, 'is,' 'isn't,' 'then,' +'before,' 'in,' 'on,' 'beside,' 'between,' 'next,' 'like,' 'unlike,' +'as,' 'but,' flower out of the stream of pure experience, the stream +of concretes or the sensational stream, as naturally as nouns and +adjectives do, and they melt into it again as fluidly when we apply +them to a new portion of the stream. + + +II + +If now we ask why we must translate experience from a more concrete +or pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with ever more +abounding conceptual distinctions, rationalism and naturalism give +different replies. + +The rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and +its interests imperative; that to understand is simply the duty of +man; and that who questions this need not be argued with, for by the +fact of arguing he gives away his case. + +The naturalist answer is that the environment kills as well as +sustains us, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish the +experient himself is lessened just in the degree in which the elements +in it that have a practical bearing upon life are analyzed out of the +continuum and verbally fixed and coupled together, so that we may know +what is in the wind for us and get ready to react in time. Had pure +experience, the naturalist says, been always perfectly healthy, there +would never have arisen the necessity of isolating or verbalizing +any of its terms. We should just have experienced inarticulately and +unintellectually enjoyed. This leaning on 'reaction' in the naturalist +account implies that, whenever we intellectualize a relatively pure +experience, we ought to do so for the sake of redescending to the +purer or more concrete level again; and that if an intellect stays +aloft among its abstract terms and generalized relations, and does not +reinsert itself with its conclusions into some particular point of +the immediate stream of life, it fails to finish out its function and +leaves its normal race unrun. + +Most rationalists nowadays will agree that naturalism gives a true +enough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first, but +they will deny these latter implications. The case, they will say, +resembles that of sexual love. Originating in the animal need +of getting another generation born, this passion has developed +secondarily such imperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why +another generation ought to be born at all, the answer is: 'Chiefly +that love may go on.' Just so with our intellect: it originated as a +practical means of serving life; but it has developed incidentally the +function of understanding absolute truth; and life itself now seems to +be given chiefly as a means by which that function may be prosecuted. +But truth and the understanding of it lie among the abstracts and +universals, so the intellect now carries on its higher business wholly +in this region, without any need of redescending into pure experience +again. + +If the contrasted tendencies which I thus designate as naturalistic +and rationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an example +will make them more concrete. Mr. Bradley, for instance, is an +ultra-rationalist. He admits that our intellect is primarily +practical, but says that, for philosophers, the practical need is +simply Truth.[1] Truth, moreover, must be assumed 'consistent.' +Immediate experience has to be broken into subjects and qualities, +terms and relations, to be understood as truth at all. Yet when +so broken it is less consistent than ever. Taken raw, it is all +undistinguished. Intellectualized, it is all distinction without +oneness. 'Such an arrangement may _work_, but the theoretic problem is +not solved' (p. 23). The question is, '_How_ the diversity can exist +in harmony with the oneness' (p. 118). To go back to pure experience +is unavailing. 'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. 104). +Even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an _understanding_. 'It is +a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. 108-109). +The experiences offered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect +rejects because they contradict themselves. They offer a complex of +diversities conjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which +it cannot repeat as its own.... For to be satisfied, my intellect must +understand, and it cannot understand by taking a congeries in +the lump' (p. 570). So Mr. Bradley, in the sole interests of +'understanding' (as he conceives that function), turns his back on +finite + +[Footnote 1: _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 152-133.] + +experience forever. Truth must lie in the opposite direction, +the direction of the absolute; and this kind of rationalism and +naturalism, or (as I will now call it) pragmatism, walk thenceforward +upon opposite paths. For the one, those intellectual products are most +true which, turning their face towards the absolute, come nearest to +symbolizing its ways of uniting the many and the one. For the other, +those are most true which most successfully dip back into the finite +stream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some particular +wave or wavelet. Such confluence not only proves the intellectual +operation to have been true (as an addition may 'prove' that a +subtraction is already rightly performed), but it constitutes, +according to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. Only in +so far as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, into sensible +experience again, are our abstracts and universals true or false at +all. + + +III + +In Section the 6th of my article, 'A world of pure experience,' I +adopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one and the same +world is cognized by our different minds; but I left undiscussed the +dialectical arguments which maintain that this is logically absurd. +The usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assumes one +object (to wit, the world) to stand in two relations at once; to my +mind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second +relation cannot logically be the same term which it was at first. + +I have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with +absolutists, and it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly, +if it were valid, that I am bound to give it an attentive ear, and +seriously to search its strength. + +For instance, let the matter in dispute be a term _M_, asserted to be +on the one hand related to _L_, and on the other to _N_; and let the +two cases of relation be symbolized by _L--M_ and _M--N_ respectively. +When, now, I assume that the experience may immediately come and be +given in the shape _L--M--N_, with no trace of doubling or internal +fission in the _M_, I am told that this is all a popular delusion; +that _L--M--N_ logically means two different experiences, _L--M_ and +_M--N_, namely; and that although the absolute may, and indeed must, +from its superior point of view, read its own kind of unity into _M_'s +two editions, yet as elements in finite experience the two _M_'s +lie irretrievably asunder, and the world between them is broken and +unbridged. + +In arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the +logical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking +a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the +letter _M_ should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which +noun, being related to _L_ by one of its parts and to _N_ by another, +would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both +relations. Thus, one might say: 'David Hume, who weighed so many stone +by his body, influences posterity by his doctrine.' The body and the +doctrine are two things, between which our finite minds can discover +no real sameness, though the same name covers both of them. And then, +one might continue: 'Only an absolute is capable of uniting such a +non-identity.' We must, I say, avoid this sort of example; for the +dialectic insight, if true at all, must apply to terms and relations +universally. It must be true of abstract units as well as of nouns +collective; and if we prove it by concrete examples, we must take the +simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant material suggestions. + +Taken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention seems +to use as its major premise Hume's notion 'that all our distinct +perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives +any real connexion among distinct existences.' Undoubtedly, since we +use two phrases in talking first about '_M_'s relation to _L_' and +then again about '_M_'s relation to _N_,' we must be having, or must +have had, two distinct perceptions;--and the rest would then seem to +follow duly. But the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be +the fact of the two _phrases_; and this suggests that the argument +may be merely verbal. Can it be that the whole dialectic achievement +consists in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution +similar to that of the language in which we describe it? Must we +assert the objective doubleness of the _M_ merely because we have to +name it twice over when we name its two relations? + +Candidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic +conclusion![1] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple +concrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience +itself belies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate +concepts in analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be +but substitutional, and that the _M_ in _L--M_ and the _M_ in _M--N_ +_mean_ (_i.e._, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one +self-same piece, _M_, of sensible experience. This persistent identity +of certain units, or emphases, or points, or objects, or members--call +them what you will--of the experience-continuum, is just one of +those conjunctive features of it, on which I am obliged to insist so +emphatically. For samenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible +structure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its +after-image dies away, I still hark back to it as 'that same + +[Footnote 1: Technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of +composition.' A duality, predicable of the two wholes, _L--M_ and +_M--N_, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, _M_.] + +bell-stroke.' When I see a thing _M_, with _L_ to the left of it and +_N_ to the right of it, I see it _as_ one _M_; and if you tell me I +have had to 'take' it twice, I reply that if I 'took' it a thousand +times, I should still _see_ it as a unit.[1] Its unity is aboriginal, +just as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It +comes unbroken as _that M_, as a singular which I encounter; they come +broken, as _those_ takings, as my plurality of operations. The unity +and the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. I do not easily fathom +why my opponents should find the separateness so much more easily +understandable that they must needs infect the whole of finite +experience with it, and relegate the unity (now taken as a bare +postulate and no longer as a thing positively perceivable) to the +region of the absolute's mysteries. I do not easily fathom this, I +say, for the said opponents are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all +that I can catch in their talk is the substitution of what is true of +certain words for what is true of what they signify. They stay with +the words,--not returning to the stream of life whence all the meaning +of them came, and which is always ready to reabsorb them. + +[Footnote 1: I may perhaps refer here to my _Principles of +Psychology_, vol. i, pp. 459 ff. It really seems 'weird' to have to +argue (as I am forced now to do) for the notion that it is one sheet +of paper (with its two surfaces and all that lies between) which is +both under my pen and on the table while I write--the 'claim' that it +is two sheets seems so brazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists +of sincerity!] + + +IV + +For aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to believe that +one thing can be known by many knowers. But the denial of one thing in +many relations is but one application of a still profounder dialectic +difficulty. Man can't be good, said the sophists, for man is _man_ and +_good_ is good; and Hegel and Herbart in their day, more recently H. +Spir, and most recently and elaborately of all, Mr. Bradley, inform us +that a term can logically only be a punctiform unit, and that not one +of the conjunctive relations between things, which experience seems to +yield, is rationally possible. + +Of course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even a +shilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their +face-value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them. +The world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are +conjunctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves +disjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which +they are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang +together similarly, inasmuch as _some_ path of conjunctive transition +by which to pass from one of its parts to another may always be +discernible. Such determinately various hanging-together may be called +_concatenated_ union, to distinguish it from the 'through-and-through' +type of union, 'each in all and all in each' (union of _total +conflux_, as one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain +when things are taken in their absolute reality. In a concatenated +world a partial conflux often is experienced. Our concepts and our +sensations are confluent; successive states of the same ego, and +feelings of the same body are confluent. Where the experience is not +of conflux, it may be of conterminousness (things with but one thing +between); or of contiguousness (nothing between); or of likeness; or +of nearness; or of simultaneousness; or of in-ness; or of on-ness; or +of for-ness; or of simple with-ness; or even of mere and-ness, which +last relation would make of however disjointed a world otherwise, at +any rate for that occasion a universe 'of discourse.' Now Mr. Bradley +tells us that none of these relations, as we actually experience them, +can possibly be real.[1] My next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue +radical empiricism from Mr. Bradley. Fortunately, as it seems to me, +his general contention, that the very notion of relation is + +[Footnote 1: Here again the reader must beware of slipping from +logical into phenomenal considerations. It may well be that we +_attribute_ a certain relation falsely, because the circumstances of +the case, being complex, have deceived us. At a railway station we +may take our own train, and not the one that fills our window, to be +moving. We here put motion in the wrong place in the world, but in its +original place the motion is a part of reality. What Mr. Bradley +means is nothing like this, but rather that such things as motion +are nowhere real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically +incorrigible seats, relations are impossible of comprehension.] + +unthinkable clearly, has been successfully met by many critics.[1] + +It is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and to +the previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. So, +in noticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of +radical empiricism solely. + + +V + +The first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at +their face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some +as more external. When two terms are _similar_, their very natures +enter into the relation. Being _what_ they are, no matter where or +when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues +predicable as long as the terms continue. Other relations, the _where_ +and the _when_, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper +may be 'off' or 'on' the table, for example; and in either case the +relation involves only the outside of its terms. Having an outside, +both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is external: +the term's inner nature is irrelevant to it. Any + +[Footnote 1: Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, in his +_Man and the Cosmos_; by L.T. Hobhouse, in chapter xii (the Validity +of Judgment) of his _Theory of Knowledge_; and by F.C.S. Schiller, +in his _Humanism_, Essay XI. Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are +Hodder's, in the _Psychological Review_, vol. i, 307; Stout's, in +the _Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_, 1901-02, p. 1; and +MacLennan's, in the _Journal of Philosophy_, etc., vol. i, 403.] + +book, any table, may fall into the relation, which is created _pro hac +vice_, not by their existence, but by their casual situation. It +is just because so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so +external that a philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism +in its ontology. So far as things have space-relations, for example, +we are free to imagine them with different origins even. If they could +get to _be_, and get into space at all, then they may have done so +separately. Once there, however, they are _additives_ to one another, +and, with no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations +may supervene between them. The question of how things could come +to be, anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their +relations, once the being accomplished, may consist in. + +Mr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as the +space-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely different +subjects from those of which the absence of such relations might +a moment previously have been plausibly asserted. Not only is the +_situation_ different when the book is on the table, but the _book +itself_ is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the +table. He admits that 'such external relations + +[Footnote 1: Once more, don't slip from logical into physical +situations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, +or if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will +break it down. But such collateral phenomena are not the point at +issue. The point is whether the successive relations 'on' and 'not-on' +can rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms, +abstractly taken. Professor A.E. Taylor drops from logical into +material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof +that _A_, 'as contra-distinguished from _B_, is not the same thing as +mere _A_ not in any way affected' (_Elements of Metaphysics_, 1903, p. +145). Note the substitution, for 'related,' of the word 'affected,' +which begs the whole question.] + +seem possible and even existing.... That you do not alter what you +compare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious, +and that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not +occur to common sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these +difficulties.... There is a relation in the result, and this relation, +we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what +does it make a difference? [_doesn't it make a difference to us +onlookers, at least?_] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying +the terms by it? [_Surely the meaning is to tell the truth about their +relative position_.[1]] If, in short, it is external to the terms, how +can it possibly be true _of_ them? [_Is it the 'intimacy' suggested by +the little word 'of,' here, which I have underscored, that is the root +of Mr. Bradley's trouble?_].... If the terms from their inner nature +do not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, +they seem related for no reason at all.... Things are spatially +related, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and +yet in no way themselves + +[Footnote 1: But 'is there any sense,' asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly, +on p. 579, 'and if so, what sense, in truth that is only outside and +"about" things?' Surely such a question may be left unanswered.] + +are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external. But I +reply that, if so, I cannot _understand_ the leaving by the terms of +one set of relations and their adoption of another fresh set. The +process and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it +[_surely they contribute to it all there is 'of' it!_] seem irrational +throughout. [_If 'irrational' here means simply 'non-rational,' +or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no +reproach; if it means 'contradicting' such essence, Mr. Bradley should +show wherein and how_.] But, if they contribute anything, they must +surely be affected internally. [_Why so, if they contribute only their +surface? In such relations as 'on,' 'a foot away,' 'between,' 'next,' +etc., only surfaces are in question_.] ... If the terms contribute +anything whatever, then the terms are affected [_inwardly altered?_] +by the arrangement.... That for working purposes we treat, and do well +to treat, some relations as external merely, I do not deny, and that +of course is not the question at issue here. That question is ... +whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation [_i.e., +a relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their +nature simultaneously_] is possible and forced on us by the facts.'[1] + +Mr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according +to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a +medium of external relations; + +[Footnote 1: _Appearance and Reality_, 2d edition, pp. 575-576.] + +and he then concludes that 'Irrationality and externality cannot be +the last truth about things. Somewhere there must be a reason why this +and that appear together. And this reason and reality must reside in +the whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in +which their internal connexion must lie, and out of which from the +background appear those fresh results which never could have come +from the premises' (p. 577). And he adds that 'Where the whole is +different, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be +different.... They are altered so far only [_how far? farther than +externally, yet not through and through?_], but still they are +altered.... I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by +their whole [_qualified how?--do their external relations, situations, +dates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify +them 'far' enough?_], and that in the second case there is a whole +which differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole; +and I urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are +altered' (p. 579). + +Not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: _und +zwar_ 'so far.' But just _how_ far is the whole problem; and +'through-and-through' would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley's somewhat +undecided utterances[1]) + +[Footnote 1: I say 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' +which sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very +pages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for +example, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its +'character' unchanged, though, in its change of place, its 'existence' +gets altered; or what he says, on p. 579, of the possibility that +an abstract quality A, B, or C, in a thing, 'may throughout remain +unchanged' although the thing be altered; or his admission that in +red-hairedness, both as analyzed out of a man and when given with +the rest of him, there may be 'no change' (p. 580). Why does he +immediately add that for the pluralist to plead the non-mutation of +such abstractions would be an _ignoratio elenchi_? It is impossible to +admit it to be such. The entire _elenchus_ and inquest is just as to +whether parts which you can abstract from existing wholes can also +contribute to other wholes without changing their inner nature. If +they can thus mould various wholes into new _gestalt-qualitäten_, +then it follows that the same elements are logically able to exist in +different wholes [whether physically able would depend on +additional hypotheses]; that partial changes are thinkable, and +through-and-through change not a dialectic necessity; that monism is +only an hypothesis; and that an additively constituted universe is +a rationally respectable hypothesis also. All the theses of radical +empiricism, in short, follow.] + +to be the full bradleyan answer. The 'whole' which he here treats as +primary and determinative of each part's manner of 'contributing,' +simply _must_, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There _must_ +be total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The +'must' appears here as a _Machtspruch_, as an _ipse dixit_ of Mr. +Bradley's absolutistically tempered 'understanding,' for he candidly +confesses that how the parts _do_ differ as they contribute to +different wholes, is unknown to him (p. 578). + +Although I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr. +Bradley's understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted. +'External relations' stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain, +for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, +but also perfectly intelligible factors of reality. + + +VI + +Mr. Bradley's understanding shows the most extraordinary power of +perceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in +comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say 'neither or both,' +but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain _whats_ +from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness +_as thus isolated_. But this does not prevent him from equally well +understanding their combination with each other as _originally +experienced in the concrete_, or their confluence with new sensible +experiences in which they recur as 'the same.' Returning into the +stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and _thats_ and +abstract _whats_, grow confluent again, and the word 'is' names +all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the +isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to +him impossible.[1] 'To understand a complex _AB_,' he + +[Footnote 1: So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like +this: 'Book,' 'table,' 'on'--how does the existence of these three +abstract elements result in _this_ book being livingly on _this_ +table? Why isn't the table on the book? Or why doesn't the 'on' +connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table? +Mustn't something _in_ each of the three elements already determine +the two others to _it_, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float +vaguely? Mustn't the whole fact be _prefigured in each part_, and +exist _de jure_ before it can exist _de facto_? But, if so, in what +can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of +the whole fact's constitution actuating; every partial factor as its +purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of +looking behind a fact _in esse_ for the ground of the fact, and +finding it in the shape of the very same fact _in posse_? Somewhere we +must leave off with a _constitution_ behind which there is nothing.] + +says, 'I must begin with _A_ or _B_. And beginning, say with _A_, if +I then merely find _B_, I have either lost _A_, or I have got beside +_A_, [_the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction +'external' and therefore unintelligible_] something else, and in +neither case have I understood.[1] For my intellect cannot simply +unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of +togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside _A_ and _B_, you offer +me their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more +than another external element. And "facts," once for all, are for my +intellect not true unless they satisfy it.... The intellect has in its +nature no principle of mere togetherness' (pp. 570, 572). + +Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power +by which we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give +due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and +amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its +behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he +elsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intellect a _proprius motus_ of +transition, but says that + +[Footnote 1: Apply this to the case of 'book-on-table'! W.J.] + +when he looks for _these_ transitions in the detail of living +experience, he 'is unable to verify such a solution' (p. 569). + +Yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like +in case we had them. He only defines them negatively--they are not +spatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or +otherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naïvely trace +relations, for relations _separate_ terms, and need themselves to be +hooked on _ad infinitum_. The nearest approach he makes to describing +a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of _A_ and _B_ +as being 'united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the +nature of both alike' (p. 570). But this (which, _pace_ Mr. Bradley, +seems exquisitely analogous to 'taking a congeries in a lump,' if +not to 'swamping') suggests nothing but that _conflux_ which pure +experience so abundantly offers, as when 'space,' 'white,' and 'sweet' +are confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal, and +optical sensations confluent in 'my hand.'[1] All that I can verify +in the transitions which Mr. Bradley's intellect desiderates as +its _proprius motus_ is a reminiscence of these and other sensible +conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions), + +[Footnote 1: How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes +(or in 'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc.) the relation is an +additional entity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related +again to each! Both Bradley (_Appearance and Reality_, pp. 32-33) and +Royce (_The World and the Individual_, i, 128) lovingly repeat this +piece of profundity.] + +but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized. +Bradley, in short, repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its +image in the water. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest +union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite, +the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon as you see the fact of +them,[1] for there is no how except the constitution of the fact as +given; with all this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for +some ineffable union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained +it, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full +possession. Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all +of us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed. + +Polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession +in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against +its best known champion would count as either superficiality or +inability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated +in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as +experienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an +empirical theory of knowledge intact, and lets us continue to believe +with common sense that one object _may_ be known, if we have any +ground for thinking that it _is_ known, to many knowers. + +[Footnote 1: The 'why' and the 'whence' are entirely other questions, +not under discussion, as I understand Mr. Bradley. Not how experience +gets itself born, but how it can be what it is after it is born, is +the puzzle.] + + + + +APPENDIX B + + +THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY[1] + +... Mr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to +philosophy, and if one turns to the current literature of the +subject--his own writings included--one easily gathers what he means. +The opponents cannot even understand one another. Mr. Bradley says to +Mr. Ward: 'I do not care what your oracle is, and your preposterous +psychology may here be gospel if you please; ... but if the revelation +does contain a meaning, I will commit myself to this: either the +oracle is so confused that its signification is not discoverable, +or, upon the other hand, if it can be pinned down to any definite +statement, then that statement will be false.'[2] Mr. Ward in turn +says of Mr. Bradley: 'I cannot even imagine the state of mind to which +his description applies.... It reads like an unintentional travesty of +Herbartian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without +being at the pains to master it.' Münsterberg excludes a view opposed +to his own by saying that with any one who holds it a _verständigung_ +with him is '_grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen_'; and Royce, + +[Footnote 1: President's Address before the American Psychological +Association, December, 1904. Reprinted from the _Psychological +Review_, vol. xii, 1905, with slight verbal revision.] + +[Footnote 2: _Appearance and Reality_, p. 117. Obviously written _at_ +Ward, though Ward's name is not mentioned.] + +in a review of Stout,[1] hauls him over the coals at great length for +defending 'efficacy' in a way which I, for one, never gathered from +reading him, and which I have heard Stout himself say was quite +foreign to the intention of his text. + +In these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and +different points of view are talked of _durcheinander_. + +(1) There is a psychological question: Have we perceptions of +activity? and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have +them? + +(2) There is a metaphysical question: Is there a _fact_ of activity? +and if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what +does it do, if it does anything? And finally there is a logical +question: + +(3) Whence do we _know_ activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or +by some other source of information? Throughout page after page of the +literature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and +mere description of the surface-show of experience is proffered as if +it implicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants, +moreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view +would carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's +experience it would make if his adversary's were triumphant. + +[Footnote 1: _Mind_, N.S., VI, 379.] + +It seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it +ought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience, +to be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them +somewhat. The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there +is no difference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact +somewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of +opinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some +practical or particular issue. The principle of pure experience is +also a methodical postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it +says, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some +experient; and for every feature of fact ever so experienced, a +definite place must be found somewhere in the final system of reality. +In other words: Everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and +every kind of thing experienced must somewhere be real. + +Armed with these rules of method, let us see what face the problems of +activity present to us. + +By the principle of pure experience, either the word 'activity' must +have no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what +it means must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be +definitely pointed out. Whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually +come to make regarding activity, _that sort_ of thing will be what the +judgments are about. The first step to take, then, is to ask where in +the stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity. +What we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later +question. + +Now it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever +we find anything _going on_. Taken in the broadest sense, any +apprehension of something _doing_, is an experience of activity. Were +our world describable only by the words 'nothing happening,' 'nothing +changing,' 'nothing doing,' we should unquestionably call it an +'inactive' world. Bare activity, then, as we may call it, means the +bare fact of event or change. 'Change taking place' is a unique +content of experience, one of those 'conjunctive' objects which +radical empiricism seeks so earnestly to rehabilitate and preserve. +The sense of activity is thus in the broadest and vaguest way +synonymous with the sense of 'life.' We should feel our own subjective +life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming an otherwise inactive +world. Our own reaction on its monotony would be the one thing +experienced there in the form of something coming to pass. + +This seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist +that for an experient to be at all is to be active. It seems to +justify, or at any rate to explain, Mr. Ward's expression that we +_are_ only as we are active,[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. ii, p. 245. One thinks +naturally of the peripatetic _actus primus_ and _actus secundus_ +here.] + +for we _are_ only as experients; and it rules out Mr. Bradley's +contention that 'there is no original experience of anything like +activity.' What we ought to say about activities thus simply given, +whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they effect +anything at all--these are later questions, to be answered only when +the field of experience is enlarged. + +Bare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite +direction, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a +wild _ideenflucht_, or _rhapsodie der wahrnehmungen_, as Kant would +say, would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive +world. + +But in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of +the activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire +and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it +overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of +resistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like +these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed +to activity arise. Here also the notion of causal efficacy comes +to birth. Perhaps the most elaborate work ever done in descriptive +psychology has been the analysis by various recent writers of the more +complex activity-situations. In their descriptions, exquisitely subtle +some of them,[1] the activity appears as the _gestalt-qualität_ + +[Footnote 1: Their existence forms a curious commentary on Professor +Munsterberg's dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He +himself has contributed in a superior way to their description, both +in his _Willenshandlung_, and in his _Grundzüge_, Part II, chap, ix, § +7.] + +or the _fundirte inhalt_ (or as whatever else you may please to call +the conjunctive form) which the content falls into when we experience +it in the ways which the describers set forth. Those factors in those +relations are what we _mean_ by activity-situations; and to the +possible enumeration and accumulation of their circumstances and +ingredients there would seem to be no natural bound. Every hour of +human life could contribute to the picture gallery; and this is the +only fault that one can find with such descriptive industry--where is +it going to stop? Ought we to listen forever to verbal pictures of +what we have already in concrete form in our own breasts?[1] +They never take us off the superficial plane. We knew the facts +already--less spread out and separated, to be sure--but we knew them +still. We always felt our own activity, for example, as 'the expansion +of an idea with which our Self is identified, against an obstacle'; +and the following out of such a definition through a multitude of +cases elaborates the obvious so as to be little more than an exercise +in synonymic speech. + +All the descriptions have to trace familiar outlines, and to use +familiar terms. The activity is, for example, + +[Footnote 1: I ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous +sinner in my own chapter on the will.] + +attributed either to a physical or to a mental agent, and is either +aimless or directed. If directed, it shows tendency. The tendency may +or may not be resisted. If not, we call the activity immanent, as when +a body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at +their own sweet will. If resistance is met, _its_ agent complicates +the situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency +continues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain +or squeeze. Will, in the narrower sense of the word, then comes upon +the scene, whenever, along with the tendency, the strain and squeeze +are sustained. But the resistance may be great enough to check the +tendency, or even to reverse its path. In that case, we (if 'we' were +the original agents or subjects of the tendency) are overpowered. +The phenomenon turns into one of tension simply, or of necessity +succumbed--to, according as the opposing power is only equal, or is +superior to ourselves. + +Whosoever describes an experience in such terms as these, describes an +experience _of_ activity. If the word have any meaning, it must denote +what there is found. _There_ is complete activity in its original and +first intention. What it is 'known-as' is what there appears. The +experiencer of such a situation possesses all that the idea contains. +He feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the +triumph, or the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the +space, the swiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and +color, the pain and pleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining +characters the situation may involve. He goes through all that ever +can be imagined where activity is supposed. If we suppose activities +to go on outside of our experience, it is in forms like these that we +must suppose them, or else give them some other name; for the word +'activity' has no imaginable content whatever save these experiences +of process, obstruction, striving, strain, or release, ultimate +_qualia_ as they are of the life given us to be known. + +Were this the end of the matter, one might think that whenever we had +successfully lived through an activity-situation we should have to be +permitted, without provoking contradiction, to say that we had +been really active, that we had met real resistance and had really +prevailed. Lotze somewhere says that to be an entity all that is +necessary is to _gelten_ as an entity, to operate, or be felt, +experienced, recognized, or in any way realized, as such. In our +activity-experiences the activity assuredly fulfils Lotze's demand. +It makes itself _gelten_. It is witnessed at its work. No matter what +activities there may really be in this extraordinary universe of ours, +it is impossible for us to conceive of any one of them being either +lived through or authentically known otherwise than in this dramatic +shape of something sustaining a felt purpose against felt obstacles +and overcoming or being overcome. What 'sustaining' means here is +clear to any one who has lived through the experience, but to no one +else; just as 'loud,' 'red,' 'sweet,' mean something only to beings +with ears, eyes, and tongues. The _percipi_ in these originals of +experience is the _esse_; the curtain is the picture. If there is +anything hiding in the background, it ought not to be called activity, +but should get itself another name. + +This seems so obviously true that one might well experience +astonishment at finding so many of the ablest writers on the subject +flatly denying that the activity we live through in these situations +is real. Merely to feel active is not to be active, in their sight. +The agents that appear in the experience are not real agents, the +resistances do not really resist, the effects that appear are not +really effects at all.[1] It is evident from this that + +[Footnote 1: _Verborum gratiâ_:'The feeling of activity is not able, +quâ feeling, to tell us anything about activity' (Loveday: _Mind_, +N.S., X., 403); 'A sensation or feeling or sense of activity ... is +not, looked at in another way, a feeling of activity at all. It is a +mere sensation shut up within which you could by no reflection get the +idea of activity.... Whether this experience is or is not later on a +character essential to our perception and our idea of activity, it, as +it comes first, is not in itself an experience of activity at all. It, +as it comes first, is only so for extraneous reasons and only so for +an outside observer' (Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, 2d edition, +p. 605); 'In dem tätigkeitsgefühle leigt an sich nicht der +geringste beweis für das vorhandensein einer psychischen tätigkeit' +(Münsterberg: _Grundzüge_, etc., p. 67). I could multiply similar +quotations, and would have introduced some of them into my text to +make it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of +view in most of these author's discussions (not in Münsterberg's) make +it impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. I am sure in any +case to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note, +by omission of the context, so the less I name names and the more +I stick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of +opinion, the safer it will be. And apropos of misunderstandings, I may +add to this note a complaint on my own account. Professor Stout, in +the excellent chapter on 'Mental Activity,' in vol. i of his _Analytic +Psychology_, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with +certain muscular feelings, and gives quotations to bear him out. They +are from certain paragraphs on 'the Self,' in which my attempt was to +show what the central nucleus of the activities that we call 'ours' +is. I found it in certain intracephalic movements which we habitually +oppose, as 'subjective,' to the activities of the transcorporeal +world. I sought to show that there is no direct evidence that we feel +the activity of an inner spiritual agent as such (I should now say the +activity of 'consciousness' as such, see my paper 'Does consciousness +exist?' in the _Journal of Philosophy_, vol. i, p. 477). There are, in +fact, three distinguishable 'activities' in the field of discussion: +the elementary activity involved in the mere _that_ of experience, in +the fact that _something_ is going on, and the farther specification +of this _something_ into two _whats_, an activity felt as 'ours,' and +an activity ascribed to objects. Stout, as I apprehend him, identifies +'our' activity with that of the total experience-process, and when I +circumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort +of external appendage to itself (pp. 162-163), as if I 'separated the +activity from the process which is active.' But all the processes in +question are active, and their activity is inseparable from their +being. My book raised only the question of _which_ activity deserved +the name of 'ours.' So far as we are 'persons,' and contrasted and +opposed to an 'environment,' movements in our body figure as our +activities; and I am unable to find any other activities that are ours +in this strictly personal sense. There is a wider sense in which +the whole 'choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,' and their +activities, are ours, for they are our 'objects.' But 'we' are here +only another name for the total process of experience, another name +for all that is, in fact; and I was dealing with the personal and +individualized self exclusively in the passages with which Professor +Stout finds fault. + +The individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing properly +called self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. The +world experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness') +comes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision, +centre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is is 'here'; +when the body acts is 'now'; what the body touches is 'this'; all +other things are 'there' and 'then' and 'that.' These words of +emphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference +to a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the +systematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no +developed or active experience exists for us at all except in that +ordered form. So far as 'thoughts' and 'feelings' can be active, their +activity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through +first arousing its activities can they begin to change those of +the rest of the world. The body is the storm centre, the origin +of co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that +experience-train. Everything circles round it, and is felt from its +point of view. The word 'I,' then, is primarily a noun of position, +just like 'this' and 'here.' Activities attached to 'this' position +have prerogative emphasis, and, if activities have feelings, must be +felt in a peculiar way. The word 'my' designates the kind of emphasis. +I see no inconsistency whatever in defending, on the one hand, 'my' +activities as unique and opposed to those of outer nature, and, on the +other hand, in affirming, after introspection, that they consist in +movements in the head. The 'my' of them is the emphasis, the feeling +of perspective-interest in which they are dyed.] + +mere descriptive analysis of any one of our activity-experiences is +not the whole story, that there is something still to tell _about_ +them that has led such able writers to conceive of a _Simon-pure_ +activity, of an activity _an sich_, that does, and doesn't merely +appear to us to do, and compared with whose real doing all this +phenomenal activity is but a specious sham. + +The metaphysical question opens here; and I think that the state of +mind of one possessed by it is often something like this: 'It is +all very well,' we may imagine him saying, 'to talk about certain +experience-series taking on the form of feelings of activity, just as +they might take on musical or geometric forms. Suppose that they do +so; suppose that what we feel is a will to stand a strain. Does our +feeling do more than _record_ the fact that the strain is sustained? +The _real_ activity, meanwhile, is the _doing_ of the fact; and what +is the doing made of before the record is made? What in the will +_enables_ it to act thus? And these trains of experience themselves, +in which activities appear, what makes them _go_ at all? Does the +activity in one bit of experience bring the next bit into being? As an +empiricist you cannot say so, for you have just declared activity +to be only a kind of synthetic object, or conjunctive relation +experienced between bits of experience already made. But what made +them at all? What propels experience _überhaupt_ into being? _There_ +is the activity that _operates_; the activity _felt_ is only its +superficial sign.' + +To the metaphysical question, popped upon us in this way, I must pay +serious attention ere I end my remarks, but, before doing so, let me +show that without leaving the immediate reticulations of experience, +or asking what makes activity itself act, we still find the +distinction between less real and more real activities forced upon us, +and are driven to much soul-searching on the purely phenomenal plane. + +We must not forget, namely, in talking of the ultimate character of +our activity-experiences, that each of them is but a portion of a +wider world, one link in the vast chain of processes of experience +out of which history is made. Each partial process, to him who lives +through it, defines itself by its origin and its goal; but to an +observer with a wider mind-span who should live outside of it, +that goal would appear but as a provisional halting-place, and the +subjectively felt activity would be seen to continue into objective +activities that led far beyond. We thus acquire a habit, in discussing +activity-experiences, of defining them by their relation to something +more. If an experience be one of narrow span, it will be mistaken as +to what activity it is and whose. You think that _you_ are acting +while you are only obeying some one's push. You think you are doing +_this_, but you are doing something of which you do not dream. For +instance, you think you are but drinking this glass; but you are +really creating the liver-cirrhosis that will end your days. You think +you are just driving this bargain, but, as Stevenson says somewhere, +you are laying down a link in the policy of mankind. + +Generally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision, +regards the _ultimate outcome_ of an activity as what it is more +really doing; and _the most previous agent_ ascertainable, being the +first source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the +field. The others but transmit that agent's impulse; on him we put +responsibility; we name him when one asks us, 'Who's to blame?' + +But the most previous agents ascertainable, instead of being of longer +span, are often of much shorter span than the activity in view. +Brain-cells are our best example. My brain-cells are believed to +excite each other from next to next (by contiguous transmission of +katabolic alteration, let us say), and to have been doing so long +before this present stretch of lecturing-activity on my part began. +If any one cell-group stops its activity, the lecturing will cease or +show disorder of form. _Cessante causa, cessat et effectus_--does not +this look as if the short-span brain activities were the more real +activities, and the lecturing activities on my part only their +effects? Moreover, as Hume so clearly pointed out, in my mental +activity-situation the words physically to be uttered are represented +as the activity's immediate goal. These words, however, cannot be +uttered without intermediate physical processes in the bulb and vagi +nerves, which processes nevertheless fail to figure in the mental +activity-series at all. That series, therefore, since it leaves out +vitally real steps of action, cannot represent the real activities. It +is something purely subjective; the _facts_ of activity are elsewhere. +They are something far more interstitial, so to speak, than what my +feelings record. + +The _real_ facts of activity that have in point of fact been +systematically pleaded for by philosophers have, so far as my +information goes, been of three principal types. + +The first type takes a consciousness of wider time-span than ours to +be the vehicle of the more real activity. Its will is the agent, and +its purpose is the action done. + +The second type assumes that 'ideas' struggling with one another are +the agents, and that the prevalence of one set of them is the action. + +The third type believes that nerve-cells are the agents, and that +resultant motor discharges are the acts achieved. + +Now if we must de-realize our immediately felt activity-situations for +the benefit of either of these types of substitute, we ought to know +what the substitution practically involves. _What practical difference +ought it to make if_, instead of saying naively that 'I' am active now +in delivering this address, I say that _a wider thinker is active_, +or that _certain ideas are active_, or that _certain nerve-cells are +active_, in producing the result? + +This would be the pragmatic meaning of the three hypotheses. Let us +take them in succession in seeking a reply. + +If we assume a wider thinker, it is evident that his purposes envelop +mine. I am really lecturing _for_ him; and altho I cannot surely know +to what end, yet if I take him religiously, I can trust it to be a +good end, and willingly connive. I can be happy in thinking that my +activity transmits his impulse, and that his ends prolong my own. So +long as I take him religiously, in short, he does not de-realize my +activities. He tends rather to corroborate the reality of them, so +long as I believe both them and him to be good. + +When now we turn to ideas, the case is different, inasmuch as ideas +are supposed by the association psychology to influence each other +only from next to next. The 'span' of an idea, or pair of ideas, is +assumed to be much smaller instead of being larger than that of my +total conscious field. The same results may get worked out in both +cases, for this address is being given anyhow. But the ideas supposed +to 'really' work it out had no prevision of the whole of it; and if +I was lecturing for an absolute thinker in the former case, so, +by similar reasoning, are my ideas now lecturing for me, that is, +accomplishing unwittingly a result which I approve and adopt. But, +when this passing lecture is over, there is nothing in the bare notion +that ideas have been its agents that would seem to guarantee that my +present purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. _I_ may have ulterior +developments in view; but there is no certainty that my ideas as such +will wish to, or be able to, work them out. + +The like is true if nerve-cells be the agents. The activity of a +nerve-cell must be conceived of as a tendency of exceedingly short +reach, an 'impulse' barely spanning the way to the next cell--for +surely that amount of actual 'process' must be 'experienced' by the +cells if what happens between them is to deserve the name of activity +at all. But here again the gross resultant, as _I_ perceive it, is +indifferent to the agents, and neither wished or willed or foreseen. +Their being agents now congruous with my will gives me no guarantee +that like results will recur again from their activity. In point of +fact, all sorts of other results do occur. My mistakes, impotencies, +perversions, mental obstructions, and frustrations generally, are also +results of the activity of cells. Altho these are letting me lecture +now, on other occasions they make me do things that I would willingly +not do. + +The question _Whose is the real activity?_ is thus tantamount to the +question _What will be the actual results?_ Its interest is dramatic; +how will things work out? If the agents are of one sort, one way; if +of another sort, they may work out very differently. The pragmatic +meaning of the various alternatives, in short, is great. It makes more +than a merely verbal difference which opinion we take up. + +You see it is the old dispute come back! Materialism and teleology; +elementary short-span actions summing themselves 'blindly,' or far +foreseen ideals coming with effort into act. + +Naïvely we believe, and humanly and dramatically we like to believe, +that activities both of wider and of narrower span are at work in life +together, that both are real, and that the long-span tendencies yoke +the others in their service, encouraging them in the right direction, +and damping them when they tend in other ways. But how to represent +clearly the _modus operandi_ of such steering of small tendencies +by large ones is a problem which metaphysical thinkers will have to +ruminate upon for many years to come. Even if such control should +eventually grow clearly picturable, the question how far it is +successfully exerted in this actual world can be answered only by +investigating the details of fact. No philosophic knowledge of the +general nature and constitution of tendencies, or of the relation +of larger to smaller ones, can help us to predict which of all the +various competing tendencies that interest us in this universe are +likeliest to prevail. We know as an empirical fact that far-seeing +tendencies often carry out their purpose, but we know also that they +are often defeated by the failure of some contemptibly small process +on which success depends. A little thrombus in a statesman's meningeal +artery will throw an empire out of gear. Therefore I cannot even hint +at any solution of the pragmatic issue. I have only wished to show you +that that issue is what gives the real interest to all inquiries into +what kinds of activity may be real. Are the forces that really act in +the world more foreseeing or more blind? As between 'our' activities +as 'we' experience them, and those of our ideas, or of our +brain-cells, the issue is well defined. + +I said awhile back (p. 381) that I should return to the 'metaphysical' +question before ending; so, with a few words about that, I will now +close my remarks. + +In whatever form we hear this question propounded, I think that it +always arises from two things, a belief that _causality_ must be +exerted in activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made. If we +take an activity-situation at its face-value, it seems as if we caught +_in flagrante delicto_ the very power that makes facts come and be. I +now am eagerly striving, for example, to get this truth which I seem +half to perceive, into words which shall make it show more clearly. If +the words come, it will seem as if the striving itself had drawn or +pulled them into actuality out from the state of merely possible being +in which they were. How is this feat performed? How does the pulling +_pull_? How do I get my hold on words not yet existent, and when they +come, by what means have I _made_ them come? Really it is the problem +of creation; for in the end the question is: How do I make them _be?_ +Real activities are those that really make things be, without which +the things are not, and with which they are there. Activity, so far as +we merely feel it, on the other hand, is only an impression of ours, +it may be maintained; and an impression is, for all this way of +thinking, only a shadow of another fact. + +Arrived at this point, I can do little more than indicate the +principles on which, as it seems to me, a radically empirical +philosophy is obliged to rely in handling such a dispute. + +If there _be_ real creative activities in being, radical empiricism +must say, somewhere they must be immediately lived. Somewhere the +_that_ of efficacious causing and the _what_ of it must be experienced +in one, just as the what and the that of 'cold' are experienced in one +whenever a man has the sensation of cold here and now. It boots not to +say that our sensations are fallible. They are indeed; but to see the +thermometer contradict us when we say 'it is cold' does not abolish +cold as a specific nature from the universe. Cold is in the arctic +circle if not here. Even so, to feel that our train is moving when the +train beside our window moves, to see the moon through a telescope +come twice as near, or to see two pictures as one solid when we look +through a stereoscope at them, leaves motion, nearness, and solidity +still in being--if not here, yet each in its proper seat elsewhere. +And wherever the seat of real causality _is_, as ultimately known 'for +true' (in nerve-processes, if you will, that cause our feelings of +activity as well as the movements which these seem to prompt), a +philosophy of pure experience can consider the real causation as no +other _nature_ of thing than that which even in our most erroneous +experiences appears to be at work. Exactly what appears there is what +we _mean_ by working, tho we may later come to learn that working was +not exactly _there_. Sustaining, persevering, striving, paying with +effort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving our intention--this +_is_ action, this _is_ effectuation in the only shape in which, by +a pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it anywhere can be +discussed. Here is creation in its first intention, here is causality +at work.[1] To treat this offhand as the bare illusory + +[Footnote 1: Let me not be told that this contradicts a former article +of mine, 'Does consciousness exist?' in the _Journal of Philosophy_ +for September 1, 1904 (see especially page 489), in which it was said +that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures +work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water +wets, etc.), but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are +composed of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other: they +check, sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely +associational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my +reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that +energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is +a desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a +feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. +The interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,' +'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental +series. In what we term the physical drama these qualities play +absolutely no part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can +see no inconsistency.] + +surface of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable ontological +principle hidden in the cubic deeps, is, for the more empirical way of +thinking, only animism in another shape. You explain your given fact +by your 'principle,' but the principle itself, when you look clearly +at it, turns out to be nothing but a previous little spiritual copy +of the fact. Away from that one and only kind of fact your mind, +considering causality, can never get.[1] + +[Footnote 1: I have found myself more than once accused in print of +being the assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since +literary misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should +like to say that such an interpretation of the pages I have published +on effort and on will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to +express. I owe all my doctrines on this subject to Renouvier; and +Renouvier, as I understand him, is (or at any rate then was) an out +and out phenomenist, a denier of 'forces' in the most strenuous +sense. Single clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their +connexion, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal +principle of energy; but I defy any one to show a single sentence +which, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate +that view. The misinterpretation probably arose at first from my +having defended (after Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. +'Free will' was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural +agent. As a matter of plain history, the only 'free will' I have +ever thought of defending is the character of novelty in fresh +activity-situations. If an activity-process is the form of a whole +'field of consciousness,' and if each field of consciousness is not +only in its totality unique (as is now commonly admitted), but has +its elements unique (since in that situation they are all dyed in +the total), then novelty is perpetually entering the world and what +happens there is not pure _repetition_, as the dogma of the literal +uniformity of nature requires. Activity-situations come, in short, +each with an original touch. A 'principle' of free will, if there were +one, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but I never +saw, nor do I now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the +phenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.] + +I conclude, then, that real effectual causation as an ultimate nature, +as a 'category,' if you like, of reality, is _just what we feel it +to be_, just that kind of conjunction which our own activity-series +reveal. We have the whole butt and being of it in our hands; and the +healthy thing for philosophy is to leave off grubbing underground for +what effects effectuation, or what makes action act, and to try to +solve the concrete questions of where effectuation in this world is +located, of which things are the true causal agents there, and of what +the more remote effects consist. + +From this point of view the greater sublimity traditionally attributed +to the metaphysical inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely +disappears. If we could know what causation really and +transcendentally is in itself, the only _use_ of the knowledge would +be to help us to recognize an actual cause when we had one, and so to +track the future course of operations more intelligently out. The mere +abstract inquiry into causation's hidden nature is not more sublime +than any other inquiry equally abstract. Causation inhabits no more +sublime level than anything else. It lives, apparently, in the dirt of +the world as well as in the absolute, or in man's unconquerable mind. +The worth and interest of the world consists not in its elements, +be these elements things, or be they the conjunctions of things; it +exists rather in the dramatic outcome of the whole process, and in the +meaning of the succession stages which the elements work out. + +My colleague and master, Josiah Royce, in a page of his review of +Stout's _Analytic Psychology_, in _Mind_ for 1897, has some fine words +on this point with which I cordially agree. I cannot agree with his +separating the notion of efficacy from that of activity altogether +(this I understand to be one contention of his), for activities are +efficacious whenever they are real activities at all. But the inner +nature both of efficacy and of activity are superficial problems, I +understand Royce to say; and the only point for us in solving them +would be their possible use in helping us to solve the far deeper +problem of the course and meaning of the world of life. Life, says +our colleague, is full of significance, of meaning, of success and of +defeat, of hoping and of striving, of longing, of desire, and of inner +value. It is a total presence that embodies worth. To live our own +lives better in this presence is the true reason why we wish to know +the elements of things; so even we psychologists must end on this +pragmatic note. + +The urgent problems of activity are thus more concrete. They all +are problems of the true relation of longer-span to shorter-span +activities. When, for example, a number of 'ideas' (to use the name +traditional in psychology) grow confluent in a larger field of +consciousness, do the smaller activities still coexist with the wider +activities then experienced by the conscious subject? And, if so, do +the wide activities accompany the narrow ones inertly, or do they +exert control? Or do they perhaps utterly supplant and replace them +and short-circuit their effects? Again, when a mental activity-process +and a brain-cell series of activities both terminate in the same +muscular movement, does the mental process steer the neural processes +or not? Or, on the other hand, does it independently short-circuit +their effects? Such are the questions that we must begin with. But so +far am I from suggesting any definitive answer to such questions, +that I hardly yet can put them clearly. They lead, however, into that +region of panpsychic and ontologic speculation of which Professors +Bergson and Strong have lately enlarged the literature in so able and +interesting a way. The results of these authors seem in many respects +dissimilar, and I understand them as yet but imperfectly; but I cannot +help suspecting that the direction of their work is very promising, +and that they have the hunter's instinct for the fruitful trails. + + + + +APPENDIX C + + +ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING + +In my _Principles of Psychology_ (vol. ii, p. 646) I gave the name of +the 'axiom of skipped intermediaries and transferred relations' to a +serial principle of which the foundation of logic, the _dictum de omni +et nullo_ (or, as I expressed it, the rule that what is of a kind is +of that kind's kind), is the most familiar instance. More than the +more is more than the less, equals of equals are equal, sames of the +same are the same, the cause of a cause is the cause of its effects, +are other examples of this serial law. Altho it applies infallibly +and without restriction throughout certain abstract series, where the +'sames,' 'causes,' etc., spoken of, are 'pure,' and have no properties +save their sameness, causality, etc., it cannot be applied offhand to +concrete objects with numerous properties and relations, for it is +hard to trace a straight line of sameness, causation, or whatever it +may be, through a series of such objects without swerving into some +'respect' where the relation, as pursued originally, no longer holds: +the objects have so many 'aspects' that we are constantly deflected +from our original direction, and find, we know not why, that we are +following something different from what we started with. Thus a cat is +in a sense the same as a mouse-trap, and a mouse-trap the same as a +bird-cage; but in no valuable or easily intelligible sense is a cat +the same as a bird-cage. Commodore Perry was in a sense the cause +of the new régime in Japan, and the new régime was the cause of the +russian Douma; but it would hardly profit us to insist on holding to +Perry as the cause of the Douma: the terms have grown too remote to +have any real or practical relation to each other. In every series of +real terms, not only do the terms themselves and their associates +and environments change, but we change, and their _meaning_ for +us changes, so that new kinds of sameness and types of causation +continually come into view and appeal to our interest. Our earlier +lines, having grown irrelevant, are then dropped. The old terms can no +longer be substituted nor the relations 'transferred,' because of so +many new dimensions into which experience has opened. Instead of a +straight line, it now follows a zigzag; and to keep it straight, one +must do violence to its spontaneous development. Not that one might +not possibly, by careful seeking (tho I doubt it), _find_ some line in +nature along which terms literally the same, or causes causal in the +same way, might be serially strung without limit, if one's interest +lay in such finding. Within such lines our axioms might hold, causes +might cause their effect's effects, etc.; but such lines themselves +would, if found, only be partial members of a vast natural network, +within the other lines of which you could not say, in any sense that +a wise man or a sane man would ever think of, in any sense that would +not be concretely _silly_, that the principle of skipt intermediaries +still held good. In the _practical_ world, the world whose +significances we follow, sames of the same are certainly not sames of +one another; and things constantly cause other things without being +held responsible for everything of which those other things are +causes. + +Professor Bergson, believing as he does in a heraclitean 'devenir +réel,' ought, if I rightly understand him, positively to deny that in +the actual world the logical axioms hold good without qualification. +Not only, according to him, do terms change, so that after a certain +time the very elements of things are no longer what they were, but +relations also change, so as no longer to obtain in the same identical +way between the new things that have succeeded upon the old ones. If +this were really so, then however indefinitely sames might still +be substituted for sames in the logical world of nothing but pure +sameness, in the world of real operations every line of sameness +actually started and followed up would eventually give out, and cease +to be traceable any farther. Sames of the same, in such a world, will +not always (or rather, in a strict sense will never) be the same +as one another, for in such a world there _is_ no literal or ideal +sameness among numerical differents. Nor in such a world will it be +true that the cause of the cause is unreservedly the cause of +the effect; for if we follow lines of real causation, instead of +contenting ourselves with Hume's and Kant's eviscerated schematism, we +find that remoter effects are seldom aimed at by causal intentions,[1] +that no one kind of causal activity continues indefinitely, and that +the principle of skipt intermediaries can be talked of only _in +abstracto_.[2] + +Volumes i, ii, and iii of the _Monist_ (1890-1893) contain a number of +articles by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, articles the originality of which +has apparently prevented their making an immediate impression, but +which, if I mistake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for thinkers +of the coming generation. Mr. Peirce's views, tho reached so +differently, are altogether congruous with Bergson's. Both +philosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is +genuine. To an observer standing outside of its generating causes, +novelty can appear only as so much 'chance'; to one who stands inside +it is the expression of 'free creative activity.' Peirce's 'tychism' +is thus practically synonymous with Bergson's 'devenir réel.' The +common objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly +in, _ex nihilo_, they shatter the world's rational continuity. Peirce +meets this objection by combining his tychism + +[Footnote 1: Compare the douma with what Perry aimed at.] + +[Footnote 2: Compare Appendix B, as to what I mean here by 'real' +casual activity.] + +with an express doctrine of 'synechism' or continuity, the two +doctrines merging into the higher synthesis on which he bestows the +name of 'agapasticism (_loc. cit._, iii, 188), which means exactly the +same thing as Bergson's 'évolution créatrice.' Novelty, as empirically +found, doesn't arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibly, for +adjacents in experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum +being both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctness being +realized effectively only after a concrete interval has passed. The +intervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and +all the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous +infiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut. +Just so, in a curve, the same direction is _never_ followed, and the +conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by +supposing it to do so for however short a time. Peirce speaks of an +'infinitesimal' tendency to diversification. The mathematical notion +of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same +and yet the nascent other, of an identity that won't _keep_ except so +far as it keeps _failing_, that won't _transfer_, any more than the +serial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality +instead of applying them to concepts alone. + +A friend of mine has an idea, which illustrates on such a magnified +scale the impossibility of tracing the same line through reality, that +I will mention it here. He thinks that nothing more is needed to make +history 'scientific' than to get the content of any two epochs (say +the end of the thirteenth and the end of the nineteenth century) +accurately defined, then accurately to define the direction of the +change that led from the one epoch into the other, and finally to +prolong the line of that direction into the future. So prolonging the +line, he thinks, we ought to be able to define the actual state +of things at any future date we please. We all feel the essential +unreality of such a conception of 'history' as this; but if such a +synechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what +really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest, +would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter +pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or +statistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality. + +I can give no further account of Mr. Peirce's ideas in this note, but +I earnestly advise all students of Bergson to compare them with those +of the french philosopher. + + + + +INDEX + + +INDEX TO THE LECTURES + + Absolute, the, 49, 108-109, 114 ff., 173, 175, 190 ff., 203, 271, 292 ff., + 311; not the same as God, 111, 134; its rationality, 114 f.; its + irrationality, 117-129; difficulty of conceiving it, 195. + + Absolutism, 34, 38, 40, 54, 72 f, 79, 122, 310. See Monism. + + Achilles and tortoise, 228, 255. + + All-form, the, 34, 324. + + Analogy, 8, 151 f. + + Angels, 164. + + Antinomies, 231, 239. + + ARISTIDES, 304. + + + BAILEY, S., 5. + + BERGSON, H., Lecture VI, _passim_. His characteristics, 226 f, 266. + + 'Between,' 70. + + Block-universe, 310, 328. + + BRADLEY, F.H., 46, 69, 79, 211, 220, 296. + + Brain, 160. + + + CAIRD, E., 89, 95, 137. + + CATO, 304. + + Causation, 258. See Influence. + + Change, 231, 253. + + CHESTERTON, 203, 303. + + Compounding of mental states, 168, 173, 186 f., 268, 281, 284, 292, 296. + + Concepts, 217, 234 f. + + Conceptual method, 243 f., 246, 253. + + Concrete reality, 283, 286. + + Confluence, 326. + + Conflux, 257. + + Consciousness, superhuman, 156, 310 f.; its compound nature, 168, 173, + 186 f., 289. + + Continuity, 256 f., 325. + + Contradiction, in Hegel, 89 f. + + Creation, 29, 119. + + + Death, 303. + + Degrees, 74. + + Dialectic method, 89. + + Difference, 257 f. + + Diminutive epithets, 12, 24. + Discreteness of change, 231. + + + 'Each-form,' the, 34, 325. + + Earth, the, in Fechner's philosophy, 156; is an angel, 164. + + Earth-soul, 152 f. + + Elan vital, 262. + + Empiricism, 264, 277; and religion, 314; defined, 7. + + Endosmosis, 257. + + Epithets. See Diminutive. + + Evil, 310. + + Experience, 312; religious, 307. + + Extremes, 67, 74. + + + 'Faith-ladder,' 328. + + 'Fall,' the, 119, 310. + + FECHNER, Lecture IV, _passim._ His life, 145-150; he reasons by analogy, + 151; his genius, 154; compared with Royce, 173, 207; not a genuine + monist, 293; his God; and religious experience, 308. + + FERRIER, Jas., 13. + + Finite experience, 39, 48, 182, 192-193. + + Finiteness, of God, 111, 124, 294. + + Foreignness, 31. + + + German manner of philosophizing, 17. + + GOD, 24 f., 111, 124, 193, 240, 294. + + GREEN, T.H., 6, 24, 137, 278. + + + HALDANE, R.B., 138. + + HEGEL, Lecture III, _passim_, 11, 85, 207, 211, 219, 296. His vision, + 88, 98 f., 104; his use of double negation, 102; his vicious + intellectualism 106; Haldane on, 138; McTaggart on, 140; Royce on, 143. + + HODGSON, S.H., 282. + + Horse, 265. + + HUME, 19, 267. + + + Idealism, 36. See Absolutism. + + Identity, 93. + + Immortality, Fechner's view of, 171. + + 'Independent' beings, 55, 58. + + Indeterminism, 77. + + Infinity, 229. + + Influence, 258, 561. + + Intellect, its function is practical, 247 f., 252. + + Intellectualism, vicious, 60, 218. + + Intellectualist logic, 216, 259, 261. + + Intellectualist method, 291. + + Interaction, 56. + + Intimacy, 31. + + Irrationality, 81; of the absolute, 117-129. + + + JACKS, L.P., 35. + + JOACHIM, H., 121, 141. + + JONES, H., 52. + + + KANT, 19, 199, 238, 240. + + + LEIBNITZ, 119. + + Life, 523. + + Log, 323. + + Logic, 92, 211; Intellectualist, 217, 242. + + LOTZE, 55, 120. + + LUTHER, 304. + + + McTAGGART, 51, 74 f., 120, 140 f., 183. + + Manyness in oneness, 322. See Compounding. + + Mental chemistry, 185. + + MILL, J.S., 242, 260. + + Mind, dust theory, 189. + + Mind, the eternal, 137. See Absolute. + + Monism, 36, 117, 125, 201, 313, 321 f.; Fechner's, 153. See Absolutism. + + Monomaniacs, 78. + + Motion, 233, 238, 254; Zeno on, 228. + + MYERS, F.W.H., 315. + + + Nature, 21, 286. + + Negation, 93 f.; double, 102. + + Newton, 260. + + + Other, 95, 312; 'its own other,' 108 f., 282. + + Oxford, _3_, 313, 331. + + + Pantheism, 24, 28. + + PAULSEN, 18, 22. + + Personality, divided, 298. + + Philosophers, their method, 9; their common desire, 11 f.; they must + reason, 13. + + Philosophies, their types, 23, 31. + + PHOCION, 304. + + Plant-soul, 165 f. + + Pluralism, 45, 76, 79, 311, 319, 321 f. + + Polytheism, 310. + + Practical reason, 329. + + Psychic synthesis, 185. See Compounding. + + Psychical research, 299. + + + 'Quâ,' 39, 47, 267, 270. + + 'Quatenus,' 47, 267. + + + Rationalism defined, 7, 98; its thinness, 144, 237. + + Rationality, 81, 112 f., 319 f. + + Reality, 262 f., 264, 283 f. + + Reason, 286, 312. + + Relating, 7. + + Relations, 70, 278 ff.; 'external,' 80. + + Religious experiences, 305 f. + + RITCHIE, 72. + + ROYCE, 61 f., 115, 173, 182 f., 197, 207, 212, 265, 296. + + + Same, 269, 281. + + Savage philosophy, 21. + + Science, 145. + + Sensations, 279. + + Socialism, 78. + + SOCRATES, 284. + + Soul, 199, 209. + + 'Some,' 79. + + Sphinx, 22. + + SPINOZA, 47. + + Spiritualistic philosophy, 23. + + Sugar, 220, 232. + + Synthesis, psychic. See Compounding. + + + TAYLOR, A.E., 76, 139, 212. + + Theism, 24. + + Thick, the, 136. + + 'Thickness' of Fechner's philosophy, 144. + + Thin, the, 136. + + Thinness of the current transcendentalism, 144, 174 f. + + Time, 232. + + + Units of reality, 287. + + + Vision, in philosophy, 20. + + + WELLS, H.G., 78. + + Will to believe, 328. + + Witnesses, as implied in experience, 200. + + WUNDT, W., 185. + + + ZENO, 228. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Pluralistic Universe, +by William James + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11984 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Pluralistic Universe + Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the + Present Situation in Philosophy + +Author: William James + +Release Date: April 10, 2004 [EBook #11984] +[Last updated: December 24, 2012] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE *** + + + + +Produced by Felicia Urbanski, David Starner, Nicolas Hayes and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + +A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE + + +Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in +Philosophy + + +BY WILLIAM JAMES + + + + +1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +LECTURE I + +THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING 1 + + Our age is growing philosophical again, 3. Change of tone since 1860, 4. + Empiricism and Rationalism defined, 7. The process of Philosophizing: + Philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, 8. + They seek to make it seem less strange, 11. Their temperamental + differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency + to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of + vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought, + 21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23. + Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and + leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The + contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand + to be essential in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: The 'each- + form' and the 'all-form' of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks + quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the + finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite + still remains outside of absolute reality, 40. + + +LECTURE II + +MONISTIC IDEALISM 41 + + Recapitulation, 43. Radical Pluralism is to be the thesis of these + lectures, 44. Most philosophers contemn it, 45. Foreignness to us of + Bradley's Absolute, 46. Spinoza and 'quatenus,'47. Difficulty of + sympathizing with the Absolute, 48. Idealistic attempt to interpret it, + 50. Professor Jones quoted, 52. Absolutist refutations of Pluralism, 54. + Criticism of Lotze's proof of Monism by the analysis of what interaction + involves, 55. Vicious intellectualism defined, 60. Royce's alternative: + either the complete disunion or the absolute union of things, 61. + Bradley's dialectic difficulties with relations, 69. Inefficiency of the + Absolute as a rationalizing remedy, 71. Tendency of Rationalists to fly + to extremes, 74. The question of 'external' relations, 79. Transition to + Hegel, 91. + + +LECTURE III + +HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 83 + + Hegel's influence. 85. The type of his vision is impressionistic, 87. + The 'dialectic' element in reality, 88. Pluralism involves possible + conflicts among things, 90. Hegel explains conflicts by the mutual + contradictoriness of concepts, 91. Criticism of his attempt to transcend + ordinary logic, 92. Examples of the 'dialectic' constitution of things, + 95. The rationalistic ideal: propositions self-securing by means of + double negation, 101. Sublimity of the conception, 104. Criticism of + Hegel's account: it involves vicious intellectualism, 105. Hegel is a + seer rather than a reasoner, 107. 'The Absolute' and 'God' are two + different notions, 110. Utility of the Absolute in conferring mental + peace, 114. But this is counterbalanced by the peculiar paradoxes which + it introduces into philosophy, 116. Leibnitz and Lotze on the 'fall' + involved in the creation of the finite, 119. Joachim on the fall of + truth into error, 121. The world of the absolutist cannot be perfect, + 123. Pluralistic conclusions, 125. + + +LECTURE IV + +CONCERNING FECHNER 131 + + Superhuman consciousness does not necessarily imply an absolute + mind, 134. Thinness of contemporary absolutism, 135. The + tone of Fechner's empiricist pantheism contrasted with that of the + rationalistic sort, 144. Fechner's life, 145. His vision, the 'daylight + view,' 150. His way of reasoning by analogy, 151. The whole universe + animated, 152. His monistic formula is unessential, 153. The + Earth-Soul, 156. Its differences from our souls, 160. The earth as + an angel, 164. The Plant-Soul, 165. The logic used by Fechner, + 168. His theory of immortality, 170. The 'thickness' of his imagination, + 173. Inferiority of the ordinary transcendentalist pantheism, + to his vision, 174. + + +LECTURE V + +THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS 179 + The assumption that states of mind may compound themselves, 181. This + assumption is held in common by naturalistic psychology, by + transcendental idealism, and by Fechner, 184. Criticism of it by the + present writer in a former book, 188. Physical combinations, so-called, + cannot be invoked as analogous, 194. Nevertheless, combination must be + postulated among the parts of the Universe, 197. The logical objections + to admitting it, 198. Rationalistic treatment of the question brings us + to an _impasse_, 208. A radical breach with intellectualism is required, + 212. Transition to Bergson's philosophy, 214. Abusive use of concepts, + 219. + + +LECTURE VI + +BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 223 + + Professor Bergson's personality, 225. Achilles and the tortoise, 228. + Not a sophism, 229. We make motion unintelligible when we treat it by + static concepts, 233. Conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense + practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives an essentially + static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240. + No rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life, + 244. The function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247. + Bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the + understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What Bergson means by + this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really exists + is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson's + originality, 264. Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a + universe where change is continuous, 267. Livingly, things _are_ their + own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel's logic is true, + 270. + + +LECTURE VII + +THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275 + + Green's critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately + felt as terms are, 280. The union of things is given in the immediate + flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux's aboriginal + incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles of continuity, + 284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete + units of experience are 'their own others,' 287. Reality is confluent + from next to next, 290. Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced, + 291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis, 292. Fechner's God is not the + Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, 296. + Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298. + + +LECTURE VIII + +CONCLUSIONS 301 + + Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304. + They corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part, + 308. This life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of + monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better + ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger + mind may open the door to superstitions, 315. But this objection + should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form parts of reality, + 317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least + foreign, 318. The word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the + word 'intimacy,' 319. Monism and pluralism distinguished and + defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All men use + the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330. + + +NOTES 333 + + +APPENDICES + + A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 847 + + B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 870 + + C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING 895 + + +INDEX 401 + + + + +LECTURE I + + +THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING + +As these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed +all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general +interest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing +philosophical again--still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford, +long the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by +Kant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different +way of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest +in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It +looks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of +fashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming +itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as +if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh. + +Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying +every one we meet under some general head. As these heads usually +suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life +of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and +complaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up, +and, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both Oxford +and Harvard are partly to be thanked. As I look back into the sixties, +Mill, Bain, and Hamilton were the only official philosophers in +Britain. Spencer, Martineau, and Hodgson were just beginning. In +France, the pupils of Cousin were delving into history only, and +Renouvier alone had an original system. In Germany, the hegelian +impetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship, +nothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as +Büchner and Ulrici as its champions. Lotze and Fechner were the sole +original thinkers, and Fechner was not a professional philosopher at +all. + +The general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of +small subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. Amateurishness was +rampant. Samuel Bailey's 'letters on the philosophy of the human +mind,' published in 1855, are one of the ablest expressions of english +associationism, and a book of real power. Yet hear how he writes of +Kant: 'No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to +hear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years +of study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the +speculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if they had. +In or about 1818, Lord Grenville, when visiting the Lakes of England, +observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of Kant's +philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, +about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of +my own. "I am endeavoring," exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the +irritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, "to understand this +accursed german philosophy."[1] + +What Oxford thinker would dare to print such _naïf_ and +provincial-sounding citations of authority to-day? + +The torch of learning passes from land to land as the spirit bloweth +the flame. The deepening of philosophic consciousness came to us +english folk from Germany, as it will probably pass back ere long. +Ferrier, J.H. Stirling, and, most of all, T.H. Green are to be +thanked. If asked to tell in broad strokes what the main doctrinal +change has been, I should call it a change from the crudity of the +older english thinking, its ultra-simplicity of mind, both when it was +religious and when it was anti-religious, toward a rationalism +derived in the first instance from Germany, but relieved from german +technicality and shrillness, and content to suggest, and to remain +vague, and to be, in, the english fashion, devout. + +By the time T.H. Green began at Oxford, the generation seemed to +feel as if it had fed on the chopped straw of psychology and of +associationism long enough, and as if a little vastness, even though +it went with vagueness, as of some moist wind from far away, reminding +us of our pre-natal sublimity, would be welcome. + +Green's great point of attack was the disconnectedness of the reigning +english sensationalism. _Relating_ was the great intellectual activity +for him, and the key to this relating was believed by him to +lodge itself at last in what most of you know as Kant's unity of +apperception, transformed into a living spirit of the world. + +Hence a monism of a devout kind. In some way we must be fallen angels, +one with intelligence as such; and a great disdain for empiricism +of the sensationalist sort has always characterized this school of +thought, which, on the whole, has reigned supreme at Oxford and in the +Scottish universities until the present day. + +But now there are signs of its giving way to a wave of revised +empiricism. I confess that I should be glad to see this latest wave +prevail; so--the sooner I am frank about it the better--I hope to +have my voice counted in its favor as one of the results of this +lecture-course. + +What do the terms empiricism and rationalism mean? Reduced to their +most pregnant difference, _empiricism means the habit of explaining +wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts +by wholes_. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since +wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic +views. No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a +picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of +the perspective of events. And the first thing to notice is this, that +the only material we have at our disposal for making a picture of the +whole world is supplied by the various portions of that world of +which we have already had experience. We can invent no new forms of +conception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested +originally by the parts. All philosophers, accordingly, have conceived +of the whole world after the analogy of some particular feature of it +which has particularly captivated their attention. Thus, the theists +take their cue from manufacture, the pantheists from growth. For one +man, the world is like a thought or a grammatical sentence in which a +thought is expressed. For such a philosopher, the whole must logically +be prior to the parts; for letters would never have been invented +without syllables to spell, or syllables without words to utter. + +Another man, struck by the disconnectedness and mutual accidentality +of so many of the world's details, takes the universe as a whole to +have been such a disconnectedness originally, and supposes order to +have been superinduced upon it in the second instance, possibly +by attrition and the gradual wearing away by internal friction of +portions that originally interfered. + +Another will conceive the order as only a statistical appearance, and +the universe will be for him like a vast grab-bag with black and white +balls in it, of which we guess the quantities only probably, by the +frequency with which we experience their egress. + +For another, again, there is no really inherent order, but it is we +who project order into the world by selecting objects and tracing +relations so as to gratify our intellectual interests. We _carve out_ +order by leaving the disorderly parts out; and the world is conceived +thus after the analogy of a forest or a block of marble from which +parks or statues may be produced by eliminating irrelevant trees or +chips of stone. + +Some thinkers follow suggestions from human life, and treat the +universe as if it were essentially a place in which ideals are +realized. Others are more struck by its lower features, and for them, +brute necessities express its character better. + +All follow one analogy or another; and all the analogies are with some +one or other of the universe's subdivisions. Every one is nevertheless +prone to claim that his conclusions are the only logical ones, that +they are necessities of universal reason, they being all the while, at +bottom, accidents more or less of personal vision which had far better +be avowed as such; for one man's vision may be much more valuable than +another's, and our visions are usually not only our most interesting +but our most respectable contributions to the world in which we play +our part. What was reason given to men for, said some eighteenth +century writer, except to enable them to find reasons for what they +want to think and do?--and I think the history of philosophy largely +bears him out, 'The aim of knowledge,' says Hegel,[2] 'is to divest +the objective world of its strangeness, and to make us more at home +in it.' Different men find their minds more at home in very different +fragments of the world. + +Let me make a few comments, here, on the curious antipathies which +these partialities arouse. They are sovereignly unjust, for all the +parties are human beings with the same essential interests, and no one +of them is the wholly perverse demon which another often imagines him +to be. Both are loyal to the world that bears them; neither wishes to +spoil it; neither wishes to regard it as an insane incoherence; both +want to keep it as a universe of some kind; and their differences are +all secondary to this deep agreement. They may be only propensities to +emphasize differently. Or one man may care for finality and security +more than the other. Or their tastes in language may be different. +One may like a universe that lends itself to lofty and exalted +characterization. To another this may seem sentimental or rhetorical. +One may wish for the right to use a clerical vocabulary, another a +technical or professorial one. A certain old farmer of my acquaintance +in America was called a rascal by one of his neighbors. He immediately +smote the man, saying,'I won't stand none of your diminutive +epithets.' Empiricist minds, putting the parts before the whole, +appear to rationalists, who start from the whole, and consequently +enjoy magniloquent privileges, to use epithets offensively diminutive. +But all such differences are minor matters which ought to be +subordinated in view of the fact that, whether we be empiricists or +rationalists, we are, ourselves, parts of the universe and share the +same one deep concern in its destinies. We crave alike to feel more +truly at home with it, and to contribute our mite to its amelioration. +It would be pitiful if small aesthetic discords were to keep honest +men asunder. + +I shall myself have use for the diminutive epithets of empiricism. But +if you look behind the words at the spirit, I am sure you will not +find it matricidal. I am as good a son as any rationalist among you to +our common mother. What troubles me more than this misapprehension is +the genuine abstruseness of many of the matters I shall be obliged +to talk about, and the difficulty of making them intelligible at one +hearing. But there two pieces, 'zwei stücke,' as Kant would have said, +in every philosophy--the final outlook, belief, or attitude to which +it brings us, and the reasonings by which that attitude is reached and +mediated. A philosophy, as James Ferrier used to tell us, must indeed +be true, but that is the least of its requirements. One may be true +without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelation. +What distinguishes a philosopher's truth is that it is _reasoned_. +Argument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession. Common +men find themselves inheriting their beliefs, they know not how. They +jump into them with both feet, and stand there. Philosophers must +do more; they must first get reason's license for them; and to the +professional philosophic mind the operation of procuring the license +is usually a thing of much more pith and moment than any particular +beliefs to which the license may give the rights of access. Suppose, +for example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will. +That a common man alongside of him should also share that belief, +possessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man +to the philosopher at all--he may even be ashamed to be associated +with such a man. What interests the philosopher is the particular +premises on which the free-will he believes in is established, the +sense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties +it takes account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner +and technical apparatus that goes with the belief in question. +A philosopher across the way who should use the same technical +apparatus, making the same distinctions, etc., but drawing opposite +conclusions and denying free-will entirely, would fascinate the first +philosopher far more than would the _naïf_ co-believer. Their common +technical interests would unite them more than their opposite +conclusions separate them. Each would feel an essential consanguinity +in the other, would think of him, write _at_ him, care for his good +opinion. The simple-minded believer in free-will would be disregarded +by either. Neither as ally nor as opponent would his vote be counted. + +In a measure this is doubtless as it should be, but like all +professionalism it can go to abusive extremes. The end is after all +more than the way, in most things human, and forms and methods may +easily frustrate their own purpose. The abuse of technicality is +seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, +metaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits. +Almost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain, +the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. Alternatives are wrapped +in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The +late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about +this. 'Thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something +for so-called philosophers only or for professed thinkers. The best +philosopher is the man who can think most _simply_. ... I wish that +people would consider that thought--and philosophy is no more than +good and methodical thought--is a matter _intimate_ to them, a portion +of their real selves ... that they would _value_ what they think, and +be interested in it.... In my own opinion,' he goes on, 'there is +something depressing in this weight of learning, with nothing that can +come into one's mind but one is told, Oh, that is the opinion of such +and such a person long ago. ... I can conceive of nothing more noxious +for students than to get into the habit of saying to themselves about +their ordinary philosophic thought, Oh, somebody must have thought it +all before.'[3] Yet this is the habit most encouraged at our seats of +learning. You must tie your opinion to Aristotle's or Spinoza's; you +must define it by its distance from Kant's; you must refute your +rival's view by identifying it with Protagoras's. Thus does all +spontaneity of thought, all freshness of conception, get destroyed. +Everything you touch is shopworn. The over-technicality and consequent +dreariness of the younger disciples at our american universities is +appalling. It comes from too much following of german models and +manners. Let me fervently express the hope that in this country you +will hark back to the more humane english tradition. American students +have to regain direct relations with our subject by painful individual +effort in later life. Some of us have done so. Some of the younger +ones, I fear, never will, so strong are the professional shop-habits +already. + +In a subject like philosophy it is really fatal to lose connexion with +the open air of human nature, and to think in terms of shop-tradition +only. In Germany the forms are so professionalized that anybody who +has gained a teaching chair and written a book, however distorted and +eccentric, has the legal right to figure forever in the history of the +subject like a fly in amber. All later comers have the duty of quoting +him and measuring their opinions with his opinion. Such are the rules +of the professorial game--they think and write from each other and for +each other and at each other exclusively. With this exclusion of the +open air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count +as much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance +any one writes popularly and about results only, with his mind +directly focussed on the subject, it is reckoned _oberflächliches +zeug_ and _ganz unwissenschaftlich_. Professor Paulsen has recently +written some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from +the reign of which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being +'literary,' have suffered loss of credit. Philosophy, he says, has +long assumed in Germany the character of being an esoteric and +occult science. There is a genuine fear of popularity. Simplicity of +statement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. He +recalls an old professor saying to him once: 'Yes, we philosophers, +whenever we wish, can go so far that in a couple of sentences we can +put ourselves where nobody can follow us.' The professor said this +with conscious pride, but he ought to have been ashamed of it. Great +as technique is, results are greater. To teach philosophy so that the +pupils' interest in technique exceeds that in results is surely a +vicious aberration. It is bad form, not good form, in a discipline +of such universal human interest. Moreover, technique for technique, +doesn't David Hume's technique set, after all, the kind of pattern +most difficult to follow? Isn't it the most admirable? The english +mind, thank heaven, and the french mind, are still kept, by their +aversion to crude technique and barbarism, closer to truth's natural +probabilities. Their literatures show fewer obvious falsities and +monstrosities than that of Germany. Think of the german literature of +aesthetics, with the preposterousness of such an unaesthetic personage +as Immanuel Kant enthroned in its centre! Think of german books on +_religions-philosophie_, with the heart's battles translated into +conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of +questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the +religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly +little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working +philosophy, individual Germans should preserve any spontaneity of +mind at all. That they still manifest freshness and originality in so +eminent a degree, proves the indestructible richness of the german +cerebral endowment. + +Let me repeat once more that a man's vision is the great fact about +him. Who cares for Carlyle's reasons, or Schopenhauer's, or Spencer's? +A philosophy is the expression of a man's intimate character, and all +definitions of the universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions +of human characters upon it. In the recent book from which I quoted +the words of Professor Paulsen, a book of successive chapters by +various living german philosophers,[4] we pass from one idiosyncratic +personal atmosphere into another almost as if we were turning over a +photograph album. + +If we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce +themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage +in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so +many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole +drift of life, forced on one by one's total character and experience, +and on the whole _preferred_--there is no other truthful word--as +one's best working attitude. Cynical characters take one general +attitude, sympathetic characters another. But no general attitude +is possible towards the world as a whole, until the intellect has +developed considerable generalizing power and learned to take pleasure +in synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly +any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. +It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and +shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical +powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but +Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is +likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the +wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest is all whispering with +witchery and danger. The eeriness of the world, the mischief and the +manyness, the littleness of the forces, the magical surprises, the +unaccountability of every agent, these surely are the characters most +impressive at that stage of culture, these communicate the thrills +of curiosity and the earliest intellectual stirrings. Tempests and +conflagrations, pestilences and earthquakes, reveal supramundane +powers, and instigate religious terror rather than philosophy. Nature, +more demonic than divine, is above all things _multifarious_. So many +creatures that feed or threaten, that help or crush, so many beings +to hate or love, to understand or start at--which is on top and which +subordinate? Who can tell? They are co-ordinate, rather, and to adapt +ourselves to them singly, to 'square' the dangerous powers and keep +the others friendly, regardless of consistency or unity, is the chief +problem. The symbol of nature at this stage, as Paulsen well says, +is the sphinx, under whose nourishing breasts the tearing claws are +visible. + +But in due course of time the intellect awoke, with its passion for +generalizing, simplifying, and subordinating, and then began those +divergences of conception which all later experience seems rather +to have deepened than to have effaced, because objective nature has +contributed to both sides impartially, and has let the thinkers +emphasize different parts of her, and pile up opposite imaginary +supplements. + +Perhaps the most interesting opposition is that which results from the +clash between what I lately called the sympathetic and the cynical +temper. Materialistic and spiritualistic philosophies are the rival +types that result: the former defining the world so as to leave man's +soul upon it as a soil of outside passenger or alien, while the latter +insists that the intimate and human must surround and underlie the +brutal. This latter is the spiritual way of thinking. + +Now there are two very distinct types or stages in spiritualistic +philosophy, and my next purpose in this lecture is to make their +contrast evident. Both types attain the sought-for intimacy of view, +but the one attains it somewhat less successfully than the other. + +The generic term spiritualism, which I began by using merely as the +opposite of materialism, thus subdivides into two species, the more +intimate one of which is monistic and the less intimate dualistic. The +dualistic species is the _theism_ that reached its elaboration in the +scholastic philosophy, while the monistic species is the _pantheism_ +spoken of sometimes simply as idealism, and sometimes as +'post-kantian' or 'absolute' idealism. Dualistic theism is professed +as firmly as ever at all catholic seats of learning, whereas it has +of late years tended to disappear at our british and american +universities, and to be replaced by a monistic pantheism more or less +open or disguised. I have an impression that ever since T.H. Green's +time absolute idealism has been decidedly in the ascendent at Oxford. +It is in the ascendent at my own university of Harvard. + +Absolute idealism attains, I said, to the more intimate point of view; +but the statement needs some explanation. So far as theism represents +the world as God's world, and God as what Matthew Arnold called a +magnified non-natural man, it would seem as if the inner quality of +the world remained human, and as if our relations with it might be +intimate enough--for what is best in ourselves appears then also +outside of ourselves, and we and the universe are of the same +spiritual species. So far, so good, then; and one might consequently +ask, What more of intimacy do you require? To which the answer is +that to be like a thing is not as intimate a relation as to be +substantially fused into it, to form one continuous soul and body with +it; and that pantheistic idealism, making us entitatively one with +God, attains this higher reach of intimacy. + +The theistic conception, picturing God and his creation as entities +distinct from each other, still leaves the human subject outside of +the deepest reality in the universe. God is from eternity complete, it +says, and sufficient unto himself; he throws off the world by a free +act and as an extraneous substance, and he throws off man as a third +substance, extraneous to both the world and himself. Between them, God +says 'one,' the world says 'two,' and man says 'three,'--that is the +orthodox theistic view. And orthodox theism has been so jealous of +God's glory that it has taken pains to exaggerate everything in the +notion of him that could make for isolation and separateness. Page +upon page in scholastic books go to prove that God is in no sense +implicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. That his +relation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to +him, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a +pantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. I said a moment ago that +theism treats us and God as of the same species, but from the orthodox +point of view that was a slip of language. God and his creatures +are _toto genere_ distinct in the scholastic theology, they have +absolutely _nothing_ in common; nay, it degrades God to attribute to +him any generic nature whatever; he can be classed with nothing. There +is a sense, then, in which philosophic theism makes us outsiders and +keeps us foreigners in relation to God, in which, at any rate, his +connexion with us appears as unilateral and not reciprocal. His action +can affect us, but he can never be affected by our reaction. Our +relation, in short, is not a strictly social relation. Of course in +common men's religion the relation is believed to be social, but that +is only one of the many differences between religion and theology. + +This essential dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of +collateral consequences. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to +God, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the +field. God is not heart of our heart and reason of our reason, but our +magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however +strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of +criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our +relations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the +same externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist +thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in +scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established +without our help, complete apart from our knowing; and the most we +can do is to acknowledge it passively and adhere to it, altho such +adhesion as ours can make no jot of difference to what is adhered to. +The situation here again is radically dualistic. It is not as if the +world came to know itself, or God came to know himself, partly through +us, as pantheistic idealists have maintained, but truth exists _per +se_ and absolutely, by God's grace and decree, no matter who of us +knows it or is ignorant, and it would continue to exist unaltered, +even though we finite knowers were all annihilated. + +It has to be confessed that this dualism and lack of intimacy has +always operated as a drag and handicap on Christian thought. Orthodox +theology has had to wage a steady fight within the schools against the +various forms of pantheistic heresy which the mystical experiences +of religious persons, on the one hand, and the formal or aesthetic +superiorities of monism to dualism, on the other, kept producing. God +as intimate soul and reason of the universe has always seemed to some +people a more worthy conception than God as external creator. So +conceived, he appeared to unify the world more perfectly, he made +it less finite and mechanical, and in comparison with such a God an +external creator seemed more like the product of a childish fancy. I +have been told by Hindoos that the great obstacle to the spread +of Christianity in their country is the puerility of our dogma +of creation. It has not sweep and infinity enough to meet the +requirements of even the illiterate natives of India. + +Assuredly most members of this audience are ready to side with +Hinduism in this matter. Those of us who are sexagenarians have +witnessed in our own persons one of those gradual mutations of +intellectual climate, due to innumerable influences, that make the +thought of a past generation seem as foreign to its successor as if +it were the expression of a different race of men. The theological +machinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, with its finite age +of the world, its creation out of nothing, its juridical morality and +eschatology, its relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of +God as an external contriver, an 'intelligent and moral governor,' +sounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish savage +religion. The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, +and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type +of our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or +obsolescent. The place of the divine in the world must be more organic +and intimate. An external creator and his institutions may still be +verbally confessed at Church in formulas that linger by their mere +inertia, but the life is out of them, we avoid dwelling on them, the +sincere heart of us is elsewhere. I shall leave cynical materialism +entirely out of our discussion as not calling for treatment before +this present audience, and I shall ignore old-fashioned dualistic +theism for the same reason. Our contemporary mind having once for all +grasped the possibility of a more intimate _Weltanschauung_, the only +opinions quite worthy of arresting our attention will fall within the +general scope of what may roughly be called the pantheistic field of +vision, the vision of God as the indwelling divine rather than the +external creator, and of human life as part and parcel of that deep +reality. + +As we have found that spiritualism in general breaks into a more +intimate and a less intimate species, so the more intimate species +itself breaks into two subspecies, of which the one is more monistic, +the other more pluralistic in form. I say in form, for our vocabulary +gets unmanageable if we don't distinguish between form and substance +here. The inner life of things must be substantially akin anyhow to +the tenderer parts of man's nature in any spiritualistic philosophy. +The word 'intimacy' probably covers the essential difference. +Materialism holds the foreign in things to be more primary and +lasting, it sends us to a lonely corner with our intimacy. The brutal +aspects overlap and outwear; refinement has the feebler and more +ephemeral hold on reality. + +From a pragmatic point of view the difference between living against +a background of foreignness and one of intimacy means the difference +between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. One might call +it a social difference, for after all, the common _socius_ of us all +is the great universe whose children we are. If materialistic, we +must be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. If +spiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and keep no ultimate fear. + +The contrast is rough enough, and can be cut across by all sorts +of other divisions, drawn from other points of view than that of +foreignness and intimacy. We have so many different businesses with +nature that no one of them yields us an all-embracing clasp. The +philosophic attempt to define nature so that no one's business is left +out, so that no one lies outside the door saying 'Where do _I_ come +in?' is sure in advance to fail. The most a philosophy can hope for is +not to lock out any interest forever. No matter what doors it closes, +it must leave other doors open for the interests which it neglects. +I have begun by shutting ourselves up to intimacy and foreignness +because that makes so generally interesting a contrast, and because it +will conveniently introduce a farther contrast to which I wish this +hour to lead. + +The majority of men are sympathetic. Comparatively few are cynics +because they like cynicism, and most of our existing materialists are +such because they think the evidence of facts impels them, or because +they find the idealists they are in contact with too private and +tender-minded; so, rather than join their company, they fly to the +opposite extreme. I therefore propose to you to disregard materialists +altogether for the present, and to consider the sympathetic party +alone. + +It is normal, I say, to be sympathetic in the sense in which I use the +term. Not to demand intimate relations with the universe, and not to +wish them satisfactory, should be accounted signs of something wrong. +Accordingly when minds of this type reach the philosophic level, and +seek some unification of their vision, they find themselves compelled +to correct that aboriginal appearance of things by which savages are +not troubled. That sphinx-like presence, with its breasts and claws, +that first bald multifariousness, is too discrepant an object for +philosophic contemplation. The intimacy and the foreignness cannot be +written down as simply coexisting. An order must be made; and in that +order the higher side of things must dominate. The philosophy of the +absolute agrees with the pluralistic philosophy which I am going +to contrast with it in these lectures, in that both identify human +substance with the divine substance. But whereas absolutism thinks +that the said substance becomes fully divine only in the form of +totality, and is not its real self in any form but the _all_-form, the +pluralistic view which I prefer to adopt is willing to believe that +there may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance +of reality may never get totally collected, that some of it may +remain outside of the largest combination of it ever made, and that +a distributive form of reality, the _each_-form, is logically as +acceptable and empirically as probable as the all-form commonly +acquiesced in as so obviously the self-evident thing. The contrast +between these two forms of a reality which we will agree to suppose +substantially spiritual is practically the topic of this course of +lectures. You see now what I mean by pantheism's two subspecies. If +we give to the monistic subspecies the name of philosophy of the +absolute, we may give that of radical empiricism to its pluralistic +rival, and it may be well to distinguish them occasionally later by +these names. + +As a convenient way of entering into the study of their differences, +I may refer to a recent article by Professor Jacks of Manchester +College. Professor Jacks, in some brilliant pages in the 'Hibbert +Journal' for last October, studies the relation between the universe +and the philosopher who describes and defines it for us. You may +assume two cases, he says. Either what the philosopher tells us is +extraneous to the universe he is accounting for, an indifferent +parasitic outgrowth, so to speak; or the fact of his philosophizing +is itself one of the things taken account of in the philosophy, and +self-included in the description. In the former case the philosopher +means by the universe everything _except_ what his own presence +brings; in the latter case his philosophy is itself an intimate +part of the universe, and may be a part momentous enough to give a +different turn to what the other parts signify. It may be a +supreme reaction of the universe upon itself by which it rises to +self-comprehension. It may handle itself differently in consequence of +this event. + +Now both empiricism and absolutism bring the philosopher inside +and make man intimate, but the one being pluralistic and the other +monistic, they do so in differing ways that need much explanation. Let +me then contrast the one with the other way of representing the status +of the human thinker. + +For monism the world is no collection, but one great all-inclusive +fact outside of which is nothing--nothing is its only alternative. +When the monism is idealistic, this all-enveloping fact is represented +as an absolute mind that makes the partial facts by thinking them, +just as we make objects in a dream by dreaming them, or personages in +a story by imagining them. To _be_, on this scheme, is, on the part of +a finite thing, to be an object for the absolute; and on the part of +the absolute it is to be the thinker of that assemblage of objects. If +we use the word 'content' here, we see that the absolute and the world +have an identical content. The absolute is nothing but the knowledge +of those objects; the objects are nothing but what the absolute knows. +The world and the all-thinker thus compenetrate and soak each other +up without residuum. They are but two names for the same identical +material, considered now from the subjective, and now from the +objective point of view--gedanke and gedachtes, as we would say if we +were Germans. We philosophers naturally form part of the material, on +the monistic scheme. The absolute makes us by thinking us, and if we +ourselves are enlightened enough to be believers in the absolute, one +may then say that our philosophizing is one of the ways in which the +absolute is conscious of itself. This is the full pantheistic scheme, +the _identitätsphilosophie_, the immanence of God in his creation, a +conception sublime from its tremendous unity. And yet that unity is +incomplete, as closer examination will show. + +The absolute and the world are one fact, I said, when materially +considered. Our philosophy, for example, is not numerically distinct +from the absolute's own knowledge of itself, not a duplicate and copy +of it, it is part of that very knowledge, is numerically identical +with as much of it as our thought covers. The absolute just _is_ our +philosophy, along with everything else that is known, in an act of +knowing which (to use the words of my gifted absolutist colleague +Royce) forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious +moment. + +But one as we are in this material sense with the absolute substance, +that being only the whole of us, and we only the parts of it, yet in a +formal sense something like a pluralism breaks out. When we speak of +the absolute we _take_ the one universal known material collectively +or integrally; when we speak of its objects, of our finite selves, +etc., we _take_ that same identical material distributively and +separately. But what is the use of a thing's _being_ only once if it +can be _taken_ twice over, and if being taken in different ways makes +different things true of it? As the absolute takes me, for example, I +appear _with_ everything else in its field of perfect knowledge. As +I take myself, I appear _without_ most other things in my field +of relative ignorance. And practical differences result from its +knowledge and my ignorance. Ignorance breeds mistake, curiosity, +misfortune, pain, for me; I suffer those consequences. The absolute +knows of those things, of course, for it knows me and my suffering, +but it doesn't itself suffer. It can't be ignorant, for simultaneous +with its knowledge of each question goes its knowledge of each answer. +It can't be patient, for it has to wait for nothing, having everything +at once in its possession. It can't be surprised; it can't be guilty. +No attribute connected with succession can be applied to it, for it +is all at once and wholly what it is, 'with the unity of a single +instant,' and succession is not of it but in it, for we are +continually told that it is 'timeless.' + +Things true of the world in its finite aspects, then, are not true of +it in its infinite capacity. _Quâ_ finite and plural its accounts of +itself to itself are different from what its account to itself _quâ_ +infinite and one must be. + +With this radical discrepancy between the absolute and the relative +points of view, it seems to me that almost as great a bar to intimacy +between the divine and the human breaks out in pantheism as that which +we found in monarchical theism, and hoped that pantheism might not +show. We humans are incurably rooted in the temporal point of view. +The eternal's ways are utterly unlike our ways. 'Let us imitate the +All,' said the original prospectus of that admirable Chicago quarterly +called the 'Monist.' As if we could, either in thought or conduct! +We are invincibly parts, let us talk as we will, and must always +apprehend the absolute as if it were a foreign being. If what I mean +by this is not wholly clear to you at this point, it ought to grow +clearer as my lectures proceed. + + + + +LECTURE II + + +MONISTIC IDEALISM + +Let me recall to you the programme which I indicated to you at our +last meeting. After agreeing not to consider materialism in any +shape, but to place ourselves straightway upon a more spiritualistic +platform, I pointed out three kinds of spiritual philosophy between +which we are asked to choose. The first way was that of the older +dualistic theism, with ourselves represented as a secondary order of +substances created by God. We found that this allowed of a degree of +intimacy with the creative principle inferior to that implied in the +pantheistic belief that we are substantially one with it, and that the +divine is therefore the most intimate of all our possessions, heart of +our heart, in fact. But we saw that this pantheistic belief could be +held in two forms, a monistic form which I called philosophy of the +absolute, and a pluralistic form which I called radical empiricism, +the former conceiving that the divine exists authentically only when +the world is experienced all at once in its absolute totality, whereas +radical empiricism allows that the absolute sum-total of things may +never be actually experienced or realized in that shape at all, and +that a disseminated, distributed, or incompletely unified appearance +is the only form that reality may yet have achieved. + +I may contrast the monistic and pluralistic forms in question as +the 'all-form' and the 'each-form.' At the end of the last hour I +animadverted on the fact that the all-form is so radically different +from the each-form, which is our human form of experiencing the +world, that the philosophy of the absolute, so far as insight and +understanding go, leaves us almost as much outside of the divine being +as dualistic theism does. I believe that radical empiricism, on the +contrary, holding to the each-form, and making of God only one of the +eaches, affords the higher degree of intimacy. The general thesis of +these lectures I said would be a defence of the pluralistic against +the monistic view. Think of the universe as existing solely in the +each-form, and you will have on the whole a more reasonable and +satisfactory idea of it than if you insist on the all-form being +necessary. The rest of my lectures will do little more than make this +thesis more concrete, and I hope more persuasive. + +It is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had +from philosophers. Whether materialistically or spiritualistically +minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with +which the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical +and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether +these were morally elevated or only intellectually neat they were +at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at +ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of +inner structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures, +the pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry +appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without +a sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. Those of you +who are accustomed to the classical constructions of reality may be +excused if your first reaction upon it be absolute contempt--a +shrug of the shoulders as if such ideas were unworthy of explicit +refutation. But one must have lived some time with a system to +appreciate its merits. Perhaps a little more familiarity may mitigate +your first surprise at such a programme as I offer. + +First, one word more than what I said last time about the relative +foreignness of the divine principle in the philosophy of the absolute. +Those of you who have read the last two chapters of Mr. Bradley's +wonderful book, 'Appearance and reality,' will remember what an +elaborately foreign aspect _his_ absolute is finally made to assume. +It is neither intelligence nor will, neither a self nor a collection +of selves, neither truthful, good, nor beautiful, as we understand +these terms. It is, in short, a metaphysical monster, all that we are +permitted to say of it being that whatever it is, it is at any rate +_worth_ more (worth more to itself, that is) than if any eulogistic +adjectives of ours applied to it. It is us, and all other appearances, +but none of us _as such_, for in it we are all 'transmuted,' and its +own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether. + +Spinoza was the first great absolutist, and the impossibility of being +intimate with _his_ God is universally recognized. _Quatenus infinitus +est_ he is other than what he is _quatenus humanam mentem constituit_. +Spinoza's philosophy has been rightly said to be worked by the word +_quatenus_. Conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs play indeed the +vital part in all philosophies; and in contemporary idealism the words +'as' and 'quâ' bear the burden of reconciling metaphysical unity with +phenomenal diversity. Quâ absolute the world is one and perfect, quâ +relative it is many and faulty, yet it is identically the self-same +world--instead of talking of it as many facts, we call it one fact in +many aspects. + +_As_ absolute, then, or _sub specie eternitatis_, or _quatenus +infinitus est_, the world repels our sympathy because it has no +history. _As such_, the absolute neither acts nor suffers, nor loves +nor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or +successes, friends or enemies, victories or defeats. All such things +pertain to the world quâ relative, in which our finite experiences +lie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our interest. +What boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and +to exhort me, as Emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its style, and +manners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition? I am +finite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up +with the finite world _as such_, and with things that have a history. +'Aus dieser erde quellen meine freuden, und ihre sonne scheinet meinen +leiden.' I have neither eyes nor ears nor heart nor mind for anything +of an opposite description, and the stagnant felicity of the +absolute's own perfection moves me as little as I move it. If we were +_readers_ only of the cosmic novel, things would be different: we +should then share the author's point of view and recognize villains to +be as essential as heroes in the plot. But we are not the readers but +the very personages of the world-drama. In your own eyes each of you +here is its hero, and the villains are your respective friends or +enemies. The tale which the absolute reader finds so perfect, we spoil +for one another through our several vital identifications with the +destinies of the particular personages involved. + +The doctrine on which the absolutists lay most stress is the +absolute's 'timeless' character. For pluralists, on the other hand, +time remains as real as anything, and nothing in the universe is great +or static or eternal enough not to have some history. But the world +that each of us feels most intimately at home with is that of beings +with histories that play into our history, whom we can help in their +vicissitudes even as they help us in ours. This satisfaction the +absolute denies us; we can neither help nor hinder it, for it stands +outside of history. It surely is a merit in a philosophy to make the +very life we lead seem real and earnest. Pluralism, in exorcising the +absolute, exorcises the great de-realizer of the only life we are +at home in, and thus redeems the nature of reality from essential +foreignness. Every end, reason, motive, object of desire or aversion, +ground of sorrow or joy that we feel is in the world of finite +multifariousness, for only in that world does anything really happen, +only there do events come to pass. + +In one sense this is a far-fetched and rather childish objection, for +so much of the history of the finite is as formidably foreign to us as +the static absolute can possibly be--in fact that entity derives its +own foreignness largely from the bad character of the finite which it +simultaneously is--that this sentimental reason for preferring the +pluralistic view seems small.[1] I shall return to the subject in my +final lecture, and meanwhile, with your permission, I will say no more +about this objection. The more so as the necessary foreignness of the +absolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of _totality_, +which is universally considered to carry the further attribute of +_perfection_ in its train. 'Philosophy,' says a recent american +philosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality,' and there is no doubt +that most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is +inspiring. 'I yielded myself to the perfect whole,' writes Emerson; +and where can you find a more mind-dilating object? A certain loyalty +is called forth by the idea; even if not proved actual, it must be +believed in somehow. Only an enemy of philosophy can speak lightly +of it. Rationalism starts from the idea of such a whole and builds +downward. Movement and change are absorbed into its immutability as +forms of mere appearance. When you accept this beatific vision of +what _is_, in contrast with what _goes on_, you feel as if you had +fulfilled an intellectual duty. 'Reality is not in its truest nature +a process,' Mr. McTaggart tells us, 'but a stable and timeless +state.'[2] 'The true knowledge of God begins,' Hegel writes, 'when +we know that things as they immediately are have no truth.'[3] 'The +consummation of the infinite aim,' he says elsewhere, 'consists merely +in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. Good +and absolute goodness is eternally accomplishing itself in the world: +and the result is that it needs not wait upon _us_, but is already ... +accomplished. It is an illusion under which we live. ... In the course +of its process the Idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an +antithesis to confront it, and its action consists in getting rid of +the illusion which it has created.'[4] + +But abstract emotional appeals of any kind sound amateurish in the +business that concerns us. Impressionistic philosophizing, like +impressionistic watchmaking or land-surveying, is intolerable to +experts. Serious discussion of the alternative before us forces +me, therefore, to become more technical. The great _claim_ of the +philosophy of the absolute is that the absolute is no hypothesis, but +a presupposition implicated in all thinking, and needing only a little +effort of analysis to be seen as a logical necessity. I will therefore +take it in this more rigorous character and see whether its claim is +in effect so coercive. + +It has seemed coercive to an enormous number of contemporaneous +thinkers. Professor Henry Jones thus describes the range and influence +of it upon the social and political life of the present time:[5] 'For +many years adherents of this way of thought have deeply interested the +british public by their writings. Almost more important than their +writings is the fact that they have occupied philosophical chairs in +almost every university in the kingdom. Even the professional critics +of idealism are for the most part idealists--after a fashion. And when +they are not, they are as a rule more occupied with the refutation of +idealism than with the construction of a better theory. It follows +from their position of academic authority, were it from nothing else, +that idealism exercises an influence not easily measured upon the +youth of the nation--upon those, that is, who from the educational +opportunities they enjoy may naturally be expected to become the +leaders of the nation's thought and practice.... Difficult as it is +to measure the forces ... it is hardly to be denied that the power +exercised by Bentham and the utilitarian school has, for better or +for worse, passed into the hands of the idealists.... "The Rhine has +flowed into the Thames" is the warning note rung out by Mr. Hobhouse. +Carlyle introduced it, bringing it as far as Chelsea. Then Jowett +and Thomas Hill Green, and William Wallace and Lewis Nettleship, and +Arnold Toynbee and David Eitchie--to mention only those teachers whose +voices now are silent--guided the waters into those upper reaches +known locally as the Isis. John and Edward Caird brought them up the +Clyde, Hutchison Stirling up the Firth of Forth. They have passed up +the Mersey and up the Severn and Dee and Don. They pollute the bay of +St. Andrews and swell the waters of the Cam, and have somehow crept +overland into Birmingham. The stream of german idealism has been +diffused over the academical world of Great Britain. The disaster is +universal.' + +Evidently if weight of authority were all, the truth of absolutism +would be thus decided. But let us first pass in review the general +style of argumentation of that philosophy. + +As I read it, its favorite way of meeting pluralism and empiricism is +by a _reductio ad absurdum_ framed somewhat as follows: You contend, +it says to the pluralist, that things, though in some respects +connected, are in other respects independent, so that they are not +members of one all-inclusive individual fact. Well, your position is +absurd on either point. For admit in fact the slightest modicum of +independence, and you find (if you will only think accurately) that +you have to admit more and more of it, until at last nothing but an +absolute chaos, or the proved impossibility of any connexion whatever +between the parts of the universe, remains upon your hands. Admit, on +the other hand, the most incipient minimum of relation between any two +things, and again you can't stop until you see that the absolute unity +of all things is implied. + +If we take the latter _reductio ad absurdum_ first, we find a good +example of it in Lotze's well-known proof of monism from the fact of +interaction between finite things. Suppose, Lotze says in effect, and +for simplicity's sake I have to paraphrase him, for his own words are +too long to quote--many distinct beings _a, b, c_, etc., to exist +independently of each other: _can a in that case ever act on b_? + +What is it to act? Is it not to exert an influence? Does the influence +detach itself from _a_ and find _b_? If so, it is a third fact, and +the problem is not how _a_ acts, but how its 'influence' acts on _b_. +By another influence perhaps? And how in the end does the chain of +influences find _b_ rather than _c_ unless _b_ is somehow prefigured +in them already? And when they have found _b_, how do they make _b_ +respond, if _b_ has nothing in common with them? Why don't they go +right through _b_? The change in _b_ is a _response_, due to _b_'s +capacity for taking account of _a_'s influence, and that again seems +to prove that _b_'s nature is somehow fitted to _a_'s nature in +advance. _A_ and _b_, in short, are not really as distinct as we at +first supposed them, not separated by a void. Were this so they would +be mutually impenetrable, or at least mutually irrelevant. They would +form two universes each living by itself, making no difference to each +other, taking no account of each other, much as the universe of your +day dreams takes no account of mine. They must therefore belong +together beforehand, be co-implicated already, their natures must have +an inborn mutual reference each to each. + +Lotze's own solution runs as follows: The multiple independent things +supposed cannot be real in that shape, but all of them, if reciprocal +action is to be possible between them, must be regarded as parts of a +single real being, M. The pluralism with which our view began has +to give place to a monism; and the 'transeunt' interaction, +being unintelligible as such, is to be understood as an immanent +operation.[6] + +The words 'immanent operation' seem here to mean that the single real +being M, of which _a_ and _b_ are members, is the only thing that +changes, and that when it changes, it changes inwardly and all over at +once. When part _a_ in it changes, consequently, part _b_ must also +change, but without the whole M changing this would not occur. + +A pretty argument, but a purely verbal one, as I apprehend it. _Call_ +your _a_ and _b_ distinct, they can't interact; _call_ them one, +they can. For taken abstractly and without qualification the words +'distinct' and 'independent' suggest only disconnection. If this be +the only property of your _a_ and _b_ (and it is the only property +your words imply), then of course, since you can't deduce their mutual +influence from _it_, you can find no ground of its occurring between +them. Your bare word 'separate,' contradicting your bare word +'joined,' seems to exclude connexion. + +Lotze's remedy for the impossibility thus verbally found is to change +the first word. If, instead of calling _a_ and _b_ independent, we now +call them 'interdependent,' 'united,' or 'one,' he says, _these_ words +do not contradict any sort of mutual influence that may be proposed. +If _a_ and _b_ are 'one,' and the one changes, _a_ and _b_ of course +must co-ordinately change. What under the old name they couldn't do, +they now have license to do under the new name. + +But I ask you whether giving the name of 'one' to the former 'many' +makes us really understand the modus operandi of interaction any +better. We have now given verbal permission to the many to change all +together, if they can; we have removed a verbal impossibility +and substituted a verbal possibility, but the new name, with the +possibility it suggests, tells us nothing of the actual process by +which real things that are one can and do change at all. In point +of fact abstract oneness as such _doesn't_ change, neither has it +parts--any more than abstract independence as such interacts. But then +neither abstract oneness nor abstract independence _exists_; only +concrete real things exist, which add to these properties the other +properties which they possess, to make up what we call their total +nature. To construe any one of their abstract names as _making their +total nature impossible_ is a misuse of the function of naming. The +real way of rescue from the abstract consequences of one name is not +to fly to an opposite name, equally abstract, but rather to correct +the first name by qualifying adjectives that restore some concreteness +to the case. Don't take your 'independence' _simpliciter_, as Lotze +does, take it _secundum quid_. Only when we know what the process of +interaction literally and concretely _consists_ in can we tell whether +beings independent _in definite respects_, distinct, for example, in +origin, separate in place, different in kind, etc., can or cannot +interact. + +_The treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the +name's definition fails positively to include, is what I call +'vicious intellectualism_.' Later I shall have more to say about this +intellectualism, but that Lotze's argument is tainted by it I hardly +think we can deny. As well might you contend (to use an instance from +Sigwart) that a person whom you have once called an 'equestrian' is +thereby forever made unable to walk on his own feet. + +I almost feel as if I should apologize for criticising such subtle +arguments in rapid lectures of this kind. The criticisms have to be as +abstract as the arguments, and in exposing their unreality, take +on such an unreal sound themselves that a hearer not nursed in the +intellectualist atmosphere knows not which of them to accuse. But +_le vin est versé, il faut le boire_, and I must cite a couple more +instances before I stop. + +If we are empiricists and go from parts to wholes, we believe that +beings may first exist and feed so to speak on their own existence, +and then secondarily become known to one another. But philosophers of +the absolute tell us that such independence of being from being known +would, if once admitted, disintegrate the universe beyond all hope of +mending. The argument is one of Professor Royce's proofs that the only +alternative we have is to choose the complete disunion of all things +or their complete union in the absolute One. + +Take, for instance, the proverb 'a cat may look at a king' and adopt +the realistic view that the king's being is independent of the cat's +witnessing. This assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make +no essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject +cognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even +be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,--this assumption, I +say, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead to the absurd +practical consequence that the two beings _can_ never later acquire +any possible linkages or connexions, but must remain eternally as if +in different worlds. For suppose any connexion whatever to ensue, this +connexion would simply be a third being additional to the cat and the +king, which would itself have to be linked to both by additional links +before it could connect them, and so on _ad infinitum_, the argument, +you see, being the same as Lotze's about how _a_'s influence does its +influencing when it influences _b_. + +In Royce's own words, if the king can be without the cat knowing him, +then king and cat 'can have no common features, no ties, no true +relations; they are separated, each from the other, by absolutely +impassable chasms. They can never come to get either ties or community +of nature; they are not in the same space, nor in the same time, nor +in the same natural or spiritual order.'[7] They form in short two +unrelated universes,--which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ required. + +To escape this preposterous state of things we must accordingly revoke +the original hypothesis. The king and the cat are not indifferent to +each other in the way supposed. But if not in that way, then in no +way, for connexion in that way carries connexion in other ways; so +that, pursuing the reverse line of reasoning, we end with the +absolute itself as the smallest fact that can exist. Cat and king are +co-involved, they are a single fact in two names, they can never have +been absent from each other, and they are both equally co-implicated +with all the other facts of which the universe consists. + +Professor Royce's proof that whoso admits the cat's witnessing the +king at all must thereupon admit the integral absolute, may be briefly +put as follows:-- + +First, to know the king, the cat must intend _that_ king, must somehow +pass over and lay hold of him individually and specifically. The cat's +idea, in short, must transcend the cat's own separate mind and somehow +include the king, for were the king utterly outside and independent of +the cat, the cat's pure other, the beast's mind could touch the king +in no wise. This makes the cat much less distinct from the king than +we had at first naïvely supposed. There must be some prior continuity +between them, which continuity Royce interprets idealistically as +meaning a higher mind that owns them both as objects, and owning them +can also own any relation, such as the supposed witnessing, that may +obtain between them. Taken purely pluralistically, neither of them can +own any part of a _between_, because, so taken, each is supposed shut +up to itself: the fact of a _between_ thus commits us to a higher +knower. + +But the higher knower that knows the two beings we start with proves +to be the same knower that knows everything else. For assume any third +being, the queen, say, and as the cat knew the king, so let the king +know his queen, and let this second knowledge, by the same reasoning, +require a higher knower as its presupposition. That knower of the +king's knowing must, it is now contended, be the same higher knower +that was required for the cat's knowing; for if you suppose otherwise, +you have no longer the _same king_. This may not seem immediately +obvious, but if you follow the intellectualistic logic employed in all +these reasonings, I don't see how you can escape the admission. If it +be true that the independent or indifferent cannot be related, for +the abstract words 'independent' or 'indifferent' as such imply no +relation, then it is just as true that the king known by the cat +cannot be the king that knows the queen, for taken merely 'as such,' +the abstract term 'what the cat knows' and the abstract term 'what +knows the queen' are logically distinct. The king thus logically +breaks into two kings, with nothing to connect them, until a higher +knower is introduced to recognize them as the self-same king concerned +in any previous acts of knowledge which he may have brought about. +This he can do because he possesses all the terms as his own objects +and can treat them as he will. Add any fourth or fifth term, and you +get a like result, and so on, until at last an all-owning knower, +otherwise called the absolute, is reached. The co-implicated +'through-and-through' world of monism thus stands proved by +irrefutable logic, and all pluralism appears as absurd. + +The reasoning is pleasing from its ingenuity, and it is almost a pity +that so straight a bridge from abstract logic to concrete fact should +not bear our weight. To have the alternative forced upon us of +admitting either finite things each cut off from all relation with +its environment, or else of accepting the integral absolute with no +environment and all relations packed within itself, would be too +delicious a simplification. But the purely verbal character of the +operation is undisguised. Because the _names_ of finite things and +their relations are disjoined, it doesn't follow that the realities +named need a _deus ex machina_ from on high to conjoin them. The same +things disjoined in one respect _appear_ as conjoined in another. +Naming the disjunction doesn't debar us from also naming the +conjunction in a later modifying statement, for the two are absolutely +co-ordinate elements in the finite tissue of experience. When at +Athens it was found self-contradictory that a boy could be both tall +and short (tall namely in respect of a child, short in respect of a +man), the absolute had not yet been thought of, but it might just as +well have been invoked by Socrates as by Lotze or Royce, as a relief +from his peculiar intellectualistic difficulty. + +Everywhere we find rationalists using the same kind of reasoning. The +primal whole which is their vision must be there not only as a +fact but as a logical necessity. It must be the minimum that can +exist--either that absolute whole is there, or there is absolutely +nothing. The logical proof alleged of the irrationality of supposing +otherwise, is that you can deny the whole only in words that +implicitly assert it. If you say 'parts,' of _what_ are they parts? If +you call them a 'many,' that very word unifies them. If you suppose +them unrelated in any particular respect, that 'respect' connects +them; and so on. In short you fall into hopeless contradiction. You +must stay either at one extreme or the other.[8] 'Partly this and +partly that,' partly rational, for instance, and partly irrational, +is no admissible description of the world. If rationality be in it at +all, it must be in it throughout; if irrationality be in it anywhere, +that also must pervade it throughout. It must be wholly rational or +wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or nulliverse; and +reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to +remain doubtful. The individual absolute, with its parts co-implicated +through and through, so that there is nothing in any part by which +any other part can remain inwardly unaffected, is the only rational +supposition. Connexions of an external sort, by which the many became +merely continuous instead of being consubstantial, would be an +irrational supposition. + +Mr. Bradley is the pattern champion of this philosophy _in extremis_, +as one might call it, for he shows an intolerance to pluralism so +extreme that I fancy few of his readers have been able fully to share +it. His reasoning exemplifies everywhere what I call the vice of +intellectualism, for abstract terms are used by him as positively +excluding all that their definition fails to include. Some Greek +sophists could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they +said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word _is_ +can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley +revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally +qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the +substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is +only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic +procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally +irrational, an example of the desperation of our finite intellectual +estate, infected and undermined as that is by the separatist +discursive forms which are our only categories, but which absolute +reality must somehow absorb into its unity and overcome. + +Readers of 'Appearance and reality' will remember how Mr. Bradley +suffers from a difficulty identical with that to which Lotze and Royce +fall a prey--how shall an influence influence? how shall a relation +relate? Any conjunctive relation between two phenomenal experiences +_a_ and _b_ must, in the intellectualist philosophy of these authors, +be itself a third entity; and as such, instead of bridging the one +original chasm, it can only create two smaller chasms, each to be +freshly bridged. Instead of hooking _a_ to _b_, it needs itself to be +hooked by a fresh relation _r’_ to _a_ and by another _r”_ to _b_. +These new relations are but two more entities which themselves require +to be hitched in turn by four still newer relations--so behold the +vertiginous _regressus ad infinitum_ in full career. + +Since a _regressus ad infinitum_ is deemed absurd, the notion that +relations come 'between' their terms must be given up. No mere +external go-between can logically connect. What occurs must be more +intimate. The hooking must be a penetration, a possession. The +relation must _involve_ the terms, each term must involve _it_, and +merging thus their being in it, they must somehow merge their being in +each other, tho, as they seem still phenomenally so separate, we can +never conceive exactly how it is that they are inwardly one. The +absolute, however, must be supposed able to perform the unifying feat +in his own inscrutable fashion. + +In old times, whenever a philosopher was assailed for some +particularly tough absurdity in his system, he was wont to parry the +attack by the argument from the divine omnipotence. 'Do you mean to +limit God's power?' he would reply: 'do you mean to say that God could +not, if he would, do this or that?' This retort was supposed to close +the mouths of all objectors of properly decorous mind. The functions +of the bradleian absolute are in this particular identical with those +of the theistic God. Suppositions treated as too absurd to pass muster +in the finite world which we inhabit, the absolute must be able to +make good 'somehow' in his ineffable way. First we hear Mr. Bradley +convicting things of absurdity; next, calling on the absolute to vouch +for them _quand même_. Invoked for no other duty, that duty it must +and shall perform. + +The strangest discontinuity of our world of appearance with the +supposed world of absolute reality is asserted both by Bradley and +by Royce; and both writers, the latter with great ingenuity, seek to +soften the violence of the jolt. But it remains violent all the same, +and is felt to be so by most readers. Whoever feels the violence +strongly sees as on a diagram in just what the peculiarity of all this +philosophy of the absolute consists. First, there is a healthy faith +that the world must be rational and self-consistent. 'All science, all +real knowledge, all experience presuppose,' as Mr. Ritchie writes, 'a +coherent universe.' Next, we find a loyal clinging to the rationalist +belief that sense-data and their associations are incoherent, and that +only in substituting a conceptual order for their order can truth +be found. Third, the substituted conceptions are treated +intellectualistically, that is as mutually exclusive and +discontinuous, so that the first innocent continuity of the flow of +sense-experience is shattered for us without any higher conceptual +continuity taking its place. Finally, since this broken state of +things is intolerable, the absolute _deus ex machina_ is called on to +mend it in his own way, since we cannot mend it in ours. + +Any other picture than this of post-kantian absolutism I am unable +to frame. I see the intellectualistic criticism destroying the +immediately given coherence of the phenomenal world, but unable to +make its own conceptual substitutes cohere, and I see the resort to +the absolute for a coherence of a higher type. The situation has +dramatic liveliness, but it is inwardly incoherent throughout, and the +question inevitably comes up whether a mistake may not somewhere have +crept in in the process that has brought it about. May not the remedy +lie rather in revising the intellectualist criticism than in first +adopting it and then trying to undo its consequences by an arbitrary +act of faith in an unintelligible agent. May not the flux of sensible +experience itself contain a rationality that has been overlooked, +so that the real remedy would consist in harking back to it more +intelligently, and not in advancing in the opposite direction away +from it and even away beyond the intellectualist criticism that +disintegrates it, to the pseudo-rationality of the supposed absolute +point of view. I myself believe that this is the real way to keep +rationality in the world, and that the traditional rationalism has +always been facing in the wrong direction. I hope in the end to make +you share, or at any rate respect, this belief, but there is much to +talk of before we get to that point. + +I employed the word 'violent' just now in describing the dramatic +situation in which it pleases the philosophy of the absolute to make +its camp. I don't see how any one can help being struck in absolutist +writings by that curious tendency to fly to violent extremes of which +I have already said a word. The universe must be rational; well +and good; but _how_ rational? in what sense of that eulogistic but +ambiguous word?--this would seem to be the next point to bring up. +There are surely degrees in rationality that might be discriminated +and described. Things can be consistent or coherent in very diverse +ways. But no more in its conception of rationality than in its +conception of relations can the monistic mind suffer the notion of +more or less. Rationality is one and indivisible: if not rational +thus indivisibly, the universe must be completely irrational, and no +shadings or mixtures or compromises can obtain. Mr. McTaggart writes, +in discussing the notion of a mixture: 'The two principles, of +rationality and irrationality, to which the universe is then referred, +will have to be absolutely separate and independent. For if there were +any common unity to which they should be referred, it would be that +unity and not its two manifestations which would be the ultimate +explanation ... and the theory, having thus become monistic,'[9] would +resolve itself into the same alternative once more: is the single +principle rational through and through or not? + +'Can a plurality of reals be possible?' asks Mr. Bradley, and answers, +'No, impossible.' For it would mean a number of beings not dependent +on each other, and this independence their plurality would contradict. +For to be 'many' is to be related, the word having no meaning unless +the units are somehow taken together, and it is impossible to take +them in a sort of unreal void, so they must belong to a larger +reality, and so carry the essence of the units beyond their proper +selves, into a whole which possesses unity and is a larger system.[10] +Either absolute independence or absolute mutual dependence--this, +then, is the only alternative allowed by these thinkers. Of course +'independence,' if absolute, would be preposterous, so the only +conclusion allowable is that, in Ritchie's words, 'every single event +is ultimately related to every other, and determined by the whole +to which it belongs.' The whole complete block-universe +through-and-through, therefore, or no universe at all! + +Professor Taylor is so _naïf_ in this habit of thinking only in +extremes that he charges the pluralists with cutting the ground from +under their own feet in not consistently following it themselves. What +pluralists say is that a universe really connected loosely, after the +pattern of our daily experience, is possible, and that for certain +reasons it is the hypothesis to be preferred. What Professor Taylor +thinks they naturally must or should say is that any other sort of +universe is logically impossible, and that a totality of things +interrelated like the world of the monists is not an hypothesis that +can be seriously thought out at all.[11] + +Meanwhile no sensible pluralist ever flies or wants to fly to this +dogmatic extreme. + +If chance is spoken of as an ingredient of the universe, absolutists +interpret it to mean that double sevens are as likely to be thrown out +of a dice box as double sixes are. If free-will is spoken of, that +must mean that an english general is as likely to eat his prisoners +to-day as a Maori chief was a hundred years ago. It is as likely--I am +using Mr. McTaggart's examples--that a majority of Londoners will +burn themselves alive to-morrow as that they will partake of food, as +likely that I shall be hanged for brushing my hair as for committing +a murder,[12] and so forth, through various suppositions that no +indeterminist ever sees real reason to make. + +This habit of thinking only in the most violent extremes reminds me +of what Mr. Wells says of the current objections to socialism, in his +wonderful little book, 'New worlds for old.' The commonest vice of the +human mind is its disposition to see everything as yes or no, as black +or white, its incapacity for discrimination of intermediate shades. +So the critics agree to some hard and fast impossible definition of +socialism, and extract absurdities from it as a conjurer gets rabbits +from a hat. Socialism abolishes property, abolishes the family, and +the rest. The method, Mr. Wells continues, is always the same: It +is to assume that whatever the socialist postulates as desirable is +wanted without limit of qualification,--for socialist read pluralist +and the parallel holds good,--it is to imagine that whatever proposal +is made by him is to be carried out by uncontrolled monomaniacs, and +so to make a picture of the socialist dream which can be presented to +the simple-minded person in doubt--'This is socialism'--or pluralism, +as the case may be. 'Surely!--SURELY! you don't want _this!_' + +How often have I been replied to, when expressing doubts of the +logical necessity of the absolute, of flying to the opposite extreme: +'But surely, SURELY there must be _some_ connexion among things!' As +if I must necessarily be an uncontrolled monomanic insanely denying +any connexion whatever. The whole question revolves in very truth +about the word 'some.' Radical empiricism and pluralism stand out for +the legitimacy of the notion of _some_: each part of the world is in +some ways connected, in some other ways not connected with its other +parts, and the ways can be discriminated, for many of them are +obvious, and their differences are obvious to view. Absolutism, on its +side, seems to hold that 'some' is a category ruinously infected +with self-contradictoriness, and that the only categories inwardly +consistent and therefore pertinent to reality are 'all' and 'none.' + +The question runs into the still more general one with which Mr. +Bradley and later writers of the monistic school have made us +abundantly familiar--the question, namely, whether all the relations +with other things, possible to a being, are pre-included in its +intrinsic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to +some of these relations, it can _be_ without reference to them, and, +if it ever does enter into them, do so adventitiously and as it +were by an after-thought. This is the great question as to whether +'external' relations can exist. They seem to, undoubtedly. My +manuscript, for example, is 'on' the desk. The relation of being 'on' +doesn't seem to implicate or involve in any way the inner meaning +of the manuscript or the inner structure of the desk--these objects +engage in it only by their outsides, it seems only a temporary +accident in their respective histories. Moreover, the 'on' fails to +appear to our senses as one of those unintelligible 'betweens' that +have to be separately hooked on the terms they pretend to connect. +All this innocent sense-appearance, however, we are told, cannot pass +muster in the eyes of reason. It is a tissue of self-contradiction +which only the complete absorption of the desk and the manuscript into +the higher unity of a more absolute reality can overcome. + +The reasoning by which this conclusion is supported is too subtle and +complicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you +will thank me for not inviting you to consider it at all.[13] I feel +the more free to pass it by now as I think that the cursory account of +the absolutistic attitude which I have already given is sufficient for +our present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of +the absolute as 'not proven'--please observe that I go no farther +now--need not be backed by argument at every special point. Flanking +operations are less costly and in some ways more effective than +frontal attacks. Possibly you will yourselves think after hearing my +remaining lectures that the alternative of an universe absolutely +rational or absolutely irrational is forced and strained, and that +a _via media_ exists which some of you may agree with me is to +be preferred. _Some_ rationality certainly does characterize our +universe; and, weighing one kind with another, we may deem that the +incomplete kinds that appear are on the whole as acceptable as +the through-and-through sort of rationality on which the monistic +systematizers insist. + +All the said systematizers who have written since Hegel have owed +their inspiration largely to him. Even when they have found no use +for his particular triadic dialectic, they have drawn confidence +and courage from his authoritative and conquering tone. I have said +nothing about Hegel in this lecture, so I must repair the omission in +the next. + + + + +LECTURE III + + +HEGEL AND HIS METHOD + +Directly or indirectly, that strange and powerful genius Hegel has +done more to strengthen idealistic pantheism in thoughtful circles +than all other influences put together. I must talk a little about him +before drawing my final conclusions about the cogency of the arguments +for the absolute. In no philosophy is the fact that a philosopher's +vision and the technique he uses in proof of it are two different +things more palpably evident than in Hegel. The vision in his case +was that of a world in which reason holds all things in solution and +accounts for all the irrationality that superficially appears by +taking it up as a 'moment' into itself. This vision was so intense in +Hegel, and the tone of authority with which he spoke from out of the +midst of it was so weighty, that the impression he made has never been +effaced. Once dilated to the scale of the master's eye, the disciples' +sight could not contract to any lesser prospect. The technique which +Hegel used to prove his vision was the so-called dialectic method, but +here his fortune has been quite contrary. Hardly a recent disciple has +felt his particular applications of the method to be satisfactory. +Many have let them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of +provisional stop-gap, symbolic of what might some day prove possible +of execution, but having no literal cogency or value now. Yet these +very same disciples hold to the vision itself as a revelation that can +never pass away. The case is curious and worthy of our study. + +It is still more curious in that these same disciples, altho they are +usually willing to abandon any particular instance of the dialectic +method to its critics, are unshakably sure that in some shape the +dialectic method is the key to truth. What, then, is the dialectic +method? It is itself a part of the hegelian vision or intuition, and +a part that finds the strongest echo in empiricism and common sense. +Great injustice is done to Hegel by treating him as primarily a +reasoner. He is in reality a naïvely observant man, only beset with a +perverse preference for the use of technical and logical jargon. He +plants himself in the empirical flux of things and gets the impression +of what happens. His mind is in very truth _impressionistic_; and his +thought, when once you put yourself at the animating centre of it, is +the easiest thing in the world to catch the pulse of and to follow. + +Any author is easy if you can catch the centre of his vision. From +the centre in Hegel come those towering sentences of his that are +comparable only to Luther's, as where, speaking of the ontological +proof of God's existence from the concept of him as the _ens +perfectissimum_ to which no attribute can be lacking, he says: 'It +would be strange if the Notion, the very heart of the mind, or, in +a word, the concrete totality we call God, were not rich enough +to embrace so poor a category as Being, the very poorest and most +abstract of all--for nothing can be more insignificant than Being.' +But if Hegel's central thought is easy to catch, his abominable habits +of speech make his application of it to details exceedingly difficult +to follow. His passion for the slipshod in the way of sentences, +his unprincipled playing fast and loose with terms; his dreadful +vocabulary, calling what completes a thing its 'negation,' for +example; his systematic refusal to let you know whether he is talking +logic or physics or psychology, his whole deliberately adopted policy +of ambiguity and vagueness, in short: all these things make his +present-day readers wish to tear their hair--or his--out in +desperation. Like Byron's corsair, he has left a name 'to other times, +linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.' + +The virtue was the vision, which was really in two parts. The first +part was that reason is all-inclusive, the second was that things +are 'dialectic.' Let me say a word about this second part of Hegel's +vision. + +The impression that any _naïf_ person gets who plants himself +innocently in the flux of things is that things are off their balance. +Whatever equilibriums our finite experiences attain to are but +provisional. Martinique volcanoes shatter our wordsworthian +equilibrium with nature. Accidents, either moral, mental, or physical, +break up the slowly built-up equilibriums men reach in family life +and in their civic and professional relations. Intellectual enigmas +frustrate our scientific systems, and the ultimate cruelty of the +universe upsets our religious attitudes and outlooks. Of no special +system of good attained does the universe recognize the value as +sacred. Down it tumbles, over it goes, to feed the ravenous appetite +for destruction, of the larger system of history in which it stood +for a moment as a landing-place and stepping-stone. This dogging of +everything by its negative, its fate, its undoing, this perpetual +moving on to something future which shall supersede the present, +this is the hegelian intuition of the essential provisionality, and +consequent unreality, of everything empirical and finite. Take any +concrete finite thing and try to hold it fast. You cannot, for so +held, it proves not to be concrete at all, but an arbitrary extract or +abstract which you have made from the remainder of empirical reality. +The rest of things invades and overflows both it and you together, +and defeats your rash attempt. Any partial view whatever of the world +tears the part out of its relations, leaves out some truth concerning +it, is untrue of it, falsifies it. The full truth about anything +involves more than that thing. In the end nothing less than the whole +of everything can be the truth of anything at all. + +Taken so far, and taken in the rough, Hegel is not only harmless, but +accurate. There is a dialectic movement in things, if such it please +you to call it, one that the whole constitution of concrete life +establishes; but it is one that can be described and accounted for in +terms of the pluralistic vision of things far more naturally than in +the monistic terms to which Hegel finally reduced it. Pluralistic +empiricism knows that everything is in an environment, a surrounding +world of other things, and that if you leave it to work there it will +inevitably meet with friction and opposition from its neighbors. Its +rivals and enemies will destroy it unless it can buy them off by +compromising some part of its original pretensions. + +But Hegel saw this undeniable characteristic of the world we live in +in a non-empirical light. Let the _mental idea_ of the thing work in +your thought all alone, he fancied, and just the same consequences +will follow. It will be negated by the opposite ideas that dog it, +and can survive only by entering, along with them, into some kind +of treaty. This treaty will be an instance of the so-called 'higher +synthesis' of everything with its negative; and Hegel's originality +lay in transporting the process from the sphere of percepts to that of +concepts and treating it as the universal method by which every kind +of life, logical, physical, or psychological, is mediated. Not to the +sensible facts as such, then, did Hegel point for the secret of what +keeps existence going, but rather to the conceptual way of treating +them. Concepts were not in his eyes the static self-contained things +that previous logicians had supposed, but were germinative, and passed +beyond themselves into each other by what he called their immanent +dialectic. In ignoring each other as they do, they virtually exclude +and deny each other, he thought, and thus in a manner introduce each +other. So the dialectic logic, according to him, had to supersede the +'logic of identity' in which, since Aristotle, all Europe had been +brought up. + +This view of concepts is Hegel's revolutionary performance; but so +studiously vague and ambiguous are all his expressions of it that one +can hardly tell whether it is the concepts as such, or the sensible +experiences and elements conceived, that Hegel really means to work +with. The only thing that is certain is that whatever you may say of +his procedure, some one will accuse you of misunderstanding it. I make +no claim to understanding it, I treat it merely impressionistically. + +So treating it, I regret that he should have called it by the name of +logic. Clinging as he did to the vision of a really living world, and +refusing to be content with a chopped-up intellectualist picture +of it, it is a pity that he should have adopted the very word that +intellectualism had already pre-empted. But he clung fast to the old +rationalist contempt for the immediately given world of sense and all +its squalid particulars, and never tolerated the notion that the form +of philosophy might be empirical only. His own system had to be a +product of eternal reason, so the word 'logic,' with its suggestions +of coercive necessity, was the only word he could find natural. He +pretended therefore to be using the _a priori_ method, and to be +working by a scanty equipment of ancient logical terms--position, +negation, reflection, universal, particular, individual, and the like. +But what he really worked by was his own empirical perceptions, which +exceeded and overflowed his miserably insufficient logical categories +in every instance of their use. + +What he did with the category of negation was his most original +stroke. The orthodox opinion is that you can advance logically through +the field of concepts only by going from the same to the same. Hegel +felt deeply the sterility of this law of conceptual thought; he +saw that in a fashion negation also relates things; and he had the +brilliant idea of transcending the ordinary logic by treating advance +from the different to the different as if it were also a necessity of +thought. 'The so-called maxim of identity,' he wrote, 'is supposed to +be accepted by the consciousness of every one. But the language which +such a law demands, "a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism, +mind is mind," deserves to be called silliness. No mind either speaks +or thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this law, and no +existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. We must never view +identity as abstract identity, to the exclusion of all difference. +That is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what +alone deserves the name of philosophy. If thinking were no more than +registering abstract identities, it would be a most superfluous +performance. Things and concepts are identical with themselves only in +so far as at the same time they involve distinction.'[1] + +The distinction that Hegel has in mind here is naturally in the first +instance distinction from all other things or concepts. But in his +hands this quickly develops into contradiction of them, and finally, +reflected back upon itself, into self-contradiction; and the immanent +self-contradictoriness of all finite concepts thenceforth becomes the +propulsive logical force that moves the world.[2] 'Isolate a thing +from all its relations,' says Dr. Edward Caird,[3] expounding Hegel, +'and try to assert it by itself; you find that it has negated itself +as well as its relations. The thing in itself is nothing.' Or, to +quote Hegel's own words: 'When we suppose an existent A, and another, +B, B is at first defined as the other. But A is just as much the other +of B. Both are others in the same fashion.... "Other" is the other by +itself, therefore the other of every other, consequently the other of +itself, the simply unlike itself, the self-negator, the self-alterer,' +etc.[4] Hegel writes elsewhere: 'The finite, as implicitly other than +what it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural being, +and to turn suddenly into its opposite.... Dialectic is the universal +and irresistible power before which nothing can stay.... _Summum jus, +summa injuria_--to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit +injustice.... Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one +another. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy +brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[5] To which one well +might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and +professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by +becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in +view. + +Once catch well the knack of this scheme of thought and you are lucky +if you ever get away from it. It is all you can see. Let any one +pronounce anything, and your feeling of a contradiction being implied +becomes a habit, almost a motor habit in some persons who symbolize by +a stereotyped gesture the position, sublation, and final reinstatement +involved. If you say 'two' or 'many,' your speech betrayeth you, for +the very name collects them into one. If you express doubt, your +expression contradicts its content, for the doubt itself is not +doubted but affirmed. If you say 'disorder,' what is that but a +certain bad kind of order? if you say 'indetermination,' you are +determining just _that_. If you say 'nothing but the unexpected +happens,' the unexpected becomes what you expect. If you say 'all +things are relative,' to what is the all of them itself relative? If +you say 'no more,' you have said more already, by implying a region +in which no more is found; to know a limit as such is consequently +already to have got beyond it; And so forth, throughout as many +examples as one cares to cite. + +Whatever you posit appears thus as one-sided, and negates its other, +which, being equally one-sided, negates _it_; and, since this +situation remains unstable, the two contradictory terms have together, +according to Hegel, to engender a higher truth of which they both +appear as indispensable members, mutually mediating aspects of that +higher concept of situation in thought. + +Every higher total, however provisional and relative, thus reconciles +the contradictions which its parts, abstracted from it, prove +implicitly to contain. Rationalism, you remember, is what I called the +way of thinking that methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so +Hegel here is rationalistic through and through. The only whole by +which _all_ contradictions are reconciled is for him the absolute +whole of wholes, the all-inclusive reason to which Hegel himself gave +the name of the absolute Idea, but which I shall continue to call 'the +absolute' purely and simply, as I have done hitherto. + +Empirical instances of the way in which higher unities reconcile +contradictions are innumerable, so here again Hegel's vision, taken +merely impressionistically, agrees with countless facts. Somehow life +does, out of its total resources, find ways of satisfying opposites +at once. This is precisely the paradoxical aspect which much of our +civilization presents. Peace we secure by armaments, liberty by laws +and constitutions; simplicity and naturalness are the consummate +result of artificial breeding and training; health, strength, and +wealth are increased only by lavish use, expense, and wear. Our +mistrust of mistrust engenders our commercial system of credit; our +tolerance of anarchistic and revolutionary utterances is the only way +of lessening their danger; our charity has to say no to beggars in +order not to defeat its own desires; the true epicurean has to observe +great sobriety; the way to certainty lies through radical doubt; +virtue signifies not innocence but the knowledge of sin and its +overcoming; by obeying nature, we command her, etc. The ethical and +the religious life are full of such contradictions held in solution. +You hate your enemy?--well, forgive him, and thereby heap coals of +fire on his head; to realize yourself, renounce yourself; to save your +soul, first lose it; in short, die to live. + +From such massive examples one easily generalizes Hegel's vision. +Roughly, his 'dialectic' picture is a fair account of a good deal of +the world. It sounds paradoxical, but whenever you once place yourself +at the point of view; of any higher synthesis, you see exactly how +it does in a fashion take up opposites into itself. As an example, +consider the conflict between our carnivorous appetites and hunting +instincts and the sympathy with animals which our refinement is +bringing in its train. We have found how to reconcile these opposites +most effectively by establishing game-laws and close seasons and by +keeping domestic herds. The creatures preserved thus are preserved for +the sake of slaughter, truly, but if not preserved for that reason, +not one of them would be alive at all. Their will to live and our +will to kill them thus harmoniously combine in this peculiar higher +synthesis of domestication. + +Merely as a reporter of certain empirical aspects of the actual, +Hegel, then, is great and true. But he aimed at being something far +greater than an empirical reporter, so I must say something about that +essential aspect of his thought. Hegel was dominated by the notion of +a truth that should prove incontrovertible, binding on every one, +and certain, which should be _the_ truth, one, indivisible, eternal, +objective, and necessary, to which all our particular thinking +must lead as to its consummation. This is the dogmatic ideal, +the postulate, uncriticised, undoubted, and unchallenged, of all +rationalizers in philosophy. '_I have never doubted_,' a recent Oxford +writer says, that truth is universal and single and timeless, a single +content or significance, one and whole and complete.[6] Advance in +thinking, in the hegelian universe, has, in short, to proceed by the +apodictic words _must be_ rather than by those inferior hypothetic +words _may be_, which are all that empiricists can use. + +Now Hegel found that his idea of an immanent movement through +the field of concepts by way of 'dialectic' negation played most +beautifully into the hands of this rationalistic demand for something +absolute and _inconcussum_ in the way of truth. It is easy to see how. +If you affirm anything, for example that A is, and simply leave the +matter thus, you leave it at the mercy of any one who may supervene +and say 'not A, but B is.' If he does say so, your statement doesn't +refute him, it simply contradicts him, just as his contradicts you. +The only way of making your affirmation about A _self-securing_ is by +getting it into a form which will by implication negate all possible +negations in advance. The mere absence of negation is not enough; it +must be present, but present with its fangs drawn. What you posit as A +must already have cancelled the alternative or made it innocuous, by +having negated it in advance. Double negation is the only form of +affirmation that fully plays into the hands of the dogmatic ideal. +Simply and innocently affirmative statements are good enough for +empiricists, but unfit for rationalist use, lying open as they do to +every accidental contradictor, and exposed to every puff of doubt. +The _final_ truth must be something to which there is no imaginable +alternative, because it contains all its possible alternatives inside +of itself as moments already taken account of and overcome. Whatever +involves its own alternatives as elements of itself is, in a phrase +often repeated, its 'own other,' made so by the _methode der absoluten +negativität_. + +Formally, this scheme of an organism of truth that has already fed as +it were on its own liability to death, so that, death once dead +for it, there's no more dying then, is the very fulfilment of the +rationalistic aspiration. That one and only whole, with all its +parts involved in it, negating and making one another impossible if +abstracted and taken singly, but necessitating and holding one another +in place if the whole of them be taken integrally, is the literal +ideal sought after; it is the very diagram and picture of that notion +of _the_ truth with no outlying alternative, to which nothing can be +added, nor from it anything withdrawn, and all variations from which +are absurd, which so dominates the human imagination. Once we have +taken in the features of this diagram that so successfully solves +the world-old problem, the older ways of proving the necessity of +judgments cease to give us satisfaction. Hegel's way we think must +be the right way. The true must be essentially the self-reflecting +self-contained recurrent, that which secures itself by including its +own other and negating it; that makes a spherical system with no loose +ends hanging out for foreignness to get a hold upon; that is forever +rounded in and closed, not strung along rectilinearly and open at its +ends like that universe of simply collective or additive form which +Hegel calls the world of the bad infinite, and which is all that +empiricism, starting with simply posited single parts and elements, is +ever able to attain to. + +No one can possibly deny the sublimity of this hegelian conception. +It is surely in the grand style, if there be such a thing as a grand +style in philosophy. For us, however, it remains, so far, a merely +formal and diagrammatic conception; for with the actual content +of absolute truth, as Hegel materially tries to set it forth, few +disciples have been satisfied, and I do not propose to refer at all to +the concreter parts of his philosophy. The main thing now is to grasp +the generalized vision, and feel the authority of the abstract scheme +of a statement self-secured by involving double negation. Absolutists +who make no use of Hegel's own technique are really working by his +method. You remember the proofs of the absolute which I instanced in +my last lecture, Lotze's and Royce's proofs by _reductio ad absurdum_, +to the effect that any smallest connexion rashly supposed in things +will logically work out into absolute union, and any minimal +disconnexion into absolute disunion,--these are really arguments +framed on the hegelian pattern. The truth is that which you implicitly +affirm in the very attempt to deny it; it is that from which every +variation refutes itself by proving self-contradictory. This is the +supreme insight of rationalism, and to-day the best _must-be's_ of +rationalist argumentation are but so many attempts to communicate it +to the hearer. + +Thus, you see, my last lecture and this lecture make connexion again +and we can consider Hegel and the other absolutists to be supporting +the same system. The next point I wish to dwell on is the part played +by what I have called vicious intellectualism in this wonderful +system's structure. + +Rationalism in general thinks it gets the fulness of truth by turning +away from sensation to conception, conception obviously giving the +more universal and immutable picture. Intellectualism in the vicious +sense I have already defined as the habit of assuming that a concept +_ex_cludes from any reality conceived by its means everything not +included in the concept's definition. I called such intellectualism +illegitimate as I found it used in Lotze's, Royce's, and Bradley's +proofs of the absolute (which absolute I consequently held to be +non-proven by their arguments), and I left off by asserting my own +belief that a pluralistic and incompletely integrated universe, +describable only by the free use of the word 'some,' is a legitimate +hypothesis. + +Now Hegel himself, in building up his method of double negation, +offers the vividest possible example of this vice of intellectualism. +Every idea of a finite thing is of course a concept of _that_ thing +and not a concept of anything else. But Hegel treats this not being a +concept of anything else as if it were _equivalent to the concept of +anything else not being_, or in other words as if it were a denial +or negation of everything else. Then, as the other things, thus +implicitly contradicted by the thing first conceived, also by the same +law contradict _it_, the pulse of dialectic commences to beat and the +famous triads begin to grind out the cosmos. If any one finds +the process here to be a luminous one, he must be left to the +illumination, he must remain an undisturbed hegelian. What others feel +as the intolerable ambiguity, verbosity, and unscrupulousness of the +master's way of deducing things, he will probably ascribe--since +divine oracles are notoriously hard to interpret--to the 'difficulty' +that habitually accompanies profundity. For my own part, there seems +something grotesque and _saugrenu_ in the pretension of a style so +disobedient to the first rules of sound communication between minds, +to be the authentic mother-tongue of reason, and to keep step more +accurately than any other style does with the absolute's own ways +of thinking. I do not therefore take Hegel's technical apparatus +seriously at all. I regard him rather as one of those numerous +original seers who can never learn how to articulate. His would-be +coercive logic counts for nothing in my eyes; but that does not in +the least impugn the philosophic importance of his conception of the +absolute, if we take it merely hypothetically as one of the great +types of cosmic vision. + +Taken thus hypothetically, I wish to discuss it briefly. But before +doing so I must call your attention to an odd peculiarity in the +hegelian procedure. The peculiarity is one which will come before us +again for a final judgment in my seventh lecture, so at present I only +note it in passing. Hegel, you remember, considers that the immediate +finite data of experience are 'untrue' because they are not their own +others. They are negated by what is external to them. The absolute +is true because it and it only has no external environment, and has +attained to being its own other. (These words sound queer enough, but +those of you who know something of Hegel's text will follow them.) +Granting his premise that to be true a thing must in some sort be its +own other, everything hinges on whether he is right in holding that +the several pieces of finite experience themselves cannot be said +to be in any wise _their_ own others. When conceptually or +intellectualistically treated, they of course cannot be their own +others. Every abstract concept as such excludes what it doesn't +include, and if such concepts are adequate substitutes for +reality's concrete pulses, the latter must square themselves with +intellectualistic logic, and no one of them in any sense can claim to +be its own other. If, however, the conceptual treatment of the flow of +reality should prove for any good reason to be inadequate and to have +a practical rather than a theoretical or speculative value, then an +independent empirical look into the constitution of reality's pulses +might possibly show that some of them _are_ their own others, and +indeed are so in the self-same sense in which the absolute is +maintained to be so by Hegel. When we come to my sixth lecture, +on Professor Bergson, I shall in effect defend this very view, +strengthening my thesis by his authority. I am unwilling to say +anything more about the point at this time, and what I have just said +of it is only a sort of surveyor's note of where our present position +lies in the general framework of these lectures. + +Let us turn now at last to the great question of fact, _Does the +absolute exist or not_? to which all our previous discussion has been +preliminary. I may sum up that discussion by saying that whether +there really be an absolute or not, no one makes himself absurd +or self-contradictory by doubting or denying it. The charges of +self-contradiction, where they do not rest on purely verbal reasoning, +rest on a vicious intellectualism. I will not recapitulate my +criticisms. I will simply ask you to change the _venue_, and to +discuss the absolute now as if it were only an open hypothesis. As +such, is it more probable or more improbable? + +But first of all I must parenthetically ask you to distinguish the +notion of the absolute carefully from that of another object with +which it is liable to become heedlessly entangled. That other object +is the 'God' of common people in their religion, and the creator-God +of orthodox christian theology. Only thoroughgoing monists or +pantheists believe in the absolute. The God of our popular +Christianity is but one member of a pluralistic system. He and we +stand outside of each other, just as the devil, the saints, and the +angels stand outside of both of us. I can hardly conceive of anything +more different from the absolute than the God, say, of David or of +Isaiah. _That_ God is an essentially finite being _in_ the cosmos, +not with the cosmos in him, and indeed he has a very local habitation +there, and very one-sided local and personal attachments. If it should +prove probable that the absolute does not exist, it will not follow in +the slightest degree that a God like that of David, Isaiah, or Jesus +may not exist, or may not be the most important existence in the +universe for us to acknowledge. I pray you, then, not to confound the +two ideas as you listen to the criticisms I shall have to proffer. +I hold to the finite God, for reasons which I shall touch on in the +seventh of these lectures; but I hold that his rival and competitor--I +feel almost tempted to say his enemy--the absolute, is not only not +forced on us by logic, but that it is an improbable hypothesis. + +The great claim made for the absolute is that by supposing it we make +the world appear more rational. Any hypothesis that does that will +always be accepted as more probably true than an hypothesis that makes +the world appear irrational. Men are once for all so made that they +prefer a rational world to believe in and to live in. But rationality +has at least four dimensions, intellectual, aesthetical, moral, and +practical; and to find a world rational to the maximal degree _in all +these respects simultaneously_ is no easy matter. Intellectually, the +world of mechanical materialism is the most rational, for we subject +its events to mathematical calculation. But the mechanical world +is ugly, as arithmetic is ugly, and it is non-moral. Morally, +the theistic world is rational enough, but full of intellectual +frustrations. The practical world of affairs, in its turn, so +supremely rational to the politician, the military man, or the man of +conquering business-faculty that he never would vote to change the +type of it, is irrational to moral and artistic temperaments; so that +whatever demand for rationality we find satisfied by a philosophic +hypothesis, we are liable to find some other demand for rationality +unsatisfied by the same hypothesis. The rationality we gain in one +coin we thus pay for in another; and the problem accordingly seems at +first sight to resolve itself into that of getting a conception which +will yield the largest _balance_ of rationality rather than one which +will yield perfect rationality of every description. In general, it +may be said that if a man's conception of the world lets loose any +action in him that is easy, or any faculty which he is fond of +exercising, he will deem it rational in so far forth, be the faculty +that of computing, fighting, lecturing, classifying, framing schematic +tabulations, getting the better end of a bargain, patiently waiting +and enduring, preaching, joke-making, or what you like. Albeit the +absolute is defined as being necessarily an embodiment of objectively +perfect rationality, it is fair to its english advocates to say that +those who have espoused the hypothesis most concretely and seriously +have usually avowed the irrationality to their own minds of certain +elements in it. + +Probably the weightiest contribution to our feeling of the rationality +of the universe which the notion of the absolute brings is the +assurance that however disturbed the surface may be, at bottom all is +well with the cosmos--central peace abiding at the heart of endless +agitation. This conception is rational in many ways, beautiful +aesthetically, beautiful intellectually (could we only follow it into +detail), and beautiful morally, if the enjoyment of security can be +accounted moral. Practically it is less beautiful; for, as we saw in +our last lecture, in representing the deepest reality of the world as +static and without a history, it loosens the world's hold upon our +sympathies and leaves the soul of it foreign. Nevertheless it does +give _peace_, and that kind of rationality is so paramountly demanded +by men that to the end of time there will be absolutists, men who +choose belief in a static eternal, rather than admit that the finite +world of change and striving, even with a God as one of the strivers, +is itself eternal. For such minds Professor Royce's words will always +be the truest: 'The very presence of ill in the temporal order is the +condition of the perfection of the eternal order.... We long for the +absolute only in so far as in us the absolute also longs, and seeks +through our very temporal striving, the peace that is nowhere in time, +but only, and yet absolutely, in eternity. Were there no longing in +time there would be no peace in eternity.... God [_i.e._ the absolute] +who here in me aims at what I now temporally miss, not only possesses +in the eternal world the goal after which I strive, but comes to +possess it even through and because of my sorrow. Through this my +tribulation the absolute triumph then is won.... In the absolute I am +fulfilled. Yet my very fulfilment demands and therefore can transcend +this sorrow.'[7] Royce is particularly felicitous in his ability to +cite parts of finite experience to which he finds his picture of this +absolute experience analogous. But it is hard to portray the absolute +at all without rising into what might be called the 'inspired' style +of language--I use the word not ironically, but prosaically and +descriptively, to designate the only literary form that goes with the +kind of emotion that the absolute arouses. One can follow the pathway +of reasoning soberly enough,[8] but the picture itself has to be +effulgent. This admirable faculty of transcending, whilst inwardly +preserving, every contrariety, is the absolute's characteristic form +of rationality. We are but syllables in the mouth of the Lord; if the +whole sentence is divine, each syllable is absolutely what it should +be, in spite of all appearances. In making up the balance for or +against absolutism, this emotional value weights heavily the credit +side of the account. + +The trouble is that we are able to see so little into the positive +detail of it, and that if once admitted not to be coercively proven +by the intellectualist arguments, it remains only a hypothetic +possibility. + +On the debit side of the account the absolute, taken seriously, and +not as a mere name for our right occasionally to drop the strenuous +mood and take a moral holiday, introduces all those tremendous +irrationalities into the universe which a frankly pluralistic theism +escapes, but which have been flung as a reproach at every form of +monistic theism or pantheism. It introduces a speculative 'problem +of evil' namely, and leaves us wondering why the perfection of the +absolute should require just such particular hideous forms of life as +darken the day for our human imaginations. If they were forced on it +by something alien, and to 'overcome' them the absolute had still to +keep hold of them, we could understand its feeling of triumph, though +we, so far as we were ourselves among the elements overcome, could +acquiesce but sullenly in the resultant situation, and would never +just have chosen it as the most rational one conceivable. But the +absolute is represented as a being without environment, upon which +nothing alien can be forced, and which has spontaneously chosen from +within to give itself the spectacle of all that evil rather than a +spectacle with less evil in it.[9] Its perfection is represented as +the source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is +the tremendous imperfection of all finite experience. In whatever +sense the word 'rationality' may be taken, it is vain to contend that +the impression made on our finite minds by such a way of representing +things is altogether rational. Theologians have felt its irrationality +acutely, and the 'fall,' the predestination, and the election which +the situation involves have given them more trouble than anything else +in their attempt to pantheize Christianity. The whole business remains +a puzzle, both intellectually and morally. + +Grant that the spectacle or world-romance offered to itself by the +absolute is in the absolute's eyes perfect. Why would not the world be +more perfect by having the affair remain in just those terms, and +by not having any finite spectators to come in and add to what was +perfect already their innumerable imperfect manners of seeing the same +spectacle? Suppose the entire universe to consist of one superb copy +of a book, fit for the ideal reader. Is that universe improved or +deteriorated by having myriads of garbled and misprinted separate +leaves and chapters also created, giving false impressions of the book +to whoever looks at them? To say the least, the balance of rationality +is not obviously in favor of such added mutilations. So this question +becomes urgent: Why, the absolute's own total vision of things +being so rational, was it necessary to comminute it into all these +coexisting inferior fragmentary visions? + +Leibnitz in his theodicy represents God as limited by an antecedent +reason in things which makes certain combinations logically +incompatible, certain goods impossible. He surveys in advance all the +universes he might create, and by an act of what Leibnitz calls his +antecedent will he chooses our actual world as the one in which the +evil, unhappily necessary anyhow, is at its minimum. It is the best of +all the worlds that are possible, therefore, but by no means the most +abstractly desirable world. Having made this mental choice, God next +proceeds to what Leibnitz calls his act of consequent or decretory +will: he says '_Fiat_' and the world selected springs into objective +being, with all the finite creatures in it to suffer from its +imperfections without sharing in its creator's atoning vision. + +Lotze has made some penetrating remarks on this conception of +Leibnitz's, and they exactly fall in with what I say of the absolutist +conception. The world projected out of the creative mind by the +_fiat_, and existing in detachment from its author, is a sphere of +being where the parts realize themselves only singly. If the divine +value of them is evident only when they are collectively looked at, +then, Lotze rightly says, the world surely becomes poorer and not +richer for God's utterance of the _fiat_. He might much better have +remained contented with his merely antecedent choice of the scheme, +without following it up by a creative decree. The scheme _as such_ was +admirable; it could only lose by being translated into reality.[10] +Why, I similarly ask, should the absolute ever have lapsed from the +perfection of its own integral experience of things, and refracted +itself into all our finite experiences? + +It is but fair to recent english absolutists to say that many of them +have confessed the imperfect rationality of the absolute from this +point of view. Mr. McTaggart, for example, writes: 'Does not our very +failure to perceive the perfection of the universe destroy it? ... In +so far as we do not see the perfection of the universe, we are not +perfect ourselves. And as we are parts of the universe, that cannot be +perfect.'[11] + +And Mr. Joachim finds just the same difficulty. Calling the hypothesis +of the absolute by the name of the 'coherence theory of truth,' he +calls the problem of understanding how the complete coherence of all +things in the absolute should involve as a necessary moment in +its self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds, a +self-assertion which in its extreme form is error,--he calls this +problem, I say, an insoluble puzzle. If truth be the universal _fons +et origo_, how does error slip in? 'The coherence theory of truth,' he +concludes, 'may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very +entrance of the harbor.'[12] Yet in spite of this rather bad form +of irrationality, Mr. Joachim stoutly asserts his 'immediate +certainty'[13] of the theory shipwrecked, the correctness of which +he says he has 'never doubted.' This candid confession of a fixed +attitude of faith in the absolute, which even one's own criticisms and +perplexities fail to disturb, seems to me very significant. Not only +empiricists, but absolutists also, would all, if they were as candid +as this author, confess that the prime thing in their philosophy +is their vision of a truth possible, which they then employ their +reasoning to convert, as best it can, into a certainty or probability. + +I can imagine a believer in the absolute retorting at this point that +_he_ at any rate is not dealing with mere probabilities, but that +the nature of things logically requires the multitudinous erroneous +copies, and that therefore the universe cannot be the absolute's book +alone. For, he will ask, is not the absolute defined as the total +consciousness of everything that is? Must not its field of view +consist of parts? And what can the parts of a total consciousness be +unless they be fractional consciousnesses? Our finite minds _must_ +therefore coexist with the absolute mind. We are its constituents, and +it cannot live without us.--But if any one of you feels tempted to +retort in this wise, let me remind you that you are frankly employing +pluralistic weapons, and thereby giving up the absolutist cause. The +notion that the absolute is made of constituents on which its being +depends is the rankest empiricism. The absolute as such has _objects_, +not constituents, and if the objects develop selfhoods upon their own +several accounts, those selfhoods must be set down as facts additional +to the absolute consciousness, and not as elements implicated in its +definition. The absolute is a rationalist conception. Rationalism +goes from wholes to parts, and always assumes wholes to be +self-sufficing.[14] + +My conclusion, so far, then, is this, that altho the hypothesis of the +absolute, in yielding a certain kind of religious peace, performs +a most important rationalizing function, it nevertheless, from +the intellectual point of view, remains decidedly irrational. The +_ideally_ perfect whole is certainly that whole of which the _parts +also are perfect_--if we can depend on logic for anything, we can +depend on it for that definition. The absolute is defined as the +ideally perfect whole, yet most of its parts, if not all, are +admittedly imperfect. Evidently the conception lacks internal +consistency, and yields us a problem rather than a solution. It +creates a speculative puzzle, the so-called mystery of evil and of +error, from which a pluralistic metaphysic is entirely free. + +In any pluralistic metaphysic, the problems that evil presents are +practical, not speculative. Not why evil should exist at all, but how +we can lessen the actual amount of it, is the sole question we need +there consider. 'God,' in the religious life of ordinary men, is the +name not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal +tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to +co-operate in his purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. +He works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When +John Mill said that the notion of God's omnipotence must be given up, +if God is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately +right; yet so prevalent is the lazy monism that idly haunts the region +of God's name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally +treated as a paradox: God, it was said, _could_ not be finite. I +believe that the only God worthy of the name _must_ be finite, and I +shall return to this point in a later lecture. If the absolute exist +in addition--and the hypothesis must, in spite of its irrational +features, still be left open--then the absolute is only the wider +cosmic whole of which our God is but the most ideal portion, and which +in the more usual human sense is hardly to be termed a religious +hypothesis at all. 'Cosmic emotion' is the better name for the +reaction it may awaken. + +Observe that all the irrationalities and puzzles which the absolute +gives rise to, and from which the finite God remains free, are due to +the fact that the absolute has nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of +itself. The finite God whom I contrast with it may conceivably have +_almost_ nothing outside of himself; he may already have triumphed +over and absorbed all but the minutest fraction of the universe; but +that fraction, however small, reduces him to the status of a +relative being, and in principle the universe is saved from all the +irrationalities incidental to absolutism. The only irrationality left +would be the irrationality of which pluralism as such is accused, and +of this I hope to say a word more later. + +I have tired you with so many subtleties in this lecture that I will +add only two other counts to my indictment. + +First, then, let me remind you that _the absolute is useless for +deductive purposes_. It gives us absolute safety if you will, but +it is compatible with every relative danger. You cannot enter the +phenomenal world with the notion of it in your grasp, and name +beforehand any detail which you are likely to meet there. Whatever the +details of experience may prove to be, _after the fact of them_ +the absolute will adopt them. It is an hypothesis that functions +retrospectively only, not prospectively. _That_, whatever it may be, +will have been in point of fact the sort of world which the absolute +was pleased to offer to itself as a spectacle. + +Again, the absolute is always represented idealistically, as the +all-knower. Thinking this view consistently out leads one to frame +an almost ridiculous conception of the absolute mind, owing to the +enormous mass of unprofitable information which it would then seem +obliged to carry. One of the many _reductiones ad absurdum_ of +pluralism by which idealism thinks it proves the absolute One is as +follows: Let there be many facts; but since on idealist principles +facts exist only by being known, the many facts will therefore mean +many knowers. But that there are so many knowers is itself a fact, +which in turn requires _its_ knower, so the one absolute knower has +eventually to be brought in. _All_ facts lead to him. If it be a fact +that this table is not a chair, not a rhinoceros, not a logarithm, not +a mile away from the door, not worth five hundred pounds sterling, not +a thousand centuries old, the absolute must even now be articulately +aware of all these negations. Along with what everything is it must +also be conscious of everything which it is not. This infinite +atmosphere of explicit negativity--observe that it has to be +explicit--around everything seems to us so useless an encumbrance as +to make the absolute still more foreign to our sympathy. Furthermore, +if it be a fact that certain ideas are silly, the absolute has to have +already thought the silly ideas to establish them in silliness. The +rubbish in its mind would thus appear easily to outweigh in amount the +more desirable material. One would expect it fairly to burst with such +an obesity, plethora, and superfoetation of useless information.[15] + +I will spare you further objections. The sum of it all is that the +absolute is not forced on our belief by logic, that it involves +features of irrationality peculiar to itself, and that a thinker +to whom it does not come as an 'immediate certainty' (to use Mr. +Joachim's words), is in no way bound to treat it as anything but an +emotionally rather sublime hypothesis. As such, it might, with all its +defects, be, on account of its peace-conferring power and its formal +grandeur, more rational than anything else in the field. But meanwhile +the strung-along unfinished world in time is its rival: _reality MAY +exist in distributive form, in the shape not of an all but of a set of +eaches, just as it seems to_--this is the anti-absolutist hypothesis. +_Prima facie_ there is this in favor of the eaches, that they are at +any rate real enough to have made themselves at least _appear_ to +every one, whereas the absolute has as yet appeared immediately to +only a few mystics, and indeed to them very ambiguously. The advocates +of the absolute assure us that any distributive form of being is +infected and undermined by self-contradiction. If we are unable to +assimilate their arguments, and we have been unable, the only course +we can take, it seems to me, is to let the absolute bury the absolute, +and to seek reality in more promising directions, even among the +details of the finite and the immediately given. + +If these words of mine sound in bad taste to some of you, or even +sacrilegious, I am sorry. Perhaps the impression may be mitigated by +what I have to say in later lectures. + + + + +LECTURE IV + + +CONCERNING FECHNER + +The prestige of the absolute has rather crumbled in our hands. +The logical proofs of it miss fire; the portraits which its best +court-painters show of it are featureless and foggy in the extreme; +and, apart from the cold comfort of assuring us that with _it_ all is +well, and that to see that all is well with us also we need only rise +to its eternal point of view, it yields us no relief whatever. It +introduces, on the contrary, into philosophy and theology certain +poisonous difficulties of which but for its intrusion we never should +have heard. + +But if we drop the absolute out of the world, must we then conclude +that the world contains nothing better in the way of consciousness +than our consciousness? Is our whole instinctive belief in higher +presences, our persistent inner turning towards divine companionship, +to count for nothing? Is it but the pathetic illusion of beings with +incorrigibly social and imaginative minds? + +Such a negative conclusion would, I believe, be desperately hasty, +a sort of pouring out of the child with the bath. Logically it is +possible to believe in superhuman beings without identifying them with +the absolute at all. The treaty of offensive and defensive alliance +which certain groups of the Christian clergy have recently made with +our transcendentalist philosophers seems to me to be based on a +well-meaning but baleful mistake. Neither the Jehovah of the old +testament nor the heavenly father of the new has anything in common +with the absolute except that they are all three greater than man; +and if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of +Abraham, of David, and of Jesus, after first developing into each +other, were inevitably destined to develop into in more reflective +and modern minds, I reply that although in certain specifically +philosophical minds this may have been the case, in minds more +properly to be termed religious the development has followed quite +another path. The whole history of evangelical Christianity is there +to prove it. I propose in these lectures to plead for that other line +of development. To set the doctrine of the absolute in its proper +framework, so that it shall not fill the whole welkin and exclude all +alternative possibilities of higher thought--as it seems to do for +many students who approach it with a limited previous acquaintance +with philosophy--I will contrast it with a system which, abstractly +considered, seems at first to have much in common with absolutism, but +which, when taken concretely and temperamentally, really stands at the +opposite pole. I refer to the philosophy of Gustav Theodor Fechner, a +writer but little known as yet to English readers, but destined, I am +persuaded, to wield more and more influence as time goes on. + +It is the intense concreteness of Fechner, his fertility of detail, +which fills me with an admiration which I should like to make this +audience share. Among the philosophic cranks of my acquaintance in the +past was a lady all the tenets of whose system I have forgotten except +one. Had she been born in the Ionian Archipelago some three thousand +years ago, that one doctrine would probably have made her name sure +of a place in every university curriculum and examination paper. The +world, she said, is composed of only two elements, the Thick, namely, +and the Thin. No one can deny the truth of this analysis, as far as it +goes (though in the light of our contemporary knowledge of nature it +has itself a rather 'thin' sound), and it is nowhere truer than in +that part of the world called philosophy. I am sure, for example, that +many of you, listening to what poor account I have been able to +give of transcendental idealism, have received an impression of its +arguments being strangely thin, and of the terms it leaves us with +being shiveringly thin wrappings for so thick and burly a world as +this. Some of you of course will charge the thinness to my exposition; +but thin as that has been, I believe the doctrines reported on to have +been thinner. From Green to Haldane the absolute proposed to us to +straighten out the confusions of the thicket of experience in which +our life is passed remains a pure abstraction which hardly any one +tries to make a whit concreter. If we open Green, we get nothing but +the transcendental ego of apperception (Kant's name for the fact that +to be counted in experience a thing has to be witnessed), blown up +into a sort of timeless soap-bubble large enough to mirror the whole +universe. Nature, Green keeps insisting, consists only in +relations, and these imply the action of a mind that is eternal; +a self-distinguishing consciousness which itself escapes from the +relations by which it determines other things. Present to whatever is +in succession, it is not in succession itself. If we take the Cairds, +they tell us little more of the principle of the universe--it is +always a return into the identity of the self from the difference of +its objects. It separates itself from them and so becomes conscious of +them in their separation from one another, while at the same time it +binds them together as elements in one higher self-consciousness. + +This seems the very quintessence of thinness; and the matter hardly +grows thicker when we gather, after enormous amounts of reading, that +the great enveloping self in question is absolute reason as such, and +that as such it is characterized by the habit of using certain jejune +'categories' with which to perform its eminent relating work. The +whole active material of natural fact is tried out, and only the +barest intellectualistic formalism remains. + +Hegel tried, as we saw, to make the system concreter by making the +relations between things 'dialectic,' but if we turn to those who use +his name most worshipfully, we find them giving up all the particulars +of his attempt, and simply praising his intention--much as in our +manner we have praised it ourselves. Mr. Haldane, for example, in his +wonderfully clever Gifford lectures, praises Hegel to the skies, but +what he tells of him amounts to little more than this, that 'the +categories in which the mind arranges its experiences, and gives +meaning to them, the universals in which the particulars are grasped +in the individual, are a logical chain, in which the first presupposes +the last, and the last is its presupposition and its truth.' He hardly +tries at all to thicken this thin logical scheme. He says indeed +that absolute mind in itself, and absolute mind in its hetereity or +otherness, under the distinction which it sets up of itself from +itself, have as their real _prius_ absolute mind in synthesis; and, +this being absolute mind's true nature, its dialectic character must +show itself in such concrete forms as Goethe's and Wordsworth's +poetry, as well as in religious forms. 'The nature of God, the nature +of absolute mind, is to exhibit the triple movement of dialectic, and +so the nature of God as presented in religion must be a triplicity, +a trinity.' But beyond thus naming Goethe and Wordsworth and +establishing the trinity, Mr. Haldane's Hegelianism carries us hardly +an inch into the concrete detail of the world we actually inhabit. + +Equally thin is Mr. Taylor, both in his principles and in their +results. Following Mr. Bradley, he starts by assuring us that reality +cannot be self-contradictory, but to be related to anything really +outside of one's self is to be self-contradictory, so the ultimate +reality must be a single all-inclusive systematic whole. Yet all he +can say of this whole at the end of his excellently written book is +that the notion of it 'can make no addition to our information and can +of itself supply no motives for practical endeavor.' + +Mr. McTaggart treats us to almost as thin a fare. 'The main practical +interest of Hegel's philosophy,' he says, 'is to be found in the +abstract certainty which the logic gives us that all reality is +rational and righteous, even when we cannot see in the least how it is +so.... Not that it shows us how the facts around us are good, not that +it shows us how we can make them better, but that it proves that they, +like other reality, are _sub specie eternitatis_, perfectly good, and +_sub specie temporis_, destined to become perfectly good.' + +Here again, no detail whatever, only the abstract certainty that +whatever the detail may prove to be, it will be good. Common +non-dialectical men have already this certainty as a result of the +generous vital enthusiasm about the universe with which they are born. +The peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is its sovereign contempt +for merely vital functions like enthusiasm, and its pretension to turn +our simple and immediate trusts and faiths into the form of logically +mediated certainties, to question which would be absurd. But the whole +basis on which Mr. McTaggart's own certainty so solidly rests, settles +down into the one nutshell of an assertion into which he puts Hegel's +gospel, namely, that in every bit of experience and thought, however +finite, the whole of reality (the absolute idea, as Hegel calls it) is +'implicitly present.' + +This indeed is Hegel's _vision_, and Hegel thought that the details of +his dialectic proved its truth. But disciples who treat the details of +the proof as unsatisfactory and yet cling to the vision, are surely, +in spite of their pretension to a more rational consciousness, no +better than common men with their enthusiasms or deliberately adopted +faiths. We have ourselves seen some of the weakness of the monistic +proofs. Mr. McTaggart picks plenty of holes of his own in Hegel's +logic, and finally concludes that 'all true philosophy must be +mystical, not indeed in its methods but in its final conclusions,' +which is as much as to say that the rationalistic methods leave us +in the lurch, in spite of all their superiority, and that in the end +vision and faith must eke them out. But how abstract and thin is +here the vision, to say nothing of the faith! The whole of reality, +explicitly absent from our finite experiences, must nevertheless +be present in them all implicitly, altho no one of us can ever see +how--the bare word 'implicit' here bearing the whole pyramid of the +monistic system on its slender point. Mr. Joachim's monistic system of +truth rests on an even slenderer point.--_I have never doubted_,' +he says, 'that universal and timeless truth is a single content or +significance, one and whole and complete,' and he candidly confesses +the failure of rationalistic attempts 'to raise this immediate +certainty' to the level of reflective knowledge. There is, in short, +no mediation for him between the Truth in capital letters and all +the little 'lower-case' truths--and errors--which life presents. The +psychological fact that he never has 'doubted' is enough. + +The whole monistic pyramid, resting on points as thin as these, seems +to me to be a _machtspruch_, a product of will far more than one of +reason. Unity is good, therefore things _shall_ cohere; they _shall_ +be one; there _shall_ be categories to make them one, no matter what +empirical disjunctions may appear. In Hegel's own writings, the +_shall-be_ temper is ubiquitous and towering; it overrides verbal and +logical resistances alike. Hegel's error, as Professor Royce so well +says, 'lay not in introducing logic into passion,' as some people +charge, 'but in conceiving the logic of passion as the only logic.... +He is [thus] suggestive,' Royce says, 'but never final. His system as +a system has crumbled, but his vital comprehension of our life remains +forever.'[1] + +That vital comprehension we have already seen. It is that there is a +sense in which real things are not merely their own bare selves, but +may vaguely be treated as also their own others, and that ordinary +logic, since it denies this, must be overcome. Ordinary logic denies +this because it substitutes concepts for real things, and concepts +_are_ their own bare selves and nothing else. What Royce calls Hegel's +'system' was Hegel's attempt to make us believe that he was working +by concepts and grinding out a higher style of logic, when in reality +sensible experiences, hypotheses, and passion furnished him with all +his results. + +What I myself may mean by things being their own others, we shall see +in a later lecture. It is now time to take our look at Fechner, whose +thickness is a refreshing contrast to the thin, abstract, indigent, +and threadbare appearance, the starving, school-room aspect, which the +speculations of most of our absolutist philosophers present. + +There is something really weird and uncanny in the contrast between +the abstract pretensions of rationalism and what rationalistic methods +concretely can do. If the 'logical prius' of our mind were really the +'implicit presence' of the whole 'concrete universal,' the whole of +reason, or reality, or spirit, or the absolute idea, or whatever it +may be called, in all our finite thinking, and if this reason worked +(for example) by the dialectical method, doesn't it seem odd that +in the greatest instance of rationalization mankind has known, in +'science,' namely, the dialectical method should never once have been +tried? Not a solitary instance of the use of it in science occurs +to my mind. Hypotheses, and deductions from these, controlled by +sense-observations and analogies with what we know elsewhere, are to +be thanked for all of science's results. + +Fechner used no methods but these latter ones in arguing for his +metaphysical conclusions about reality--but let me first rehearse a +few of the facts about his life. + +Born in 1801, the son of a poor country pastor in Saxony, he lived +from 1817 to 1887, when he died, seventy years therefore, at Leipzig, +a typical _gelehrter_ of the old-fashioned german stripe. His means +were always scanty, so his only extravagances could be in the way +of thought, but these were gorgeous ones. He passed his medical +examinations at Leipzig University at the age of twenty-one, but +decided, instead of becoming a doctor, to devote himself to physical +science. It was ten years before he was made professor of physics, +although he soon was authorized to lecture. Meanwhile, he had to make +both ends meet, and this he did by voluminous literary labors. He +translated, for example, the four volumes of Biot's treatise on +physics, and the six of Thénard's work on chemistry, and took care of +their enlarged editions later. He edited repertories of chemistry +and physics, a pharmaceutical journal, and an encyclopaedia in eight +volumes, of which he wrote about one third. He published physical +treatises and experimental investigations of his own, especially in +electricity. Electrical measurements, as you know, are the basis of +electrical science, and Fechner's measurements in galvanism, performed +with the simplest self-made apparatus, are classic to this day. +During this time he also published a number of half-philosophical, +half-humorous writings, which have gone through several editions, +under the name of Dr. Mises, besides poems, literary and artistic +essays, and other occasional articles. + +But overwork, poverty, and an eye-trouble produced by his observations +on after-images in the retina (also a classic piece of investigation) +produced in Fechner, then about thirty-eight years old, a terrific +attack of nervous prostration with painful hyperaesthesia of all the +functions, from which he suffered three years, cut off entirely from +active life. Present-day medicine would have classed poor Fechner's +malady quickly enough, as partly a habit-neurosis, but its +severity was such that in his day it was treated as a visitation +incomprehensible in its malignity; and when he suddenly began to get +well, both Fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine +miracle. This illness, bringing Fechner face to face with inner +desperation, made a great crisis in his life. 'Had I not then clung to +the faith,' he writes, 'that clinging to faith would somehow or other +work its reward, _so hätte ich jene zeit nicht ausgehalten_.' His +religious and cosmological faiths saved him--thenceforward one great +aim with him was to work out and communicate these faiths to the +world. He did so on the largest scale; but he did many other things +too ere he died. + +A book on the atomic theory, classic also; four elaborate mathematical +and experimental volumes on what he called psychophysics--many persons +consider Fechner to have practically founded scientific psychology in +the first of these books; a volume on organic evolution, and two works +on experimental aesthetics, in which again Fechner is considered by +some judges to have laid the foundations of a new science, must be +included among these other performances. Of the more religious and +philosophical works, I shall immediately give a further account. + +All Leipzig mourned him when he died, for he was the pattern of the +ideal german scholar, as daringly original in his thought as he was +homely in his life, a modest, genial, laborious slave to truth and +learning, and withal the owner of an admirable literary style of the +vernacular sort. The materialistic generation, that in the fifties and +sixties called his speculations fantastic, had been replaced by one +with greater liberty of imagination, and a Preyer, a Wundt, a Paulsen, +and a Lasswitz could now speak of Fechner as their master. + +His mind was indeed one of those multitudinously organized cross-roads +of truth which are occupied only at rare intervals by children of men, +and from which nothing is either too far or too near to be seen in due +perspective. Patientest observation, exactest mathematics, shrewdest +discrimination, humanest feeling, flourished in him on the largest +scale, with no apparent detriment to one another. He was in fact a +philosopher in the 'great' sense, altho he cared so much less than +most philosophers care for abstractions of the 'thin' order. For him +the abstract lived in the concrete, and the hidden motive of all he +did was to bring what he called the daylight view of the world into +ever greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole +universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and +envelopments, is everywhere alive and conscious. It has taken fifty +years for his chief book, 'Zend-avesta,' to pass into a second edition +(1901). 'One swallow,' he cheerfully writes, 'does not make a summer. +But the first swallow would not come unless the summer were coming; +and for me that summer means my daylight view some time prevailing.' + +The original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and +our scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the +spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. +Instead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater +life, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, +which must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence +than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies +outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only; or if we +believe in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless, +and nature as soulless on the other. What comfort, or peace, Fechner +asks, can come from such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, +the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit +and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature +turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is +treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns +between us and all that is higher than ourselves; and God becomes a +thin nest of abstractions. + +Fechner's great instrument for vivifying the daylight view is +analogy; not a rationalistic argument is to be found in all his +many pages--only reasonings like those which men continually use in +practical life. For example: My house is built by some one, the world +too is built by some one. The world is greater than my house, it +must be a greater some one who built the world. My body moves by the +influence of my feeling and will; the sun, moon, sea, and wind, being +themselves more powerful, move by the influence of some more powerful +feeling and will. I live now, and change from one day to another; I +shall live hereafter, and change still more, etc. + +Bain defines genius as the power of seeing analogies. The number +that Fechner could perceive was prodigious; but he insisted on the +differences as well. Neglect to make allowance for these, he said, is +the common fallacy in analogical reasoning. Most of us, for example, +reasoning justly that, since all the minds we know are connected with +bodies, therefore God's mind should be connected with a body, proceed +to suppose that that body must be just an animal body over again, and +paint an altogether human picture of God. But all that the analogy +comports is _a_ body--the particular features of _our_ body are +adaptations to a habitat so different from God's that if God have +a physical body at all, it must be utterly different from ours in +structure. Throughout his writings Fechner makes difference and +analogy walk abreast, and by his extraordinary power of noticing +both, he converts what would ordinarily pass for objections to his +conclusions into factors of their support. + +The vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. The +entire earth on which we live must have, according to Fechner, its own +collective consciousness. So must each sun, moon, and planet; so must +the whole solar system have its own wider consciousness, in which the +consciousness of our earth plays one part. So has the entire starry +system as such its consciousness; and if that starry system be not the +sum of all that _is_, materially considered, then that whole system, +along with whatever else may be, is the body of that absolutely +totalized consciousness of the universe to which men give the name of +God. + +Speculatively Fechner is thus a monist in his theology; but there is +room in his universe for every grade of spiritual being between man +and the final all-inclusive God; and in suggesting what the positive +content of all this super-humanity may be, he hardly lets his +imagination fly beyond simple spirits of the planetary order. The +earth-soul he passionately believes in; he treats the earth as our +special human guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to +their saints; but I think that in his system, as in so many of the +actual historic theologies, the supreme God marks only a sort of limit +of enclosure of the worlds above man. He is left thin and abstract in +his majesty, men preferring to carry on their personal transactions +with the many less remote and abstract messengers and mediators whom +the divine order provides. + +I shall ask later whether the abstractly monistic turn which Fechner's +speculations took was necessitated by logic. I believe it not to have +been required. Meanwhile let me lead you a little more into the +detail of his thought. Inevitably one does him miserable injustice +by summarizing and abridging him. For altho the type of reasoning he +employs is almost childlike for simplicity, and his bare conclusions +can be written on a single page, the _power_ of the man is due +altogether to the profuseness of his concrete imagination, to the +multitude of the points which he considers successively, to the +cumulative effect of his learning, of his thoroughness, and of the +ingenuity of his detail, to his admirably homely style, to the +sincerity with which his pages glow, and finally to the impression he +gives of a man who doesn't live at second-hand, but who _sees_, who in +fact speaks as one having authority, and not as if he were one of the +common herd of professorial philosophic scribes. + +Abstractly set down, his most important conclusion for my purpose in +these lectures is that the constitution of the world is identical +throughout. In ourselves, visual consciousness goes with our eyes, +tactile consciousness with our skin. But altho neither skin nor eye +knows aught of the sensations of the other, they come together and +figure in some sort of relation and combination in the more inclusive +consciousness which each of us names his _self_. Quite similarly, +then, says Fechner, we must suppose that my consciousness of myself +and yours of yourself, altho in their immediacy they keep separate +and know nothing of each other, are yet known and used together in a +higher consciousness, that of the human race, say, into which they +enter as constituent parts. Similarly, the whole human and animal +kingdoms come together as conditions of a consciousness of still wider +scope. This combines in the soul of the earth with the consciousness +of the vegetable kingdom, which in turn contributes its share of +experience to that of the whole solar system, and so on from synthesis +to synthesis and height to height, till an absolutely universal +consciousness is reached. + +A vast analogical series, in which the basis of the analogy consists +of facts directly observable in ourselves. + +The supposition of an earth-consciousness meets a strong instinctive +prejudice which Fechner ingeniously tries to overcome. Man's mind is +the highest consciousness upon the earth, we think--the earth itself +being in all ways man's inferior. How should its consciousness, if it +have one, be superior to his? + +What are the marks of superiority which we are tempted to use here? If +we look more carefully into them, Fechner points out that the earth +possesses each and all of them more perfectly than we. He considers in +detail the points of difference between us, and shows them all to +make for the earth's higher rank. I will touch on only a few of these +points. + +One of them of course is independence of other external beings. +External to the earth are only the other heavenly bodies. All the +things on which we externally depend for life--air, water, plant and +animal food, fellow men, etc.--are included in her as her constituent +parts. She is self-sufficing in a million respects in which we are not +so. We depend on her for almost everything, she on us for but a small +portion of her history. She swings us in her orbit from winter to +summer and revolves us from day into night and from night into day. + +Complexity in unity is another sign of superiority. The total earth's +complexity far exceeds that of any organism, for she includes all our +organisms in herself, along with an infinite number of things that our +organisms fail to include. Yet how simple and massive are the phases +of her own proper life! As the total bearing of any animal is sedate +and tranquil compared with the agitation of its blood corpuscles, so +is the earth a sedate and tranquil being compared with the animals +whom she supports. + +To develop from within, instead of being fashioned from without, is +also counted as something superior in men's eyes. An egg is a higher +style of being than a piece of clay which an external modeler makes +into the image of a bird. Well, the earth's history develops from +within. It is like that of a wonderful egg which the sun's heat, like +that of a mother-hen, has stimulated to its cycles of evolutionary +change. + +Individuality of type, and difference from other beings of its type, +is another mark of rank. The earth differs from every other planet, +and as a class planetary beings are extraordinarily distinct from +other beings. + +Long ago the earth was called an animal; but a planet is a higher +class of being than either man or animal; not only quantitatively +greater, like a vaster and more awkward whale or elephant, but a being +whose enormous size requires an altogether different plan of life. Our +animal organization comes from our inferiority. Our need of moving to +and fro, of stretching our limbs and bending our bodies, shows only +our defect. What are our legs but crutches, by means of which, with +restless efforts, we go hunting after the things we have not inside +of ourselves. But the earth is no such cripple; why should she who +already possesses within herself the things we so painfully pursue, +have limbs analogous to ours? Shall she mimic a small part of herself? +What need has she of arms, with nothing to reach for? of a neck, with +no head to carry? of eyes or nose when she finds her way through space +without either, and has the millions of eyes of all her animals to +guide their movements on her surface, and all their noses to smell the +flowers that grow? For, as we are ourselves a part of the earth, so +our organs are her organs. She is, as it were, eye and ear over her +whole extent--all that we see and hear in separation she sees and +hears at once. She brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon +her surface, and their multitudinous conscious relations with each +other she takes up into her higher and more general conscious life. + +Most of us, considering the theory that the whole terrestrial mass is +animated as our bodies are, make the mistake of working the analogy +too literally, and allowing for no differences. If the earth be a +sentient organism, we say, where are her brain and nerves? What +corresponds to her heart and lungs? In other words, we expect +functions which she already performs through us, to be performed +outside of us again, and in just the same way. But we see perfectly +well how the earth performs some of these functions in a way unlike +our way. If you speak of circulation, what need has she of a heart +when the sun keeps all the showers of rain that fall upon her and all +the springs and brooks and rivers that irrigate her, going? What need +has she of internal lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in +living commerce with the atmosphere that clings to it? + +The organ that gives us most trouble is the brain. All the +consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains.--Can there be +consciousness, we ask, where there is no brain? But our brain, which +primarily serves to correlate our muscular reactions with the external +objects on which we depend, performs a function which the earth +performs in an entirely different way. She has no proper muscles or +limbs of her own, and the only objects external to her are the other +stars. To these her whole mass reacts by most exquisite alterations in +its total gait, and by still more exquisite vibratory responses in +its substance. Her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as in a mighty +mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monstrous lens, the +clouds and snow-fields combine them into white, the woods and flowers +disperse them into colors. Polarization, interference, absorption, +awaken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to +take any note. + +For these cosmic relations of hers, then, she no more needs a special +brain than she needs eyes or ears. _Our_ brains do indeed unify and +correlate innumerable functions. Our eyes know nothing of sound, our +ears nothing of light, but, having brains, we can feel sound and light +together, and compare them. We account for this by the fibres which in +the brain connect the optical with the acoustic centre, but just how +these fibres bring together not only the sensations, but the centres, +we fail to see. But if fibres are indeed all that is needed to do that +trick, has not the earth pathways, by which you and I are physically +continuous, more than enough to do for our two minds what the +brain-fibres do for the sounds and sights in a single mind? Must every +higher means of unification between things be a literal _brain_-fibre, +and go by that name? Cannot the earth-mind know otherwise the contents +of our minds together? + +Fechner's imagination, insisting on the differences as well as on the +resemblances, thus tries to make our picture of the whole earth's life +more concrete. He revels in the thought of its perfections. To carry +her precious freight through the hours and seasons what form could be +more excellent than hers--being as it is horse, wheels, and wagon all +in one. Think of her beauty--a shining ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over +one half, the other bathed in starry night, reflecting the heavens +from all her waters, myriads of lights and shadows in the folds of her +mountains and windings of her valleys, she would be a spectacle of +rainbow glory, could one only see her from afar as we see parts of her +from her own mountain-tops. Every quality of landscape that has a +name would then be visible in her at once--all that is delicate or +graceful, all that is quiet, or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or +cheerful, or luxuriant, or fresh. That landscape is her face--a +peopled landscape, too, for men's eyes would appear in it like +diamonds among the dew-drops. Green would be the dominant color, but +the blue atmosphere and the clouds would enfold her as a bride is +shrouded in her veil--a veil the vapory transparent folds of which +the earth, through her ministers the winds, never tires of laying and +folding about herself anew. + +Every element has its own living denizens. Can the celestial ocean of +ether, whose waves are light, in which the earth herself floats, not +have hers, higher by as much as their element is higher, swimming +without fins, flying without wings, moving, immense and tranquil, as +by a half-spiritual force through the half-spiritual sea which they +inhabit, rejoicing in the exchange of luminous influence with one +another, following the slightest pull of one another's attraction, and +harboring, each of them, an inexhaustible inward wealth? + +Men have always made fables about angels, dwelling in the light, +needing no earthly food or drink, messengers between ourselves and +God. Here are actually existent beings, dwelling in the light and +moving through the sky, needing neither food nor drink, intermediaries +between God and us, obeying his commands. So, if the heavens really +are the home of angels, the heavenly bodies must be those very angels, +for other creatures _there_ are none. Yes! the earth is our great +common guardian angel, who watches over all our interests combined. + +In a striking page Fechner relates one of his moments of direct vision +of this truth. + +'On a certain spring morning I went out to walk. The fields were +green, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here +and there a man appeared; a light as of transfiguration lay on all +things. It was only a little bit of the earth; it was only one moment +of her existence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it +seemed to me not only so beautiful an idea, but so true and clear +a fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and +flower-like, and yet going her round in the skies so firmly and so +at one with herself, turning her whole living face to Heaven, and +carrying me along with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself how +the opinions of men could ever have so spun themselves away from life +so far as to deem the earth only a dry clod, and to seek for angels +above it or about it in the emptiness of the sky,--only to find them +nowhere.... But such an experience as this passes for fantastic. The +earth is a globular body, and what more she may be, one can find in +mineralogical cabinets.'[2] + +Where there is no vision the people perish. Few professorial +philosophers have any vision. Fechner had vision, and that is why one +can read him over and over again, and each time bring away a fresh +sense of reality. + +His earliest book was a vision of what the inner life of plants may be +like. He called it 'Nanna.' In the development of animals the nervous +system is the central fact. Plants develop centrifugally, spread their +organs abroad. For that reason people suppose that they can have no +consciousness, for they lack the unity which the central nervous +system provides. But the plant's consciousness may be of another type, +being connected with other structures. Violins and pianos give out +sounds because they have strings. Does it follow that nothing but +strings can give out sound? How then about flutes and organ-pipes? +Of course their sounds are of a different quality, and so may the +consciousness of plants be of a quality correlated exclusively with +the kind of organization that | they possess. Nutrition, respiration, +propagation take place in them without nerves. In us these functions +are conscious only in unusual states, normally their consciousness is +eclipsed by that which goes with the brain. No such eclipse occurs in +plants, and their lower consciousness may therefore be all the more +lively. With nothing to do but to drink the light and air with their +leaves, to let their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw +the sap, is it conceivable that they should not consciously suffer +if water, light, and air are suddenly withdrawn? or that when the +flowering and fertilization which are the culmination of their life +take place, they should not feel their own existence more intensely +and enjoy something like what we call pleasure in ourselves? Does +the water-lily, rocking in her triple bath of water, air, and light, +relish in no wise her own beauty? When the plant in our room turns to +the light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds to our watering +or pruning by increase of size or change of shape and bloom, who has +the right to say she does not feel, or that she plays a purely passive +part? Truly plants can foresee nothing, neither the scythe of the +mower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. They can neither +run away nor cry out. But this only proves how different their modes +of feeling life must be from those of animals that live by eyes and +ears and locomotive organs, it does not prove that they have no mode +of feeling life at all. + +How scanty and scattered would sensation be on our globe, if the +feeling-life of plants were blotted from existence. Solitary would +consciousness move through the woods in the shape of some deer or +other quadruped, or fly about the flowers in that of some insect, but +can we really suppose that the Nature through which God's breath blows +is such a barren wilderness as this? + +I have probably by this time said enough to acquaint those of you who +have never seen these metaphysical writings of Fechner with their more +general characteristics, and I hope that some of you may now feel like +reading them yourselves.[3] The special thought of Fechner's with +which in these lectures I have most practical concern, is his +belief that the more inclusive forms of consciousness are in part +_constituted_ by the more limited forms. Not that they are the mere +sum of the more limited forms. As our mind is not the bare sum of +our sights plus our sounds plus our pains, but in adding these terms +together also finds relations among them and weaves them into schemes +and forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate +knows anything, so the earth-soul traces relations between the +contents of my mind and the contents of yours of which neither of +our separate minds is conscious. It has schemes, forms, and objects +proportionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far too +narrow to cognize. By ourselves we are simply out of relation with +each other, for it we are both of us there, and _different_ from each +other, which is a positive relation. What we are without knowing, it +knows that we are. We are closed against its world, but that world is +not closed against us. It is as if the total universe of inner life +had a sort of grain or direction, a sort of valvular structure, +permitting knowledge to flow in one way only, so that the wider might +always have the narrower under observation, but never the narrower the +wider. + +Fechner's great analogy here is the relation of the senses to our +individual minds. When our eyes are open their sensations enter into +our general mental life, which grows incessantly by the addition of +what they see. Close the eyes, however, and the visual additions stop, +nothing but thoughts and memories of the past visual experiences +remain--in combination of course with the enormous stock of other +thoughts and memories, and with the data coming in from the senses +not yet closed. Our eye-sensations of themselves know nothing of this +enormous life into which they fall. Fechner thinks, as any common man +would think, that they are taken into it directly when they occur, +and form part of it just as they are. They don't stay outside and +get represented inside by their copies. It is only the memories and +concepts of them that are copies; the sensible perceptions themselves +are taken in or walled out in their own proper persons according as +the eyes are open or shut. + +Fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many +sense-organs of the earth's soul. We add to its perceptive life so +long as our own life lasts. It absorbs our perceptions, just as they +occur, into its larger sphere of knowledge, and combines them with the +other data there. When one of us dies, it is as if an eye of the world +were closed, for all _perceptive_ contributions from that particular +quarter cease. But the memories and conceptual relations that have +spun themselves round the perceptions of that person remain in the +larger earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations and grow +and develop throughout all the future, in the same way in which our +own distinct objects of thought, once stored in memory, form new +relations and develop throughout our whole finite life. This is +Fechner's theory of immortality, first published in the little +'Büchlein des lebens nach dem tode,' in 1836, and re-edited in greatly +improved shape in the last volume of his 'Zend-avesta.' + +We rise upon the earth as wavelets rise upon the ocean. We grow out of +her soil as leaves grow from a tree. The wavelets catch the sunbeams +separately, the leaves stir when the branches do not move. They +realize their own events apart, just as in our own consciousness, when +anything becomes emphatic, the background fades from observation. Yet +the event works back upon the background, as the wavelet works upon +the waves, or as the leaf's movements work upon the sap inside the +branch. The whole sea and the whole tree are registers of what has +happened, and are different for the wave's and the leaf's action +having occurred. A grafted twig may modify its stock to the roots:--so +our outlived private experiences, impressed on the whole earth-mind as +memories, lead the immortal life of ideas there, and become parts of +the great system, fully distinguished from one another, just as we +ourselves when alive were distinct, realizing themselves no longer +isolatedly, but along with one another as so many partial systems, +entering thus into new combinations, being affected by the perceptive +experiences of those living then, and affecting the living in their +turn--altho they are so seldom recognized by living men to do so. + +If you imagine that this entrance after the death of the body into a +common life of higher type means a merging and loss of our distinct +personality, Fechner asks you whether a visual sensation of our own +exists in any sense _less for itself_ or _less distinctly_, when +it enters into our higher relational consciousness and is there +distinguished and defined. + +--But here I must stop my reporting and send you to his volumes. Thus +is the universe alive, according to this philosopher! I think you +will admit that he makes it more _thickly_ alive than do the other +philosophers who, following rationalistic methods solely, gain the +same results, but only in the thinnest outlines. Both Fechner and +Professor Royce, for example, believe ultimately in one all-inclusive +mind. Both believe that we, just as we stand here, are constituent +parts of that mind. No other _content_ has it than us, with all the +other creatures like or unlike us, and the relations which it finds +between us. Our eaches, collected into one, are substantively +identical with its all, tho the all is perfect while no each is +perfect, so that we have to admit that new qualities as well as +unperceived relations accrue from the collective form. It is thus +superior to the distributive form. But having reached this result, +Royce (tho his treatment of the subject on its moral side seems to +me infinitely richer and thicker than that of any other contemporary +idealistic philosopher) leaves us very much to our own devices. +Fechner, on the contrary, tries to trace the superiorities due to the +more collective form in as much detail as he can. He marks the various +intermediary stages and halting places of collectivity,--as we are to +our separate senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system +to the earth, etc.,--and if, in order to escape an infinitely long +summation, he posits a complete God as the all-container and leaves +him about as indefinite in feature as the idealists leave their +absolute, he yet provides us with a very definite gate of approach to +him in the shape of the earth-soul, through which in the nature of +things we must first make connexion with all the more enveloping +superhuman realms, and with which our more immediate religious +commerce at any rate has to be carried on. + +Ordinary monistic idealism leaves everything intermediary out. It +recognizes only the extremes, as if, after the first rude face of the +phenomenal world in all its particularity, nothing but the supreme in +all its perfection could be found. First, you and I, just as we are in +this room; and the moment we get below that surface, the unutterable +absolute itself! Doesn't this show a singularly indigent imagination? +Isn't this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in +it for a long hierarchy of beings? Materialistic science makes it +infinitely richer in terms, with its molecules, and ether, and +electrons, and what not. Absolute idealism, thinking of reality only +under intellectual forms, knows not what to do with _bodies_ of +any grade, and can make no use of any psychophysical analogy or +correspondence. The resultant thinness is startling when compared with +the thickness and articulation of such a universe as Fechner paints. +May not satisfaction with the rationalistic absolute as the alpha +and omega, and treatment of it in all its abstraction as an adequate +religious object, argue a certain native poverty of mental demand? +Things reveal themselves soonest to those who most passionately want +them, for our need sharpens our wit. To a mind content with little, +the much in the universe may always remain hid. + +To be candid, one of my reasons for saying so much about Fechner has +been to make the thinness of our current transcendentalism appear +more evident by an effect of contrast. Scholasticism ran thick; Hegel +himself ran thick; but english and american transcendentalisms run +thin. If philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of +logic,--and I believe it is, logic only finding reasons for the vision +afterwards,--must not such thinness come either from the vision being +defective in the disciples, or from their passion, matched with +Fechner's or with Hegel's own passion, being as moonlight unto +sunlight or as water unto wine?[4] + +But I have also a much deeper reason for making Fechner a part of my +text. His _assumption that conscious experiences freely compound and +separate themselves_, the same assumption by which absolutism explains +the relation of our minds to the eternal mind, and the same by +which empiricism explains the composition of the human mind out of +subordinate mental elements, is not one which we ought to let pass +without scrutiny. I shall scrutinize it in the next lecture. + + + + +LECTURE V + + +THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS + +In my last lecture I gave a miserably scanty outline of the way +of thinking of a philosopher remarkable for the almost unexampled +richness of his imagination of details. I owe to Fechner's shade an +apology for presenting him in a manner so unfair to the most essential +quality of his genius; but the time allotted is too short to say more +about the particulars of his work, so I proceed to the programme +I suggested at the end of our last hour. I wish to discuss the +assumption that states of consciousness, so-called, can separate and +combine themselves freely, and keep their own identity unchanged while +forming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope. + +Let me first explain just what I mean by this. While you listen to +my voice, for example, you are perhaps inattentive to some bodily +sensation due to your clothing or your posture. Yet that sensation +would seem probably to be there, for in an instant, by a change of +attention, you can have it in one field of consciousness with the +voice. It seems as if it existed first in a separate form, and then as +if, without itself changing, it combined with your other co-existent +sensations. It is after this analogy that pantheistic idealism thinks +that we exist in the absolute. The absolute, it thinks, makes the +world by knowing the whole of it at once in one undivided eternal +act.[1] To 'be,' _really_ to be, is to be as it knows us to be, along +with everything else, namely, and clothed with the fulness of our +meaning. Meanwhile we _are_ at the same time not only really and as it +knows us, but also apparently, for to our separate single selves we +appear _without_ most other things and unable to declare with +any fulness what our own meaning is. Now the classic doctrine of +pantheistic idealism, from the Upanishads down to Josiah Royce, is +that the finite knowers, in spite of their apparent ignorance, are one +with the knower of the all. In the most limited moments of our private +experience, the absolute idea, as Dr. McTaggart told us, is implicitly +contained. The moments, as Royce says, exist only in relation to it. +They are true or erroneous only through its overshadowing presence. Of +the larger self that alone eternally is, they are the organic parts. +They _are_, only inasmuch as they are implicated in its being. + +There is thus in reality but this one self, consciously inclusive of +all the lesser selves, _logos_, problem-solver, and all-knower; and +Royce ingeniously compares the ignorance that in our persons breaks +out in the midst of its complete knowledge and isolates me from you +and both of us from it, to the inattention into which our finite minds +are liable to fall with respect to such implicitly present details as +those corporeal sensations to which I made allusion just now. Those +sensations stand to our total private minds in the same relation in +which our private minds stand to the absolute mind. Privacy means +ignorance--I still quote Royce--and ignorance means inattention. We +are finite because our wills, as such, are only fragments of the +absolute will; because will means interest, and an incomplete will +means an incomplete interest; and because incompleteness of interest +means inattention to much that a fuller interest would bring us to +perceive.[2] + +In this account Royce makes by far the manliest of the post-hegelian +attempts to read some empirically apprehensible content into the +notion of our relation to the absolute mind. + +I have to admit, now that I propose to you to scrutinize this +assumption rather closely, that trepidation seizes me. The subject is +a subtle and abstruse one. It is one thing to delve into subtleties by +one's self with pen in hand, or to study out abstruse points in +books, but quite another thing to make a popular lecture out of them. +Nevertheless I must not flinch from my task here, for I think that +this particular point forms perhaps the vital knot of the present +philosophic situation, and I imagine that the times are ripe, or +almost ripe, for a serious attempt to be made at its untying. + +It may perhaps help to lessen the arduousness of the subject if I put +the first part of what I have to say in the form of a direct personal +confession. + +In the year 1890 I published a work on psychology in which it became +my duty to discuss the value of a certain explanation of our higher +mental states that had come into favor among the more biologically +inclined psychologists. Suggested partly by the association of ideas, +and partly by the analogy of chemical compounds, this opinion was +that complex mental states are resultants of the self-compounding of +simpler ones. The Mills had spoken of mental chemistry; Wundt of a +'psychic synthesis,' which might develop properties not contained in +the elements; and such writers as Spencer, Taine, Fiske, Barratt, and +Clifford had propounded a great evolutionary theory in which, in the +absence of souls, selves, or other principles of unity, primordial +units of mind-stuff or mind-dust were represented as summing +themselves together in successive stages of compounding and +re-compounding, and thus engendering our higher and more complex +states of mind. The elementary feeling of A, let us say, and the +elementary feeling of B, when they occur in certain conditions, +combine, according to this doctrine, into a feeling of A-plus-B, and +this in turn combines with a similarly generated feeling of C-plus-D, +until at last the whole alphabet may appear together in one field of +awareness, without any other witnessing principle or principles beyond +the feelings of the several letters themselves, being supposed to +exist. What each of them witnesses separately, 'all' of them are +supposed to witness in conjunction. But their distributive knowledge +doesn't _give rise_ to their collective knowledge by any act, it _is_ +their collective knowledge. The lower forms of consciousness 'taken +together' _are_ the higher. It, 'taken apart,' consists of nothing +and _is_ nothing but them. This, at least, is the most obvious way +of understanding the doctrine, and is the way I understood it in the +chapter in my psychology. + +Superficially looked at, this seems just like the combination of H_2 +and O into water, but looked at more closely, the analogy halts badly. +When a chemist tells us that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen +combine themselves of their own accord into the new compound substance +'water,' he knows (if he believes in the mechanical view of nature) +that this is only an elliptical statement for a more complex fact. +That fact is that when H_2 and O, instead of keeping far apart, get +into closer quarters, say into the position H-O-H, they _affect +surrounding bodies differently_: they now wet our skin, dissolve +sugar, put out fire, etc., which they didn't in their former +positions. 'Water' is but _our name_ for what acts thus peculiarly. +But if the skin, sugar, and fire were absent, no witness would speak +of water at all. He would still talk of the H and O distributively, +merely noting that they acted now in the new position H-O-H. + +In the older psychologies the soul or self took the place of the +sugar, fire, or skin. The lower feelings produced _effects on it_, +and their apparent compounds were only its reactions. As you tickle +a man's face with a feather, and he laughs, so when you tickle his +intellectual principle with a retinal feeling, say, and a muscular +feeling at once, it laughs responsively by its category of 'space,' +but it would be false to treat the space as simply made of those +simpler feelings. It is rather a new and unique psychic creation which +their combined action on the mind is able to evoke. + +I found myself obliged, in discussing the mind-dust theory, to urge +this last alternative view. The so-called mental compounds are simple +psychic reactions of a higher type. The form itself of them, I said, +is something new. We can't say that awareness of the alphabet as +such is nothing more than twenty-six awarenesses, each of a separate +letter; for those are twenty-six distinct awarenesses, of single +letters _without_ others, while their so-called sum is one awareness, +of every letter _with_ its comrades. There is thus something new in +the collective consciousness. It knows the same letters, indeed, but +it knows them in this novel way. It is safer, I said (for I fought shy +of admitting a self or soul or other agent of combination), to treat +the consciousness of the alphabet as a twenty-seventh fact, the +substitute and not the sum of the twenty-six simpler consciousnesses, +and to say that while under certain physiological conditions they +alone are produced, other more complex physiological conditions result +in its production instead. Do not talk, therefore, I said, of the +higher states _consisting_ of the simpler, or _being_ the same with +them; talk rather of their _knowing the same things_. They are +different mental facts, but they apprehend, each in its own peculiar +way, the same objective A, B, C, and D. + +The theory of combination, I was forced to conclude, is thus +untenable, being both logically nonsensical and practically +unnecessary. Say what you will, twelve thoughts, each of a single +word, are not the self-same mental thing as one thought of the whole +sentence. The higher thoughts, I insisted, are psychic units, not +compounds; but for all that, they may know together as a collective +multitude the very same objects which under other conditions are known +separately by as many simple thoughts. + +For many years I held rigorously to this view,[3] and the reasons for +doing so seemed to me during all those years to apply also to the +opinion that the absolute mind stands to our minds in the relation of +a whole to its parts. If untenable in finite psychology, that opinion +ought to be untenable in metaphysics also. The great transcendentalist +metaphor has always been, as I lately reminded you, a grammatical +sentence. Physically such a sentence is of course composed of clauses, +these of words, the words of syllables, and the syllables of letters. +We may take each word in, yet not understand the sentence; but if +suddenly the meaning of the whole sentence flashes, the sense of each +word is taken up into that whole meaning. Just so, according to +our transcendentalist teachers, the absolute mind thinks the whole +sentence, while we, according to our rank as thinkers, think a clause, +a word, a syllable, or a letter. Most of us are, as I said, mere +syllables in the mouth of Allah. And as Allah comes first in the order +of being, so comes first the entire sentence, the _logos_ that forms +the eternal absolute thought. Students of language tell us that speech +began with men's efforts to make _statements_. The rude synthetic +vocal utterances first used for this effect slowly got stereotyped, +and then much later got decomposed into grammatical parts. It is not +as if men had first invented letters and made syllables of them, then +made words of the syllables and sentences of the words;--they actually +followed the reverse order. So, the transcendentalists affirm, the +complete absolute thought is the pre-condition of our thoughts, and +we finite creatures _are_ only in so far as it owns us as its verbal +fragments. + +The metaphor is so beautiful, and applies, moreover, so literally to +such a multitude of the minor wholes of experience, that by merely +hearing it most of us are convinced that it must apply universally. +We see that no smallest raindrop can come into being without a whole +shower, no single feather without a whole bird, neck and crop, beak +and tail, coming into being simultaneously: so we unhesitatingly lay +down the law that no part of anything can be except so far as the +whole also is. And then, since everything whatever is part of the +whole universe, and since (if we are idealists) nothing, whether part +or whole, exists except for a witness, we proceed to the conclusion +that the unmitigated absolute as witness of the whole is the one sole +ground of being of every partial fact, the fact of our own existence +included. We think of ourselves as being only a few of the feathers, +so to speak, which help to constitute that absolute bird. Extending +the analogy of certain wholes, of which we have familiar experience, +to the whole of wholes, we easily become absolute idealists. + +But if, instead of yielding to the seductions of our metaphor, be +it sentence, shower, or bird, we analyze more carefully the notion +suggested by it that we are constituent parts of the absolute's +eternal field of consciousness, we find grave difficulties arising. +First, the difficulty I found with the mind-dust theory. If the +absolute makes us by knowing us, how can we exist otherwise than _as_ +it knows us? But it knows each of us indivisibly from everything else. +Yet if to exist means nothing but to be experienced, as idealism +affirms, we surely exist otherwise, for we experience _ourselves_ +ignorantly and in division. We indeed differ from the absolute not +only by defect, but by excess. Our ignorances, for example, bring +curiosities and doubts by which it cannot be troubled, for it owns +eternally the solution of every problem. Our impotence entails pains, +our imperfection sins, which its perfection keeps at a distance. What +I said of the alphabet-form and the letters holds good of the absolute +experience and our experiences. Their relation, whatever it may be, +seems not to be that of identity. + +It is impossible to reconcile the peculiarities of our experience with +our being only the absolute's mental objects. A God, as distinguished +from the absolute, creates things by projecting them beyond himself as +so many substances, each endowed with _perseity_, as the scholastics +call it. But objects of thought are not things _per se_. They are +there only _for_ their thinker, and only _as_ he thinks them. How, +then, can they become severally alive on their own accounts and think +themselves quite otherwise than as he thinks them? It is as if the +characters in a novel were to get up from the pages, and walk away and +transact business of their own outside of the author's story. + +A third difficulty is this: The bird-metaphor is physical, but we +see on reflection that in the _physical_ world there is no real +compounding. 'Wholes' are not realities there, parts only are +realities. 'Bird' is only our _name_ for the physical fact of a +certain grouping of organs, just as 'Charles's Wain' is our name for a +certain grouping of stars. The 'whole,' be it bird or constellation, +is nothing but our vision, nothing but an effect on our sensorium when +a lot of things act on it together. It is not realized by any organ +or any star, or experienced apart from the consciousness of an +onlooker.[4] In the physical world taken by itself there _is_ thus no +'all,' there are only the 'eaches'--at least that is the 'scientific' +view. + +In the mental world, on the contrary, wholes do in point of fact +realize themselves _per se_. The meaning of the whole sentence is +just as much a real experience as the feeling of each word is; the +absolute's experience _is_ for itself, as much as yours is for +yourself or mine for myself. So the feather-and-bird analogy won't +work unless you make the absolute into a distinct sort of mental agent +with a vision produced in it _by_ our several minds analogous to the +'bird'-vision which the feathers, beak, etc., produce _in_ those same +minds. The 'whole,' which is _its_ experience, would then be its +unifying reaction on our experiences, and not those very experiences +self-combined. Such a view as this would go with theism, for the +theistic God is a separate being; but it would not go with pantheistic +idealism, the very essence of which is to insist that we are literally +_parts_ of God, and he only ourselves in our totality--the word +'ourselves' here standing of course for all the universe's finite +facts. + +I am dragging you into depths unsuitable, I fear, for a rapid lecture. +Such difficulties as these have to be teased out with a needle, so to +speak, and lecturers should take only bird's-eye views. The practical +upshot of the matter, however, so far as I am concerned, is this, that +if I had been lecturing on the absolute a very few years ago, I should +unhesitatingly have urged these difficulties, and developed them at +still greater length, to show that the hypothesis of the absolute +was not only non-coercive from the logical point of view, but +self-contradictory as well, its notion that parts and whole are only +two names for the same thing not bearing critical scrutiny. If you +stick to purely physical terms like stars, there is no whole. If you +call the whole mental, then the so-called whole, instead of being one +fact with the parts, appears rather as the integral reaction on those +parts of an independent higher witness, such as the theistic God is +supposed to be. + +So long as this was the state of my own mind, I could accept the +notion of self-compounding in the supernal spheres of experience no +more easily than in that chapter on mind-dust I had accepted it in +the lower spheres. I found myself compelled, therefore, to call +the absolute impossible; and the untrammelled freedom with which +pantheistic or monistic idealists stepped over the logical barriers +which Lotze and others had set down long before I had--I had done +little more than quote these previous critics in my chapter--surprised +me not a little, and made me, I have to confess, both resentful and +envious. Envious because in the bottom of my heart I wanted the same +freedom myself, for motives which I shall develop later; and resentful +because my absolutist friends seemed to me to be stealing the +privilege of blowing both hot and cold. To establish their absolute +they used an intellectualist type of logic which they disregarded when +employed against it. It seemed to me that they ought at least to have +mentioned the objections that had stopped me so completely. I had +yielded to them against my 'will to believe,' out of pure logical +scrupulosity. They, professing to loathe the will to believe and to +follow purest rationality, had simply ignored them. The method was +easy, but hardly to be called candid. Fechner indeed was candid +enough, for he had never thought of the objections, but later writers, +like Royce, who should presumably have heard them, had passed them by +in silence. I felt as if these philosophers were granting their will +to believe in monism too easy a license. My own conscience would +permit me no such license. + +So much for the personal confession by which you have allowed me to +introduce the subject. Let us now consider it more objectively. + +The fundamental difficulty I have found is the number of +contradictions which idealistic monists seem to disregard. In the +first place they attribute to all existence a mental or experiential +character, but I find their simultaneous belief that the higher and +the lower in the universe are entitatively identical, incompatible +with this character. Incompatible in consequence of the generally +accepted doctrine that, whether Berkeley were right or not in saying +of material existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_, it is undoubtedly +right to say of _mental_ existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_ or +_experiri_. If I feel pain, it is just pain that I feel, however I +may have come by the feeling. No one pretends that pain as such only +appears like pain, but in itself is different, for to be as a mental +experience _is_ only to appear to some one. + +The idealists in question ought then to do one of two things, but they +do neither. They ought either to refute the notion that as mental +states appear, so they are; or, still keeping that notion, they +ought to admit a distinct agent of unification to do the work of +the all-knower, just as our respective souls or selves in popular +philosophy do the work of partial knowers. Otherwise it is like a +joint-stock company all shareholders and no treasurer or director. If +our finite minds formed a billion facts, then its mind, knowing our +billion, would make a universe composed of a billion and one facts. +But transcendental idealism is quite as unfriendly to active +principles called souls as physiological psychology is, Kant having, +as it thinks, definitively demolished them. And altho some disciples +speak of the transcendental ego of apperception (which they celebrate +as Kant's most precious legacy to posterity) as if it were a combining +agent, the drift of monistic authority is certainly in the direction +of treating it as only an all-witness, whose field of vision we finite +witnesses do not cause, but constitute rather. We are the letters, it +is the alphabet; we are the features, it is the face; not indeed as if +either alphabet or face were something additional to the letters or +the features, but rather as if it were only another name for the very +letters or features themselves. The all-form assuredly differs from +the each-form, but the _matter_ is the same in both, and the each-form +only an unaccountable appearance. + +But this, as you see, contradicts the other idealist principle, of +a mental fact being just what it appears to be. If their forms +of appearance are so different, the all and the eaches cannot be +identical. + +The way out (unless, indeed, we are willing to discard the logic of +identity altogether) would seem to be frankly to write down the all +and the eaches as two distinct orders of witness, each minor witness +being aware of its own 'content' solely, while the greater witness +knows the minor witnesses, knows their whole content pooled together, +knows their relations to one another, and knows of just how much each +one of them is ignorant. + +The two types of witnessing are here palpably non-identical. We get a +pluralism, not a monism, out of them. In my psychology-chapter I +had resorted openly to such pluralism, treating each total field of +consciousness as a distinct entity, and maintaining that the higher +fields merely supersede the lower functionally by knowing more about +the same objects. + +The monists themselves writhe like worms on the hook to escape +pluralistic or at least dualistic language, but they cannot escape it. +They speak of the eternal and the temporal 'points of view'; of the +universe in its infinite 'aspect' or in its finite 'capacity'; they +say that '_quâ_ absolute' it is one thing, '_quâ_ relative' another; +they contrast its 'truth' with its appearances; they distinguish the +total from the partial way of 'taking' it, etc.; but they forget that, +on idealistic principles, to make such distinctions is tantamount to +making different beings, or at any rate that varying points of view, +aspects, appearances, ways of taking, and the like, are meaningless +phrases unless we suppose outside of the unchanging content of reality +a diversity of witnesses who experience or take it variously, the +absolute mind being just the witness that takes it most completely. + +For consider the matter one moment longer, if you can. Ask what this +notion implies, of appearing differently from different points of +view. If there be no outside witness, a thing can appear only to +itself, the eaches or parts to their several selves temporally, the +all or whole to itself eternally. Different 'selves' thus break out +inside of what the absolutist insists to be intrinsically one fact. +But how can what is _actually_ one be _effectively_ so many? Put your +witnesses anywhere, whether outside or inside of what is witnessed, +in the last resort your witnesses must on idealistic principles be +distinct, for what is witnessed is different. + +I fear that I am expressing myself with terrible obscurity--some of +you, I know, are groaning over the logic-chopping. Be a pluralist or +be a monist, you say, for heaven's sake, no matter which, so long as +you stop arguing. It reminds one of Chesterton's epigram that the only +thing that ever drives human beings insane is logic. But whether I be +sane or insane, you cannot fail, even tho you be transcendentalists +yourselves, to recognize to some degree by my trouble the difficulties +that beset monistic idealism. What boots it to call the parts and the +whole the same body of experience, when in the same breath you have to +say that the all 'as such' means one sort of experience and each part +'as such' means another? + +Difficulties, then, so far, but no stable solution as yet, for I have +been talking only critically. You will probably be relieved to hear, +then, that having rounded this corner, I shall begin to consider what +may be the possibilities of getting farther. + +To clear the path, I beg you first to note one point. What has so +troubled my logical conscience is not so much the absolute by itself +as the whole class of suppositions of which it is the supreme +example, collective experiences namely, claiming identity with their +constituent parts, yet experiencing things quite differently from +these latter. If _any_ such collective experience can be, then of +course, so far as the mere logic of the case goes, the absolute may +be. In a previous lecture I have talked against the absolute from +other points of view. In this lecture I have meant merely to take it +as the example most prominent at Oxford of the thing which has given +me such logical perplexity. I don't logically see how a collective +experience of any grade whatever can be treated as logically identical +with a lot of distributive experiences. They form two different +concepts. The absolute happens to be the only collective experience +concerning which Oxford idealists have urged the identity, so I took +it as my prerogative instance. But Fechner's earth-soul, or any stage +of being below or above that, would have served my purpose just +as well: the same logical objection applies to these collective +experiences as to the absolute. + +So much, then, in order that you may not be confused about my +strategical objective. The real point to defend against the logic that +I have used is the identity of the collective and distributive anyhow, +not the particular example of such identity known as the absolute. + +So now for the directer question. Shall we say that every complex +mental fact is a separate psychic entity succeeding upon a lot of +other psychic entities which are erroneously called its parts, and +superseding them in function, but not literally being composed of +them? This was the course I took in my psychology; and if followed in +theology, we should have to deny the absolute as usually conceived, +and replace it by the 'God' of theism. We should also have to deny +Fechner's 'earth-soul' and all other superhuman collections of +experience of every grade, so far at least as these are held to be +compounded of our simpler souls in the way which Fechner believed +in; and we should have to make all these denials in the name of the +incorruptible logic of self-identity, teaching us that to call a thing +and its other the same is to commit the crime of self-contradiction. + +But if we realize the whole philosophic situation thus produced, +we see that it is almost intolerable. Loyal to the logical kind of +rationality, it is disloyal to every other kind. It makes the universe +discontinuous. These fields of experience that replace each other +so punctually, each knowing the same matter, but in ever-widening +contexts, from simplest feeling up to absolute knowledge, _can_ +they have no _being_ in common when their cognitive function is so +manifestly common? The regular succession of them is on such terms an +unintelligible miracle. If you reply that their common _object_ is +of itself enough to make the many witnesses continuous, the same +implacable logic follows you--how _can_ one and the same object appear +so variously? Its diverse appearances break it into a plurality; and +our world of objects then falls into discontinuous pieces quite as +much as did our world of subjects. The resultant irrationality is +really intolerable. + +I said awhile ago that I was envious of Fechner and the other +pantheists because I myself wanted the same freedom that I saw them +unscrupulously enjoying, of letting mental fields compound themselves +and so make the universe more continuous, but that my conscience held +me prisoner. In my heart of hearts, however, I knew that my situation +was absurd and could be only provisional. That secret of a continuous +life which the universe knows by heart and acts on every instant +cannot be a contradiction incarnate. If logic says it is one, so +much the worse for logic. Logic being the lesser thing, the static +incomplete abstraction, must succumb to reality, not reality to logic. +Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in its +chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the +universe that engendered it. Fechner, Royce, and Hegel seem on the +truer path. Fechner has never heard of logic's veto, Royce hears the +voice but cannily ignores the utterances, Hegel hears them but to +spurn them--and all go on their way rejoicing. Shall we alone obey the +veto? + +Sincerely, and patiently as I could, I struggled with the problem for +years, covering hundreds of sheets of paper with notes and memoranda +and discussions with myself over the difficulty. How can many +consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? How can one and +the same identical fact experience itself so diversely? The struggle +was vain; I found myself in an _impasse_. I saw that I must either +forswear that 'psychology without a soul' to which my whole +psychological and kantian education had committed me,--I must, in +short, bring back distinct spiritual agents to know the mental states, +now singly and now in combination, in a word bring back scholasticism +and common sense--or else I must squarely confess the solution of +the problem impossible, and then either give up my intellectualistic +logic, the logic of identity, and adopt some higher (or lower) form +of rationality, or, finally, face the fact that life is logically +irrational. + +Sincerely, this is the actual trilemma that confronts every one of us. +Those of you who are scholastic-minded, or simply common-sense minded, +will smile at the elaborate groans of my parturient mountain resulting +in nothing but this mouse. Accept the spiritual agents, for heaven's +sake, you will say, and leave off your ridiculous pedantry. Let but +our 'souls' combine our sensations by their intellectual faculties, +and let but 'God' replace the pantheistic world-soul, and your wheels +will go round again--you will enjoy both life and logic together. + +This solution is obvious and I know that many of you will adopt it. It +is comfortable, and all our habits of speech support it. Yet it is not +for idle or fantastical reasons that the notion of the substantial +soul, so freely used by common men and the more popular philosophies, +has fallen upon such evil days, and has no prestige in the eyes of +critical thinkers. It only shares the fate of other unrepresentable +substances and principles. They are without exception all so barren +that to sincere inquirers they appear as little more than names +masquerading--Wo die begriffe fehlen da stellt ein wort zur rechten +zeit sich ein. You see no deeper into the fact that a hundred +sensations get compounded or known together by thinking that a 'soul' +does the compounding than you see into a man's living eighty years by +thinking of him as an octogenarian, or into our having five fingers by +calling us pentadactyls. Souls have worn out both themselves and +their welcome, that is the plain truth. Philosophy ought to get the +manifolds of experience unified on principles less empty. Like the +word 'cause,' the word 'soul' is but a theoretic stop-gap--it marks a +place and claims it for a future explanation to occupy. + +This being our post-humian and post-kantian state of mind, I will ask +your permission to leave the soul wholly out of the present discussion +and to consider only the residual dilemma. Some day, indeed, souls may +get their innings again in philosophy--I am quite ready to admit that +possibility--they form a category of thought too natural to the human +mind to expire without prolonged resistance. But if the belief in the +soul ever does come to life after the many funeral-discourses which +humian and kantian criticism have preached over it, I am sure it will +be only when some one has found in the term a pragmatic significance +that has hitherto eluded observation. When that champion speaks, as +he well may speak some day, it will be time to consider souls more +seriously. + +Let us leave out the soul, then, and confront what I just called +the residual dilemma. Can we, on the one hand, give up the logic +of identity?--can we, on the other, believe human experience to be +fundamentally irrational? Neither is easy, yet it would seem that we +must do one or the other. + +Few philosophers have had the frankness fairly to admit the necessity +of choosing between the 'horns' offered. Reality must be rational, +they have said, and since the ordinary intellectualist logic is +the only usual test of rationality, reality and logic must agree +'somehow.' Hegel was the first non-mystical writer to face the +dilemma squarely and throw away the ordinary logic, saving a +pseudo-rationality for the universe by inventing the higher logic of +the 'dialectic process.' Bradley holds to the intellectualist logic, +and by dint of it convicts the human universe of being irrationality +incarnate. But what must be and can be, is, he says; there must and +can be relief from _that_ irrationality; and the absolute must already +have got the relief in secret ways of its own, impossible for us to +guess at. _We_ of course get no relief, so Bradley's is a rather +ascetic doctrine. Royce and Taylor accept similar solutions, only they +emphasize the irrationality of our finite universe less than Bradley +does; and Royce in particular, being unusually 'thick' for an +idealist, tries to bring the absolute's secret forms of relief more +sympathetically home to our imagination. + +Well, what must we do in this tragic predicament? For my own part, I +have finally found myself compelled to _give up the logic_, fairly, +squarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in human life, +but that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the +essential nature of reality--just what it is I can perhaps suggest +to you a little later. Reality, life, experience, concreteness, +immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and +surrounds it. If you like to employ words eulogistically, as most +men do, and so encourage confusion, you may say that reality obeys a +higher logic, or enjoys a higher rationality. But I think that +even eulogistic words should be used rather to distinguish than +to commingle meanings, so I prefer bluntly to call reality if not +irrational then at least non-rational in its constitution,--and by +reality here I mean reality where things _happen_, all temporal +reality without exception. I myself find no good warrant for even +suspecting the existence of any reality of a higher denomination than +that distributed and strung-along and flowing sort of reality which we +finite beings swim in. That is the sort of reality given us, and that +is the sort with which logic is so incommensurable. If there be any +higher sort of reality--the 'absolute,' for example--that sort, by +the confession of those who believe in it, is still less amenable +to ordinary logic; it transcends logic and is therefore still less +rational in the intellectualist sense, so it cannot help us to save +our logic as an adequate definer and confiner of existence. + +These sayings will sound queer and dark, probably they will sound +quite wild or childish in the absence of explanatory comment. Only the +persuasion that I soon can explain them, if not satisfactorily to all +of you, at least intelligibly, emboldens me to state them thus baldly +as a sort of programme. Please take them as a thesis, therefore, to be +defended by later pleading. + +I told you that I had long and sincerely wrestled with the dilemma. I +have now to confess (and this will probably re-animate your interest) +that I should not now be emancipated, not now subordinate logic with +so very light a heart, or throw it out of the deeper regions of +philosophy to take its rightful and respectable place in the world of +simple human practice, if I had not been influenced by a comparatively +young and very original french writer, Professor Henri Bergson. +Reading his works is what has made me bold. If I had not read +Bergson, I should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper +privately, in the hope of making ends meet that were never meant to +meet, and trying to discover some mode of conceiving the behavior of +reality which should leave no discrepancy between it and the accepted +laws of the logic of identity. It is certain, at any rate, that +without the confidence which being able to lean on Bergson's authority +gives me I should never have ventured to urge these particular views +of mine upon this ultra-critical audience. + +I must therefore, in order to make my own views more intelligible, +give some preliminary account of the bergsonian philosophy. But here, +as in Fechner's case, I must confine myself only to the features +that are essential to the present purpose, and not entangle you in +collateral details, however interesting otherwise. For our present +purpose, then, the essential contribution of Bergson to philosophy +is his criticism of intellectualism. In my opinion he has killed +intellectualism definitively and without hope of recovery. I don't +see how it can ever revive again in its ancient platonizing rôle of +claiming to be the most authentic, intimate, and exhaustive definer +of the nature of reality. Others, as Kant for example, have denied +intellectualism's pretensions to define reality _an sich_ or in its +absolute capacity; but Kant still leaves it laying down laws--and laws +from which there is no appeal--to all our human experience; while what +Bergson denies is that its methods give any adequate account of this +human experience in its very finiteness. Just how Bergson accomplishes +all this I must try to tell in my imperfect way in the next lecture; +but since I have already used the words 'logic,' 'logic of identity, +intellectualistic logic,' and 'intellectualism' so often, and +sometimes used them as if they required no particular explanation, it +will be wise at this point to say at greater length than heretofore in +what sense I take these terms when I claim that Bergson has refuted +their pretension to decide what reality can or cannot be. Just what I +mean by intellectualism is therefore what I shall try to give a fuller +idea of during the remainder of this present hour. + +In recent controversies some participants have shown resentment +at being classed as intellectualists. I mean to use the word +disparagingly, but shall be sorry if it works offence. Intellectualism +has its source in the faculty which gives us our chief superiority to +the brutes, our power, namely, of translating the crude flux of our +merely feeling-experience into a conceptual order. An immediate +experience, as yet unnamed or classed, is a mere _that_ that we +undergo, a thing that asks, '_What_ am I?' When we name and class it, +we say for the first time what it is, and all these whats are abstract +names or concepts. Each concept means a particular _kind_ of thing, +and as things seem once for all to have been created in kinds, a far +more efficient handling of a given bit of experience begins as soon as +we have classed the various parts of it. Once classed, a thing can be +treated by the law of its class, and the advantages are endless. Both +theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts +is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives. We come back +into the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an +increase both of vision and of power. It is no wonder that earlier +thinkers, forgetting that concepts are only man-made extracts from the +temporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type +of being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in +nature to the turbid, restless lower world. The latter then appears as +but their corruption and falsification. + +Intellectualism in the vicious sense began when Socrates and Plato +taught that what a thing really is, is told us by its _definition_. +Ever since Socrates we have been taught that reality consists of +essences, not of appearances, and that the essences of things are +known whenever we know their definitions. So first we identify +the thing with a concept and then we identify the concept with a +definition, and only then, inasmuch as the thing _is_ whatever the +definition expresses, are we sure of apprehending the real essence of +it or the full truth about it. + +So far no harm is done. The misuse of concepts begins with the habit +of employing them privatively as well as positively, using them not +merely to assign properties to things, but to deny the very properties +with which the things sensibly present themselves. Logic can extract +all its possible consequences from any definition, and the logician +who is _unerbittlich consequent_ is often tempted, when he cannot +extract a certain property from a definition, to deny that the +concrete object to which the definition applies can possibly possess +that property. The definition that fails to yield it must exclude or +negate it. This is Hegel's regular method of establishing his system. + +It is but the old story, of a useful practice first becoming a method, +then a habit, and finally a tyranny that defeats the end it was used +for. Concepts, first employed to make things intelligible, are clung +to even when they make them unintelligible. Thus it comes that when +once you have conceived things as 'independent,' you must proceed to +deny the possibility of any connexion whatever among them, because +the notion of connexion is not contained in the definition of +independence. For a like reason you must deny any possible forms or +modes of unity among things which you have begun by defining as a +'many.' We have cast a glance at Hegel's and Bradley's use of this +sort of reasoning, and you will remember Sigwart's epigram that +according to it a horseman can never in his life go on foot, or a +photographer ever do anything but photograph. + +The classic extreme in this direction is the denial of the possibility +of change, and the consequent branding of the world of change as +unreal, by certain philosophers. The definition of A is changeless, +so is the definition of B. The one definition cannot change into +the other, so the notion that a concrete thing A should change into +another concrete thing B is made Out to be contrary to reason. In Mr. +Bradley's difficulty in seeing how sugar can be sweet intellectualism +outstrips itself and becomes openly a sort of verbalism. Sugar is just +sugar and sweet is just sweet; neither is the other; nor can the +word 'is' ever be understood to join any subject to its predicate +rationally. Nothing 'between' things can connect them, for 'between' +is just that third thing, 'between,' and would need itself to be +connected to the first and second things by two still finer betweens, +and so on ad infinitum. + +The particular intellectualistic difficulty that had held my own +thought so long in a vise was, as we have seen at such tedious length, +the impossibility of understanding how 'your' experience and 'mine,' +which 'as such' are defined as not conscious of each other, can +nevertheless at the same time be members of a world-experience defined +expressly as having all its parts co-conscious, or known together. The +definitions are contradictory, so the things defined can in no way be +united. You see how unintelligible intellectualism here seems to make +the world of our most accomplished philosophers. Neither as they +use it nor as we use it does it do anything but make nature look +irrational and seem impossible. + +In my next lecture, using Bergson as my principal topic, I shall enter +into more concrete details and try, by giving up intellectualism +frankly, to make, if not the world, at least my own general thesis, +less unintelligible. + + + + +LECTURE VI + + +BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM + +I gave you a very stiff lecture last time, and I fear that this one +can be little less so. The best way of entering into it will be to +begin immediately with Bergson's philosophy, since I told you that +that was what had led me personally to renounce the intellectualistic +method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of +what can or cannot be. + +Professor Henri Bergson is a young man, comparatively, as influential +philosophers go, having been born at Paris in 1859. His career has +been the perfectly routine one of a successful french professor. +Entering the école normale supérieure at the age of twenty-two, he +spent the next seventeen years teaching at _lycées_, provincial or +parisian, until his fortieth year, when he was made professor at the +said école normale. Since 1900 he has been professor at the College de +France, and member of the Institute since 1900. So far as the outward +facts go, Bergson's career has then been commonplace to the utmost. +Neither one of Taine's famous principles of explanation of great +men, _the race, the environment, or the moment_, no, nor all three +together, will explain that peculiar way of looking at things that +constitutes his mental individuality. Originality in men dates from +nothing previous, other things date from it, rather. I have to confess +that Bergson's originality is so profuse that many of his ideas baffle +me entirely. I doubt whether any one understands him all over, so to +speak; and I am sure that he would himself be the first to see that +this must be, and to confess that things which he himself has not yet +thought out clearly, had yet to be mentioned and have a tentative +place assigned them in his philosophy. Many of us are profusely +original, in that no man can understand us--violently peculiar ways +of looking at things are no great rarity. The rarity is when great +peculiarity of vision is allied with great lucidity and unusual +command of all the classic expository apparatus. Bergson's resources +in the way of erudition are remarkable, and in the way of expression +they are simply phenomenal. This is why in France, where _l'art de +bien dire_ counts for so much and is so sure of appreciation, he has +immediately taken so eminent a place in public esteem. Old-fashioned +professors, whom his ideas quite fail to satisfy, nevertheless speak +of his talent almost with bated breath, while the youngsters flock to +him as to a master. + +If anything can make hard things easy to follow, it is a style like +Bergson's. A 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lately +called it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a +flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a +crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movements +of one's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of putting things is what +all readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in +advance to become his disciple. It is a miracle, and he a real +magician. + +M. Bergson, if I am rightly informed, came into philosophy through the +gateway of mathematics. The old antinomies of the infinite were, +I imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their +dogmatic slumber. You all remember Zeno's famous paradox, or sophism, +as many of our logic books still call it, of Achilles and the +tortoise. Give that reptile ever so small an advance and the swift +runner Achilles can never overtake him, much less get ahead of him; +for if space and time are infinitely divisible (as our intellects +tell us they must be), by the time Achilles reaches the tortoise's +starting-point, the tortoise has already got ahead of _that_ +starting-point, and so on _ad infinitum_, the interval between the +pursuer and the pursued growing endlessly minuter, but never becoming +wholly obliterated. The common way of showing up the sophism here is +by pointing out the ambiguity of the expression 'never can overtake.' +What the word 'never' falsely suggests, it is said, is an infinite +duration of time; what it really means is the inexhaustible number of +the steps of which the overtaking must consist. But if these steps are +infinitely short, a finite time will suffice for them; and in point of +fact they do rapidly converge, whatever be the original interval +or the contrasted speeds, toward infinitesimal shortness. This +proportionality of the shortness of the times to that of the spaces +required frees us, it is claimed, from the sophism which the word +'never' suggests. + +But this criticism misses Zeno's point entirely. Zeno would have been +perfectly willing to grant that if the tortoise can be overtaken at +all, he can be overtaken in (say) twenty seconds, but he would still +have insisted that he can't be overtaken at all. Leave Achilles and +the tortoise out of the account altogether, he would have said--they +complicate the case unnecessarily. Take any single process of change +whatever, take the twenty seconds themselves elapsing. If time be +infinitely divisible, and it must be so on intellectualist principles, +they simply cannot elapse, their end cannot be reached; for no matter +how much of them has already elapsed, before the remainder, however +minute, can have wholly elapsed, the earlier half of it must first +have elapsed. And this ever re-arising need of making the earlier half +elapse _first_ leaves time with always something to do _before_ the +last thing is done, so that the last thing never gets done. Expressed +in bare numbers, it is like the convergent series 1/2 plus 1/4 plus +1/8..., of which the limit is one. But this limit, simply because it +is a limit, stands outside the series, the value of which approaches +it indefinitely but never touches it. If in the natural world there +were no other way of getting things save by such successive addition +of their logically involved fractions, no complete units or whole +things would ever come into being, for the fractions' sum would always +leave a remainder. But in point of fact nature doesn't make eggs by +making first half an egg, then a quarter, then an eighth, etc., and +adding them together. She either makes a whole egg at once or none +at all, and so of all her other units. It is only in the sphere of +change, then, where one phase of a thing must needs come into being +before another phase can come that Zeno's paradox gives trouble. + +And it gives trouble then only if the succession of steps of change +be infinitely divisible. If a bottle had to be emptied by an infinite +number of successive decrements, it is mathematically impossible that +the emptying should ever positively terminate. In point of fact, +however, bottles and coffee-pots empty themselves by a finite number +of decrements, each of definite amount. Either a whole drop emerges or +nothing emerges from the spout. If all change went thus drop-wise, +so to speak, if real time sprouted or grew by units of duration of +determinate amount, just as our perceptions of it grow by pulses, +there would be no zenonian paradoxes or kantian antinomies to trouble +us. All our sensible experiences, as we get them immediately, do thus +change by discrete pulses of perception, each of which keeps us saying +'more, more, more,' or 'less, less, less,' as the definite increments +or diminutions make themselves felt. The discreteness is still more +obvious when, instead of old things changing, they cease, or when +altogether new things come. Fechner's term of the 'threshold,' which +has played such a part in the psychology of perception, is only one +way of naming the quantitative discreteness in the change of all our +sensible experiences. They come to us in drops. Time itself comes in +drops. + +Our ideal decomposition of the drops which are all that we feel into +still finer fractions is but an incident in that great transformation +of the perceptual order into a conceptual order of which I spoke in +my last lecture. It is made in the interest of our rationalizing +intellect solely. The times directly _felt_ in the experiences of +living subjects have originally no common measure. Let a lump of sugar +melt in a glass, to use one of M. Bergson's instances. We feel the +time to be long while waiting for the process to end, but who knows +how long or how short it feels to the sugar? All _felt_ times coexist +and overlap or compenetrate each other thus vaguely, but the artifice +of plotting them on a common scale helps us to reduce their aboriginal +confusion, and it helps us still more to plot, against the same scale, +the successive possible steps into which nature's various changes may +be resolved, either sensibly or conceivably. We thus straighten out +the aboriginal privacy and vagueness, and can date things publicly, as +it were, and by each other. The notion of one objective and 'evenly +flowing' time, cut into numbered instants, applies itself as a common +measure to all the steps and phases, no matter how many, into which we +cut the processes of nature. They are now definitely contemporary, +or later or earlier one than another, and we can handle them +mathematically, as we say, and far better, practically as well as +theoretically, for having thus correlated them one to one with each +other on the common schematic or conceptual time-scale. + +Motion, to take a good example, is originally a turbid sensation, of +which the native shape is perhaps best preserved in the phenomenon of +vertigo. In vertigo we feel that movement _is_, and is more or less +violent or rapid, more or less in this direction or that, more or less +alarming or sickening. But a man subject to vertigo may gradually +learn to co-ordinate his felt motion with his real position and that +of other things, and intellectualize it enough to succeed at last in +walking without staggering. The mathematical mind similarly organizes +motion in its way, putting it into a logical definition: motion is now +conceived as 'the occupancy of serially successive points of space +at serially successive instants of time.' With such a definition we +escape wholly from the turbid privacy of sense. But do we not also +escape from sense-reality altogether? Whatever motion really may be, +it surely is not static; but the definition we have gained is of the +absolutely static. It gives a set of one-to-one relations between +space-points and time-points, which relations themselves are as fixed +as the points are. It gives _positions_ assignable ad infinitum, but +how the body gets from one position to another it omits to mention. +The body gets there by moving, of course; but the conceived positions, +however numerously multiplied, contain no element of movement, so +Zeno, using nothing but them in his discussion, has no alternative +but to say that our intellect repudiates motion as a non-reality. +Intellectualism here does what I said it does--it makes experience +less instead of more intelligible. + +We of course need a stable scheme of concepts, stably related with +one another, to lay hold of our experiences and to co-ordinate them +withal. When an experience comes with sufficient saliency to stand +out, we keep the thought of it for future use, and store it in our +conceptual system. What does not of itself stand out, we learn to +_cut_ out; so the system grows completer, and new reality, as it +comes, gets named after and conceptually strung upon this or that +element of it which we have already established. The immutability +of such an abstract system is its great practical merit; the same +identical terms and relations in it can always be recovered and +referred to--change itself is just such an unalterable concept. But +all these abstract concepts are but as flowers gathered, they are only +moments dipped out from the stream of time, snap-shots taken, as by +a kinetoscopic camera, at a life that in its original coming is +continuous. Useful as they are as samples of the garden, or to +re-enter the stream with, or to insert in our revolving lantern, they +have no value but these practical values. You cannot explain by them +what makes any single phenomenon be or go--you merely dot out the path +of appearances which it traverses. For you cannot make continuous +being out of discontinuities, and your concepts are discontinuous. The +stages into which you analyze a change are _states_, the change itself +goes on between them. It lies along their intervals, inhabits what +your definition fails to gather up, and thus eludes conceptual +explanation altogether. + +'When the mathematician,' Bergson writes, 'calculates the state of +a system at the end of a time _t_, nothing need prevent him from +supposing that betweenwhiles the universe vanishes, in order suddenly +to appear again at the due moment in the new configuration. It is +only the _t_-th moment that counts--that which flows throughout the +intervals, namely real time, plays no part in his calculation.... In +short, the world on which the mathematician operates is a world which +dies and is born anew at every instant, like the world which Descartes +thought of when he spoke of a continued creation.' To know adequately +what really _happens_ we ought, Bergson insists, to see into the +intervals, but the mathematician sees only their extremities. He +fixes only a few results, he dots a curve and then interpolates, he +substitutes a tracing for a reality. + +This being so undeniably the case, the history of the way in which +philosophy has dealt with it is curious. The ruling tradition in +philosophy has always been the platonic and aristotelian belief that +fixity is a nobler and worthier thing than change. Reality must be one +and unalterable. Concepts, being themselves fixities, agree best with +this fixed nature of truth, so that for any knowledge of ours to be +quite true it must be knowledge by universal concepts rather than +by particular experiences, for these notoriously are mutable and +corruptible. This is the tradition known as rationalism in philosophy, +and what I have called intellectualism is only the extreme application +of it. In spite of sceptics and empiricists, in spite of Protagoras, +Hume, and James Mill, rationalism has never been seriously questioned, +for its sharpest critics have always had a tender place in their +hearts for it, and have obeyed some of its mandates. They have not +been consistent; they have played fast and loose with the enemy; and +Bergson alone has been radical. + +To show what I mean by this, let me contrast his procedure with that +of some of the transcendentalist philosophers whom I have lately +mentioned. Coming after Kant, these pique themselves on being +'critical,' on building in fact upon Kant's 'critique' of pure reason. +What that critique professed to establish was this, that concepts do +not apprehend reality, but only such appearances as our senses +feed out to them. They give immutable intellectual forms to these +appearances, it is true, but the reality _an sich_ from which in +ultimate resort the sense-appearances have to come remains forever +unintelligible to our intellect. Take motion, for example. Sensibly, +motion comes in drops, waves, or pulses; either some actual amount of +it, or none, being apprehended. This amount is the datum or _gabe_ +which reality feeds out to our intellectual faculty; but our intellect +makes of it a task or _aufgabe_--this pun is one of the most memorable +of Kant's formulas--and insists that in every pulse of it an infinite +number of successive minor pulses shall be ascertainable. These minor +pulses _we_ can indeed _go on_ to ascertain or to compute indefinitely +if we have patience; but it would contradict the definition of an +infinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually +counted _themselves_ out piecemeal. Zeno made this manifest; so the +infinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus +a future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of +structure. The datum after it has made itself must be decompos_able_ +ad infinitum by our conception, but of the steps by which that +structure actually got composed we know nothing. Our intellect casts, +in short, no ray of light on the processes by which experiences _get +made_. + +Kant's monistic successors have in general found the data of immediate +experience even more self-contradictory, when intellectually treated, +than Kant did. Not only the character of infinity involved in the +relation of various empirical data to their 'conditions,' but the very +notion that empirical things should be related to one another at all, +has seemed to them, when the intellectualistic fit was upon them, full +of paradox and contradiction. We saw in a former lecture numerous +instances of this from Hegel, Bradley, Royce, and others. We saw also +where the solution of such an intolerable state of things was sought +for by these authors. Whereas Kant had placed it outside of and +_before_ our experience, in the _dinge an sich_ which are the causes +of the latter, his monistic successors all look for it either _after_ +experience, as its absolute completion, or else consider it to be even +now implicit within experience as its ideal signification. Kant and +his successors look, in short, in diametrically opposite directions. +Do not be misled by Kant's admission of theism into his system. +His God is the ordinary dualistic God of Christianity, to whom his +philosophy simply opens the door; he has nothing whatsoever in common +with the 'absolute spirit' set up by his successors. So far as this +absolute spirit is logically derived from Kant, it is not from his +God, but from entirely different elements of his philosophy. First +from his notion that an unconditioned totality of the conditions of +any experience must be assignable; and then from his other notion that +the presence of some witness, or ego of apperception, is the most +universal of all the conditions in question. The post-kantians make +of the witness-condition what is called a concrete universal, an +individualized all-witness or world-self, which shall imply in its +rational constitution each and all of the other conditions put +together, and therefore necessitate each and all of the conditioned +experiences. + +Abridgments like this of other men's opinions are very unsatisfactory, +they always work injustice; but in this case those of you who are +familiar with the literature will see immediately what I have in mind; +and to the others, if there be any here, it will suffice to say that +what I am trying so pedantically to point out is only the fact that +monistic idealists after Kant have invariably sought relief from the +supposed contradictions of our world of sense by looking forward +toward an _ens rationis_ conceived as its integration or logical +completion, while he looked backward toward non-rational _dinge an +sich_ conceived as its cause. Pluralistic empiricists, on the other +hand, have remained in the world of sense, either naïvely and because +they overlooked the intellectualistic contradictions, or because, not +able to ignore them, they thought they could refute them by a superior +use of the same intellectualistic logic. Thus it is that John Mill +pretends to refute the Achilles-tortoise fallacy. + +The important point to notice here is the intellectualist logic. Both +sides treat it as authoritative, but they do so capriciously: the +absolutists smashing the world of sense by its means, the empiricists +smashing the absolute--for the absolute, they say, is the quintessence +of all logical contradictions. Neither side attains consistency. +The Hegelians have to invoke a higher logic to supersede the purely +destructive efforts of their first logic. The empiricists use their +logic against the absolute, but refuse to use it against finite +experience. Each party uses it or drops it to suit the vision it has +faith in, but neither impugns in principle its general theoretic +authority. + +Bergson alone challenges its theoretic authority in principle. He +alone denies that mere conceptual logic can tell us what is impossible +or possible in the world of being or fact; and he does so for reasons +which at the same time that they rule logic out from lordship over the +whole of life, establish a vast and definite sphere of influence where +its sovereignty is indisputable. Bergson's own text, felicitous as +it is, is too intricate for quotation, so I must use my own inferior +words in explaining what I mean by saying this. + +In the first place, logic, giving primarily the relations between +concepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only +secondarily or so far as the facts have been already identified with +concepts and defined by them, must of course stand or fall with the +conceptual method. But the conceptual method is a transformation which +the flux of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice +essentially and only subordinately in the interests of theory. We +live forward, we understand backward, said a danish writer; and to +understand life by concepts is to arrest its movement, cutting it up +into bits as if with scissors, and immobilizing these in our logical +herbarium where, comparing them as dried specimens, we can ascertain +which of them statically includes or excludes which other. This +treatment supposes life to have already accomplished itself, for the +concepts, being so many views taken after the fact, are retrospective +and post mortem. Nevertheless we can draw conclusions from them and +project them into the future. We cannot learn from them how life made +itself go, or how it will make itself go; but, on the supposition that +its ways of making itself go are unchanging, we can calculate what +positions of imagined arrest it will exhibit hereafter under given +conditions. We can compute, for instance, at what point Achilles +will be, and where the tortoise will be, at the end of the twentieth +minute. Achilles may then be at a point far ahead; but the full detail +of how he will have managed practically to get there our logic never +gives us--we have seen, indeed, that it finds that its results +contradict the facts of nature. The computations which the other +sciences make differ in no respect from those of mathematics. The +concepts used are all of them dots through which, by interpolation or +extrapolation, curves are drawn, while along the curves other dots are +found as consequences. The latest refinements of logic dispense +with the curves altogether, and deal solely with the dots and their +correspondences each to each in various series. The authors of these +recent improvements tell us expressly that their aim is to abolish the +last vestiges of intuition, _videlicet_ of concrete reality, from the +field of reasoning, which then will operate literally on mental dots +or bare abstract units of discourse, and on the ways in which they may +be strung in naked series. + +This is all very esoteric, and my own understanding of it is most +likely misunderstanding. So I speak here only by way of brief reminder +to those who know. For the rest of us it is enough to recognize this +fact, that altho by means of concepts cut out from the sensible flux +of the past, we can re-descend upon the future flux and, making +another cut, say what particular thing is likely to be found there; +and that altho in this sense concepts give us knowledge, and may be +said to have some theoretic value (especially when the particular +thing foretold is one in which we take no present practical interest); +yet in the deeper sense of giving _insight_ they have no theoretic +value, for they quite fail to connect us with the inner life of the +flux, or with the causes that govern its direction. Instead of being +interpreters of reality, concepts negate the inwardness of reality +altogether. They make the whole notion of a causal influence between +finite things incomprehensible. No real activities and indeed no real +connexions of any kind can obtain if we follow the conceptual logic; +for to be distinguishable, according to what I call intellectualism, +is to be incapable of connexion. The work begun by Zeno, and continued +by Hume, Kant, Herbart, Hegel, and Bradley, does not stop till +sensible reality lies entirely disintegrated at the feet of 'reason.' + +Of the 'absolute' reality which reason proposes to substitute for +sensible reality I shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile you see +what Professor Bergson means by insisting that the function of the +intellect is practical rather than theoretical. Sensible reality is +too concrete to be entirely manageable--look at the narrow range of it +which is all that any animal, living in it exclusively as he does, is +able to compass. To get from one point in it to another we have to +plough or wade through the whole intolerable interval. No detail is +spared us; it is as bad as the barbed-wire complications at Port +Arthur, and we grow old and die in the process. But with our faculty +of abstracting and fixing concepts we are there in a second, almost as +if we controlled a fourth dimension, skipping the intermediaries as +by a divine winged power, and getting at the exact point we require +without entanglement with any context. What we do in fact is to +_harness up_ reality in our conceptual systems in order to drive it +the better. This process is practical because all the termini to which +we drive are _particular_ termini, even when they are facts of the +mental order. But the sciences in which the conceptual method chiefly +celebrates its triumphs are those of space and matter, where the +transformations of external things are dealt with. To deal with moral +facts conceptually, we have first to transform them, substitute +brain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests +as mechanical forces, our conscious 'selves' as 'streams,' and the +like. Paradoxical effect! as Bergson well remarks, if our intellectual +life were not practical but destined to reveal the inner natures. +One would then suppose that it would find itself most at home in the +domain of its own intellectual realities. But it is precisely there +that it finds itself at the end of its tether. We know the inner +movements of our spirit only perceptually. We feel them live in us, +but can give no distinct account of their elements, nor definitely +predict their future; while things that lie along the world of space, +things of the sort that we literally _handle_, are what our intellects +cope with most successfully. Does not this confirm us in the view that +the original and still surviving function of our intellectual life +is to guide us in the practical adaptation of our expectancies and +activities? + +One can easily get into a verbal mess at this point, and my own +experience with pragmatism' makes me shrink from the dangers that lie +in the word 'practical,' and far rather than stand out against you for +that word, I am quite willing to part company with Professor Bergson, +and to ascribe a primarily theoretical function to our intellect, +provided you on your part then agree to discriminate 'theoretic' or +scientific knowledge from the deeper 'speculative' knowledge aspired +to by most philosophers, and concede that theoretic knowledge, +which is knowledge _about_ things, as distinguished from living or +sympathetic acquaintance with them, touches only the outer surface of +reality. The surface which theoretic knowledge taken in this sense +covers may indeed be enormous in extent; it may dot the whole diameter +of space and time with its conceptual creations; but it does not +penetrate a millimeter into the solid dimension. That inner dimension +of reality is occupied by the _activities_ that keep it going, but the +intellect, speaking through Hume, Kant & Co., finds itself obliged to +deny, and persists in denying, that activities have any intelligible +existence. What exists for _thought_, we are told, is at most the +results that we illusorily ascribe to such activities, strung along +the surfaces of space and time by _regeln der verknüpfung_, laws of +nature which state only coexistences and successions.[1] + +Thought deals thus solely with surfaces. It can name the thickness +of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is +essential and permanent, not temporary. + +The only way in which to apprehend reality's thickness is either to +experience it directly by being a part of reality one's self, or to +evoke it in imagination by sympathetically divining some one else's +inner life. But what we thus immediately experience or concretely +divine is very limited in duration, whereas abstractly we are able to +conceive eternities. Could we feel a million years concretely as we +now feel a passing minute, we should have very little employment for +our conceptual faculty. We should know the whole period fully at every +moment of its passage, whereas we must now construct it laboriously by +means of concepts which we project. Direct acquaintance and conceptual +knowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the +other's defects. If what we care most about be the synoptic treatment +of phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered +like, we must follow the conceptual method. But if, as metaphysicians, +we are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what +really makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts +altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing +moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points +of which they occasionally rest and perch. + +Professor Bergson thus inverts the traditional platonic doctrine +absolutely. Instead of intellectual knowledge being the profounder, +he calls it the more superficial. Instead of being the only adequate +knowledge, it is grossly inadequate, and its only superiority is the +practical one of enabling us to make short cuts through experience +and thereby to save time. The one thing it cannot do is to reveal the +nature of things--which last remark, if not clear already, will become +clearer as I proceed. Dive back into the flux itself, then, Bergson +tells us, if you wish to _know_ reality, that flux which Platonism, in +its strange belief that only the immutable is excellent, has always +spurned; turn your face toward sensation, that flesh-bound thing which +rationalism has always loaded with abuse.--This, you see, is exactly +the opposite remedy from that of looking forward into the absolute, +which our idealistic contemporaries prescribe. It violates our mental +habits, being a kind of passive and receptive listening quite contrary +to that effort to react noisily and verbally on everything, which is +our usual intellectual pose. + +What, then, are the peculiar features in the perceptual flux which the +conceptual translation so fatally leaves out? + +The essence of life is its continuously changing character; but our +concepts are all discontinuous and fixed, and the only mode of making +them coincide with life is by arbitrarily supposing positions of +arrest therein. With such arrests our concepts may be made congruent. +But these concepts are not _parts_ of reality, not real positions +taken by it, but _suppositions_ rather, notes taken by ourselves, and +you can no more dip up the substance of reality with them than you can +dip up water with a net, however finely meshed. + +When we conceptualize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything +but what we have fixed. A concept means a _that-and-no-other_. +Conceptually, time excludes space; motion and rest exclude each other; +approach excludes contact; presence excludes absence; unity excludes +plurality; independence excludes relativity; 'mine' excludes 'yours'; +this connexion excludes that connexion--and so on indefinitely; +whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences +compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is +excluded and what not. Past and future, for example, conceptually +separated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined +as being the opposite sides of that cut, are to some extent, however +brief, co-present with each other throughout experience. The literally +present moment is a purely verbal supposition, not a position; the +only present ever realized concretely being the 'passing moment' in +which the dying rearward of time and its dawning future forever mix +their lights. Say 'now' and it _was_ even while you say it. + +It is just intellectualism's attempt to substitute static cuts +for units of experienced duration that makes real motion so +unintelligible. The conception of the first half of the interval +between Achilles and the tortoise excludes that of the last half, and +the mathematical necessity of traversing it separately before the last +half is traversed stands permanently in the way of the last half ever +being traversed. Meanwhile the living Achilles (who, for the purposes +of this discussion, is only the abstract name of one phenomenon of +impetus, just as the tortoise is of another) asks no leave of logic. +The velocity of his acts is an indivisible nature in them like the +expansive tension in a spring compressed. We define it conceptually as +[_s/t_], but the _s_ and _t_ are only artificial cuts made after the +fact, and indeed most artificial when we treat them in both runners +as the same tracts of 'objective' space and time, for the experienced +spaces and times in which the tortoise inwardly lives are probably +as different as his velocity from the same things in Achilles. The +impetus of Achilles is one concrete fact, and carries space, time, and +conquest over the inferior creature's motion indivisibly in it. He +perceives nothing, while running, of the mathematician's homogeneous +time and space, of the infinitely numerous succession of cuts in both, +or of their order. End and beginning come for him in the one onrush, +and all that he actually experiences is that, in the midst of a +certain intense effort of his own, the rival is in point of fact +outstripped. + +We are so inveterately wedded to the conceptual decomposition of life +that I know that this will seem to you like putting muddiest confusion +in place of clearest thought, and relapsing into a molluscoid state +of mind. Yet I ask you whether the absolute superiority of our higher +thought is so very clear, if all that it can find is impossibility in +tasks which sense-experience so easily performs. + +What makes you call real life confusion is that it presents, as +if they were dissolved in one another, a lot of differents which +conception breaks life's flow by keeping apart. But _are_ not +differents actually dissolved in one another? Hasn't every bit of +experience its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity, +its urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which +can exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it? +They exist only _durcheinander_. Reality always is, in M. Bergson's +phrase, an endosmosis or conflux of the same with the different: they +compenetrate and telescope. For conceptual logic, the same is nothing +but the same, and all sames with a third thing are the same with each +other. Not so in concrete experience. Two spots on our skin, each of +which feels the same as a third spot when touched along with it, are +felt as different from each other. Two tones, neither distinguishable +from a third tone, are perfectly distinct from each other. The whole +process of life is due to life's violation of our logical axioms. +Take its continuity as an example. Terms like A and C appear to be +connected by intermediaries, by B for example. Intellectualism calls +this absurd, for 'B-connected-with-A' is, 'as such,' a different term +from 'B-connected-with-C.' But real life laughs at logic's veto. +Imagine a heavy log which takes two men to carry it. First A and B +take it. Then C takes hold and A drops off; then D takes hold and B +drops off, so that C and D now bear it; and so on. The log meanwhile +never drops, and keeps its sameness throughout the journey. Even so +it is with all our experiences. Their changes are not complete +annihilations followed by complete creations of something absolutely +novel. There is partial decay and partial growth, and all the while a +nucleus of relative constancy from which what decays drops off, and +which takes into itself whatever is grafted on, until at length +something wholly different has taken its place. In such a process we +are as sure, in spite of intellectualist logic with its 'as suches,' +that it _is_ the same nucleus which is able now to make connexion with +what goes and again with what comes, as we are sure that the same +point can lie on diverse lines that intersect there. Without being one +throughout, such a universe is continuous. Its members interdigitate +with their next neighbors in manifold directions, and there are no +clean cuts between them anywhere. + +The great clash of intellectualist logic with sensible experience is +where the experience is that of influence exerted. Intellectualism +denies (as we saw in lecture ii) that finite things can act on one +another, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up +to themselves. To act on anything means to get into it somehow; but +that would mean to get out of one's self and be one's other, which is +self-contradictory, etc. Meanwhile each of us actually _is_ his own +other to that extent, livingly knowing how to perform the trick which +logic tells us can't be done. My thoughts animate and actuate this +very body which you see and hear, and thereby influence your thoughts. +The dynamic current somehow does get from me to you, however numerous +the intermediary conductors may have to be. Distinctions may be +insulators in logic as much as they like, but in life distinct things +can and do commune together every moment. + +The conflict of the two ways of knowing is best summed up in the +intellectualist doctrine that 'the same cannot exist in many +relations.' This follows of course from the concepts of the two +relations being so distinct that 'what-is-in-the-one' means 'as such' +something distinct from what 'what-is-in-the-other' means. It is like +Mill's ironical saying, that we should not think of Newton as both an +Englishman and a mathematician, because an Englishman as such is not +a mathematician and a mathematician as such is not an Englishman. But +the real Newton was somehow both things at once; and throughout the +whole finite universe each real thing proves to be many differents +without undergoing the necessity of breaking into disconnected +editions of itself. + +These few indications will perhaps suffice to put you at the +bergsonian point of view. The immediate experience of life solves the +problems which so baffle our conceptual intelligence: How can what is +manifold be one? how can things get out of themselves? how be their +own others? how be both distinct and connected? how can they act on +one another? how be for others and yet for themselves? how be absent +and present at once? The intellect asks these questions much as we +might ask how anything can both separate and unite things, or how +sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. If +you already know space sensibly, you can answer the former question by +pointing to any interval in it, long or short; if you know the musical +scale, you can answer the latter by sounding an octave; but then you +must first have the sensible knowledge of these realities. Similarly +Bergson answers the intellectualist conundrums by pointing back to our +various finite sensational experiences and saying, 'Lo, even thus; +even so are these other problems solved livingly.' + +When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can +reconstruct it in its wholeness. Out of no amount of discreteness +can you manufacture the concrete. But place yourself at a bound, or +_d'emblée_, as M. Bergson says, inside of the living, moving, active +thickness of the real, and all the abstractions and distinctions +are given into your hand: you can now make the intellectualist +substitutions to your heart's content. Install yourself in phenomenal +movement, for example, and velocity, succession, dates, positions, and +innumerable other things are given you in the bargain. But with only +an abstract succession of dates and positions you can never patch up +movement itself. It slips through their intervals and is lost. + +So it is with every concrete thing, however complicated. Our +intellectual handling of it is a retrospective patchwork, a +post-mortem dissection, and can follow any order we find most +expedient. We can make the thing seem self-contradictory whenever +we wish to. But place yourself at the point of view of the thing's +interior _doing_, and all these back-looking and conflicting +conceptions lie harmoniously in your hand. Get at the expanding centre +of a human character, the _élan vital_ of a man, as Bergson calls it, +by living sympathy, and at a stroke you see how it makes those who see +it from without interpret it in such diverse ways. It is something +that breaks into both honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, +stupidity and insight, at the touch of varying circumstances, and you +feel exactly why and how it does this, and never seek to identify +it stably with any of these single abstractions. Only your +intellectualist does that,--and you now also feel why _he_ must do it +to the end. + +Place yourself similarly at the centre of a man's philosophic vision +and you understand at once all the different things it makes him write +or say. But keep outside, use your post-mortem method, try to build +the philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then +another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You +crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling +into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but +inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope +that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have +had something different from this intellectualist type of criticism +applied to their own works! + +What really _exists_ is not things made but things in the making. Once +made, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative conceptual +decompositions can be used in defining them. But put yourself _in the +making_ by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the +whole range of possible decompositions coming at once into your +possession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of +them is the more absolutely true. Reality _falls_ in passing into +conceptual analysis; it _mounts_ in living its own undivided life--it +buds and bourgeons, changes and creates. Once adopt the movement of +this life in any given instance and you know what Bergson calls the +_devenir réel_ by which the thing evolves and grows. Philosophy should +seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality, +not follow science in vainly patching together fragments of its dead +results. + +Thus much of M. Bergson's philosophy is sufficient for my purpose in +these lectures, so here I will stop, leaving unnoticed all its other +constituent features, original and interesting tho they be. You may +say, and doubtless some of you now are saying inwardly, that his +remanding us to sensation in this wise is only a regress, a return to +that ultra-crude empiricism which your own idealists since Green +have buried ten times over. I confess that it is indeed a return to +empiricism, but I think that the return in such accomplished shape +only proves the latter's immortal truth. What won't stay buried must +have some genuine life. _Am anfang war die tat_; fact is a _first_; to +which all our conceptual handling comes as an inadequate second, +never its full equivalent. When I read recent transcendentalist +literature--I must partly except my colleague Royce!--I get nothing +but a sort of marking of time, champing of jaws, pawing of the ground, +and resettling into the same attitude, like a weary horse in a stall +with an empty manger. It is but turning over the same few threadbare +categories, bringing the same objections, and urging the same answers +and solutions, with never a new fact or a new horizon coming into +sight. But open Bergson, and new horizons loom on every page you read. +It is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells +of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded +professors have written about what other previous professors have +thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. + +That he gives us no closed-in system will of course be fatal to him in +intellectualist eyes. He only evokes and invites; but he first annuls +the intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with +a philosophical conscience never quite set free before. As a french +disciple of his well expresses it: 'Bergson claims of us first of all +a certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a +logical revolution. But those who have once found themselves flexible +enough for the execution of such a psychological change of front, +discover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient +attitude of mind. They are now Bergsonians ... and possess the +principal thoughts of the master all at once. They have understood in +the fashion in which one loves, they have caught the whole melody and +can thereafter admire at their leisure the originality, the fecundity, +and the imaginative genius with which its author develops, transposes, +and varies in a thousand ways by the orchestration of his style and +dialectic, the original theme.'[2] + +This, scant as it is, is all I have to say about Bergson on this +occasion--I hope it may send some of you to his original text. I must +now turn back to the point where I found it advisable to appeal to his +ideas. You remember my own intellectualist difficulties in the last +lecture, about how a lot of separate consciousnesses can at the same +time be one collective thing. How, I asked, can one and the same +identical content of experience, of which on idealist principles the +_esse_ is to be felt, be felt so diversely if itself be the only +feeler? The usual way of escape by 'quatenus' or 'as such' won't +help us here if we are radical intellectualists, I said, for +appearance-together is as such _not_ appearance-apart, the world _quâ_ +many is not the world _quâ_ one, as absolutism claims. If we hold to +Hume's maxim, which later intellectualism uses so well, that whatever +things are distinguished are as separate as if there were no manner of +connexion between them, there seemed no way out of the difficulty save +by stepping outside of experience altogether and invoking different +spiritual agents, selves or souls, to realize the diversity required. +But this rescue by 'scholastic entities' I was unwilling to accept any +more than pantheistic idealists accept it. + +Yet, to quote Fechner's phrase again, 'nichts wirkliches kann +unmöglich sein,' the actual cannot be impossible, and what _is_ actual +at every moment of our lives is the sort of thing which I now +proceed to remind you of. You can hear the vibration of an electric +contact-maker, smell the ozone, see the sparks, and feel the thrill, +co-consciously as it were or in one field of experience. But you can +also isolate any one of these sensations by shutting out the rest. If +you close your eyes, hold your nose, and remove your hand, you can get +the sensation of sound alone, but it seems still the same sensation +that it was; and if you restore the action of the other organs, the +sound coalesces with the feeling, the sight, and the smell sensations +again. Now the natural way of talking of all this[3] is to say that +certain sensations are experienced, now singly, and now together +with other sensations, in a common conscious field. Fluctuations of +attention give analogous results. We let a sensation in or keep it out +by changing our attention; and similarly we let an item of memory in +or drop it out. [Please don't raise the question here of how these +changes _come to pass_. The immediate condition is probably cerebral +in every instance, but it would be irrelevant now to consider it, for +now we are thinking only of results, and I repeat that the natural way +of thinking of them is that which intellectualist criticism finds so +absurd.] + +The absurdity charged is that the self-same should function so +differently, now with and now without something else. But this it +sensibly seems to do. This very desk which I strike with my hand +strikes in turn your eyes. It functions at once as a physical object +in the outer world and as a mental object in our sundry mental worlds. +The very body of mine that _my_ thought actuates is the body whose +gestures are _your_ visual object and to which you give my name. The +very log which John helped to carry is the log now borne by James. The +very girl you love is simultaneously entangled elsewhere. The very +place behind me is in front of you. Look where you will, you gather +only examples of the same amid the different, and of different +relations existing as it were in solution in the same thing. _Quâ_ +this an experience is not the same as it is _quâ_ that, truly enough; +but the _quâs_ are conceptual shots of ours at its post-mortem +remains, and in its sensational immediacy everything is all at once +whatever different things it is at once at all. It is before C and +after A, far from you and near to me, without this associate and with +that one, active and passive, physical and mental, a whole of +parts and part of a higher whole, all simultaneously and without +interference or need of doubling-up its being, so long as we keep to +what I call the 'immediate' point of view, the point of view in which +we follow our sensational life's continuity, and to which all living +language conforms. It is only when you try--to continue using the +hegelian vocabulary--to 'mediate' the immediate, or to substitute +concepts for sensational life, that intellectualism celebrates +its triumph and the immanent-self-contradictoriness of all this +smooth-running finite experience gets proved. + +Of the oddity of inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences +resulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object +called an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions +unreduced, I will say something in the next lecture. The absolute is +said to perform its feats by taking up its other into itself. But +that is exactly what is done when every individual morsel of the +sensational stream takes up the adjacent morsels by coalescing with +them. This is just what we mean by the stream's sensible continuity. +No element _there_ cuts itself off from any other element, as concepts +cut themselves from concepts. No part _there_ is so small as not to be +a place of conflux. No part there is not really _next_ its neighbors; +which means that there is literally nothing between; which means +again that no part goes exactly so far and no farther; that no part +absolutely excludes another, but that they compenetrate and are +cohesive; that if you tear out one, its roots bring out more with +them; that whatever is real is telescoped and diffused into other +reals; that, in short, every minutest thing is already its hegelian +'own other,' in the fullest sense of the term. + +Of course this _sounds_ self-contradictory, but as the immediate facts +don't sound at all, but simply _are_, until we conceptualize and name +them vocally, the contradiction results only from the conceptual +or discursive form being substituted for the real form. But if, as +Bergson shows, that form is superimposed for practical ends only, in +order to let us jump about over life instead of wading through it; +and if it cannot even pretend to reveal anything of what life's inner +nature is or ought to be; why then we can turn a deaf ear to its +accusations. The resolve to turn the deaf ear is the inner crisis or +'catastrophe' of which M. Bergson's disciple whom I lately quoted +spoke. We are so subject to the philosophic tradition which treats +_logos_ or discursive thought generally as the sole avenue to truth, +that to fall back on raw unverbalized life as more of a revealer, and +to think of concepts as the merely practical things which Bergson +calls them, comes very hard. It is putting off our proud maturity of +mind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of +reason. But difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way, +I believe, to the possession of reality, and I permit myself to hope +that some of you may share my opinion after you have heard my next +lecture. + + + + +LECTURE VII + + +THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE + +I fear that few of you will have been able to obey Bergson's call upon +you to look towards the sensational life for the fuller knowledge of +reality, or to sympathize with his attempt to limit the divine right +of concepts to rule our mind absolutely. It is too much like looking +downward and not up. Philosophy, you will say, doesn't lie flat on its +belly in the middle of experience, in the very thick of its sand and +gravel, as this Bergsonism does, never getting a peep at anything from +above. Philosophy is essentially the vision of things from above. +It doesn't simply feel the detail of things, it comprehends their +intelligible plan, sees their forms and principles, their categories +and rules, their order and necessity. It takes the superior point of +view of the architect. Is it conceivable that it should ever forsake +that point of view and abandon itself to a slovenly life of immediate +feeling? To say nothing of your traditional Oxford devotion to +Aristotle and Plato, the leaven of T.H. Green probably works still +too strongly here for his anti-sensationalism to be outgrown quickly. +Green more than any one realized that knowledge _about_ things was +knowledge of their relations; but nothing could persuade him that our +sensational life could contain any relational element. He followed +the strict intellectualist method with sensations. What they were not +expressly defined as including, they must exclude. Sensations are not +defined as relations, so in the end Green thought that they could +get related together only by the action on them from above of a +'self-distinguishing' absolute and eternal mind, present to that which +is related, but not related itself. 'A relation,' he said, 'is not +contingent with the contingency of feeling. It is permanent with +the permanence of the combining and comparing thought which alone +constitutes it.'[1] In other words, relations are purely conceptual +objects, and the sensational life as such cannot relate itself +together. Sensation in itself, Green wrote, is fleeting, momentary, +unnameable (because, while we name it, it has become another), and for +the same reason unknowable, the very negation of knowability. Were +there no permanent objects of conception for our sensations to be +'referred to,' there would be no significant names, but only noises, +and a consistent sensationalism must be speechless.[2] Green's +intellectualism was so earnest that it produced a natural and an +inevitable effect. But the atomistic and unrelated sensations which he +had in mind were purely fictitious products of his rationalist fancy. +The psychology of our own day disavows them utterly,[3] and Green's +laborious belaboring of poor old Locke for not having first seen that +his ideas of sensation were just that impracticable sort of thing, and +then fled to transcendental idealism as a remedy,--his belaboring of +poor old Locke for this, I say, is pathetic. Every examiner of the +sensible life _in concreto_ must see that relations of every sort, of +time, space, difference, likeness, change, rate, cause, or what not, +are just as integral members of the sensational flux as terms are, and +that conjunctive relations are just as true members of the flux as +disjunctive relations are.[4] This is what in some recent writings of +mine I have called the 'radically empiricist' doctrine (in distinction +from the doctrine of mental atoms which the name empiricism so +often suggests). Intellectualistic critics of sensation insist that +sensations are _disjoined_ only. Radical empiricism insists +that conjunctions between them are just as immediately given as +disjunctions are, and that relations, whether disjunctive or +conjunctive, are in their original sensible givenness just as fleeting +and momentary (in Green's words), and just as 'particular,' as terms +are. Later, both terms and relations get universalized by being +conceptualized and named.[5] But all the thickness, concreteness, and +individuality of experience exists in the immediate and relatively +unnamed stages of it, to the richness of which, and to the standing +inadequacy of our conceptions to match it, Professor Bergson so +emphatically calls our attention. And now I am happy to say that we +can begin to gather together some of the separate threads of our +argument, and see a little better the general kind of conclusion +toward which we are tending. Pray go back with me to the lecture +before the last, and recall what I said about the difficulty of seeing +how states of consciousness can compound themselves. The difficulty +seemed to be the same, you remember, whether we took it in psychology +as the composition of finite states of mind out of simpler finite +states, or in metaphysics as the composition of the absolute mind out +of finite minds in general. It is the general conceptualist difficulty +of any one thing being the same with many things, either at once or +in succession, for the abstract concepts of oneness and manyness must +needs exclude each other. In the particular instance that we have +dwelt on so long, the one thing is the all-form of experience, the +many things are the each-forms of experience in you and me. To call +them the same we must treat them as if each were simultaneously +its own other, a feat on conceptualist principles impossible of +performance. + +On the principle of going behind the conceptual function altogether, +however, and looking to the more primitive flux of the sensational +life for reality's true shape, a way is open to us, as I tried in my +last lecture to show. Not only the absolute is its own other, but the +simplest bits of immediate experience are their own others, if that +hegelian phrase be once for all allowed. The concrete pulses of +experience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual +substitutes for them are confined by. They run into one another +continuously and seem to interpenetrate. What in them is relation and +what is matter related is hard to discern. You feel no one of them as +inwardly simple, and no two as wholly without confluence where they +touch. There is no datum so small as not to show this mystery, if +mystery it be. The tiniest feeling that we can possibly have comes +with an earlier and a later part and with a sense of their continuous +procession. Mr. Shadworth Hodgson showed long ago that there is +literally no such object as the present moment except as an unreal +postulate of abstract thought.[6] The 'passing' moment is, as I +already have reminded you, the minimal fact, with the 'apparition of +difference' inside of it as well as outside. If we do not feel both +past and present in one field of feeling, we feel them not at all. We +have the same many-in-one in the matter that fills the passing time. +The rush of our thought forward through its fringes is the everlasting +peculiarity of its life. We realize this life as something always off +its balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a +darkness through a dawn into a brightness that we feel to be the dawn +fulfilled. In the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as +an alteration. 'Yes,' we say at the full brightness, '_this_ is what I +just meant.' 'No,' we feel at the dawning, 'this is not yet the full +meaning, there is more to come.' In every crescendo of sensation, in +every effort to recall, in every progress towards the satisfaction +of desire, this succession of an emptiness and fulness that have +reference to each other and are one flesh is the essence of the +phenomenon. In every hindrance of desire the sense of an ideal +presence which is absent in fact, of an absent, in a word, which the +only function of the present is to _mean_, is even more notoriously +there. And in the movement of pure thought we have the same +phenomenon. When I say _Socrates is mortal_, the moment _Socrates_ is +incomplete; it falls forward through the _is_ which is pure movement, +into the _mortal_ which is indeed bare mortal on the tongue, but +for the mind is _that mortal_, the _mortal Socrates_, at last +satisfactorily disposed of and told off.[7] + +Here, then, inside of the minimal pulses of experience, is realized +that very inner complexity which the transcendentalists say only the +absolute can genuinely possess. The gist of the matter is always the +same--something ever goes indissolubly with something else. You cannot +separate the same from its other, except by abandoning the real +altogether and taking to the conceptual system. What is immediately +given in the single and particular instance is always something pooled +and mutual, something with no dark spot, no point of ignorance. No one +elementary bit of reality is eclipsed from the next bit's point of +view, if only we take reality sensibly and in small enough pulses--and +by us it has to be taken pulse-wise, for our span of consciousness is +too short to grasp the larger collectivity of things except nominally +and abstractly. No more of reality collected together at once is +extant anywhere, perhaps, than in my experience of reading this page, +or in yours of listening; yet within those bits of experience as +they come to pass we get a fulness of content that no conceptual +description can equal. Sensational experiences _are_ their 'own +others,' then, both internally and externally. Inwardly they are one +with their parts, and outwardly they pass continuously into their next +neighbors, so that events separated by years of time in a man's life +hang together unbrokenly by the intermediary events. Their _names_, +to be sure, cut them into separate conceptual entities, but no cuts +existed in the continuum in which they originally came. + +If, with all this in our mind, we turn to our own particular +predicament, we see that our old objection to the self-compounding of +states of consciousness, our accusation that it was impossible for +purely logical reasons, is unfounded in principle. Every smallest +state of consciousness, concretely taken, overflows its own +definition. Only concepts are self-identical; only 'reason' deals with +closed equations; nature is but a name for excess; every point in +her opens out and runs into the more; and the only question, with +reference to any point we may be considering, is how far into the +rest of nature we may have to go in order to get entirely beyond its +overflow. In the pulse of inner life immediately present now in each +of us is a little past, a little future, a little awareness of our own +body, of each other's persons, of these sublimities we are trying to +talk about, of the earth's geography and the direction of history, +of truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how much more? +Feeling, however dimly and subconsciously, all these things, your +pulse of inner life is continuous with them, belongs to them and they +to it. You can't identify it with either one of them rather than with +the others, for if you let it develop into no matter which of those +directions, what it develops into will look back on it and say, 'That +was the original germ of me.' + +In _principle_, then, the real units of our immediately-felt life are +unlike the units that intellectualist logic holds to and makes its +calculations with. They are not separate from their own others, and +you have to take them at widely separated dates to find any two of +them that seem unblent. Then indeed they do appear separate even as +their concepts are separate; a chasm yawns between them; but the chasm +itself is but an intellectualist fiction, got by abstracting from the +continuous sheet of experiences with which the intermediary time was +filled. It is like the log carried first by William and Henry, then +by William, Henry, and John, then by Henry and John, then by John and +Peter, and so on. All real units of experience _overlap_. Let a row of +equidistant dots on a sheet of paper symbolize the concepts by which +we intellectualize the world. Let a ruler long enough to cover at +least three dots stand for our sensible experience. Then the conceived +changes of the sensible experience can be symbolized by sliding the +ruler along the line of dots. One concept after another will apply to +it, one after another drop away, but it will always cover at least two +of them, and no dots less than three will ever adequately cover _it_. +You falsify it if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots. + +What is true here of successive states must also be true of +simultaneous characters. They also overlap each other with their +being. My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a +fringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious more. I use three +separate terms here to describe, this fact; but I might as well use +three hundred, for the fact is all shades and no boundaries. Which +part of it properly is in my consciousness, which out? If I name what +is out, it already has come in. The centre works in one way while the +margins work in another, and presently overpower the centre and are +central themselves. What we conceptually identify ourselves with and +say we are thinking of at any time is the centre; but our _full_ self +is the whole field, with all those indefinitely radiating subconscious +possibilities of increase that we can only feel without conceiving, +and can hardly begin to analyze. The collective and the distributive +ways of being coexist here, for each part functions distinctly, makes +connexion with its own peculiar region in the still wider rest of +experience and tends to draw us into that line, and yet the whole is +somehow felt as one pulse of our life,--not conceived so, but felt so. + +In principle, then, as I said, intellectualism's edge is broken; it +can only approximate to reality, and its logic is inapplicable to our +inner life, which spurns its vetoes and mocks at its impossibilities. +Every bit of us at every moment is part and parcel of a wider self, it +quivers along various radii like the wind-rose on a compass, and the +actual in it is continuously one with possibles not yet in our present +sight.[8] And just as we are co-conscious with our own momentary +margin, may not we ourselves form the margin of some more really +central self in things which is co-conscious with the whole of us? May +not you and I be confluent in a higher consciousness, and confluently +active there, tho we now know it not? + +I am tiring myself and you, I know, by vainly seeking to describe +by concepts and words what I say at the same time exceeds either +conceptualization or verbalization. As long as one continues +_talking_, intellectualism remains in undisturbed possession of the +field. The return to life can't come about by talking. It is an _act_; +to make you return to life, I must set an example for your imitation, +I must deafen you to talk, or to the importance of talk, by showing +you, as Bergson does, that the concepts we talk with are made for +purposes of _practice_ and not for purposes of insight. Or I must +_point_, point to the mere _that_ of life, and you by inner sympathy +must fill out the _what_ for yourselves. The minds of some of you, +I know, will absolutely refuse to do so, refuse to think in +non-conceptualized terms. I myself absolutely refused to do so +for years together, even after I knew that the denial of +manyness-in-oneness by intellectualism must be false, for the same +reality does perform the most various functions at once. But I hoped +ever for a revised intellectualist way round the difficulty, and it +was only after reading Bergson that I saw that to continue using the +intellectualist method was itself the fault. I saw that philosophy had +been on a false scent ever since the days of Socrates and Plato, that +an _intellectual_ answer to the intellectualist's difficulties will +never come, and that the real way out of them, far from consisting in +the discovery of such an answer, consists in simply closing one's ears +to the question. When conceptualism summons life to justify itself +in conceptual terms, it is like a challenge addressed in a foreign +language to some one who is absorbed in his own business; it is +irrelevant to him altogether--he may let it lie unnoticed. I went thus +through the 'inner catastrophe' of which I spoke in the last lecture; +I had literally come to the end of my conceptual stock-in-trade, I was +bankrupt intellectualistically, and had to change my base. No words +of mine will probably convert you, for words can be the names only of +concepts. But if any of you try sincerely and pertinaciously on your +own separate accounts to intellectualize reality, you may be similarly +driven to a change of front. I say no more: I must leave life to teach +the lesson. + +We have now reached a point of view from which the self-compounding of +mind in its smaller and more accessible portions seems a certain +fact, and in which the speculative assumption of a similar but wider +compounding in remoter regions must be reckoned with as a legitimate +hypothesis. The absolute is not the impossible being I once thought +it. Mental facts do function both singly and together, at once, and we +finite minds may simultaneously be co-conscious with one another in a +superhuman intelligence. It is only the extravagant claims of coercive +necessity on the absolute's part that have to be denied by _a priori_ +logic. As an hypothesis trying to make itself probable on analogical +and inductive grounds, the absolute is entitled to a patient hearing. +Which is as much as to say that our serious business from now onward +lies with Fechner and his method, rather than with Hegel, Royce, or +Bradley. Fechner treats the superhuman consciousness he so fervently +believes in as an hypothesis only, which he then recommends by all the +resources of induction and persuasion. + +It is true that Fechner himself is an absolutist in his books, not +actively but passively, if I may say so. He talks not only of the +earth-soul and of the star-souls, but of an integrated soul of all +things in the cosmos without exception, and this he calls God just +as others call it the absolute. Nevertheless he _thinks_ only of +the subordinate superhuman souls, and content with having made his +obeisance once for all to the august total soul of the cosmos, he +leaves it in its lonely sublimity with no attempt to define its +nature. Like the absolute, it is 'out of range,' and not an object for +distincter vision. Psychologically, it seems to me that Fechner's +God is a lazy postulate of his, rather than a part of his system +positively thought out. As we envelop our sight and hearing, so the +earth-soul envelops us, and the star-soul the earth-soul, until--what? +Envelopment can't go on forever; it must have an _abschluss_, a total +envelope must terminate the series, so God is the name that Fechner +gives to this last all-enveloper. But if nothing escapes this +all-enveloper, he is responsible for everything, including evil, and +all the paradoxes and difficulties which I found in the absolute +at the end of our third lecture recur undiminished. Fechner tries +sincerely to grapple with the problem of evil, but he always solves it +in the leibnitzian fashion by making his God non-absolute, placing +him under conditions of 'metaphysical necessity' which even his +omnipotence cannot violate. His will has to struggle with conditions +not imposed on that will by itself. He tolerates provisionally what he +has not created, and then with endless patience tries to overcome it +and live it down. He has, in short, a history. Whenever Fechner tries +to represent him clearly, his God becomes the ordinary God of theism, +and ceases to be the absolutely totalized all-enveloper.[9] In this +shape, he represents the ideal element in things solely, and is our +champion and our helper and we his helpers, against the bad parts of +the universe. + +Fechner was in fact too little of a metaphysician to care for perfect +formal consistency in these abstract regions. He believed in God in +the pluralistic manner, but partly from convention and partly from +what I should call intellectual laziness, if laziness of any kind +could be imputed to a Fechner, he let the usual monistic talk about +him pass unchallenged. I propose to you that we should discuss the +question of God without entangling ourselves in advance in the +monistic assumption. Is it probable that there is any superhuman +consciousness at all, in the first place? When that is settled, the +further question whether its form be monistic or pluralistic is in +order. + +Before advancing to either question, however, and I shall have to deal +with both but very briefly after what has been said already, let me +finish our retrospective survey by one more remark about the curious +logical situation of the absolutists. For what have they invoked the +absolute except as a being the peculiar inner form of which shall +enable it to overcome the contradictions with which intellectualism +has found the finite many as such to be infected? The many-in-one +character that, as we have seen, every smallest tract of finite +experience offers, is considered by intellectualism to be fatal to the +reality of finite experience. What can be distinguished, it tells us, +is separate; and what is separate is unrelated, for a relation, being +a 'between,' would bring only a twofold separation. Hegel, Royce, +Bradley, and the Oxford absolutists in general seem to agree about +this logical absurdity of manyness-in-oneness in the only places where +it is empirically found. But see the curious tactics! Is the absurdity +_reduced_ in the absolute being whom they call in to relieve it? Quite +otherwise, for that being shows it on an infinitely greater scale, and +flaunts it in its very definition. The fact of its not being related +to any outward environment, the fact that all relations are inside of +itself, doesn't save it, for Mr. Bradley's great argument against the +finite is that _in_ any given bit of it (a bit of sugar, for instance) +the presence of a plurality of characters (whiteness and sweetness, +for example) is self-contradictory; so that in the final end all that +the absolute's name appears to stand for is the persistent claim of +outraged human nature that reality _shall_ not be called +absurd. _Somewhere_ there must be an aspect of it guiltless of +self-contradiction. All we can see of the absolute, meanwhile, is +guilty in the same way in which the finite is. Intellectualism sees +what it calls the guilt, when comminuted in the finite object; but +is too near-sighted to see it in the more enormous object. Yet the +absolute's constitution, if imagined at all, has to be imagined after +the analogy of some bit of finite experience. Take any _real_ bit, +suppress its environment and then magnify it to monstrosity, and you +get identically the type of structure of the absolute. It is obvious +that all your difficulties here remain and go with you. If the +relative experience was inwardly absurd, the absolute experience is +infinitely more so. Intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat, +but swallows the whole camel. But this polemic against the absolute +is as odious to me as it is to you, so I will say no more about that +being. It is only one of those wills of the wisp, those lights that +do mislead the morn, that have so often impeded the clear progress of +philosophy, so I will turn to the more general positive question of +whether superhuman unities of consciousness should be considered as +more probable or more improbable. + +In a former lecture I went over some of the fechnerian reasons for +their plausibility, or reasons that at least replied to our more +obvious grounds of doubt concerning them. The numerous facts of +divided or split human personality which the genius of certain medical +men, as Janet, Freud, Prince, Sidis, and others, have unearthed were +unknown in Fechner's time, and neither the phenomena of automatic +writing and speech, nor of mediumship and 'possession' generally, had +been recognized or studied as we now study them, so Fechner's stock of +analogies is scant compared with our present one. He did the best with +what he had, however. For my own part I find in some of these abnormal +or supernormal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior +co-consciousness being possible. I doubt whether we shall ever +understand some of them without using the very letter of Fechner's +conception of a great reservoir in which the memories of earth's +inhabitants are pooled and preserved, and from which, when the +threshold lowers or the valve opens, information ordinarily shut out +leaks into the mind of exceptional individuals among us. But those +regions of inquiry are perhaps too spook-haunted to interest an +academic audience, and the only evidence I feel it now decorous to +bring to the support of Fechner is drawn from ordinary religious +experience. I think it may be asserted that there _are_ religious +experiences of a specific nature, not deducible by analogy or +psychological reasoning from our other sorts of experience. I think +that they point with reasonable probability to the continuity of +our consciousness with a wider spiritual environment from which +the ordinary prudential man (who is the only man that scientific +psychology, so called, takes cognizance of) is shut off. I shall begin +my final lecture by referring to them again briefly. + + + + +LECTURE VIII + + +CONCLUSIONS + +At the close of my last lecture I referred to the existence of +religious experiences of a specific nature. I must now explain just +what I mean by such a claim. Briefly, the facts I have in mind may +all be described as experiences of an unexpected life succeeding upon +death. By this I don't mean immortality, or the death of the body. I +mean the deathlike termination of certain mental processes within the +individual's experience, processes that run to failure, and in some +individuals, at least, eventuate in despair. Just as romantic love +seems a comparatively recent literary invention, so these experiences +of a life that supervenes upon despair seem to have played no great +part in official theology till Luther's time; and possibly the best +way to indicate their character will be to point to a certain contrast +between the inner life of ourselves and of the ancient Greeks and +Romans. + +Mr. Chesterton, I think, says somewhere, that the Greeks and Romans, +in all that concerned their moral life, were an extraordinarily solemn +set of folks. The Athenians thought that the very gods must admire the +rectitude of Phocion and Aristides; and those gentlemen themselves +were apparently of much the same opinion. Cato's veracity was so +impeccable that the extremest incredulity a Roman could express of +anything was to say, 'I would not believe it even if Cato had told +me.' Good was good, and bad was bad, for these people. Hypocrisy, +which church-Christianity brought in, hardly existed; the naturalistic +system held firm; its values showed no hollowness and brooked no +irony. The individual, if virtuous enough, could meet all possible +requirements. The pagan pride had never crumbled. Luther was the first +moralist who broke with any effectiveness through the crust of all +this naturalistic self-sufficiency, thinking (and possibly he was +right) that Saint Paul had done it already. Religious experience of +the lutheran type brings all our naturalistic standards to bankruptcy. +You are strong only by being weak, it shows. You cannot live on pride +or self-sufficingness. There is a light in which all the naturally +founded and currently accepted distinctions, excellences, and +safeguards of our characters appear as utter childishness. Sincerely +to give up one's conceit or hope of being good in one's own right is +the only door to the universe's deeper reaches. + +These deeper reaches are familiar to evangelical Christianity and +to what is nowadays becoming known as 'mind-cure' religion or 'new +thought.' The phenomenon is that of new ranges of life succeeding on +our most despairing moments. There are resources in us that naturalism +with its literal and legal virtues never recks of, possibilities that +take our breath away, of another kind of happiness and power, based on +giving up our own will and letting something higher work for us, and +these seem to show a world wider than either physics or philistine +ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in _spite_ +of certain forms of death, indeed _because_ of certain forms of +death--death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, +of fear and worry, competency and desert, death of everything that +paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their +trust to. + +Reason, operating on our other experiences, even our psychological +experiences, would never have inferred these specifically religious +experiences in advance of their actual coming. She could not suspect +their existence, for they are discontinuous with the 'natural' +experiences they succeed upon and invert their values. But as they +actually come and are given, creation widens to the view of their +recipients. They suggest that our natural experience, our strictly +moralistic and prudential experience, may be only a fragment of real +human experience. They soften nature's outlines and open out the +strangest possibilities and perspectives. + +This is why it seems to me that the logical understanding, working in +abstraction from such specifically religious experiences, will always +omit something, and fail to reach completely adequate conclusions. +Death and failure, it will always say, _are_ death and failure +simply, and can nevermore be one with life; so religious experience, +peculiarly so called, needs, in my opinion, to be carefully considered +and interpreted by every one who aspires to reason out a more complete +philosophy. + +The sort of belief that religious experience of this type naturally +engenders in those who have it is fully in accord with Fechner's +theories. To quote words which I have used elsewhere, the believer +finds that the tenderer parts of his personal life are continuous +with a _more_ of the same quality which is operative in the universe +outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a +fashion get on board of and save himself, when all his lower being has +gone to pieces in the wreck. In a word, the believer is continuous, +to his own consciousness, at any rate, with a wider self from which +saving experiences flow in. Those who have such experiences distinctly +enough and often enough to live in the light of them remain quite +unmoved by criticism, from whatever quarter it may come, be it +academic or scientific, or be it merely the voice of logical +common sense. They have had their vision and they _know_--that is +enough--that we inhabit an invisible spiritual environment from which +help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose +instruments we are. + +One may therefore plead, I think, that Fechner's ideas are not without +direct empirical verification. There is at any rate one side of life +which would be easily explicable if those ideas were true, but of +which there appears no clear explanation so long as we assume either +with naturalism that human consciousness is the highest consciousness +there is, or with dualistic theism that there is a higher mind in the +cosmos, but that it is discontinuous with our own. It has always been +a matter of surprise with me that philosophers of the absolute should +have shown so little interest in this department of life, and so +seldom put its phenomena in evidence, even when it seemed obvious that +personal experience of some kind must have made their confidence in +their own vision so strong. The logician's bias has always been too +much with them. They have preferred the thinner to the thicker method, +dialectical abstraction being so much more dignified and academic than +the confused and unwholesome facts of personal biography. + +In spite of rationalism's disdain for the particular, the personal, +and the unwholesome, the drift of all the evidence we have seems to +me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form +of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be +co-conscious. We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our +libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having +no inkling of the meaning of it all. The intellectualist objections +to this fall away when the authority of intellectualist logic is +undermined by criticism, and then the positive empirical evidence +remains. The analogies with ordinary psychology and with the facts of +pathology, with those of psychical research, so called, and with those +of religious experience, establish, when taken together, a decidedly +_formidable_ probability in favor of a general view of the world +almost identical with Fechner's. The outlines of the superhuman +consciousness thus made probable must remain, however, very vague, and +the number of functionally distinct 'selves' it comports and carries +has to be left entirely problematic. It may be polytheistically or +it may be monotheistically conceived of. Fechner, with his distinct +earth-soul functioning as our guardian angel, seems to me clearly +polytheistic; but the word 'polytheism' usually gives offence, so +perhaps it is better not to use it. Only one thing is certain, and +that is the result of our criticism of the absolute: the only way +to escape from the paradoxes and perplexities that a consistently +thought-out monistic universe suffers from as from a species of +auto-intoxication--the mystery of the 'fall' namely, of reality +lapsing into appearance, truth into error, perfection into +imperfection; of evil, in short; the mystery of universal determinism, +of the block-universe eternal and without a history, etc.;--the only +way of escape, I say, from all this is to be frankly pluralistic and +assume that the superhuman consciousness, however vast it may be, has +itself an external environment, and consequently is finite. Present +day monism carefully repudiates complicity with spinozistic monism. In +that, it explains, the many get dissolved in the one and lost, whereas +in the improved idealistic form they get preserved in all their +manyness as the one's eternal object. The absolute itself is thus +represented by absolutists as having a pluralistic object. But if even +the absolute has to have a pluralistic vision, why should we ourselves +hesitate to be pluralists on our own sole account? Why should we +envelop our many with the 'one' that brings so much poison in its +train? + +The line of least resistance, then, as it seems to me, both in +theology and in philosophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman +consciousness, the notion that it is not all-embracing, the notion, +in other words, that there is a God, but that he is finite, either in +power or in knowledge, or in both at once. These, I need hardly tell +you, are the terms in which common men have usually carried on their +active commerce with God; and the monistic perfections that make the +notion of him so paradoxical practically and morally are the colder +addition of remote professorial minds operating _in distans_ upon +conceptual substitutes for him alone. + +Why cannot 'experience' and 'reason' meet on this common ground? Why +cannot they compromise? May not the godlessness usually but needlessly +associated with the philosophy of immediate experience give way to a +theism now seen to follow directly from that experience more widely +taken? and may not rationalism, satisfied with seeing her _a priori_ +proofs of God so effectively replaced by empirical evidence, abate +something of her absolutist claims? Let God but have the least +infinitesimal _other_ of any kind beside him, and empiricism and +rationalism might strike hands in a lasting treaty of peace. Both +might then leave abstract thinness behind them, and seek together, as +scientific men seek, by using all the analogies and data within reach, +to build up the most probable approximate idea of what the divine +consciousness concretely may be like. I venture to beg the younger +Oxford idealists to consider seriously this alternative. Few men are +as qualified by their intellectual gifts to reap the harvests that +seem certain to any one who, like Fechner and Bergson, will leave the +thinner for the thicker path. + +Compromise and mediation are inseparable from the pluralistic +philosophy. Only monistic dogmatism can say of any of its hypotheses, +'It is either that or nothing; take it or leave it just as it stands.' +The type of monism prevalent at Oxford has kept this steep and brittle +attitude, partly through the proverbial academic preference for thin +and elegant logical solutions, partly from a mistaken notion that the +only solidly grounded basis for religion was along those lines. If +Oxford men could be ignorant of anything, it might almost seem that +they had remained ignorant of the great empirical movement towards +a pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe, into which our own +generation has been drawn, and which threatens to short-circuit their +methods entirely and become their religious rival unless they are +willing to make themselves its allies. Yet, wedded as they seem to +be to the logical machinery and technical apparatus of absolutism, +I cannot but believe that their fidelity to the religious ideal in +general is deeper still. Especially do I find it hard to believe that +the more clerical adherents of the school would hold so fast to its +particular machinery if only they could be made to think that religion +could be secured in some other way. Let empiricism once become +associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange +misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I +believe that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be +ready to begin. That great awakening of a new popular interest in +philosophy, which is so striking a phenomenon at the present day in +all countries, is undoubtedly due in part to religious demands. As +the authority of past tradition tends more and more to crumble, men +naturally turn a wistful ear to the authority of reason or to the +evidence of present fact. They will assuredly not be disappointed if +they open their minds to what the thicker and more radical empiricism +has to say. I fully believe that such an empiricism is a more natural +ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. It +is true that superstitions and wild-growing over-beliefs of all +sorts will undoubtedly begin to abound if the notion of higher +consciousnesses enveloping ours, of fechnerian earth-souls and the +like, grows orthodox and fashionable; still more will they superabound +if science ever puts her approving stamp on the phenomena of which +Frederic Myers so earnestly advocated the scientific recognition, the +phenomena of psychic research so-called--and I myself firmly believe +that most of these phenomena are rooted in reality. But ought one +seriously to allow such a timid consideration as that to deter one +from following the evident path of greatest religious promise? Since +when, in this mixed world, was any good thing given us in purest +outline and isolation? One of the chief characteristics of life is +life's redundancy. The sole condition of our having anything, no +matter what, is that we should have so much of it, that we are +fortunate if we do not grow sick of the sight and sound of it +altogether. Everything is smothered in the litter that is fated to +accompany it. Without too much you cannot have enough, of anything. +Lots of inferior books, lots of bad statues, lots of dull speeches, of +tenth-rate men and women, as a condition of the few precious specimens +in either kind being realized! The gold-dust comes to birth with the +quartz-sand all around it, and this is as much a condition of religion +as of any other excellent possession. There must be extrication; there +must be competition for survival; but the clay matrix and the noble +gem must first come into being unsifted. Once extricated, the gem can +be examined separately, conceptualized, defined, and insulated. But +this process of extrication cannot be short-circuited--or if it is, +you get the thin inferior abstractions which we have seen, either +the hollow unreal god of scholastic theology, or the unintelligible +pantheistic monster, instead of the more living divine reality with +which it appears certain that empirical methods tend to connect men in +imagination. + +Arrived at this point, I ask you to go back to my first lecture and +remember, if you can, what I quoted there from your own Professor +Jacks--what he said about the philosopher himself being taken up into +the universe which he is accounting for. This is the fechnerian as +well as the hegelian view, and thus our end rejoins harmoniously our +beginning. Philosophies are intimate parts of the universe, they +express something of its own thought of itself. A philosophy may +indeed be a most momentous reaction of the universe upon itself. It +may, as I said, possess and handle itself differently in consequence +of us philosophers, with our theories, being here; it may trust itself +or mistrust itself the more, and, by doing the one or the other, +deserve more the trust or the mistrust. What mistrusts itself deserves +mistrust. + +This is the philosophy of humanism in the widest sense. Our +philosophies swell the current of being, add their character to it. +They are part of all that we have met, of all that makes us be. As +a French philosopher says, 'Nous sommes du réel dans le réel.' Our +thoughts determine our acts, and our acts redetermine the previous +nature of the world. + +Thus does foreignness get banished from our world, and far more so +when we take the system of it pluralistically than when we take it +monistically. We are indeed internal parts of God and not external +creations, on any possible reading of the panpsychic system. Yet +because God is not the absolute, but is himself a part when the system +is conceived pluralistically, his functions can be taken as not wholly +dissimilar to those of the other smaller parts,--as similar to our +functions consequently. + +Having an environment, being in time, and working out a history just +like ourselves, he escapes from the foreignness from all that is +human, of the static timeless perfect absolute. + +Remember that one of our troubles with that was its essential +foreignness and monstrosity--there really is no other word for it than +that. Its having the all-inclusive form gave to it an essentially +heterogeneous _nature_ from ourselves. And this great difference +between absolutism and pluralism demands no difference in the +universe's material content--it follows from a difference in the form +alone. The all-form or monistic form makes the foreignness result, the +each-form or pluralistic form leaves the intimacy undisturbed. + +No matter what the content of the universe may be, if you only allow +that it is _many_ everywhere and always, that _nothing_ real escapes +from having an environment; so far from defeating its rationality, as +the absolutists so unanimously pretend, you leave it in possession of +the maximum amount of rationality practically attainable by our minds. +Your relations with it, intellectual, emotional, and active, remain +fluent and congruous with your own nature's chief demands. + +It would be a pity if the word 'rationality' were allowed to give us +trouble here. It is one of those eulogistic words that both sides +claim--for almost no one is willing to advertise his philosophy as a +system of irrationality. But like most of the words which people used +eulogistically, the word 'rational' carries too many meanings. The +most objective one is that of the older logic--the connexion between +two things is rational when you can infer one from the other, mortal +from Socrates, _e.g.;_ and you can do that only when they have a +quality in common. But this kind of rationality is just that logic +of identity which all disciples of Hegel find insufficient. They +supersede it by the higher rationality of negation and contradiction +and make the notion vague again. Then you get the aesthetic or +teleologic kinds of rationality, saying that whatever fits in any way, +whatever is beautiful or good, whatever is purposive or gratifies +desire, is rational in so far forth. Then again, according to Hegel, +whatever is 'real' is rational. I myself said awhile ago that whatever +lets loose any action which we are fond of exerting seems rational. It +would be better to give up the word 'rational' altogether than to get +into a merely verbal fight about who has the best right to keep it. + +Perhaps the words 'foreignness' and 'intimacy,' which I put forward +in my first lecture, express the contrast I insist on better than the +words 'rationality' and 'irrationality'--let us stick to them, then. +I now say that the notion of the 'one' breeds foreignness and that of +the 'many' intimacy, for reasons which I have urged at only too great +length, and with which, whether they convince you or not, I may +suppose that you are now well acquainted. But what at bottom is meant +by calling the universe many or by calling it one? + +Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is +many means only that the sundry parts of reality _may be externally +related_. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has +on the pluralistic view a genuinely 'external' environment of some +sort or amount. Things are 'with' one another in many ways, but +nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word +'and' trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. +'Ever not quite' has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in +the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is +thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. +However much may be collected, however much may report itself as +present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something +else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity. + +Monism, on the other hand, insists that when you come down to reality +as such, to the reality of realities, everything is present +to _everything_ else in one vast instantaneous co-implicated +completeness--nothing can in _any_ sense, functional or substantial, +be really absent from anything else, all things interpenetrate and +telescope together in the great total conflux. + +For pluralism, all that we are required to admit as the constitution +of reality is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every +minimum of finite life. Briefly it is this, that nothing real is +absolutely simple, that every smallest bit of experience is a _multum +in parvo_ plurally related, that each relation is one aspect, +character, or function, way of its being taken, or way of its taking +something else; and that a bit of reality when actively engaged in one +of these relations is not _by that very fact_ engaged in all the other +relations simultaneously. The relations are not _all_ what the French +call _solidaires_ with one another. Without losing its identity a +thing can either take up or drop another thing, like the log I spoke +of, which by taking up new carriers and dropping old ones can travel +anywhere with a light escort. + +For monism, on the contrary, everything, whether we realize it or not, +drags the whole universe along with itself and drops nothing. The log +starts and arrives with all its carriers supporting it. If a thing +were once disconnected, it could never be connected again, according +to monism. The pragmatic difference between the two systems is thus a +definite one. It is just thus, that if _a_ is once out of sight of _b_ +or out of touch with it, or, more briefly, 'out' of it at all, then, +according to monism, it must always remain so, they can never get +together; whereas pluralism admits that on another occasion they may +work together, or in some way be connected again. Monism allows for +no such things as 'other occasions' in reality--in _real_ or absolute +reality, that is. + +The difference I try to describe amounts, you see, to nothing more +than the difference between what I formerly called the each-form and +the all-form of reality. Pluralism lets things really exist in the +each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or +collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. The all-form +allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the +parts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. In the each-form, +on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with +a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It +is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not +necessarily actualized at the moment. They depend on which actual path +of intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word 'or' names +a genuine reality. Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead _or_ to the +right _or_ to the left, and in either case the intervening space and +air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of +this audience. My being here is independent of any one set of these +faces. + +If the each-form be the eternal form of reality no less than it is the +form of temporal appearance, we still have a coherent world, and not +an incarnate incoherence, as is charged by so many absolutists. Our +'multiverse' still makes a 'universe'; for every part, tho it may not +be in actual or immediate connexion, is nevertheless in some possible +or mediated connexion, with every other part however remote, through +the fact that each part hangs together with its very next neighbors in +inextricable interfusion. The type of union, it is true, is different +here from the monistic type of _all-einheit_. It is not a universal +co-implication, or integration of all things _durcheinander_. It is +what I call the strung-along type, the type of continuity, contiguity, +or concatenation. If you prefer greek words, you may call it the +synechistic type. At all events, you see that it forms a definitely +conceivable alternative to the through-and-through unity of all things +at once, which is the type opposed to it by monism. You see also that +it stands or falls with the notion I have taken such pains to defend, +of the through-and-through union of adjacent minima of experience, of +the confluence of every passing moment of concretely felt experience +with its immediately next neighbors. The recognition of this fact of +coalescence of next with next in concrete experience, so that all +the insulating cuts we make there are artificial products of the +conceptualizing faculty, is what distinguishes the empiricism which +I call 'radical,' from the bugaboo empiricism of the traditional +rationalist critics, which (rightly or wrongly) is accused of chopping +up experience into atomistic sensations, incapable of union with one +another until a purely intellectual principle has swooped down upon +them from on high and folded them in its own conjunctive categories. + +Here, then, you have the plain alternative, and the full mystery of +the difference between pluralism and monism, as clearly as I can +set it forth on this occasion. It packs up into a nutshell:--Is the +manyness in oneness that indubitably characterizes the world we +inhabit, a property only of the absolute whole of things, so that you +must postulate that one-enormous-whole indivisibly as the _prius_ +of there being any many at all--in other words, start with the +rationalistic block-universe, entire, unmitigated, and complete?--or +can the finite elements have their own aboriginal forms of manyness in +oneness, and where they have no immediate oneness still be continued +into one another by intermediary terms--each one of these terms being +one with its next neighbors, and yet the total 'oneness' never getting +absolutely complete? + +The alternative is definite. It seems to me, moreover, that the two +horns of it make pragmatically different ethical appeals--at least +they _may_ do so, to certain individuals. But if you consider the +pluralistic horn to be intrinsically irrational, self-contradictory, +and absurd, I can now say no more in its defence. Having done what +I could in my earlier lectures to break the edge of the +intellectualistic _reductiones ad absurdum_, I must leave the issue +in your hands. Whatever I may say, each of you will be sure to take +pluralism or leave it, just as your own sense of rationality moves and +inclines. The only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it is a +fully co-ordinate hypothesis with monism. This world _may_, in the +last resort, be a block-universe; but on the other hand it _may_ be a +universe only strung-along, not rounded in and closed. Reality _may_ +exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that +possibility I do insist. + +One's general vision of the probable usually decides such +alternatives. They illustrate what I once wrote of as the 'will to +believe.' In some of my lectures at Harvard I have spoken of what +I call the 'faith-ladder,' as something quite different from the +_sorites_ of the logic-books, yet seeming to have an analogous form. I +think you will quickly recognize in yourselves, as I describe it, the +mental process to which I give this name. + +A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it +true or not? you ask. + +It _might_ be true somewhere, you say, for it is not +self-contradictory. + +It _may_ be true, you continue, even here and now. + +It is _fit_ to be true, it would be _well if it were true_, it _ought_ +to be true, you presently feel. + +It _must_ be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and +then--as a final result-- + +It shall be _held for true_, you decide; it _shall be_ as if true, for +_you_. + +And your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making +it securely true in the end. + +Not one step in this process is logical, yet it is the way in which +monists and pluralists alike espouse and hold fast to their visions. +It is life exceeding logic, it is the practical reason for which the +theoretic reason finds arguments after the conclusion is once there. +In just this way do some of us hold to the unfinished pluralistic +universe; in just this way do others hold to the timeless universe +eternally complete. + +Meanwhile the incompleteness of the pluralistic universe, thus assumed +and held to as the most probable hypothesis, is also represented by +the pluralistic philosophy as being self-reparative through us, as +getting its disconnections remedied in part by our behavior. 'We use +what we are and have, to know; and what we know, to be and have still +more.'[1] Thus do philosophy and reality, theory and action, work in +the same circle indefinitely. + + +I have now finished these poor lectures, and as you look back on them, +they doubtless seem rambling and inconclusive enough. My only hope is +that they may possibly have proved suggestive; and if indeed they have +been suggestive of one point of method, I am almost willing to let +all other suggestions go. That point is that _it is high time for the +basis of discussion in these questions to be broadened and thickened +up_. It is for that that I have brought in Fechner and Bergson, and +descriptive psychology and religious experiences, and have ventured +even to hint at psychical research and other wild beasts of the +philosophic desert. Owing possibly to the fact that Plato and +Aristotle, with their intellectualism, are the basis of philosophic +study here, the Oxford brand of transcendentalism seems to me to have +confined itself too exclusively to thin logical considerations, that +would hold good in all conceivable worlds, worlds of an empirical +constitution entirely different from ours. It is as if the actual +peculiarities of the world that is were entirely irrelevant to the +content of truth. But they cannot be irrelevant; and the philosophy +of the future must imitate the sciences in taking them more and more +elaborately into account. I urge some of the younger members of +this learned audience to lay this hint to heart. If you can do so +effectively, making still more concrete advances upon the path which +Fechner and Bergson have so enticingly opened up, if you can gather +philosophic conclusions of any kind, monistic or pluralistic, from +the _particulars of life_, I will say, as I now do say, with the +cheerfullest of hearts, 'Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, but +ring the fuller minstrel in.' + + + + +NOTES + + +LECTURE I + +Note 1, page 5.--Bailey: _op. cit._, First Series, p. 52. + +Note 2, page 11.--_Smaller Logic_, § 194. + +Note 3, page 16.--_Exploratio philosophica_, Part I, 1865, pp. +xxxviii, 130. + +Note 4, page 20.--Hinneberg: _Die Kultur der Gegenwart: Systematische +Philosophie_. Leipzig: Teubner, 1907. + + +LECTURE II + +Note 1, page 50.--The difference is that the bad parts of this finite +are eternal and essential for absolutists, whereas pluralists may hope +that they will eventually get sloughed off and become as if they had +not been. + +Note 2, page 51.--Quoted by W. Wallace: _Lectures and Essays_, Oxford, +1898, p. 560. + +Note 3, page 51.--_Logic_, tr. Wallace, 1874, p. 181. + +Note 4, page 52.--_Ibid._, p. 304. + +Note 5, page 53.--_Contemporary Review_, December, 1907, vol. 92, p. +618. + +Note 6, page 57.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 69 ff. + +Note 7, page 62.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. i, pp. 131-132. + +Note 8, page 67.--A good illustration of this is to be found in a +controversy between Mr. Bradley and the present writer, in _Mind_ +for 1893, Mr. Bradley contending (if I understood him rightly) that +'resemblance' is an illegitimate category, because it admits of +degrees, and that the only real relations in comparison are absolute +identity and absolute non-comparability. + +Note 9, page 75.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 184. + +Note 10, page 75.--_Appearance and Reality_, 1893, pp. 141-142. + +Note 11, page 76.--Cf. _Elements of Metaphysics_, p. 88. + +Note 12, page 77.--_Some Dogmas of Religion_, p. 184. + +Note 13, page 80.--For a more detailed criticism of Mr. Bradley's +intellectualism, see Appendix A. + + +LECTURE III + +Note 1, page 94.--Hegel, _Smaller Logic_, pp. 184-185. + +Note 2, page 95.--Cf. Hegel's fine vindication of this function of +contradiction in his _Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. ii, sec. 1, chap, +ii, C, Anmerkung 3. + +Note 3, page 95--_Hegel_, in _Blackwood's Philosophical Classics_, p. +162. + +Note 4, page 95--_Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. i, sec. 1, chap, ii, B, +a. + +Note 5, page 96--Wallace's translation of the _Smaller Logic_, p. 128. + +Note 6, page 101--Joachim, _The Nature of Truth_, Oxford, 1906, pp. +22, 178. The argument in case the belief should be doubted would be +the higher synthetic idea: if two truths were possible, the duality of +that possibility would itself be the one truth that would unite them. + +Note 7, page 115.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 385, +386, 409. + +Note 8, page 116.--The best _un_inspired argument (again not +ironical!) which I know is that in Miss M.W. Calkins's excellent book, +_The Persistent Problems of Philosophy_, Macmillan, 1902. + +Note 9, page 117.--Cf. Dr. Fuller's excellent article,' Ethical monism +and the problem of evil,' in the _Harvard Journal of Theology_, vol. +i, No. 2, April, 1908. + +Note 10, page 120.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 79. + +Note 11, page 121.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, secs. 150, +153. + +Note 12, page 121.--_The Nature of Truth_, 1906, pp. 170-171. + +Note 13, page 121.--_Ibid._, p. 179. + +Note 14, page 123.--The psychological analogy that certain finite +tracts of consciousness are composed of isolable parts added together, +cannot be used by absolutists as proof that such parts are essential +elements of all consciousness. Other finite fields of consciousness +seem in point of fact not to be similarly resolvable into isolable +parts. + +Note 15, page 128.--Judging by the analogy of the relation which our +central consciousness seems to bear to that of our spinal cord, lower +ganglia, etc., it would seem natural to suppose that in whatever +superhuman mental synthesis there may be, the neglect and elimination +of certain contents of which we are conscious on the human level might +be as characteristic a feature as is the combination and interweaving +of other human contents. + + +LECTURE IV + +Note 1, page 143.--_The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 227. + +Note 2, page 165.--Fechner: _Über die Seelenfrage_, 1861, p. 170. + +Note 3, page 168.--Fechner's latest summarizing of his views, _Die +Tagesansicht gegenüber der Nachtansicht_, Leipzig, 1879, is now, I +understand, in process of translation. His _Little Book of Life after +Death_ exists already in two American versions, one published by +Little, Brown & Co., Boston, the other by the Open Court Co., Chicago. + +Note 4, page 176.--Mr. Bradley ought to be to some degree exempted +from my attack in these last pages. Compare especially what he says of +non-human consciousness in his _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 269-272. + + +LECTURE V + +Note 1, page 182.--Royce: _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 379. + +Note 2, page 184.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 58-62. + +Note 3, page 190.--I hold to it still as the best description of +an enormous number of our higher fields of consciousness. They +demonstrably do not _contain_ the lower states that know the same +objects. Of other fields, however this is not so true; so, in the +_Psychological Review_ for 1895, vol. ii, p. 105 (see especially pp. +119-120), I frankly withdrew, in principle, my former objection to +talking of fields of consciousness being made of simpler 'parts,' +leaving the facts to decide the question in each special case. + +Note 4, page 194.--I abstract from the consciousness attached to the +whole itself, if such consciousness be there. + + +LECTURE VI + +Note 1, page 250.--For a more explicit vindication of the notion of +activity, see Appendix B, where I try to defend its recognition as +a definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic +critics. + +I subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible critics +of Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings +of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement +that concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. Understood +in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we +certainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a +theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in +its train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of +his own mouth. His philosophy pretends, if anything, to give a better +insight into truth than rationalistic philosophies give: yet what is +it in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its author not reason by +concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no +insight? + +To this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply. +In using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of +concepts generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary +emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for +they serve in his hands only to 'orient' us, to show us to what +quarter we must _practically turn_ if we wish to gain that completer +insight into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs +our hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. _What +he reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude_. He +but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our +naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense. +This service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which +we may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with +a good philosophic conscience!--who ever conferred on us so valuable a +freedom before? + +By making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the +other counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new order, +with particular relations between them. These relations are just as +much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the +distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it. +Conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of +perception, then; and when the results of these are written down, +we get those bodies of 'mental truth' (as Locke called it) known as +mathematics, logic, and _a priori_ metaphysics. To know all this truth +is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the +relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static +ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or +contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing _happens_ in the realm +of concepts; relations there are 'eternal' only. The theoretic gain +fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real +world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and +history. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right +in turning us away from conception and towards perception. + +By combining concepts with percepts, _we can draw maps of the +distribution_ of other percepts in distant space and time. To know +this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the +achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without +percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. From +maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the +slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming +our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous +practical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists. + +But concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths +of comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new +_values_ into life. In their mapping function they stand to perception +in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to +touch--Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory +touch. But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent +glory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement +of life's value follows. Even so does the conceptual world bring new +ranges of value and of motivation to our life. Its maps not only serve +us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures +is of itself an inspiring good. New interests and incitements, and +feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused. + +Abstractness _per se_ seems to have a touch of ideality. ROYCE'S +'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'Causes,' as +anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their +sordid particulars. The veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to +cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE +contends, in his _Philosophy of Loyalty_, appears another thing +altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe. +It transcends in value all those 'expediencies,' and is something to +live for, whether expedient or inexpedient. Truth with a big T is a +'momentous issue'; truths in detail are 'poor scraps,' mere 'crumbling +successes.' (_Op. cit._, Lecture VII, especially § v.) + +Is, now, such bringing into existence of a new _value_ to be regarded +as a theoretic achievement? The question is a nice one, for altho a +value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of +that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being +a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. So far as their +value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts +connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life, +so here again Bergson's formulation seems unobjectionable. Persons who +have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own +vital careers differently. It doesn't necessarily follow that they +understand other vital careers more intimately. + +Again it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones, +conceiving thus such realities as the ether, God, souls, or what not, +of which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant. +This surely is an increase of our knowledge, and may well be called +a theoretical achievement. Yet here again Bergson's criticisms hold +good. Much as conception may tell us _about_ such invisible objects, +it sheds no ray of light into their interior. The completer, indeed, +our definitions of ether-waves, atoms, Gods, or souls become, the less +instead of the more intelligible do they appear to us. The learned +in such things are consequently beginning more and more to ascribe a +solely instrumental value to our concepts of them. Ether and molecules +may be like co-ordinates and averages, only so many crutches by the +help of which we practically perform the operation of getting about +among our sensible experiences. + +We see from these considerations how easily the question of whether +the function of concepts is theoretical or practical may grow into +a logomachy. It may be better from this point of view to refuse to +recognize the alternative as a sharp one. The sole thing that is +certain in the midst of it all is that Bergson is absolutely right +in contending that the whole life of activity and change is inwardly +impenetrable to conceptual treatment, and that it opens itself only to +sympathetic apprehension at the hands of immediate feeling. All the +_whats_ as well as the _thats_ of reality, relational as well as +terminal, are in the end contents of immediate concrete perception. +Yet the remoter unperceived _arrangements_, temporal, spatial, and +logical, of these contents, are also something that we need to know as +well for the pleasure of the knowing as for the practical help. We may +call this need of arrangement a theoretic need or a practical need, +according as we choose to lay the emphasis; but Bergson is accurately +right when he limits conceptual knowledge to arrangement, and when he +insists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of +what we ought to know. + +Note 2, page 266.--Gaston Rageot, _Revue Philosophique_, vol. lxiv, p. +85 (July, 1907). + +Note 3, page 268.--I have myself talked in other ways as plausibly +as I could, in my _Psychology_, and talked truly (as I believe) in +certain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way invincibly +comes back. + + +LECTURE VII + +Note 1, page 278.--_Introduction to Hume_, 1874, p. 151. + +Note 2, page 279.--_Ibid._, pp. 16, 21, 36, _et passim_. + +Note 3, page 279.--See, _inter alia_, the chapter on the 'Stream of +Thought' in my own Psychologies; H. Cornelius, _Psychologie_, 1897, +chaps, i and iii; G.H. Luquet, _Idées Générales de Psychologie_, 1906, +_passim_. + +Note 4, page 280.--Compare, as to all this, an article by the present +writer, entitled 'A world of pure experience,' in the _Journal of +Philosophy_, New York, vol. i, pp. 533, 561 (1905). + +Note 5, page 280.--Green's attempt to discredit sensations by +reminding us of their 'dumbness,' in that they do not come already +_named_, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how intellectualism +is dominated by verbality. The unnamed appears in Green as synonymous +with the unreal. + +Note 6, page 283.--_Philosophy of Reflection_, i, 248 ff. + +Note 7, page 284.--Most of this paragraph is extracted from an address +of mine before the American Psychological Association, printed in the +_Psychological Review_, vol. ii, p. 105. I take pleasure in the +fact that already in 1895 I was so far advanced towards my present +bergsonian position. + +Note 8, page 289.--The conscious self of the moment, the central self, +is probably determined to this privileged position by its functional +connexion with the body's imminent or present acts. It is the present +_acting_ self. Tho the more that surrounds it may be 'subconscious' +to us, yet if in its 'collective capacity' it also exerts an active +function, it may be conscious in a wider way, conscious, as it were, +over our heads. + +On the relations of consciousness to action see Bergson's _Matière +et Mémoire, passim_, especially chap. i. Compare also the hints in +Münsterberg's _Grundzüge der Psychologie_, chap, xv; those in my own +_Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii, pp. 581-592; and those in W. +McDougall's _Physiological Psychology_, chap. vii. + +Note 9, page 295.--Compare _Zend-Avesta_, 2d edition, vol. i, pp. 165 +ff., 181, 206, 244 ff., etc.; _Die Tagesansicht_, etc., chap, v, § 6; +and chap. xv. + + +LECTURE VIII + +Note 1, page 330.--Blondel: _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, June, +1906, p. 241. + + + + +APPENDICES + + +APPENDIX A + +THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS[1] + +Experience in its immediacy seems perfectly fluent. The active +sense of living which we all enjoy, before reflection shatters our +instinctive world for us, is self-luminous and suggests no paradoxes. +Its difficulties are disappointments and uncertainties. They are not +intellectual contradictions. + +When the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers +incomprehensibilities in the flowing process. Distinguishing its +elements and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus +disjoins it cannot easily put together. Pyrrhonism accepts the +irrationality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. Other +philosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by +turning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first +negations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let +redemption take the place of innocence. The perfection with which any +philosophy may do this is the measure of its human success and of its +importance in philosophic history. In an article entitled 'A world of +pure experience,[2] I tried my own hand sketchily at + +[Footnote 1: Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, +and Scientific Methods_, vol. ii, New York, 1905, with slight verbal +revision.] + +[Footnote 2: _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods_, vol. i, No. 20, p. 566.] + +the problem, resisting certain first steps of dialectics by insisting +in a general way that the immediately experienced conjunctive +relations are as real as anything else. If my sketch is not to appear +too _näif_, I must come closer to details, and in the present essay I +propose to do so. + + +I + +'Pure experience' is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of +life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its +conceptual categories. Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma +from sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an +experience pure in the literal sense of a _that_ which is not yet any +definite _what_, tho ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of +oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don't appear; changing +throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no +points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure +experience in this state is but another name for feeling or sensation. +But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with +emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and +abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with +adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is +only a relative term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized +sensation which it still embodies. + +Far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that +of things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space, +and the self envelop everything, betwixt them, and flow together +without interfering. The things that they envelop come as separate in +some ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with +some ideas, and others are irreconcilable. Qualities compenetrate one +space, or exclude each other from it. They cling together persistently +in groups that move as units, or else they separate. Their changes are +abrupt or discontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as +they do so, they fall into either even or irregular series. + +In all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely +co-ordinate matters of immediate feeling. The conjunctions are +as primordial elements of 'fact' as are the distinctions and +disjunctions. In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute +is a new pulse of my life, I feel that the old life continues into it, +and the feeling of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous +feeling of a novelty. They, too, compenetrate harmoniously. +Prepositions, copulas, and conjunctions, 'is,' 'isn't,' 'then,' +'before,' 'in,' 'on,' 'beside,' 'between,' 'next,' 'like,' 'unlike,' +'as,' 'but,' flower out of the stream of pure experience, the stream +of concretes or the sensational stream, as naturally as nouns and +adjectives do, and they melt into it again as fluidly when we apply +them to a new portion of the stream. + + +II + +If now we ask why we must translate experience from a more concrete +or pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with ever more +abounding conceptual distinctions, rationalism and naturalism give +different replies. + +The rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and +its interests imperative; that to understand is simply the duty of +man; and that who questions this need not be argued with, for by the +fact of arguing he gives away his case. + +The naturalist answer is that the environment kills as well as +sustains us, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish the +experient himself is lessened just in the degree in which the elements +in it that have a practical bearing upon life are analyzed out of the +continuum and verbally fixed and coupled together, so that we may know +what is in the wind for us and get ready to react in time. Had pure +experience, the naturalist says, been always perfectly healthy, there +would never have arisen the necessity of isolating or verbalizing +any of its terms. We should just have experienced inarticulately and +unintellectually enjoyed. This leaning on 'reaction' in the naturalist +account implies that, whenever we intellectualize a relatively pure +experience, we ought to do so for the sake of redescending to the +purer or more concrete level again; and that if an intellect stays +aloft among its abstract terms and generalized relations, and does not +reinsert itself with its conclusions into some particular point of +the immediate stream of life, it fails to finish out its function and +leaves its normal race unrun. + +Most rationalists nowadays will agree that naturalism gives a true +enough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first, but +they will deny these latter implications. The case, they will say, +resembles that of sexual love. Originating in the animal need +of getting another generation born, this passion has developed +secondarily such imperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why +another generation ought to be born at all, the answer is: 'Chiefly +that love may go on.' Just so with our intellect: it originated as a +practical means of serving life; but it has developed incidentally the +function of understanding absolute truth; and life itself now seems to +be given chiefly as a means by which that function may be prosecuted. +But truth and the understanding of it lie among the abstracts and +universals, so the intellect now carries on its higher business wholly +in this region, without any need of redescending into pure experience +again. + +If the contrasted tendencies which I thus designate as naturalistic +and rationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an example +will make them more concrete. Mr. Bradley, for instance, is an +ultra-rationalist. He admits that our intellect is primarily +practical, but says that, for philosophers, the practical need is +simply Truth.[1] Truth, moreover, must be assumed 'consistent.' +Immediate experience has to be broken into subjects and qualities, +terms and relations, to be understood as truth at all. Yet when +so broken it is less consistent than ever. Taken raw, it is all +undistinguished. Intellectualized, it is all distinction without +oneness. 'Such an arrangement may _work_, but the theoretic problem is +not solved' (p. 23). The question is, '_How_ the diversity can exist +in harmony with the oneness' (p. 118). To go back to pure experience +is unavailing. 'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. 104). +Even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an _understanding_. 'It is +a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. 108-109). +The experiences offered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect +rejects because they contradict themselves. They offer a complex of +diversities conjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which +it cannot repeat as its own.... For to be satisfied, my intellect must +understand, and it cannot understand by taking a congeries in +the lump' (p. 570). So Mr. Bradley, in the sole interests of +'understanding' (as he conceives that function), turns his back on +finite + +[Footnote 1: _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 152-133.] + +experience forever. Truth must lie in the opposite direction, +the direction of the absolute; and this kind of rationalism and +naturalism, or (as I will now call it) pragmatism, walk thenceforward +upon opposite paths. For the one, those intellectual products are most +true which, turning their face towards the absolute, come nearest to +symbolizing its ways of uniting the many and the one. For the other, +those are most true which most successfully dip back into the finite +stream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some particular +wave or wavelet. Such confluence not only proves the intellectual +operation to have been true (as an addition may 'prove' that a +subtraction is already rightly performed), but it constitutes, +according to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. Only in +so far as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, into sensible +experience again, are our abstracts and universals true or false at +all. + + +III + +In Section the 6th of my article, 'A world of pure experience,' I +adopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one and the same +world is cognized by our different minds; but I left undiscussed the +dialectical arguments which maintain that this is logically absurd. +The usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assumes one +object (to wit, the world) to stand in two relations at once; to my +mind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second +relation cannot logically be the same term which it was at first. + +I have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with +absolutists, and it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly, +if it were valid, that I am bound to give it an attentive ear, and +seriously to search its strength. + +For instance, let the matter in dispute be a term _M_, asserted to be +on the one hand related to _L_, and on the other to _N_; and let the +two cases of relation be symbolized by _L--M_ and _M--N_ respectively. +When, now, I assume that the experience may immediately come and be +given in the shape _L--M--N_, with no trace of doubling or internal +fission in the _M_, I am told that this is all a popular delusion; +that _L--M--N_ logically means two different experiences, _L--M_ and +_M--N_, namely; and that although the absolute may, and indeed must, +from its superior point of view, read its own kind of unity into _M_'s +two editions, yet as elements in finite experience the two _M_'s +lie irretrievably asunder, and the world between them is broken and +unbridged. + +In arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the +logical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking +a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the +letter _M_ should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which +noun, being related to _L_ by one of its parts and to _N_ by another, +would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both +relations. Thus, one might say: 'David Hume, who weighed so many stone +by his body, influences posterity by his doctrine.' The body and the +doctrine are two things, between which our finite minds can discover +no real sameness, though the same name covers both of them. And then, +one might continue: 'Only an absolute is capable of uniting such a +non-identity.' We must, I say, avoid this sort of example; for the +dialectic insight, if true at all, must apply to terms and relations +universally. It must be true of abstract units as well as of nouns +collective; and if we prove it by concrete examples, we must take the +simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant material suggestions. + +Taken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention seems +to use as its major premise Hume's notion 'that all our distinct +perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives +any real connexion among distinct existences.' Undoubtedly, since we +use two phrases in talking first about '_M_'s relation to _L_' and +then again about '_M_'s relation to _N_,' we must be having, or must +have had, two distinct perceptions;--and the rest would then seem to +follow duly. But the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be +the fact of the two _phrases_; and this suggests that the argument +may be merely verbal. Can it be that the whole dialectic achievement +consists in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution +similar to that of the language in which we describe it? Must we +assert the objective doubleness of the _M_ merely because we have to +name it twice over when we name its two relations? + +Candidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic +conclusion![1] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple +concrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience +itself belies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate +concepts in analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be +but substitutional, and that the _M_ in _L--M_ and the _M_ in _M--N_ +_mean_ (_i.e._, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one +self-same piece, _M_, of sensible experience. This persistent identity +of certain units, or emphases, or points, or objects, or members--call +them what you will--of the experience-continuum, is just one of +those conjunctive features of it, on which I am obliged to insist so +emphatically. For samenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible +structure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its +after-image dies away, I still hark back to it as 'that same + +[Footnote 1: Technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of +composition.' A duality, predicable of the two wholes, _L--M_ and +_M--N_, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, _M_.] + +bell-stroke.' When I see a thing _M_, with _L_ to the left of it and +_N_ to the right of it, I see it _as_ one _M_; and if you tell me I +have had to 'take' it twice, I reply that if I 'took' it a thousand +times, I should still _see_ it as a unit.[1] Its unity is aboriginal, +just as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It +comes unbroken as _that M_, as a singular which I encounter; they come +broken, as _those_ takings, as my plurality of operations. The unity +and the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. I do not easily fathom +why my opponents should find the separateness so much more easily +understandable that they must needs infect the whole of finite +experience with it, and relegate the unity (now taken as a bare +postulate and no longer as a thing positively perceivable) to the +region of the absolute's mysteries. I do not easily fathom this, I +say, for the said opponents are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all +that I can catch in their talk is the substitution of what is true of +certain words for what is true of what they signify. They stay with +the words,--not returning to the stream of life whence all the meaning +of them came, and which is always ready to reabsorb them. + +[Footnote 1: I may perhaps refer here to my _Principles of +Psychology_, vol. i, pp. 459 ff. It really seems 'weird' to have to +argue (as I am forced now to do) for the notion that it is one sheet +of paper (with its two surfaces and all that lies between) which is +both under my pen and on the table while I write--the 'claim' that it +is two sheets seems so brazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists +of sincerity!] + + +IV + +For aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to believe that +one thing can be known by many knowers. But the denial of one thing in +many relations is but one application of a still profounder dialectic +difficulty. Man can't be good, said the sophists, for man is _man_ and +_good_ is good; and Hegel and Herbart in their day, more recently H. +Spir, and most recently and elaborately of all, Mr. Bradley, inform us +that a term can logically only be a punctiform unit, and that not one +of the conjunctive relations between things, which experience seems to +yield, is rationally possible. + +Of course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even a +shilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their +face-value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them. +The world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are +conjunctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves +disjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which +they are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang +together similarly, inasmuch as _some_ path of conjunctive transition +by which to pass from one of its parts to another may always be +discernible. Such determinately various hanging-together may be called +_concatenated_ union, to distinguish it from the 'through-and-through' +type of union, 'each in all and all in each' (union of _total +conflux_, as one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain +when things are taken in their absolute reality. In a concatenated +world a partial conflux often is experienced. Our concepts and our +sensations are confluent; successive states of the same ego, and +feelings of the same body are confluent. Where the experience is not +of conflux, it may be of conterminousness (things with but one thing +between); or of contiguousness (nothing between); or of likeness; or +of nearness; or of simultaneousness; or of in-ness; or of on-ness; or +of for-ness; or of simple with-ness; or even of mere and-ness, which +last relation would make of however disjointed a world otherwise, at +any rate for that occasion a universe 'of discourse.' Now Mr. Bradley +tells us that none of these relations, as we actually experience them, +can possibly be real.[1] My next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue +radical empiricism from Mr. Bradley. Fortunately, as it seems to me, +his general contention, that the very notion of relation is + +[Footnote 1: Here again the reader must beware of slipping from +logical into phenomenal considerations. It may well be that we +_attribute_ a certain relation falsely, because the circumstances of +the case, being complex, have deceived us. At a railway station we +may take our own train, and not the one that fills our window, to be +moving. We here put motion in the wrong place in the world, but in its +original place the motion is a part of reality. What Mr. Bradley +means is nothing like this, but rather that such things as motion +are nowhere real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically +incorrigible seats, relations are impossible of comprehension.] + +unthinkable clearly, has been successfully met by many critics.[1] + +It is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and to +the previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. So, +in noticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of +radical empiricism solely. + + +V + +The first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at +their face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some +as more external. When two terms are _similar_, their very natures +enter into the relation. Being _what_ they are, no matter where or +when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues +predicable as long as the terms continue. Other relations, the _where_ +and the _when_, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper +may be 'off' or 'on' the table, for example; and in either case the +relation involves only the outside of its terms. Having an outside, +both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is external: +the term's inner nature is irrelevant to it. Any + +[Footnote 1: Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, in his +_Man and the Cosmos_; by L.T. Hobhouse, in chapter xii (the Validity +of Judgment) of his _Theory of Knowledge_; and by F.C.S. Schiller, +in his _Humanism_, Essay XI. Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are +Hodder's, in the _Psychological Review_, vol. i, 307; Stout's, in +the _Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_, 1901-02, p. 1; and +MacLennan's, in the _Journal of Philosophy_, etc., vol. i, 403.] + +book, any table, may fall into the relation, which is created _pro hac +vice_, not by their existence, but by their casual situation. It +is just because so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so +external that a philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism +in its ontology. So far as things have space-relations, for example, +we are free to imagine them with different origins even. If they could +get to _be_, and get into space at all, then they may have done so +separately. Once there, however, they are _additives_ to one another, +and, with no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations +may supervene between them. The question of how things could come +to be, anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their +relations, once the being accomplished, may consist in. + +Mr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as the +space-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely different +subjects from those of which the absence of such relations might +a moment previously have been plausibly asserted. Not only is the +_situation_ different when the book is on the table, but the _book +itself_ is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the +table. He admits that 'such external relations + +[Footnote 1: Once more, don't slip from logical into physical +situations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, +or if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will +break it down. But such collateral phenomena are not the point at +issue. The point is whether the successive relations 'on' and 'not-on' +can rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms, +abstractly taken. Professor A.E. Taylor drops from logical into +material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof +that _A_, 'as contra-distinguished from _B_, is not the same thing as +mere _A_ not in any way affected' (_Elements of Metaphysics_, 1903, p. +145). Note the substitution, for 'related,' of the word 'affected,' +which begs the whole question.] + +seem possible and even existing.... That you do not alter what you +compare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious, +and that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not +occur to common sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these +difficulties.... There is a relation in the result, and this relation, +we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what +does it make a difference? [_doesn't it make a difference to us +onlookers, at least?_] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying +the terms by it? [_Surely the meaning is to tell the truth about their +relative position_.[1]] If, in short, it is external to the terms, how +can it possibly be true _of_ them? [_Is it the 'intimacy' suggested by +the little word 'of,' here, which I have underscored, that is the root +of Mr. Bradley's trouble?_].... If the terms from their inner nature +do not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, +they seem related for no reason at all.... Things are spatially +related, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and +yet in no way themselves + +[Footnote 1: But 'is there any sense,' asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly, +on p. 579, 'and if so, what sense, in truth that is only outside and +"about" things?' Surely such a question may be left unanswered.] + +are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external. But I +reply that, if so, I cannot _understand_ the leaving by the terms of +one set of relations and their adoption of another fresh set. The +process and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it +[_surely they contribute to it all there is 'of' it!_] seem irrational +throughout. [_If 'irrational' here means simply 'non-rational,' +or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no +reproach; if it means 'contradicting' such essence, Mr. Bradley should +show wherein and how_.] But, if they contribute anything, they must +surely be affected internally. [_Why so, if they contribute only their +surface? In such relations as 'on,' 'a foot away,' 'between,' 'next,' +etc., only surfaces are in question_.] ... If the terms contribute +anything whatever, then the terms are affected [_inwardly altered?_] +by the arrangement.... That for working purposes we treat, and do well +to treat, some relations as external merely, I do not deny, and that +of course is not the question at issue here. That question is ... +whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation [_i.e., +a relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their +nature simultaneously_] is possible and forced on us by the facts.'[1] + +Mr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according +to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a +medium of external relations; + +[Footnote 1: _Appearance and Reality_, 2d edition, pp. 575-576.] + +and he then concludes that 'Irrationality and externality cannot be +the last truth about things. Somewhere there must be a reason why this +and that appear together. And this reason and reality must reside in +the whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in +which their internal connexion must lie, and out of which from the +background appear those fresh results which never could have come +from the premises' (p. 577). And he adds that 'Where the whole is +different, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be +different.... They are altered so far only [_how far? farther than +externally, yet not through and through?_], but still they are +altered.... I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by +their whole [_qualified how?--do their external relations, situations, +dates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify +them 'far' enough?_], and that in the second case there is a whole +which differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole; +and I urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are +altered' (p. 579). + +Not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: _und +zwar_ 'so far.' But just _how_ far is the whole problem; and +'through-and-through' would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley's somewhat +undecided utterances[1]) + +[Footnote 1: I say 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' +which sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very +pages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for +example, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its +'character' unchanged, though, in its change of place, its 'existence' +gets altered; or what he says, on p. 579, of the possibility that +an abstract quality A, B, or C, in a thing, 'may throughout remain +unchanged' although the thing be altered; or his admission that in +red-hairedness, both as analyzed out of a man and when given with +the rest of him, there may be 'no change' (p. 580). Why does he +immediately add that for the pluralist to plead the non-mutation of +such abstractions would be an _ignoratio elenchi_? It is impossible to +admit it to be such. The entire _elenchus_ and inquest is just as to +whether parts which you can abstract from existing wholes can also +contribute to other wholes without changing their inner nature. If +they can thus mould various wholes into new _gestalt-qualitäten_, +then it follows that the same elements are logically able to exist in +different wholes [whether physically able would depend on +additional hypotheses]; that partial changes are thinkable, and +through-and-through change not a dialectic necessity; that monism is +only an hypothesis; and that an additively constituted universe is +a rationally respectable hypothesis also. All the theses of radical +empiricism, in short, follow.] + +to be the full bradleyan answer. The 'whole' which he here treats as +primary and determinative of each part's manner of 'contributing,' +simply _must_, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There _must_ +be total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The +'must' appears here as a _Machtspruch_, as an _ipse dixit_ of Mr. +Bradley's absolutistically tempered 'understanding,' for he candidly +confesses that how the parts _do_ differ as they contribute to +different wholes, is unknown to him (p. 578). + +Although I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr. +Bradley's understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted. +'External relations' stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain, +for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, +but also perfectly intelligible factors of reality. + + +VI + +Mr. Bradley's understanding shows the most extraordinary power of +perceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in +comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say 'neither or both,' +but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain _whats_ +from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness +_as thus isolated_. But this does not prevent him from equally well +understanding their combination with each other as _originally +experienced in the concrete_, or their confluence with new sensible +experiences in which they recur as 'the same.' Returning into the +stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and _thats_ and +abstract _whats_, grow confluent again, and the word 'is' names +all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the +isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to +him impossible.[1] 'To understand a complex _AB_,' he + +[Footnote 1: So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like +this: 'Book,' 'table,' 'on'--how does the existence of these three +abstract elements result in _this_ book being livingly on _this_ +table? Why isn't the table on the book? Or why doesn't the 'on' +connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table? +Mustn't something _in_ each of the three elements already determine +the two others to _it_, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float +vaguely? Mustn't the whole fact be _prefigured in each part_, and +exist _de jure_ before it can exist _de facto_? But, if so, in what +can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of +the whole fact's constitution actuating; every partial factor as its +purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of +looking behind a fact _in esse_ for the ground of the fact, and +finding it in the shape of the very same fact _in posse_? Somewhere we +must leave off with a _constitution_ behind which there is nothing.] + +says, 'I must begin with _A_ or _B_. And beginning, say with _A_, if +I then merely find _B_, I have either lost _A_, or I have got beside +_A_, [_the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction +'external' and therefore unintelligible_] something else, and in +neither case have I understood.[1] For my intellect cannot simply +unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of +togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside _A_ and _B_, you offer +me their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more +than another external element. And "facts," once for all, are for my +intellect not true unless they satisfy it.... The intellect has in its +nature no principle of mere togetherness' (pp. 570, 572). + +Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power +by which we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give +due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and +amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its +behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he +elsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intellect a _proprius motus_ of +transition, but says that + +[Footnote 1: Apply this to the case of 'book-on-table'! W.J.] + +when he looks for _these_ transitions in the detail of living +experience, he 'is unable to verify such a solution' (p. 569). + +Yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like +in case we had them. He only defines them negatively--they are not +spatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or +otherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naïvely trace +relations, for relations _separate_ terms, and need themselves to be +hooked on _ad infinitum_. The nearest approach he makes to describing +a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of _A_ and _B_ +as being 'united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the +nature of both alike' (p. 570). But this (which, _pace_ Mr. Bradley, +seems exquisitely analogous to 'taking a congeries in a lump,' if +not to 'swamping') suggests nothing but that _conflux_ which pure +experience so abundantly offers, as when 'space,' 'white,' and 'sweet' +are confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal, and +optical sensations confluent in 'my hand.'[1] All that I can verify +in the transitions which Mr. Bradley's intellect desiderates as +its _proprius motus_ is a reminiscence of these and other sensible +conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions), + +[Footnote 1: How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes +(or in 'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc.) the relation is an +additional entity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related +again to each! Both Bradley (_Appearance and Reality_, pp. 32-33) and +Royce (_The World and the Individual_, i, 128) lovingly repeat this +piece of profundity.] + +but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized. +Bradley, in short, repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its +image in the water. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest +union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite, +the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon as you see the fact of +them,[1] for there is no how except the constitution of the fact as +given; with all this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for +some ineffable union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained +it, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full +possession. Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all +of us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed. + +Polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession +in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against +its best known champion would count as either superficiality or +inability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated +in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as +experienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an +empirical theory of knowledge intact, and lets us continue to believe +with common sense that one object _may_ be known, if we have any +ground for thinking that it _is_ known, to many knowers. + +[Footnote 1: The 'why' and the 'whence' are entirely other questions, +not under discussion, as I understand Mr. Bradley. Not how experience +gets itself born, but how it can be what it is after it is born, is +the puzzle.] + + + + +APPENDIX B + + +THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY[1] + +... Mr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to +philosophy, and if one turns to the current literature of the +subject--his own writings included--one easily gathers what he means. +The opponents cannot even understand one another. Mr. Bradley says to +Mr. Ward: 'I do not care what your oracle is, and your preposterous +psychology may here be gospel if you please; ... but if the revelation +does contain a meaning, I will commit myself to this: either the +oracle is so confused that its signification is not discoverable, +or, upon the other hand, if it can be pinned down to any definite +statement, then that statement will be false.'[2] Mr. Ward in turn +says of Mr. Bradley: 'I cannot even imagine the state of mind to which +his description applies.... It reads like an unintentional travesty of +Herbartian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without +being at the pains to master it.' Münsterberg excludes a view opposed +to his own by saying that with any one who holds it a _verständigung_ +with him is '_grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen_'; and Royce, + +[Footnote 1: President's Address before the American Psychological +Association, December, 1904. Reprinted from the _Psychological +Review_, vol. xii, 1905, with slight verbal revision.] + +[Footnote 2: _Appearance and Reality_, p. 117. Obviously written _at_ +Ward, though Ward's name is not mentioned.] + +in a review of Stout,[1] hauls him over the coals at great length for +defending 'efficacy' in a way which I, for one, never gathered from +reading him, and which I have heard Stout himself say was quite +foreign to the intention of his text. + +In these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and +different points of view are talked of _durcheinander_. + +(1) There is a psychological question: Have we perceptions of +activity? and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have +them? + +(2) There is a metaphysical question: Is there a _fact_ of activity? +and if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what +does it do, if it does anything? And finally there is a logical +question: + +(3) Whence do we _know_ activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or +by some other source of information? Throughout page after page of the +literature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and +mere description of the surface-show of experience is proffered as if +it implicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants, +moreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view +would carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's +experience it would make if his adversary's were triumphant. + +[Footnote 1: _Mind_, N.S., VI, 379.] + +It seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it +ought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience, +to be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them +somewhat. The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there +is no difference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact +somewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of +opinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some +practical or particular issue. The principle of pure experience is +also a methodical postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it +says, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some +experient; and for every feature of fact ever so experienced, a +definite place must be found somewhere in the final system of reality. +In other words: Everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and +every kind of thing experienced must somewhere be real. + +Armed with these rules of method, let us see what face the problems of +activity present to us. + +By the principle of pure experience, either the word 'activity' must +have no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what +it means must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be +definitely pointed out. Whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually +come to make regarding activity, _that sort_ of thing will be what the +judgments are about. The first step to take, then, is to ask where in +the stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity. +What we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later +question. + +Now it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever +we find anything _going on_. Taken in the broadest sense, any +apprehension of something _doing_, is an experience of activity. Were +our world describable only by the words 'nothing happening,' 'nothing +changing,' 'nothing doing,' we should unquestionably call it an +'inactive' world. Bare activity, then, as we may call it, means the +bare fact of event or change. 'Change taking place' is a unique +content of experience, one of those 'conjunctive' objects which +radical empiricism seeks so earnestly to rehabilitate and preserve. +The sense of activity is thus in the broadest and vaguest way +synonymous with the sense of 'life.' We should feel our own subjective +life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming an otherwise inactive +world. Our own reaction on its monotony would be the one thing +experienced there in the form of something coming to pass. + +This seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist +that for an experient to be at all is to be active. It seems to +justify, or at any rate to explain, Mr. Ward's expression that we +_are_ only as we are active,[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. ii, p. 245. One thinks +naturally of the peripatetic _actus primus_ and _actus secundus_ +here.] + +for we _are_ only as experients; and it rules out Mr. Bradley's +contention that 'there is no original experience of anything like +activity.' What we ought to say about activities thus simply given, +whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they effect +anything at all--these are later questions, to be answered only when +the field of experience is enlarged. + +Bare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite +direction, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a +wild _ideenflucht_, or _rhapsodie der wahrnehmungen_, as Kant would +say, would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive +world. + +But in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of +the activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire +and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it +overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of +resistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like +these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed +to activity arise. Here also the notion of causal efficacy comes +to birth. Perhaps the most elaborate work ever done in descriptive +psychology has been the analysis by various recent writers of the more +complex activity-situations. In their descriptions, exquisitely subtle +some of them,[1] the activity appears as the _gestalt-qualität_ + +[Footnote 1: Their existence forms a curious commentary on Professor +Munsterberg's dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He +himself has contributed in a superior way to their description, both +in his _Willenshandlung_, and in his _Grundzüge_, Part II, chap, ix, § +7.] + +or the _fundirte inhalt_ (or as whatever else you may please to call +the conjunctive form) which the content falls into when we experience +it in the ways which the describers set forth. Those factors in those +relations are what we _mean_ by activity-situations; and to the +possible enumeration and accumulation of their circumstances and +ingredients there would seem to be no natural bound. Every hour of +human life could contribute to the picture gallery; and this is the +only fault that one can find with such descriptive industry--where is +it going to stop? Ought we to listen forever to verbal pictures of +what we have already in concrete form in our own breasts?[1] +They never take us off the superficial plane. We knew the facts +already--less spread out and separated, to be sure--but we knew them +still. We always felt our own activity, for example, as 'the expansion +of an idea with which our Self is identified, against an obstacle'; +and the following out of such a definition through a multitude of +cases elaborates the obvious so as to be little more than an exercise +in synonymic speech. + +All the descriptions have to trace familiar outlines, and to use +familiar terms. The activity is, for example, + +[Footnote 1: I ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous +sinner in my own chapter on the will.] + +attributed either to a physical or to a mental agent, and is either +aimless or directed. If directed, it shows tendency. The tendency may +or may not be resisted. If not, we call the activity immanent, as when +a body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at +their own sweet will. If resistance is met, _its_ agent complicates +the situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency +continues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain +or squeeze. Will, in the narrower sense of the word, then comes upon +the scene, whenever, along with the tendency, the strain and squeeze +are sustained. But the resistance may be great enough to check the +tendency, or even to reverse its path. In that case, we (if 'we' were +the original agents or subjects of the tendency) are overpowered. +The phenomenon turns into one of tension simply, or of necessity +succumbed--to, according as the opposing power is only equal, or is +superior to ourselves. + +Whosoever describes an experience in such terms as these, describes an +experience _of_ activity. If the word have any meaning, it must denote +what there is found. _There_ is complete activity in its original and +first intention. What it is 'known-as' is what there appears. The +experiencer of such a situation possesses all that the idea contains. +He feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the +triumph, or the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the +space, the swiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and +color, the pain and pleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining +characters the situation may involve. He goes through all that ever +can be imagined where activity is supposed. If we suppose activities +to go on outside of our experience, it is in forms like these that we +must suppose them, or else give them some other name; for the word +'activity' has no imaginable content whatever save these experiences +of process, obstruction, striving, strain, or release, ultimate +_qualia_ as they are of the life given us to be known. + +Were this the end of the matter, one might think that whenever we had +successfully lived through an activity-situation we should have to be +permitted, without provoking contradiction, to say that we had +been really active, that we had met real resistance and had really +prevailed. Lotze somewhere says that to be an entity all that is +necessary is to _gelten_ as an entity, to operate, or be felt, +experienced, recognized, or in any way realized, as such. In our +activity-experiences the activity assuredly fulfils Lotze's demand. +It makes itself _gelten_. It is witnessed at its work. No matter what +activities there may really be in this extraordinary universe of ours, +it is impossible for us to conceive of any one of them being either +lived through or authentically known otherwise than in this dramatic +shape of something sustaining a felt purpose against felt obstacles +and overcoming or being overcome. What 'sustaining' means here is +clear to any one who has lived through the experience, but to no one +else; just as 'loud,' 'red,' 'sweet,' mean something only to beings +with ears, eyes, and tongues. The _percipi_ in these originals of +experience is the _esse_; the curtain is the picture. If there is +anything hiding in the background, it ought not to be called activity, +but should get itself another name. + +This seems so obviously true that one might well experience +astonishment at finding so many of the ablest writers on the subject +flatly denying that the activity we live through in these situations +is real. Merely to feel active is not to be active, in their sight. +The agents that appear in the experience are not real agents, the +resistances do not really resist, the effects that appear are not +really effects at all.[1] It is evident from this that + +[Footnote 1: _Verborum gratiâ_:'The feeling of activity is not able, +quâ feeling, to tell us anything about activity' (Loveday: _Mind_, +N.S., X., 403); 'A sensation or feeling or sense of activity ... is +not, looked at in another way, a feeling of activity at all. It is a +mere sensation shut up within which you could by no reflection get the +idea of activity.... Whether this experience is or is not later on a +character essential to our perception and our idea of activity, it, as +it comes first, is not in itself an experience of activity at all. It, +as it comes first, is only so for extraneous reasons and only so for +an outside observer' (Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, 2d edition, +p. 605); 'In dem tätigkeitsgefühle leigt an sich nicht der +geringste beweis für das vorhandensein einer psychischen tätigkeit' +(Münsterberg: _Grundzüge_, etc., p. 67). I could multiply similar +quotations, and would have introduced some of them into my text to +make it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of +view in most of these author's discussions (not in Münsterberg's) make +it impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. I am sure in any +case to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note, +by omission of the context, so the less I name names and the more +I stick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of +opinion, the safer it will be. And apropos of misunderstandings, I may +add to this note a complaint on my own account. Professor Stout, in +the excellent chapter on 'Mental Activity,' in vol. i of his _Analytic +Psychology_, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with +certain muscular feelings, and gives quotations to bear him out. They +are from certain paragraphs on 'the Self,' in which my attempt was to +show what the central nucleus of the activities that we call 'ours' +is. I found it in certain intracephalic movements which we habitually +oppose, as 'subjective,' to the activities of the transcorporeal +world. I sought to show that there is no direct evidence that we feel +the activity of an inner spiritual agent as such (I should now say the +activity of 'consciousness' as such, see my paper 'Does consciousness +exist?' in the _Journal of Philosophy_, vol. i, p. 477). There are, in +fact, three distinguishable 'activities' in the field of discussion: +the elementary activity involved in the mere _that_ of experience, in +the fact that _something_ is going on, and the farther specification +of this _something_ into two _whats_, an activity felt as 'ours,' and +an activity ascribed to objects. Stout, as I apprehend him, identifies +'our' activity with that of the total experience-process, and when I +circumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort +of external appendage to itself (pp. 162-163), as if I 'separated the +activity from the process which is active.' But all the processes in +question are active, and their activity is inseparable from their +being. My book raised only the question of _which_ activity deserved +the name of 'ours.' So far as we are 'persons,' and contrasted and +opposed to an 'environment,' movements in our body figure as our +activities; and I am unable to find any other activities that are ours +in this strictly personal sense. There is a wider sense in which +the whole 'choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,' and their +activities, are ours, for they are our 'objects.' But 'we' are here +only another name for the total process of experience, another name +for all that is, in fact; and I was dealing with the personal and +individualized self exclusively in the passages with which Professor +Stout finds fault. + +The individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing properly +called self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. The +world experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness') +comes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision, +centre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is is 'here'; +when the body acts is 'now'; what the body touches is 'this'; all +other things are 'there' and 'then' and 'that.' These words of +emphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference +to a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the +systematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no +developed or active experience exists for us at all except in that +ordered form. So far as 'thoughts' and 'feelings' can be active, their +activity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through +first arousing its activities can they begin to change those of +the rest of the world. The body is the storm centre, the origin +of co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that +experience-train. Everything circles round it, and is felt from its +point of view. The word 'I,' then, is primarily a noun of position, +just like 'this' and 'here.' Activities attached to 'this' position +have prerogative emphasis, and, if activities have feelings, must be +felt in a peculiar way. The word 'my' designates the kind of emphasis. +I see no inconsistency whatever in defending, on the one hand, 'my' +activities as unique and opposed to those of outer nature, and, on the +other hand, in affirming, after introspection, that they consist in +movements in the head. The 'my' of them is the emphasis, the feeling +of perspective-interest in which they are dyed.] + +mere descriptive analysis of any one of our activity-experiences is +not the whole story, that there is something still to tell _about_ +them that has led such able writers to conceive of a _Simon-pure_ +activity, of an activity _an sich_, that does, and doesn't merely +appear to us to do, and compared with whose real doing all this +phenomenal activity is but a specious sham. + +The metaphysical question opens here; and I think that the state of +mind of one possessed by it is often something like this: 'It is +all very well,' we may imagine him saying, 'to talk about certain +experience-series taking on the form of feelings of activity, just as +they might take on musical or geometric forms. Suppose that they do +so; suppose that what we feel is a will to stand a strain. Does our +feeling do more than _record_ the fact that the strain is sustained? +The _real_ activity, meanwhile, is the _doing_ of the fact; and what +is the doing made of before the record is made? What in the will +_enables_ it to act thus? And these trains of experience themselves, +in which activities appear, what makes them _go_ at all? Does the +activity in one bit of experience bring the next bit into being? As an +empiricist you cannot say so, for you have just declared activity +to be only a kind of synthetic object, or conjunctive relation +experienced between bits of experience already made. But what made +them at all? What propels experience _überhaupt_ into being? _There_ +is the activity that _operates_; the activity _felt_ is only its +superficial sign.' + +To the metaphysical question, popped upon us in this way, I must pay +serious attention ere I end my remarks, but, before doing so, let me +show that without leaving the immediate reticulations of experience, +or asking what makes activity itself act, we still find the +distinction between less real and more real activities forced upon us, +and are driven to much soul-searching on the purely phenomenal plane. + +We must not forget, namely, in talking of the ultimate character of +our activity-experiences, that each of them is but a portion of a +wider world, one link in the vast chain of processes of experience +out of which history is made. Each partial process, to him who lives +through it, defines itself by its origin and its goal; but to an +observer with a wider mind-span who should live outside of it, +that goal would appear but as a provisional halting-place, and the +subjectively felt activity would be seen to continue into objective +activities that led far beyond. We thus acquire a habit, in discussing +activity-experiences, of defining them by their relation to something +more. If an experience be one of narrow span, it will be mistaken as +to what activity it is and whose. You think that _you_ are acting +while you are only obeying some one's push. You think you are doing +_this_, but you are doing something of which you do not dream. For +instance, you think you are but drinking this glass; but you are +really creating the liver-cirrhosis that will end your days. You think +you are just driving this bargain, but, as Stevenson says somewhere, +you are laying down a link in the policy of mankind. + +Generally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision, +regards the _ultimate outcome_ of an activity as what it is more +really doing; and _the most previous agent_ ascertainable, being the +first source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the +field. The others but transmit that agent's impulse; on him we put +responsibility; we name him when one asks us, 'Who's to blame?' + +But the most previous agents ascertainable, instead of being of longer +span, are often of much shorter span than the activity in view. +Brain-cells are our best example. My brain-cells are believed to +excite each other from next to next (by contiguous transmission of +katabolic alteration, let us say), and to have been doing so long +before this present stretch of lecturing-activity on my part began. +If any one cell-group stops its activity, the lecturing will cease or +show disorder of form. _Cessante causa, cessat et effectus_--does not +this look as if the short-span brain activities were the more real +activities, and the lecturing activities on my part only their +effects? Moreover, as Hume so clearly pointed out, in my mental +activity-situation the words physically to be uttered are represented +as the activity's immediate goal. These words, however, cannot be +uttered without intermediate physical processes in the bulb and vagi +nerves, which processes nevertheless fail to figure in the mental +activity-series at all. That series, therefore, since it leaves out +vitally real steps of action, cannot represent the real activities. It +is something purely subjective; the _facts_ of activity are elsewhere. +They are something far more interstitial, so to speak, than what my +feelings record. + +The _real_ facts of activity that have in point of fact been +systematically pleaded for by philosophers have, so far as my +information goes, been of three principal types. + +The first type takes a consciousness of wider time-span than ours to +be the vehicle of the more real activity. Its will is the agent, and +its purpose is the action done. + +The second type assumes that 'ideas' struggling with one another are +the agents, and that the prevalence of one set of them is the action. + +The third type believes that nerve-cells are the agents, and that +resultant motor discharges are the acts achieved. + +Now if we must de-realize our immediately felt activity-situations for +the benefit of either of these types of substitute, we ought to know +what the substitution practically involves. _What practical difference +ought it to make if_, instead of saying naively that 'I' am active now +in delivering this address, I say that _a wider thinker is active_, +or that _certain ideas are active_, or that _certain nerve-cells are +active_, in producing the result? + +This would be the pragmatic meaning of the three hypotheses. Let us +take them in succession in seeking a reply. + +If we assume a wider thinker, it is evident that his purposes envelop +mine. I am really lecturing _for_ him; and altho I cannot surely know +to what end, yet if I take him religiously, I can trust it to be a +good end, and willingly connive. I can be happy in thinking that my +activity transmits his impulse, and that his ends prolong my own. So +long as I take him religiously, in short, he does not de-realize my +activities. He tends rather to corroborate the reality of them, so +long as I believe both them and him to be good. + +When now we turn to ideas, the case is different, inasmuch as ideas +are supposed by the association psychology to influence each other +only from next to next. The 'span' of an idea, or pair of ideas, is +assumed to be much smaller instead of being larger than that of my +total conscious field. The same results may get worked out in both +cases, for this address is being given anyhow. But the ideas supposed +to 'really' work it out had no prevision of the whole of it; and if +I was lecturing for an absolute thinker in the former case, so, +by similar reasoning, are my ideas now lecturing for me, that is, +accomplishing unwittingly a result which I approve and adopt. But, +when this passing lecture is over, there is nothing in the bare notion +that ideas have been its agents that would seem to guarantee that my +present purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. _I_ may have ulterior +developments in view; but there is no certainty that my ideas as such +will wish to, or be able to, work them out. + +The like is true if nerve-cells be the agents. The activity of a +nerve-cell must be conceived of as a tendency of exceedingly short +reach, an 'impulse' barely spanning the way to the next cell--for +surely that amount of actual 'process' must be 'experienced' by the +cells if what happens between them is to deserve the name of activity +at all. But here again the gross resultant, as _I_ perceive it, is +indifferent to the agents, and neither wished or willed or foreseen. +Their being agents now congruous with my will gives me no guarantee +that like results will recur again from their activity. In point of +fact, all sorts of other results do occur. My mistakes, impotencies, +perversions, mental obstructions, and frustrations generally, are also +results of the activity of cells. Altho these are letting me lecture +now, on other occasions they make me do things that I would willingly +not do. + +The question _Whose is the real activity?_ is thus tantamount to the +question _What will be the actual results?_ Its interest is dramatic; +how will things work out? If the agents are of one sort, one way; if +of another sort, they may work out very differently. The pragmatic +meaning of the various alternatives, in short, is great. It makes more +than a merely verbal difference which opinion we take up. + +You see it is the old dispute come back! Materialism and teleology; +elementary short-span actions summing themselves 'blindly,' or far +foreseen ideals coming with effort into act. + +Naïvely we believe, and humanly and dramatically we like to believe, +that activities both of wider and of narrower span are at work in life +together, that both are real, and that the long-span tendencies yoke +the others in their service, encouraging them in the right direction, +and damping them when they tend in other ways. But how to represent +clearly the _modus operandi_ of such steering of small tendencies +by large ones is a problem which metaphysical thinkers will have to +ruminate upon for many years to come. Even if such control should +eventually grow clearly picturable, the question how far it is +successfully exerted in this actual world can be answered only by +investigating the details of fact. No philosophic knowledge of the +general nature and constitution of tendencies, or of the relation +of larger to smaller ones, can help us to predict which of all the +various competing tendencies that interest us in this universe are +likeliest to prevail. We know as an empirical fact that far-seeing +tendencies often carry out their purpose, but we know also that they +are often defeated by the failure of some contemptibly small process +on which success depends. A little thrombus in a statesman's meningeal +artery will throw an empire out of gear. Therefore I cannot even hint +at any solution of the pragmatic issue. I have only wished to show you +that that issue is what gives the real interest to all inquiries into +what kinds of activity may be real. Are the forces that really act in +the world more foreseeing or more blind? As between 'our' activities +as 'we' experience them, and those of our ideas, or of our +brain-cells, the issue is well defined. + +I said awhile back (p. 381) that I should return to the 'metaphysical' +question before ending; so, with a few words about that, I will now +close my remarks. + +In whatever form we hear this question propounded, I think that it +always arises from two things, a belief that _causality_ must be +exerted in activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made. If we +take an activity-situation at its face-value, it seems as if we caught +_in flagrante delicto_ the very power that makes facts come and be. I +now am eagerly striving, for example, to get this truth which I seem +half to perceive, into words which shall make it show more clearly. If +the words come, it will seem as if the striving itself had drawn or +pulled them into actuality out from the state of merely possible being +in which they were. How is this feat performed? How does the pulling +_pull_? How do I get my hold on words not yet existent, and when they +come, by what means have I _made_ them come? Really it is the problem +of creation; for in the end the question is: How do I make them _be?_ +Real activities are those that really make things be, without which +the things are not, and with which they are there. Activity, so far as +we merely feel it, on the other hand, is only an impression of ours, +it may be maintained; and an impression is, for all this way of +thinking, only a shadow of another fact. + +Arrived at this point, I can do little more than indicate the +principles on which, as it seems to me, a radically empirical +philosophy is obliged to rely in handling such a dispute. + +If there _be_ real creative activities in being, radical empiricism +must say, somewhere they must be immediately lived. Somewhere the +_that_ of efficacious causing and the _what_ of it must be experienced +in one, just as the what and the that of 'cold' are experienced in one +whenever a man has the sensation of cold here and now. It boots not to +say that our sensations are fallible. They are indeed; but to see the +thermometer contradict us when we say 'it is cold' does not abolish +cold as a specific nature from the universe. Cold is in the arctic +circle if not here. Even so, to feel that our train is moving when the +train beside our window moves, to see the moon through a telescope +come twice as near, or to see two pictures as one solid when we look +through a stereoscope at them, leaves motion, nearness, and solidity +still in being--if not here, yet each in its proper seat elsewhere. +And wherever the seat of real causality _is_, as ultimately known 'for +true' (in nerve-processes, if you will, that cause our feelings of +activity as well as the movements which these seem to prompt), a +philosophy of pure experience can consider the real causation as no +other _nature_ of thing than that which even in our most erroneous +experiences appears to be at work. Exactly what appears there is what +we _mean_ by working, tho we may later come to learn that working was +not exactly _there_. Sustaining, persevering, striving, paying with +effort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving our intention--this +_is_ action, this _is_ effectuation in the only shape in which, by +a pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it anywhere can be +discussed. Here is creation in its first intention, here is causality +at work.[1] To treat this offhand as the bare illusory + +[Footnote 1: Let me not be told that this contradicts a former article +of mine, 'Does consciousness exist?' in the _Journal of Philosophy_ +for September 1, 1904 (see especially page 489), in which it was said +that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures +work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water +wets, etc.), but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are +composed of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other: they +check, sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely +associational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my +reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that +energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is +a desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a +feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. +The interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,' +'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental +series. In what we term the physical drama these qualities play +absolutely no part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can +see no inconsistency.] + +surface of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable ontological +principle hidden in the cubic deeps, is, for the more empirical way of +thinking, only animism in another shape. You explain your given fact +by your 'principle,' but the principle itself, when you look clearly +at it, turns out to be nothing but a previous little spiritual copy +of the fact. Away from that one and only kind of fact your mind, +considering causality, can never get.[1] + +[Footnote 1: I have found myself more than once accused in print of +being the assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since +literary misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should +like to say that such an interpretation of the pages I have published +on effort and on will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to +express. I owe all my doctrines on this subject to Renouvier; and +Renouvier, as I understand him, is (or at any rate then was) an out +and out phenomenist, a denier of 'forces' in the most strenuous +sense. Single clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their +connexion, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal +principle of energy; but I defy any one to show a single sentence +which, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate +that view. The misinterpretation probably arose at first from my +having defended (after Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. +'Free will' was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural +agent. As a matter of plain history, the only 'free will' I have +ever thought of defending is the character of novelty in fresh +activity-situations. If an activity-process is the form of a whole +'field of consciousness,' and if each field of consciousness is not +only in its totality unique (as is now commonly admitted), but has +its elements unique (since in that situation they are all dyed in +the total), then novelty is perpetually entering the world and what +happens there is not pure _repetition_, as the dogma of the literal +uniformity of nature requires. Activity-situations come, in short, +each with an original touch. A 'principle' of free will, if there were +one, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but I never +saw, nor do I now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the +phenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.] + +I conclude, then, that real effectual causation as an ultimate nature, +as a 'category,' if you like, of reality, is _just what we feel it +to be_, just that kind of conjunction which our own activity-series +reveal. We have the whole butt and being of it in our hands; and the +healthy thing for philosophy is to leave off grubbing underground for +what effects effectuation, or what makes action act, and to try to +solve the concrete questions of where effectuation in this world is +located, of which things are the true causal agents there, and of what +the more remote effects consist. + +From this point of view the greater sublimity traditionally attributed +to the metaphysical inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely +disappears. If we could know what causation really and +transcendentally is in itself, the only _use_ of the knowledge would +be to help us to recognize an actual cause when we had one, and so to +track the future course of operations more intelligently out. The mere +abstract inquiry into causation's hidden nature is not more sublime +than any other inquiry equally abstract. Causation inhabits no more +sublime level than anything else. It lives, apparently, in the dirt of +the world as well as in the absolute, or in man's unconquerable mind. +The worth and interest of the world consists not in its elements, +be these elements things, or be they the conjunctions of things; it +exists rather in the dramatic outcome of the whole process, and in the +meaning of the succession stages which the elements work out. + +My colleague and master, Josiah Royce, in a page of his review of +Stout's _Analytic Psychology_, in _Mind_ for 1897, has some fine words +on this point with which I cordially agree. I cannot agree with his +separating the notion of efficacy from that of activity altogether +(this I understand to be one contention of his), for activities are +efficacious whenever they are real activities at all. But the inner +nature both of efficacy and of activity are superficial problems, I +understand Royce to say; and the only point for us in solving them +would be their possible use in helping us to solve the far deeper +problem of the course and meaning of the world of life. Life, says +our colleague, is full of significance, of meaning, of success and of +defeat, of hoping and of striving, of longing, of desire, and of inner +value. It is a total presence that embodies worth. To live our own +lives better in this presence is the true reason why we wish to know +the elements of things; so even we psychologists must end on this +pragmatic note. + +The urgent problems of activity are thus more concrete. They all +are problems of the true relation of longer-span to shorter-span +activities. When, for example, a number of 'ideas' (to use the name +traditional in psychology) grow confluent in a larger field of +consciousness, do the smaller activities still coexist with the wider +activities then experienced by the conscious subject? And, if so, do +the wide activities accompany the narrow ones inertly, or do they +exert control? Or do they perhaps utterly supplant and replace them +and short-circuit their effects? Again, when a mental activity-process +and a brain-cell series of activities both terminate in the same +muscular movement, does the mental process steer the neural processes +or not? Or, on the other hand, does it independently short-circuit +their effects? Such are the questions that we must begin with. But so +far am I from suggesting any definitive answer to such questions, +that I hardly yet can put them clearly. They lead, however, into that +region of panpsychic and ontologic speculation of which Professors +Bergson and Strong have lately enlarged the literature in so able and +interesting a way. The results of these authors seem in many respects +dissimilar, and I understand them as yet but imperfectly; but I cannot +help suspecting that the direction of their work is very promising, +and that they have the hunter's instinct for the fruitful trails. + + + + +APPENDIX C + + +ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING + +In my _Principles of Psychology_ (vol. ii, p. 646) I gave the name of +the 'axiom of skipped intermediaries and transferred relations' to a +serial principle of which the foundation of logic, the _dictum de omni +et nullo_ (or, as I expressed it, the rule that what is of a kind is +of that kind's kind), is the most familiar instance. More than the +more is more than the less, equals of equals are equal, sames of the +same are the same, the cause of a cause is the cause of its effects, +are other examples of this serial law. Altho it applies infallibly +and without restriction throughout certain abstract series, where the +'sames,' 'causes,' etc., spoken of, are 'pure,' and have no properties +save their sameness, causality, etc., it cannot be applied offhand to +concrete objects with numerous properties and relations, for it is +hard to trace a straight line of sameness, causation, or whatever it +may be, through a series of such objects without swerving into some +'respect' where the relation, as pursued originally, no longer holds: +the objects have so many 'aspects' that we are constantly deflected +from our original direction, and find, we know not why, that we are +following something different from what we started with. Thus a cat is +in a sense the same as a mouse-trap, and a mouse-trap the same as a +bird-cage; but in no valuable or easily intelligible sense is a cat +the same as a bird-cage. Commodore Perry was in a sense the cause +of the new régime in Japan, and the new régime was the cause of the +russian Douma; but it would hardly profit us to insist on holding to +Perry as the cause of the Douma: the terms have grown too remote to +have any real or practical relation to each other. In every series of +real terms, not only do the terms themselves and their associates +and environments change, but we change, and their _meaning_ for +us changes, so that new kinds of sameness and types of causation +continually come into view and appeal to our interest. Our earlier +lines, having grown irrelevant, are then dropped. The old terms can no +longer be substituted nor the relations 'transferred,' because of so +many new dimensions into which experience has opened. Instead of a +straight line, it now follows a zigzag; and to keep it straight, one +must do violence to its spontaneous development. Not that one might +not possibly, by careful seeking (tho I doubt it), _find_ some line in +nature along which terms literally the same, or causes causal in the +same way, might be serially strung without limit, if one's interest +lay in such finding. Within such lines our axioms might hold, causes +might cause their effect's effects, etc.; but such lines themselves +would, if found, only be partial members of a vast natural network, +within the other lines of which you could not say, in any sense that +a wise man or a sane man would ever think of, in any sense that would +not be concretely _silly_, that the principle of skipt intermediaries +still held good. In the _practical_ world, the world whose +significances we follow, sames of the same are certainly not sames of +one another; and things constantly cause other things without being +held responsible for everything of which those other things are +causes. + +Professor Bergson, believing as he does in a heraclitean 'devenir +réel,' ought, if I rightly understand him, positively to deny that in +the actual world the logical axioms hold good without qualification. +Not only, according to him, do terms change, so that after a certain +time the very elements of things are no longer what they were, but +relations also change, so as no longer to obtain in the same identical +way between the new things that have succeeded upon the old ones. If +this were really so, then however indefinitely sames might still +be substituted for sames in the logical world of nothing but pure +sameness, in the world of real operations every line of sameness +actually started and followed up would eventually give out, and cease +to be traceable any farther. Sames of the same, in such a world, will +not always (or rather, in a strict sense will never) be the same +as one another, for in such a world there _is_ no literal or ideal +sameness among numerical differents. Nor in such a world will it be +true that the cause of the cause is unreservedly the cause of +the effect; for if we follow lines of real causation, instead of +contenting ourselves with Hume's and Kant's eviscerated schematism, we +find that remoter effects are seldom aimed at by causal intentions,[1] +that no one kind of causal activity continues indefinitely, and that +the principle of skipt intermediaries can be talked of only _in +abstracto_.[2] + +Volumes i, ii, and iii of the _Monist_ (1890-1893) contain a number of +articles by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, articles the originality of which +has apparently prevented their making an immediate impression, but +which, if I mistake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for thinkers +of the coming generation. Mr. Peirce's views, tho reached so +differently, are altogether congruous with Bergson's. Both +philosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is +genuine. To an observer standing outside of its generating causes, +novelty can appear only as so much 'chance'; to one who stands inside +it is the expression of 'free creative activity.' Peirce's 'tychism' +is thus practically synonymous with Bergson's 'devenir réel.' The +common objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly +in, _ex nihilo_, they shatter the world's rational continuity. Peirce +meets this objection by combining his tychism + +[Footnote 1: Compare the douma with what Perry aimed at.] + +[Footnote 2: Compare Appendix B, as to what I mean here by 'real' +casual activity.] + +with an express doctrine of 'synechism' or continuity, the two +doctrines merging into the higher synthesis on which he bestows the +name of 'agapasticism (_loc. cit._, iii, 188), which means exactly the +same thing as Bergson's 'évolution créatrice.' Novelty, as empirically +found, doesn't arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibly, for +adjacents in experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum +being both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctness being +realized effectively only after a concrete interval has passed. The +intervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and +all the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous +infiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut. +Just so, in a curve, the same direction is _never_ followed, and the +conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by +supposing it to do so for however short a time. Peirce speaks of an +'infinitesimal' tendency to diversification. The mathematical notion +of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same +and yet the nascent other, of an identity that won't _keep_ except so +far as it keeps _failing_, that won't _transfer_, any more than the +serial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality +instead of applying them to concepts alone. + +A friend of mine has an idea, which illustrates on such a magnified +scale the impossibility of tracing the same line through reality, that +I will mention it here. He thinks that nothing more is needed to make +history 'scientific' than to get the content of any two epochs (say +the end of the thirteenth and the end of the nineteenth century) +accurately defined, then accurately to define the direction of the +change that led from the one epoch into the other, and finally to +prolong the line of that direction into the future. So prolonging the +line, he thinks, we ought to be able to define the actual state +of things at any future date we please. We all feel the essential +unreality of such a conception of 'history' as this; but if such a +synechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what +really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest, +would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter +pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or +statistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality. + +I can give no further account of Mr. Peirce's ideas in this note, but +I earnestly advise all students of Bergson to compare them with those +of the french philosopher. + + + + +INDEX + + +INDEX TO THE LECTURES + + Absolute, the, 49, 108-109, 114 ff., 173, 175, 190 ff., 203, 271, 292 ff., + 311; not the same as God, 111, 134; its rationality, 114 f.; its + irrationality, 117-129; difficulty of conceiving it, 195. + + Absolutism, 34, 38, 40, 54, 72 f, 79, 122, 310. See Monism. + + Achilles and tortoise, 228, 255. + + All-form, the, 34, 324. + + Analogy, 8, 151 f. + + Angels, 164. + + Antinomies, 231, 239. + + ARISTIDES, 304. + + + BAILEY, S., 5. + + BERGSON, H., Lecture VI, _passim_. His characteristics, 226 f, 266. + + 'Between,' 70. + + Block-universe, 310, 328. + + BRADLEY, F.H., 46, 69, 79, 211, 220, 296. + + Brain, 160. + + + CAIRD, E., 89, 95, 137. + + CATO, 304. + + Causation, 258. See Influence. + + Change, 231, 253. + + CHESTERTON, 203, 303. + + Compounding of mental states, 168, 173, 186 f., 268, 281, 284, 292, 296. + + Concepts, 217, 234 f. + + Conceptual method, 243 f., 246, 253. + + Concrete reality, 283, 286. + + Confluence, 326. + + Conflux, 257. + + Consciousness, superhuman, 156, 310 f.; its compound nature, 168, 173, + 186 f., 289. + + Continuity, 256 f., 325. + + Contradiction, in Hegel, 89 f. + + Creation, 29, 119. + + + Death, 303. + + Degrees, 74. + + Dialectic method, 89. + + Difference, 257 f. + + Diminutive epithets, 12, 24. + Discreteness of change, 231. + + + 'Each-form,' the, 34, 325. + + Earth, the, in Fechner's philosophy, 156; is an angel, 164. + + Earth-soul, 152 f. + + Elan vital, 262. + + Empiricism, 264, 277; and religion, 314; defined, 7. + + Endosmosis, 257. + + Epithets. See Diminutive. + + Evil, 310. + + Experience, 312; religious, 307. + + Extremes, 67, 74. + + + 'Faith-ladder,' 328. + + 'Fall,' the, 119, 310. + + FECHNER, Lecture IV, _passim._ His life, 145-150; he reasons by analogy, + 151; his genius, 154; compared with Royce, 173, 207; not a genuine + monist, 293; his God; and religious experience, 308. + + FERRIER, Jas., 13. + + Finite experience, 39, 48, 182, 192-193. + + Finiteness, of God, 111, 124, 294. + + Foreignness, 31. + + + German manner of philosophizing, 17. + + GOD, 24 f., 111, 124, 193, 240, 294. + + GREEN, T.H., 6, 24, 137, 278. + + + HALDANE, R.B., 138. + + HEGEL, Lecture III, _passim_, 11, 85, 207, 211, 219, 296. His vision, + 88, 98 f., 104; his use of double negation, 102; his vicious + intellectualism 106; Haldane on, 138; McTaggart on, 140; Royce on, 143. + + HODGSON, S.H., 282. + + Horse, 265. + + HUME, 19, 267. + + + Idealism, 36. See Absolutism. + + Identity, 93. + + Immortality, Fechner's view of, 171. + + 'Independent' beings, 55, 58. + + Indeterminism, 77. + + Infinity, 229. + + Influence, 258, 561. + + Intellect, its function is practical, 247 f., 252. + + Intellectualism, vicious, 60, 218. + + Intellectualist logic, 216, 259, 261. + + Intellectualist method, 291. + + Interaction, 56. + + Intimacy, 31. + + Irrationality, 81; of the absolute, 117-129. + + + JACKS, L.P., 35. + + JOACHIM, H., 121, 141. + + JONES, H., 52. + + + KANT, 19, 199, 238, 240. + + + LEIBNITZ, 119. + + Life, 523. + + Log, 323. + + Logic, 92, 211; Intellectualist, 217, 242. + + LOTZE, 55, 120. + + LUTHER, 304. + + + McTAGGART, 51, 74 f., 120, 140 f., 183. + + Manyness in oneness, 322. See Compounding. + + Mental chemistry, 185. + + MILL, J.S., 242, 260. + + Mind, dust theory, 189. + + Mind, the eternal, 137. See Absolute. + + Monism, 36, 117, 125, 201, 313, 321 f.; Fechner's, 153. See Absolutism. + + Monomaniacs, 78. + + Motion, 233, 238, 254; Zeno on, 228. + + MYERS, F.W.H., 315. + + + Nature, 21, 286. + + Negation, 93 f.; double, 102. + + Newton, 260. + + + Other, 95, 312; 'its own other,' 108 f., 282. + + Oxford, _3_, 313, 331. + + + Pantheism, 24, 28. + + PAULSEN, 18, 22. + + Personality, divided, 298. + + Philosophers, their method, 9; their common desire, 11 f.; they must + reason, 13. + + Philosophies, their types, 23, 31. + + PHOCION, 304. + + Plant-soul, 165 f. + + Pluralism, 45, 76, 79, 311, 319, 321 f. + + Polytheism, 310. + + Practical reason, 329. + + Psychic synthesis, 185. See Compounding. + + Psychical research, 299. + + + 'Quâ,' 39, 47, 267, 270. + + 'Quatenus,' 47, 267. + + + Rationalism defined, 7, 98; its thinness, 144, 237. + + Rationality, 81, 112 f., 319 f. + + Reality, 262 f., 264, 283 f. + + Reason, 286, 312. + + Relating, 7. + + Relations, 70, 278 ff.; 'external,' 80. + + Religious experiences, 305 f. + + RITCHIE, 72. + + ROYCE, 61 f., 115, 173, 182 f., 197, 207, 212, 265, 296. + + + Same, 269, 281. + + Savage philosophy, 21. + + Science, 145. + + Sensations, 279. + + Socialism, 78. + + SOCRATES, 284. + + Soul, 199, 209. + + 'Some,' 79. + + Sphinx, 22. + + SPINOZA, 47. + + Spiritualistic philosophy, 23. + + Sugar, 220, 232. + + Synthesis, psychic. See Compounding. + + + TAYLOR, A.E., 76, 139, 212. + + Theism, 24. + + Thick, the, 136. + + 'Thickness' of Fechner's philosophy, 144. + + Thin, the, 136. + + Thinness of the current transcendentalism, 144, 174 f. + + Time, 232. + + + Units of reality, 287. + + + Vision, in philosophy, 20. + + + WELLS, H.G., 78. + + Will to believe, 328. + + Witnesses, as implied in experience, 200. + + WUNDT, W., 185. + + + ZENO, 228. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Pluralistic Universe, +by William James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE *** + +***** This file should be named 11984-8.txt or 11984-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/9/8/11984/ + +Produced by Felicia Urbanski, David Starner, Nicolas Hayes and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Pluralistic Universe + Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the + Present Situation in Philosophy + +Author: William James + +Release Date: April 10, 2004 [EBook #11984] +[Last updated: December 24, 2012] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE *** + + + + +Produced by Felicia Urbanski, David Starner, Nicolas Hayes and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + +A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE + + +Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in +Philosophy + + +BY WILLIAM JAMES + + + + +1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +LECTURE I + +THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING 1 + + Our age is growing philosophical again, 3. Change of tone since 1860, 4. + Empiricism and Rationalism defined, 7. The process of Philosophizing: + Philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, 8. + They seek to make it seem less strange, 11. Their temperamental + differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency + to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of + vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought, + 21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23. + Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and + leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The + contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand + to be essential in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: The 'each- + form' and the 'all-form' of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks + quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the + finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite + still remains outside of absolute reality, 40. + + +LECTURE II + +MONISTIC IDEALISM 41 + + Recapitulation, 43. Radical Pluralism is to be the thesis of these + lectures, 44. Most philosophers contemn it, 45. Foreignness to us of + Bradley's Absolute, 46. Spinoza and 'quatenus,'47. Difficulty of + sympathizing with the Absolute, 48. Idealistic attempt to interpret it, + 50. Professor Jones quoted, 52. Absolutist refutations of Pluralism, 54. + Criticism of Lotze's proof of Monism by the analysis of what interaction + involves, 55. Vicious intellectualism defined, 60. Royce's alternative: + either the complete disunion or the absolute union of things, 61. + Bradley's dialectic difficulties with relations, 69. Inefficiency of the + Absolute as a rationalizing remedy, 71. Tendency of Rationalists to fly + to extremes, 74. The question of 'external' relations, 79. Transition to + Hegel, 91. + + +LECTURE III + +HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 83 + + Hegel's influence. 85. The type of his vision is impressionistic, 87. + The 'dialectic' element in reality, 88. Pluralism involves possible + conflicts among things, 90. Hegel explains conflicts by the mutual + contradictoriness of concepts, 91. Criticism of his attempt to transcend + ordinary logic, 92. Examples of the 'dialectic' constitution of things, + 95. The rationalistic ideal: propositions self-securing by means of + double negation, 101. Sublimity of the conception, 104. Criticism of + Hegel's account: it involves vicious intellectualism, 105. Hegel is a + seer rather than a reasoner, 107. 'The Absolute' and 'God' are two + different notions, 110. Utility of the Absolute in conferring mental + peace, 114. But this is counterbalanced by the peculiar paradoxes which + it introduces into philosophy, 116. Leibnitz and Lotze on the 'fall' + involved in the creation of the finite, 119. Joachim on the fall of + truth into error, 121. The world of the absolutist cannot be perfect, + 123. Pluralistic conclusions, 125. + + +LECTURE IV + +CONCERNING FECHNER 131 + + Superhuman consciousness does not necessarily imply an absolute + mind, 134. Thinness of contemporary absolutism, 135. The + tone of Fechner's empiricist pantheism contrasted with that of the + rationalistic sort, 144. Fechner's life, 145. His vision, the 'daylight + view,' 150. His way of reasoning by analogy, 151. The whole universe + animated, 152. His monistic formula is unessential, 153. The + Earth-Soul, 156. Its differences from our souls, 160. The earth as + an angel, 164. The Plant-Soul, 165. The logic used by Fechner, + 168. His theory of immortality, 170. The 'thickness' of his imagination, + 173. Inferiority of the ordinary transcendentalist pantheism, + to his vision, 174. + + +LECTURE V + +THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS 179 + The assumption that states of mind may compound themselves, 181. This + assumption is held in common by naturalistic psychology, by + transcendental idealism, and by Fechner, 184. Criticism of it by the + present writer in a former book, 188. Physical combinations, so-called, + cannot be invoked as analogous, 194. Nevertheless, combination must be + postulated among the parts of the Universe, 197. The logical objections + to admitting it, 198. Rationalistic treatment of the question brings us + to an _impasse_, 208. A radical breach with intellectualism is required, + 212. Transition to Bergson's philosophy, 214. Abusive use of concepts, + 219. + + +LECTURE VI + +BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 223 + + Professor Bergson's personality, 225. Achilles and the tortoise, 228. + Not a sophism, 229. We make motion unintelligible when we treat it by + static concepts, 233. Conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense + practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives an essentially + static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240. + No rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life, + 244. The function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247. + Bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the + understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What Bergson means by + this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really exists + is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson's + originality, 264. Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a + universe where change is continuous, 267. Livingly, things _are_ their + own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel's logic is true, + 270. + + +LECTURE VII + +THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275 + + Green's critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately + felt as terms are, 280. The union of things is given in the immediate + flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux's aboriginal + incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles of continuity, + 284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete + units of experience are 'their own others,' 287. Reality is confluent + from next to next, 290. Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced, + 291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis, 292. Fechner's God is not the + Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, 296. + Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298. + + +LECTURE VIII + +CONCLUSIONS 301 + + Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304. + They corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part, + 308. This life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of + monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better + ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger + mind may open the door to superstitions, 315. But this objection + should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form parts of reality, + 317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least + foreign, 318. The word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the + word 'intimacy,' 319. Monism and pluralism distinguished and + defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All men use + the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330. + + +NOTES 333 + + +APPENDICES + + A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 847 + + B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 870 + + C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING 895 + + +INDEX 401 + + + + +LECTURE I + + +THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING + +As these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed +all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general +interest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing +philosophical again--still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford, +long the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by +Kant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different +way of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest +in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It +looks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of +fashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming +itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as +if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh. + +Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying +every one we meet under some general head. As these heads usually +suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life +of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and +complaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up, +and, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both Oxford +and Harvard are partly to be thanked. As I look back into the sixties, +Mill, Bain, and Hamilton were the only official philosophers in +Britain. Spencer, Martineau, and Hodgson were just beginning. In +France, the pupils of Cousin were delving into history only, and +Renouvier alone had an original system. In Germany, the hegelian +impetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship, +nothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as +Buechner and Ulrici as its champions. Lotze and Fechner were the sole +original thinkers, and Fechner was not a professional philosopher at +all. + +The general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of +small subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. Amateurishness was +rampant. Samuel Bailey's 'letters on the philosophy of the human +mind,' published in 1855, are one of the ablest expressions of english +associationism, and a book of real power. Yet hear how he writes of +Kant: 'No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to +hear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years +of study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the +speculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if they had. +In or about 1818, Lord Grenville, when visiting the Lakes of England, +observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of Kant's +philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, +about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of +my own. "I am endeavoring," exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the +irritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, "to understand this +accursed german philosophy."[1] + +What Oxford thinker would dare to print such _naif_ and +provincial-sounding citations of authority to-day? + +The torch of learning passes from land to land as the spirit bloweth +the flame. The deepening of philosophic consciousness came to us +english folk from Germany, as it will probably pass back ere long. +Ferrier, J.H. Stirling, and, most of all, T.H. Green are to be +thanked. If asked to tell in broad strokes what the main doctrinal +change has been, I should call it a change from the crudity of the +older english thinking, its ultra-simplicity of mind, both when it was +religious and when it was anti-religious, toward a rationalism +derived in the first instance from Germany, but relieved from german +technicality and shrillness, and content to suggest, and to remain +vague, and to be, in, the english fashion, devout. + +By the time T.H. Green began at Oxford, the generation seemed to +feel as if it had fed on the chopped straw of psychology and of +associationism long enough, and as if a little vastness, even though +it went with vagueness, as of some moist wind from far away, reminding +us of our pre-natal sublimity, would be welcome. + +Green's great point of attack was the disconnectedness of the reigning +english sensationalism. _Relating_ was the great intellectual activity +for him, and the key to this relating was believed by him to +lodge itself at last in what most of you know as Kant's unity of +apperception, transformed into a living spirit of the world. + +Hence a monism of a devout kind. In some way we must be fallen angels, +one with intelligence as such; and a great disdain for empiricism +of the sensationalist sort has always characterized this school of +thought, which, on the whole, has reigned supreme at Oxford and in the +Scottish universities until the present day. + +But now there are signs of its giving way to a wave of revised +empiricism. I confess that I should be glad to see this latest wave +prevail; so--the sooner I am frank about it the better--I hope to +have my voice counted in its favor as one of the results of this +lecture-course. + +What do the terms empiricism and rationalism mean? Reduced to their +most pregnant difference, _empiricism means the habit of explaining +wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts +by wholes_. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since +wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic +views. No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a +picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of +the perspective of events. And the first thing to notice is this, that +the only material we have at our disposal for making a picture of the +whole world is supplied by the various portions of that world of +which we have already had experience. We can invent no new forms of +conception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested +originally by the parts. All philosophers, accordingly, have conceived +of the whole world after the analogy of some particular feature of it +which has particularly captivated their attention. Thus, the theists +take their cue from manufacture, the pantheists from growth. For one +man, the world is like a thought or a grammatical sentence in which a +thought is expressed. For such a philosopher, the whole must logically +be prior to the parts; for letters would never have been invented +without syllables to spell, or syllables without words to utter. + +Another man, struck by the disconnectedness and mutual accidentality +of so many of the world's details, takes the universe as a whole to +have been such a disconnectedness originally, and supposes order to +have been superinduced upon it in the second instance, possibly +by attrition and the gradual wearing away by internal friction of +portions that originally interfered. + +Another will conceive the order as only a statistical appearance, and +the universe will be for him like a vast grab-bag with black and white +balls in it, of which we guess the quantities only probably, by the +frequency with which we experience their egress. + +For another, again, there is no really inherent order, but it is we +who project order into the world by selecting objects and tracing +relations so as to gratify our intellectual interests. We _carve out_ +order by leaving the disorderly parts out; and the world is conceived +thus after the analogy of a forest or a block of marble from which +parks or statues may be produced by eliminating irrelevant trees or +chips of stone. + +Some thinkers follow suggestions from human life, and treat the +universe as if it were essentially a place in which ideals are +realized. Others are more struck by its lower features, and for them, +brute necessities express its character better. + +All follow one analogy or another; and all the analogies are with some +one or other of the universe's subdivisions. Every one is nevertheless +prone to claim that his conclusions are the only logical ones, that +they are necessities of universal reason, they being all the while, at +bottom, accidents more or less of personal vision which had far better +be avowed as such; for one man's vision may be much more valuable than +another's, and our visions are usually not only our most interesting +but our most respectable contributions to the world in which we play +our part. What was reason given to men for, said some eighteenth +century writer, except to enable them to find reasons for what they +want to think and do?--and I think the history of philosophy largely +bears him out, 'The aim of knowledge,' says Hegel,[2] 'is to divest +the objective world of its strangeness, and to make us more at home +in it.' Different men find their minds more at home in very different +fragments of the world. + +Let me make a few comments, here, on the curious antipathies which +these partialities arouse. They are sovereignly unjust, for all the +parties are human beings with the same essential interests, and no one +of them is the wholly perverse demon which another often imagines him +to be. Both are loyal to the world that bears them; neither wishes to +spoil it; neither wishes to regard it as an insane incoherence; both +want to keep it as a universe of some kind; and their differences are +all secondary to this deep agreement. They may be only propensities to +emphasize differently. Or one man may care for finality and security +more than the other. Or their tastes in language may be different. +One may like a universe that lends itself to lofty and exalted +characterization. To another this may seem sentimental or rhetorical. +One may wish for the right to use a clerical vocabulary, another a +technical or professorial one. A certain old farmer of my acquaintance +in America was called a rascal by one of his neighbors. He immediately +smote the man, saying,'I won't stand none of your diminutive +epithets.' Empiricist minds, putting the parts before the whole, +appear to rationalists, who start from the whole, and consequently +enjoy magniloquent privileges, to use epithets offensively diminutive. +But all such differences are minor matters which ought to be +subordinated in view of the fact that, whether we be empiricists or +rationalists, we are, ourselves, parts of the universe and share the +same one deep concern in its destinies. We crave alike to feel more +truly at home with it, and to contribute our mite to its amelioration. +It would be pitiful if small aesthetic discords were to keep honest +men asunder. + +I shall myself have use for the diminutive epithets of empiricism. But +if you look behind the words at the spirit, I am sure you will not +find it matricidal. I am as good a son as any rationalist among you to +our common mother. What troubles me more than this misapprehension is +the genuine abstruseness of many of the matters I shall be obliged +to talk about, and the difficulty of making them intelligible at one +hearing. But there two pieces, 'zwei stuecke,' as Kant would have said, +in every philosophy--the final outlook, belief, or attitude to which +it brings us, and the reasonings by which that attitude is reached and +mediated. A philosophy, as James Ferrier used to tell us, must indeed +be true, but that is the least of its requirements. One may be true +without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelation. +What distinguishes a philosopher's truth is that it is _reasoned_. +Argument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession. Common +men find themselves inheriting their beliefs, they know not how. They +jump into them with both feet, and stand there. Philosophers must +do more; they must first get reason's license for them; and to the +professional philosophic mind the operation of procuring the license +is usually a thing of much more pith and moment than any particular +beliefs to which the license may give the rights of access. Suppose, +for example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will. +That a common man alongside of him should also share that belief, +possessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man +to the philosopher at all--he may even be ashamed to be associated +with such a man. What interests the philosopher is the particular +premises on which the free-will he believes in is established, the +sense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties +it takes account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner +and technical apparatus that goes with the belief in question. +A philosopher across the way who should use the same technical +apparatus, making the same distinctions, etc., but drawing opposite +conclusions and denying free-will entirely, would fascinate the first +philosopher far more than would the _naif_ co-believer. Their common +technical interests would unite them more than their opposite +conclusions separate them. Each would feel an essential consanguinity +in the other, would think of him, write _at_ him, care for his good +opinion. The simple-minded believer in free-will would be disregarded +by either. Neither as ally nor as opponent would his vote be counted. + +In a measure this is doubtless as it should be, but like all +professionalism it can go to abusive extremes. The end is after all +more than the way, in most things human, and forms and methods may +easily frustrate their own purpose. The abuse of technicality is +seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, +metaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits. +Almost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain, +the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. Alternatives are wrapped +in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The +late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about +this. 'Thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something +for so-called philosophers only or for professed thinkers. The best +philosopher is the man who can think most _simply_. ... I wish that +people would consider that thought--and philosophy is no more than +good and methodical thought--is a matter _intimate_ to them, a portion +of their real selves ... that they would _value_ what they think, and +be interested in it.... In my own opinion,' he goes on, 'there is +something depressing in this weight of learning, with nothing that can +come into one's mind but one is told, Oh, that is the opinion of such +and such a person long ago. ... I can conceive of nothing more noxious +for students than to get into the habit of saying to themselves about +their ordinary philosophic thought, Oh, somebody must have thought it +all before.'[3] Yet this is the habit most encouraged at our seats of +learning. You must tie your opinion to Aristotle's or Spinoza's; you +must define it by its distance from Kant's; you must refute your +rival's view by identifying it with Protagoras's. Thus does all +spontaneity of thought, all freshness of conception, get destroyed. +Everything you touch is shopworn. The over-technicality and consequent +dreariness of the younger disciples at our american universities is +appalling. It comes from too much following of german models and +manners. Let me fervently express the hope that in this country you +will hark back to the more humane english tradition. American students +have to regain direct relations with our subject by painful individual +effort in later life. Some of us have done so. Some of the younger +ones, I fear, never will, so strong are the professional shop-habits +already. + +In a subject like philosophy it is really fatal to lose connexion with +the open air of human nature, and to think in terms of shop-tradition +only. In Germany the forms are so professionalized that anybody who +has gained a teaching chair and written a book, however distorted and +eccentric, has the legal right to figure forever in the history of the +subject like a fly in amber. All later comers have the duty of quoting +him and measuring their opinions with his opinion. Such are the rules +of the professorial game--they think and write from each other and for +each other and at each other exclusively. With this exclusion of the +open air all true perspective gets lost, extremes and oddities count +as much as sanities, and command the same attention; and if by chance +any one writes popularly and about results only, with his mind +directly focussed on the subject, it is reckoned _oberflaechliches +zeug_ and _ganz unwissenschaftlich_. Professor Paulsen has recently +written some feeling lines about this over-professionalism, from +the reign of which in Germany his own writings, which sin by being +'literary,' have suffered loss of credit. Philosophy, he says, has +long assumed in Germany the character of being an esoteric and +occult science. There is a genuine fear of popularity. Simplicity of +statement is deemed synonymous with hollowness and shallowness. He +recalls an old professor saying to him once: 'Yes, we philosophers, +whenever we wish, can go so far that in a couple of sentences we can +put ourselves where nobody can follow us.' The professor said this +with conscious pride, but he ought to have been ashamed of it. Great +as technique is, results are greater. To teach philosophy so that the +pupils' interest in technique exceeds that in results is surely a +vicious aberration. It is bad form, not good form, in a discipline +of such universal human interest. Moreover, technique for technique, +doesn't David Hume's technique set, after all, the kind of pattern +most difficult to follow? Isn't it the most admirable? The english +mind, thank heaven, and the french mind, are still kept, by their +aversion to crude technique and barbarism, closer to truth's natural +probabilities. Their literatures show fewer obvious falsities and +monstrosities than that of Germany. Think of the german literature of +aesthetics, with the preposterousness of such an unaesthetic personage +as Immanuel Kant enthroned in its centre! Think of german books on +_religions-philosophie_, with the heart's battles translated into +conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of +questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the +religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly +little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working +philosophy, individual Germans should preserve any spontaneity of +mind at all. That they still manifest freshness and originality in so +eminent a degree, proves the indestructible richness of the german +cerebral endowment. + +Let me repeat once more that a man's vision is the great fact about +him. Who cares for Carlyle's reasons, or Schopenhauer's, or Spencer's? +A philosophy is the expression of a man's intimate character, and all +definitions of the universe are but the deliberately adopted reactions +of human characters upon it. In the recent book from which I quoted +the words of Professor Paulsen, a book of successive chapters by +various living german philosophers,[4] we pass from one idiosyncratic +personal atmosphere into another almost as if we were turning over a +photograph album. + +If we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce +themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage +in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so +many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole +drift of life, forced on one by one's total character and experience, +and on the whole _preferred_--there is no other truthful word--as +one's best working attitude. Cynical characters take one general +attitude, sympathetic characters another. But no general attitude +is possible towards the world as a whole, until the intellect has +developed considerable generalizing power and learned to take pleasure +in synthetic formulas. The thought of very primitive men has hardly +any tincture of philosophy. Nature can have little unity for savages. +It is a Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of light and +shadow, a medley of impish and elfish friendly and inimical +powers. 'Close to nature' though they live, they are anything but +Wordsworthians. If a bit of cosmic emotion ever thrills them, it is +likely to be at midnight, when the camp smoke rises straight to the +wicked full moon in the zenith, and the forest is all whispering with +witchery and danger. The eeriness of the world, the mischief and the +manyness, the littleness of the forces, the magical surprises, the +unaccountability of every agent, these surely are the characters most +impressive at that stage of culture, these communicate the thrills +of curiosity and the earliest intellectual stirrings. Tempests and +conflagrations, pestilences and earthquakes, reveal supramundane +powers, and instigate religious terror rather than philosophy. Nature, +more demonic than divine, is above all things _multifarious_. So many +creatures that feed or threaten, that help or crush, so many beings +to hate or love, to understand or start at--which is on top and which +subordinate? Who can tell? They are co-ordinate, rather, and to adapt +ourselves to them singly, to 'square' the dangerous powers and keep +the others friendly, regardless of consistency or unity, is the chief +problem. The symbol of nature at this stage, as Paulsen well says, +is the sphinx, under whose nourishing breasts the tearing claws are +visible. + +But in due course of time the intellect awoke, with its passion for +generalizing, simplifying, and subordinating, and then began those +divergences of conception which all later experience seems rather +to have deepened than to have effaced, because objective nature has +contributed to both sides impartially, and has let the thinkers +emphasize different parts of her, and pile up opposite imaginary +supplements. + +Perhaps the most interesting opposition is that which results from the +clash between what I lately called the sympathetic and the cynical +temper. Materialistic and spiritualistic philosophies are the rival +types that result: the former defining the world so as to leave man's +soul upon it as a soil of outside passenger or alien, while the latter +insists that the intimate and human must surround and underlie the +brutal. This latter is the spiritual way of thinking. + +Now there are two very distinct types or stages in spiritualistic +philosophy, and my next purpose in this lecture is to make their +contrast evident. Both types attain the sought-for intimacy of view, +but the one attains it somewhat less successfully than the other. + +The generic term spiritualism, which I began by using merely as the +opposite of materialism, thus subdivides into two species, the more +intimate one of which is monistic and the less intimate dualistic. The +dualistic species is the _theism_ that reached its elaboration in the +scholastic philosophy, while the monistic species is the _pantheism_ +spoken of sometimes simply as idealism, and sometimes as +'post-kantian' or 'absolute' idealism. Dualistic theism is professed +as firmly as ever at all catholic seats of learning, whereas it has +of late years tended to disappear at our british and american +universities, and to be replaced by a monistic pantheism more or less +open or disguised. I have an impression that ever since T.H. Green's +time absolute idealism has been decidedly in the ascendent at Oxford. +It is in the ascendent at my own university of Harvard. + +Absolute idealism attains, I said, to the more intimate point of view; +but the statement needs some explanation. So far as theism represents +the world as God's world, and God as what Matthew Arnold called a +magnified non-natural man, it would seem as if the inner quality of +the world remained human, and as if our relations with it might be +intimate enough--for what is best in ourselves appears then also +outside of ourselves, and we and the universe are of the same +spiritual species. So far, so good, then; and one might consequently +ask, What more of intimacy do you require? To which the answer is +that to be like a thing is not as intimate a relation as to be +substantially fused into it, to form one continuous soul and body with +it; and that pantheistic idealism, making us entitatively one with +God, attains this higher reach of intimacy. + +The theistic conception, picturing God and his creation as entities +distinct from each other, still leaves the human subject outside of +the deepest reality in the universe. God is from eternity complete, it +says, and sufficient unto himself; he throws off the world by a free +act and as an extraneous substance, and he throws off man as a third +substance, extraneous to both the world and himself. Between them, God +says 'one,' the world says 'two,' and man says 'three,'--that is the +orthodox theistic view. And orthodox theism has been so jealous of +God's glory that it has taken pains to exaggerate everything in the +notion of him that could make for isolation and separateness. Page +upon page in scholastic books go to prove that God is in no sense +implicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. That his +relation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to +him, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a +pantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. I said a moment ago that +theism treats us and God as of the same species, but from the orthodox +point of view that was a slip of language. God and his creatures +are _toto genere_ distinct in the scholastic theology, they have +absolutely _nothing_ in common; nay, it degrades God to attribute to +him any generic nature whatever; he can be classed with nothing. There +is a sense, then, in which philosophic theism makes us outsiders and +keeps us foreigners in relation to God, in which, at any rate, his +connexion with us appears as unilateral and not reciprocal. His action +can affect us, but he can never be affected by our reaction. Our +relation, in short, is not a strictly social relation. Of course in +common men's religion the relation is believed to be social, but that +is only one of the many differences between religion and theology. + +This essential dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of +collateral consequences. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to +God, not his intimate partner, a character of externality invades the +field. God is not heart of our heart and reason of our reason, but our +magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however +strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of +criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our +relations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the +same externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist +thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in +scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established +without our help, complete apart from our knowing; and the most we +can do is to acknowledge it passively and adhere to it, altho such +adhesion as ours can make no jot of difference to what is adhered to. +The situation here again is radically dualistic. It is not as if the +world came to know itself, or God came to know himself, partly through +us, as pantheistic idealists have maintained, but truth exists _per +se_ and absolutely, by God's grace and decree, no matter who of us +knows it or is ignorant, and it would continue to exist unaltered, +even though we finite knowers were all annihilated. + +It has to be confessed that this dualism and lack of intimacy has +always operated as a drag and handicap on Christian thought. Orthodox +theology has had to wage a steady fight within the schools against the +various forms of pantheistic heresy which the mystical experiences +of religious persons, on the one hand, and the formal or aesthetic +superiorities of monism to dualism, on the other, kept producing. God +as intimate soul and reason of the universe has always seemed to some +people a more worthy conception than God as external creator. So +conceived, he appeared to unify the world more perfectly, he made +it less finite and mechanical, and in comparison with such a God an +external creator seemed more like the product of a childish fancy. I +have been told by Hindoos that the great obstacle to the spread +of Christianity in their country is the puerility of our dogma +of creation. It has not sweep and infinity enough to meet the +requirements of even the illiterate natives of India. + +Assuredly most members of this audience are ready to side with +Hinduism in this matter. Those of us who are sexagenarians have +witnessed in our own persons one of those gradual mutations of +intellectual climate, due to innumerable influences, that make the +thought of a past generation seem as foreign to its successor as if +it were the expression of a different race of men. The theological +machinery that spoke so livingly to our ancestors, with its finite age +of the world, its creation out of nothing, its juridical morality and +eschatology, its relish for rewards and punishments, its treatment of +God as an external contriver, an 'intelligent and moral governor,' +sounds as odd to most of us as if it were some outlandish savage +religion. The vaster vistas which scientific evolutionism has opened, +and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the type +of our imagination, and the older monarchical theism is obsolete or +obsolescent. The place of the divine in the world must be more organic +and intimate. An external creator and his institutions may still be +verbally confessed at Church in formulas that linger by their mere +inertia, but the life is out of them, we avoid dwelling on them, the +sincere heart of us is elsewhere. I shall leave cynical materialism +entirely out of our discussion as not calling for treatment before +this present audience, and I shall ignore old-fashioned dualistic +theism for the same reason. Our contemporary mind having once for all +grasped the possibility of a more intimate _Weltanschauung_, the only +opinions quite worthy of arresting our attention will fall within the +general scope of what may roughly be called the pantheistic field of +vision, the vision of God as the indwelling divine rather than the +external creator, and of human life as part and parcel of that deep +reality. + +As we have found that spiritualism in general breaks into a more +intimate and a less intimate species, so the more intimate species +itself breaks into two subspecies, of which the one is more monistic, +the other more pluralistic in form. I say in form, for our vocabulary +gets unmanageable if we don't distinguish between form and substance +here. The inner life of things must be substantially akin anyhow to +the tenderer parts of man's nature in any spiritualistic philosophy. +The word 'intimacy' probably covers the essential difference. +Materialism holds the foreign in things to be more primary and +lasting, it sends us to a lonely corner with our intimacy. The brutal +aspects overlap and outwear; refinement has the feebler and more +ephemeral hold on reality. + +From a pragmatic point of view the difference between living against +a background of foreignness and one of intimacy means the difference +between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. One might call +it a social difference, for after all, the common _socius_ of us all +is the great universe whose children we are. If materialistic, we +must be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. If +spiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and keep no ultimate fear. + +The contrast is rough enough, and can be cut across by all sorts +of other divisions, drawn from other points of view than that of +foreignness and intimacy. We have so many different businesses with +nature that no one of them yields us an all-embracing clasp. The +philosophic attempt to define nature so that no one's business is left +out, so that no one lies outside the door saying 'Where do _I_ come +in?' is sure in advance to fail. The most a philosophy can hope for is +not to lock out any interest forever. No matter what doors it closes, +it must leave other doors open for the interests which it neglects. +I have begun by shutting ourselves up to intimacy and foreignness +because that makes so generally interesting a contrast, and because it +will conveniently introduce a farther contrast to which I wish this +hour to lead. + +The majority of men are sympathetic. Comparatively few are cynics +because they like cynicism, and most of our existing materialists are +such because they think the evidence of facts impels them, or because +they find the idealists they are in contact with too private and +tender-minded; so, rather than join their company, they fly to the +opposite extreme. I therefore propose to you to disregard materialists +altogether for the present, and to consider the sympathetic party +alone. + +It is normal, I say, to be sympathetic in the sense in which I use the +term. Not to demand intimate relations with the universe, and not to +wish them satisfactory, should be accounted signs of something wrong. +Accordingly when minds of this type reach the philosophic level, and +seek some unification of their vision, they find themselves compelled +to correct that aboriginal appearance of things by which savages are +not troubled. That sphinx-like presence, with its breasts and claws, +that first bald multifariousness, is too discrepant an object for +philosophic contemplation. The intimacy and the foreignness cannot be +written down as simply coexisting. An order must be made; and in that +order the higher side of things must dominate. The philosophy of the +absolute agrees with the pluralistic philosophy which I am going +to contrast with it in these lectures, in that both identify human +substance with the divine substance. But whereas absolutism thinks +that the said substance becomes fully divine only in the form of +totality, and is not its real self in any form but the _all_-form, the +pluralistic view which I prefer to adopt is willing to believe that +there may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance +of reality may never get totally collected, that some of it may +remain outside of the largest combination of it ever made, and that +a distributive form of reality, the _each_-form, is logically as +acceptable and empirically as probable as the all-form commonly +acquiesced in as so obviously the self-evident thing. The contrast +between these two forms of a reality which we will agree to suppose +substantially spiritual is practically the topic of this course of +lectures. You see now what I mean by pantheism's two subspecies. If +we give to the monistic subspecies the name of philosophy of the +absolute, we may give that of radical empiricism to its pluralistic +rival, and it may be well to distinguish them occasionally later by +these names. + +As a convenient way of entering into the study of their differences, +I may refer to a recent article by Professor Jacks of Manchester +College. Professor Jacks, in some brilliant pages in the 'Hibbert +Journal' for last October, studies the relation between the universe +and the philosopher who describes and defines it for us. You may +assume two cases, he says. Either what the philosopher tells us is +extraneous to the universe he is accounting for, an indifferent +parasitic outgrowth, so to speak; or the fact of his philosophizing +is itself one of the things taken account of in the philosophy, and +self-included in the description. In the former case the philosopher +means by the universe everything _except_ what his own presence +brings; in the latter case his philosophy is itself an intimate +part of the universe, and may be a part momentous enough to give a +different turn to what the other parts signify. It may be a +supreme reaction of the universe upon itself by which it rises to +self-comprehension. It may handle itself differently in consequence of +this event. + +Now both empiricism and absolutism bring the philosopher inside +and make man intimate, but the one being pluralistic and the other +monistic, they do so in differing ways that need much explanation. Let +me then contrast the one with the other way of representing the status +of the human thinker. + +For monism the world is no collection, but one great all-inclusive +fact outside of which is nothing--nothing is its only alternative. +When the monism is idealistic, this all-enveloping fact is represented +as an absolute mind that makes the partial facts by thinking them, +just as we make objects in a dream by dreaming them, or personages in +a story by imagining them. To _be_, on this scheme, is, on the part of +a finite thing, to be an object for the absolute; and on the part of +the absolute it is to be the thinker of that assemblage of objects. If +we use the word 'content' here, we see that the absolute and the world +have an identical content. The absolute is nothing but the knowledge +of those objects; the objects are nothing but what the absolute knows. +The world and the all-thinker thus compenetrate and soak each other +up without residuum. They are but two names for the same identical +material, considered now from the subjective, and now from the +objective point of view--gedanke and gedachtes, as we would say if we +were Germans. We philosophers naturally form part of the material, on +the monistic scheme. The absolute makes us by thinking us, and if we +ourselves are enlightened enough to be believers in the absolute, one +may then say that our philosophizing is one of the ways in which the +absolute is conscious of itself. This is the full pantheistic scheme, +the _identitaetsphilosophie_, the immanence of God in his creation, a +conception sublime from its tremendous unity. And yet that unity is +incomplete, as closer examination will show. + +The absolute and the world are one fact, I said, when materially +considered. Our philosophy, for example, is not numerically distinct +from the absolute's own knowledge of itself, not a duplicate and copy +of it, it is part of that very knowledge, is numerically identical +with as much of it as our thought covers. The absolute just _is_ our +philosophy, along with everything else that is known, in an act of +knowing which (to use the words of my gifted absolutist colleague +Royce) forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious +moment. + +But one as we are in this material sense with the absolute substance, +that being only the whole of us, and we only the parts of it, yet in a +formal sense something like a pluralism breaks out. When we speak of +the absolute we _take_ the one universal known material collectively +or integrally; when we speak of its objects, of our finite selves, +etc., we _take_ that same identical material distributively and +separately. But what is the use of a thing's _being_ only once if it +can be _taken_ twice over, and if being taken in different ways makes +different things true of it? As the absolute takes me, for example, I +appear _with_ everything else in its field of perfect knowledge. As +I take myself, I appear _without_ most other things in my field +of relative ignorance. And practical differences result from its +knowledge and my ignorance. Ignorance breeds mistake, curiosity, +misfortune, pain, for me; I suffer those consequences. The absolute +knows of those things, of course, for it knows me and my suffering, +but it doesn't itself suffer. It can't be ignorant, for simultaneous +with its knowledge of each question goes its knowledge of each answer. +It can't be patient, for it has to wait for nothing, having everything +at once in its possession. It can't be surprised; it can't be guilty. +No attribute connected with succession can be applied to it, for it +is all at once and wholly what it is, 'with the unity of a single +instant,' and succession is not of it but in it, for we are +continually told that it is 'timeless.' + +Things true of the world in its finite aspects, then, are not true of +it in its infinite capacity. _Qua_ finite and plural its accounts of +itself to itself are different from what its account to itself _qua_ +infinite and one must be. + +With this radical discrepancy between the absolute and the relative +points of view, it seems to me that almost as great a bar to intimacy +between the divine and the human breaks out in pantheism as that which +we found in monarchical theism, and hoped that pantheism might not +show. We humans are incurably rooted in the temporal point of view. +The eternal's ways are utterly unlike our ways. 'Let us imitate the +All,' said the original prospectus of that admirable Chicago quarterly +called the 'Monist.' As if we could, either in thought or conduct! +We are invincibly parts, let us talk as we will, and must always +apprehend the absolute as if it were a foreign being. If what I mean +by this is not wholly clear to you at this point, it ought to grow +clearer as my lectures proceed. + + + + +LECTURE II + + +MONISTIC IDEALISM + +Let me recall to you the programme which I indicated to you at our +last meeting. After agreeing not to consider materialism in any +shape, but to place ourselves straightway upon a more spiritualistic +platform, I pointed out three kinds of spiritual philosophy between +which we are asked to choose. The first way was that of the older +dualistic theism, with ourselves represented as a secondary order of +substances created by God. We found that this allowed of a degree of +intimacy with the creative principle inferior to that implied in the +pantheistic belief that we are substantially one with it, and that the +divine is therefore the most intimate of all our possessions, heart of +our heart, in fact. But we saw that this pantheistic belief could be +held in two forms, a monistic form which I called philosophy of the +absolute, and a pluralistic form which I called radical empiricism, +the former conceiving that the divine exists authentically only when +the world is experienced all at once in its absolute totality, whereas +radical empiricism allows that the absolute sum-total of things may +never be actually experienced or realized in that shape at all, and +that a disseminated, distributed, or incompletely unified appearance +is the only form that reality may yet have achieved. + +I may contrast the monistic and pluralistic forms in question as +the 'all-form' and the 'each-form.' At the end of the last hour I +animadverted on the fact that the all-form is so radically different +from the each-form, which is our human form of experiencing the +world, that the philosophy of the absolute, so far as insight and +understanding go, leaves us almost as much outside of the divine being +as dualistic theism does. I believe that radical empiricism, on the +contrary, holding to the each-form, and making of God only one of the +eaches, affords the higher degree of intimacy. The general thesis of +these lectures I said would be a defence of the pluralistic against +the monistic view. Think of the universe as existing solely in the +each-form, and you will have on the whole a more reasonable and +satisfactory idea of it than if you insist on the all-form being +necessary. The rest of my lectures will do little more than make this +thesis more concrete, and I hope more persuasive. + +It is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had +from philosophers. Whether materialistically or spiritualistically +minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with +which the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical +and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether +these were morally elevated or only intellectually neat they were +at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at +ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of +inner structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures, +the pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry +appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of an affair, without +a sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. Those of you +who are accustomed to the classical constructions of reality may be +excused if your first reaction upon it be absolute contempt--a +shrug of the shoulders as if such ideas were unworthy of explicit +refutation. But one must have lived some time with a system to +appreciate its merits. Perhaps a little more familiarity may mitigate +your first surprise at such a programme as I offer. + +First, one word more than what I said last time about the relative +foreignness of the divine principle in the philosophy of the absolute. +Those of you who have read the last two chapters of Mr. Bradley's +wonderful book, 'Appearance and reality,' will remember what an +elaborately foreign aspect _his_ absolute is finally made to assume. +It is neither intelligence nor will, neither a self nor a collection +of selves, neither truthful, good, nor beautiful, as we understand +these terms. It is, in short, a metaphysical monster, all that we are +permitted to say of it being that whatever it is, it is at any rate +_worth_ more (worth more to itself, that is) than if any eulogistic +adjectives of ours applied to it. It is us, and all other appearances, +but none of us _as such_, for in it we are all 'transmuted,' and its +own as-suchness is of another denomination altogether. + +Spinoza was the first great absolutist, and the impossibility of being +intimate with _his_ God is universally recognized. _Quatenus infinitus +est_ he is other than what he is _quatenus humanam mentem constituit_. +Spinoza's philosophy has been rightly said to be worked by the word +_quatenus_. Conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs play indeed the +vital part in all philosophies; and in contemporary idealism the words +'as' and 'qua' bear the burden of reconciling metaphysical unity with +phenomenal diversity. Qua absolute the world is one and perfect, qua +relative it is many and faulty, yet it is identically the self-same +world--instead of talking of it as many facts, we call it one fact in +many aspects. + +_As_ absolute, then, or _sub specie eternitatis_, or _quatenus +infinitus est_, the world repels our sympathy because it has no +history. _As such_, the absolute neither acts nor suffers, nor loves +nor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or +successes, friends or enemies, victories or defeats. All such things +pertain to the world qua relative, in which our finite experiences +lie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our interest. +What boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and +to exhort me, as Emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its style, and +manners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition? I am +finite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up +with the finite world _as such_, and with things that have a history. +'Aus dieser erde quellen meine freuden, und ihre sonne scheinet meinen +leiden.' I have neither eyes nor ears nor heart nor mind for anything +of an opposite description, and the stagnant felicity of the +absolute's own perfection moves me as little as I move it. If we were +_readers_ only of the cosmic novel, things would be different: we +should then share the author's point of view and recognize villains to +be as essential as heroes in the plot. But we are not the readers but +the very personages of the world-drama. In your own eyes each of you +here is its hero, and the villains are your respective friends or +enemies. The tale which the absolute reader finds so perfect, we spoil +for one another through our several vital identifications with the +destinies of the particular personages involved. + +The doctrine on which the absolutists lay most stress is the +absolute's 'timeless' character. For pluralists, on the other hand, +time remains as real as anything, and nothing in the universe is great +or static or eternal enough not to have some history. But the world +that each of us feels most intimately at home with is that of beings +with histories that play into our history, whom we can help in their +vicissitudes even as they help us in ours. This satisfaction the +absolute denies us; we can neither help nor hinder it, for it stands +outside of history. It surely is a merit in a philosophy to make the +very life we lead seem real and earnest. Pluralism, in exorcising the +absolute, exorcises the great de-realizer of the only life we are +at home in, and thus redeems the nature of reality from essential +foreignness. Every end, reason, motive, object of desire or aversion, +ground of sorrow or joy that we feel is in the world of finite +multifariousness, for only in that world does anything really happen, +only there do events come to pass. + +In one sense this is a far-fetched and rather childish objection, for +so much of the history of the finite is as formidably foreign to us as +the static absolute can possibly be--in fact that entity derives its +own foreignness largely from the bad character of the finite which it +simultaneously is--that this sentimental reason for preferring the +pluralistic view seems small.[1] I shall return to the subject in my +final lecture, and meanwhile, with your permission, I will say no more +about this objection. The more so as the necessary foreignness of the +absolute is cancelled emotionally by its attribute of _totality_, +which is universally considered to carry the further attribute of +_perfection_ in its train. 'Philosophy,' says a recent american +philosopher, 'is humanity's hold on totality,' and there is no doubt +that most of us find that the bare notion of an absolute all-one is +inspiring. 'I yielded myself to the perfect whole,' writes Emerson; +and where can you find a more mind-dilating object? A certain loyalty +is called forth by the idea; even if not proved actual, it must be +believed in somehow. Only an enemy of philosophy can speak lightly +of it. Rationalism starts from the idea of such a whole and builds +downward. Movement and change are absorbed into its immutability as +forms of mere appearance. When you accept this beatific vision of +what _is_, in contrast with what _goes on_, you feel as if you had +fulfilled an intellectual duty. 'Reality is not in its truest nature +a process,' Mr. McTaggart tells us, 'but a stable and timeless +state.'[2] 'The true knowledge of God begins,' Hegel writes, 'when +we know that things as they immediately are have no truth.'[3] 'The +consummation of the infinite aim,' he says elsewhere, 'consists merely +in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. Good +and absolute goodness is eternally accomplishing itself in the world: +and the result is that it needs not wait upon _us_, but is already ... +accomplished. It is an illusion under which we live. ... In the course +of its process the Idea makes itself that illusion, by setting an +antithesis to confront it, and its action consists in getting rid of +the illusion which it has created.'[4] + +But abstract emotional appeals of any kind sound amateurish in the +business that concerns us. Impressionistic philosophizing, like +impressionistic watchmaking or land-surveying, is intolerable to +experts. Serious discussion of the alternative before us forces +me, therefore, to become more technical. The great _claim_ of the +philosophy of the absolute is that the absolute is no hypothesis, but +a presupposition implicated in all thinking, and needing only a little +effort of analysis to be seen as a logical necessity. I will therefore +take it in this more rigorous character and see whether its claim is +in effect so coercive. + +It has seemed coercive to an enormous number of contemporaneous +thinkers. Professor Henry Jones thus describes the range and influence +of it upon the social and political life of the present time:[5] 'For +many years adherents of this way of thought have deeply interested the +british public by their writings. Almost more important than their +writings is the fact that they have occupied philosophical chairs in +almost every university in the kingdom. Even the professional critics +of idealism are for the most part idealists--after a fashion. And when +they are not, they are as a rule more occupied with the refutation of +idealism than with the construction of a better theory. It follows +from their position of academic authority, were it from nothing else, +that idealism exercises an influence not easily measured upon the +youth of the nation--upon those, that is, who from the educational +opportunities they enjoy may naturally be expected to become the +leaders of the nation's thought and practice.... Difficult as it is +to measure the forces ... it is hardly to be denied that the power +exercised by Bentham and the utilitarian school has, for better or +for worse, passed into the hands of the idealists.... "The Rhine has +flowed into the Thames" is the warning note rung out by Mr. Hobhouse. +Carlyle introduced it, bringing it as far as Chelsea. Then Jowett +and Thomas Hill Green, and William Wallace and Lewis Nettleship, and +Arnold Toynbee and David Eitchie--to mention only those teachers whose +voices now are silent--guided the waters into those upper reaches +known locally as the Isis. John and Edward Caird brought them up the +Clyde, Hutchison Stirling up the Firth of Forth. They have passed up +the Mersey and up the Severn and Dee and Don. They pollute the bay of +St. Andrews and swell the waters of the Cam, and have somehow crept +overland into Birmingham. The stream of german idealism has been +diffused over the academical world of Great Britain. The disaster is +universal.' + +Evidently if weight of authority were all, the truth of absolutism +would be thus decided. But let us first pass in review the general +style of argumentation of that philosophy. + +As I read it, its favorite way of meeting pluralism and empiricism is +by a _reductio ad absurdum_ framed somewhat as follows: You contend, +it says to the pluralist, that things, though in some respects +connected, are in other respects independent, so that they are not +members of one all-inclusive individual fact. Well, your position is +absurd on either point. For admit in fact the slightest modicum of +independence, and you find (if you will only think accurately) that +you have to admit more and more of it, until at last nothing but an +absolute chaos, or the proved impossibility of any connexion whatever +between the parts of the universe, remains upon your hands. Admit, on +the other hand, the most incipient minimum of relation between any two +things, and again you can't stop until you see that the absolute unity +of all things is implied. + +If we take the latter _reductio ad absurdum_ first, we find a good +example of it in Lotze's well-known proof of monism from the fact of +interaction between finite things. Suppose, Lotze says in effect, and +for simplicity's sake I have to paraphrase him, for his own words are +too long to quote--many distinct beings _a, b, c_, etc., to exist +independently of each other: _can a in that case ever act on b_? + +What is it to act? Is it not to exert an influence? Does the influence +detach itself from _a_ and find _b_? If so, it is a third fact, and +the problem is not how _a_ acts, but how its 'influence' acts on _b_. +By another influence perhaps? And how in the end does the chain of +influences find _b_ rather than _c_ unless _b_ is somehow prefigured +in them already? And when they have found _b_, how do they make _b_ +respond, if _b_ has nothing in common with them? Why don't they go +right through _b_? The change in _b_ is a _response_, due to _b_'s +capacity for taking account of _a_'s influence, and that again seems +to prove that _b_'s nature is somehow fitted to _a_'s nature in +advance. _A_ and _b_, in short, are not really as distinct as we at +first supposed them, not separated by a void. Were this so they would +be mutually impenetrable, or at least mutually irrelevant. They would +form two universes each living by itself, making no difference to each +other, taking no account of each other, much as the universe of your +day dreams takes no account of mine. They must therefore belong +together beforehand, be co-implicated already, their natures must have +an inborn mutual reference each to each. + +Lotze's own solution runs as follows: The multiple independent things +supposed cannot be real in that shape, but all of them, if reciprocal +action is to be possible between them, must be regarded as parts of a +single real being, M. The pluralism with which our view began has +to give place to a monism; and the 'transeunt' interaction, +being unintelligible as such, is to be understood as an immanent +operation.[6] + +The words 'immanent operation' seem here to mean that the single real +being M, of which _a_ and _b_ are members, is the only thing that +changes, and that when it changes, it changes inwardly and all over at +once. When part _a_ in it changes, consequently, part _b_ must also +change, but without the whole M changing this would not occur. + +A pretty argument, but a purely verbal one, as I apprehend it. _Call_ +your _a_ and _b_ distinct, they can't interact; _call_ them one, +they can. For taken abstractly and without qualification the words +'distinct' and 'independent' suggest only disconnection. If this be +the only property of your _a_ and _b_ (and it is the only property +your words imply), then of course, since you can't deduce their mutual +influence from _it_, you can find no ground of its occurring between +them. Your bare word 'separate,' contradicting your bare word +'joined,' seems to exclude connexion. + +Lotze's remedy for the impossibility thus verbally found is to change +the first word. If, instead of calling _a_ and _b_ independent, we now +call them 'interdependent,' 'united,' or 'one,' he says, _these_ words +do not contradict any sort of mutual influence that may be proposed. +If _a_ and _b_ are 'one,' and the one changes, _a_ and _b_ of course +must co-ordinately change. What under the old name they couldn't do, +they now have license to do under the new name. + +But I ask you whether giving the name of 'one' to the former 'many' +makes us really understand the modus operandi of interaction any +better. We have now given verbal permission to the many to change all +together, if they can; we have removed a verbal impossibility +and substituted a verbal possibility, but the new name, with the +possibility it suggests, tells us nothing of the actual process by +which real things that are one can and do change at all. In point +of fact abstract oneness as such _doesn't_ change, neither has it +parts--any more than abstract independence as such interacts. But then +neither abstract oneness nor abstract independence _exists_; only +concrete real things exist, which add to these properties the other +properties which they possess, to make up what we call their total +nature. To construe any one of their abstract names as _making their +total nature impossible_ is a misuse of the function of naming. The +real way of rescue from the abstract consequences of one name is not +to fly to an opposite name, equally abstract, but rather to correct +the first name by qualifying adjectives that restore some concreteness +to the case. Don't take your 'independence' _simpliciter_, as Lotze +does, take it _secundum quid_. Only when we know what the process of +interaction literally and concretely _consists_ in can we tell whether +beings independent _in definite respects_, distinct, for example, in +origin, separate in place, different in kind, etc., can or cannot +interact. + +_The treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the +name's definition fails positively to include, is what I call +'vicious intellectualism_.' Later I shall have more to say about this +intellectualism, but that Lotze's argument is tainted by it I hardly +think we can deny. As well might you contend (to use an instance from +Sigwart) that a person whom you have once called an 'equestrian' is +thereby forever made unable to walk on his own feet. + +I almost feel as if I should apologize for criticising such subtle +arguments in rapid lectures of this kind. The criticisms have to be as +abstract as the arguments, and in exposing their unreality, take +on such an unreal sound themselves that a hearer not nursed in the +intellectualist atmosphere knows not which of them to accuse. But +_le vin est verse, il faut le boire_, and I must cite a couple more +instances before I stop. + +If we are empiricists and go from parts to wholes, we believe that +beings may first exist and feed so to speak on their own existence, +and then secondarily become known to one another. But philosophers of +the absolute tell us that such independence of being from being known +would, if once admitted, disintegrate the universe beyond all hope of +mending. The argument is one of Professor Royce's proofs that the only +alternative we have is to choose the complete disunion of all things +or their complete union in the absolute One. + +Take, for instance, the proverb 'a cat may look at a king' and adopt +the realistic view that the king's being is independent of the cat's +witnessing. This assumption, which amounts to saying that it need make +no essential difference to the royal object whether the feline subject +cognizes him or not, that the cat may look away from him or may even +be annihilated, and the king remain unchanged,--this assumption, I +say, is considered by my ingenious colleague to lead to the absurd +practical consequence that the two beings _can_ never later acquire +any possible linkages or connexions, but must remain eternally as if +in different worlds. For suppose any connexion whatever to ensue, this +connexion would simply be a third being additional to the cat and the +king, which would itself have to be linked to both by additional links +before it could connect them, and so on _ad infinitum_, the argument, +you see, being the same as Lotze's about how _a_'s influence does its +influencing when it influences _b_. + +In Royce's own words, if the king can be without the cat knowing him, +then king and cat 'can have no common features, no ties, no true +relations; they are separated, each from the other, by absolutely +impassable chasms. They can never come to get either ties or community +of nature; they are not in the same space, nor in the same time, nor +in the same natural or spiritual order.'[7] They form in short two +unrelated universes,--which is the _reductio ad absurdum_ required. + +To escape this preposterous state of things we must accordingly revoke +the original hypothesis. The king and the cat are not indifferent to +each other in the way supposed. But if not in that way, then in no +way, for connexion in that way carries connexion in other ways; so +that, pursuing the reverse line of reasoning, we end with the +absolute itself as the smallest fact that can exist. Cat and king are +co-involved, they are a single fact in two names, they can never have +been absent from each other, and they are both equally co-implicated +with all the other facts of which the universe consists. + +Professor Royce's proof that whoso admits the cat's witnessing the +king at all must thereupon admit the integral absolute, may be briefly +put as follows:-- + +First, to know the king, the cat must intend _that_ king, must somehow +pass over and lay hold of him individually and specifically. The cat's +idea, in short, must transcend the cat's own separate mind and somehow +include the king, for were the king utterly outside and independent of +the cat, the cat's pure other, the beast's mind could touch the king +in no wise. This makes the cat much less distinct from the king than +we had at first naively supposed. There must be some prior continuity +between them, which continuity Royce interprets idealistically as +meaning a higher mind that owns them both as objects, and owning them +can also own any relation, such as the supposed witnessing, that may +obtain between them. Taken purely pluralistically, neither of them can +own any part of a _between_, because, so taken, each is supposed shut +up to itself: the fact of a _between_ thus commits us to a higher +knower. + +But the higher knower that knows the two beings we start with proves +to be the same knower that knows everything else. For assume any third +being, the queen, say, and as the cat knew the king, so let the king +know his queen, and let this second knowledge, by the same reasoning, +require a higher knower as its presupposition. That knower of the +king's knowing must, it is now contended, be the same higher knower +that was required for the cat's knowing; for if you suppose otherwise, +you have no longer the _same king_. This may not seem immediately +obvious, but if you follow the intellectualistic logic employed in all +these reasonings, I don't see how you can escape the admission. If it +be true that the independent or indifferent cannot be related, for +the abstract words 'independent' or 'indifferent' as such imply no +relation, then it is just as true that the king known by the cat +cannot be the king that knows the queen, for taken merely 'as such,' +the abstract term 'what the cat knows' and the abstract term 'what +knows the queen' are logically distinct. The king thus logically +breaks into two kings, with nothing to connect them, until a higher +knower is introduced to recognize them as the self-same king concerned +in any previous acts of knowledge which he may have brought about. +This he can do because he possesses all the terms as his own objects +and can treat them as he will. Add any fourth or fifth term, and you +get a like result, and so on, until at last an all-owning knower, +otherwise called the absolute, is reached. The co-implicated +'through-and-through' world of monism thus stands proved by +irrefutable logic, and all pluralism appears as absurd. + +The reasoning is pleasing from its ingenuity, and it is almost a pity +that so straight a bridge from abstract logic to concrete fact should +not bear our weight. To have the alternative forced upon us of +admitting either finite things each cut off from all relation with +its environment, or else of accepting the integral absolute with no +environment and all relations packed within itself, would be too +delicious a simplification. But the purely verbal character of the +operation is undisguised. Because the _names_ of finite things and +their relations are disjoined, it doesn't follow that the realities +named need a _deus ex machina_ from on high to conjoin them. The same +things disjoined in one respect _appear_ as conjoined in another. +Naming the disjunction doesn't debar us from also naming the +conjunction in a later modifying statement, for the two are absolutely +co-ordinate elements in the finite tissue of experience. When at +Athens it was found self-contradictory that a boy could be both tall +and short (tall namely in respect of a child, short in respect of a +man), the absolute had not yet been thought of, but it might just as +well have been invoked by Socrates as by Lotze or Royce, as a relief +from his peculiar intellectualistic difficulty. + +Everywhere we find rationalists using the same kind of reasoning. The +primal whole which is their vision must be there not only as a +fact but as a logical necessity. It must be the minimum that can +exist--either that absolute whole is there, or there is absolutely +nothing. The logical proof alleged of the irrationality of supposing +otherwise, is that you can deny the whole only in words that +implicitly assert it. If you say 'parts,' of _what_ are they parts? If +you call them a 'many,' that very word unifies them. If you suppose +them unrelated in any particular respect, that 'respect' connects +them; and so on. In short you fall into hopeless contradiction. You +must stay either at one extreme or the other.[8] 'Partly this and +partly that,' partly rational, for instance, and partly irrational, +is no admissible description of the world. If rationality be in it at +all, it must be in it throughout; if irrationality be in it anywhere, +that also must pervade it throughout. It must be wholly rational or +wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or nulliverse; and +reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to +remain doubtful. The individual absolute, with its parts co-implicated +through and through, so that there is nothing in any part by which +any other part can remain inwardly unaffected, is the only rational +supposition. Connexions of an external sort, by which the many became +merely continuous instead of being consubstantial, would be an +irrational supposition. + +Mr. Bradley is the pattern champion of this philosophy _in extremis_, +as one might call it, for he shows an intolerance to pluralism so +extreme that I fancy few of his readers have been able fully to share +it. His reasoning exemplifies everywhere what I call the vice of +intellectualism, for abstract terms are used by him as positively +excluding all that their definition fails to include. Some Greek +sophists could deny that we may say that man is good, for man, they +said, means only man, and good means only good, and the word _is_ +can't be construed to identify such disparate meanings. Mr. Bradley +revels in the same type of argument. No adjective can rationally +qualify a substantive, he thinks, for if distinct from the +substantive, it can't be united with it; and if not distinct, there is +only one thing there, and nothing left to unite. Our whole pluralistic +procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally +irrational, an example of the desperation of our finite intellectual +estate, infected and undermined as that is by the separatist +discursive forms which are our only categories, but which absolute +reality must somehow absorb into its unity and overcome. + +Readers of 'Appearance and reality' will remember how Mr. Bradley +suffers from a difficulty identical with that to which Lotze and Royce +fall a prey--how shall an influence influence? how shall a relation +relate? Any conjunctive relation between two phenomenal experiences +_a_ and _b_ must, in the intellectualist philosophy of these authors, +be itself a third entity; and as such, instead of bridging the one +original chasm, it can only create two smaller chasms, each to be +freshly bridged. Instead of hooking _a_ to _b_, it needs itself to be +hooked by a fresh relation _r'_ to _a_ and by another _r"_ to _b_. +These new relations are but two more entities which themselves require +to be hitched in turn by four still newer relations--so behold the +vertiginous _regressus ad infinitum_ in full career. + +Since a _regressus ad infinitum_ is deemed absurd, the notion that +relations come 'between' their terms must be given up. No mere +external go-between can logically connect. What occurs must be more +intimate. The hooking must be a penetration, a possession. The +relation must _involve_ the terms, each term must involve _it_, and +merging thus their being in it, they must somehow merge their being in +each other, tho, as they seem still phenomenally so separate, we can +never conceive exactly how it is that they are inwardly one. The +absolute, however, must be supposed able to perform the unifying feat +in his own inscrutable fashion. + +In old times, whenever a philosopher was assailed for some +particularly tough absurdity in his system, he was wont to parry the +attack by the argument from the divine omnipotence. 'Do you mean to +limit God's power?' he would reply: 'do you mean to say that God could +not, if he would, do this or that?' This retort was supposed to close +the mouths of all objectors of properly decorous mind. The functions +of the bradleian absolute are in this particular identical with those +of the theistic God. Suppositions treated as too absurd to pass muster +in the finite world which we inhabit, the absolute must be able to +make good 'somehow' in his ineffable way. First we hear Mr. Bradley +convicting things of absurdity; next, calling on the absolute to vouch +for them _quand meme_. Invoked for no other duty, that duty it must +and shall perform. + +The strangest discontinuity of our world of appearance with the +supposed world of absolute reality is asserted both by Bradley and +by Royce; and both writers, the latter with great ingenuity, seek to +soften the violence of the jolt. But it remains violent all the same, +and is felt to be so by most readers. Whoever feels the violence +strongly sees as on a diagram in just what the peculiarity of all this +philosophy of the absolute consists. First, there is a healthy faith +that the world must be rational and self-consistent. 'All science, all +real knowledge, all experience presuppose,' as Mr. Ritchie writes, 'a +coherent universe.' Next, we find a loyal clinging to the rationalist +belief that sense-data and their associations are incoherent, and that +only in substituting a conceptual order for their order can truth +be found. Third, the substituted conceptions are treated +intellectualistically, that is as mutually exclusive and +discontinuous, so that the first innocent continuity of the flow of +sense-experience is shattered for us without any higher conceptual +continuity taking its place. Finally, since this broken state of +things is intolerable, the absolute _deus ex machina_ is called on to +mend it in his own way, since we cannot mend it in ours. + +Any other picture than this of post-kantian absolutism I am unable +to frame. I see the intellectualistic criticism destroying the +immediately given coherence of the phenomenal world, but unable to +make its own conceptual substitutes cohere, and I see the resort to +the absolute for a coherence of a higher type. The situation has +dramatic liveliness, but it is inwardly incoherent throughout, and the +question inevitably comes up whether a mistake may not somewhere have +crept in in the process that has brought it about. May not the remedy +lie rather in revising the intellectualist criticism than in first +adopting it and then trying to undo its consequences by an arbitrary +act of faith in an unintelligible agent. May not the flux of sensible +experience itself contain a rationality that has been overlooked, +so that the real remedy would consist in harking back to it more +intelligently, and not in advancing in the opposite direction away +from it and even away beyond the intellectualist criticism that +disintegrates it, to the pseudo-rationality of the supposed absolute +point of view. I myself believe that this is the real way to keep +rationality in the world, and that the traditional rationalism has +always been facing in the wrong direction. I hope in the end to make +you share, or at any rate respect, this belief, but there is much to +talk of before we get to that point. + +I employed the word 'violent' just now in describing the dramatic +situation in which it pleases the philosophy of the absolute to make +its camp. I don't see how any one can help being struck in absolutist +writings by that curious tendency to fly to violent extremes of which +I have already said a word. The universe must be rational; well +and good; but _how_ rational? in what sense of that eulogistic but +ambiguous word?--this would seem to be the next point to bring up. +There are surely degrees in rationality that might be discriminated +and described. Things can be consistent or coherent in very diverse +ways. But no more in its conception of rationality than in its +conception of relations can the monistic mind suffer the notion of +more or less. Rationality is one and indivisible: if not rational +thus indivisibly, the universe must be completely irrational, and no +shadings or mixtures or compromises can obtain. Mr. McTaggart writes, +in discussing the notion of a mixture: 'The two principles, of +rationality and irrationality, to which the universe is then referred, +will have to be absolutely separate and independent. For if there were +any common unity to which they should be referred, it would be that +unity and not its two manifestations which would be the ultimate +explanation ... and the theory, having thus become monistic,'[9] would +resolve itself into the same alternative once more: is the single +principle rational through and through or not? + +'Can a plurality of reals be possible?' asks Mr. Bradley, and answers, +'No, impossible.' For it would mean a number of beings not dependent +on each other, and this independence their plurality would contradict. +For to be 'many' is to be related, the word having no meaning unless +the units are somehow taken together, and it is impossible to take +them in a sort of unreal void, so they must belong to a larger +reality, and so carry the essence of the units beyond their proper +selves, into a whole which possesses unity and is a larger system.[10] +Either absolute independence or absolute mutual dependence--this, +then, is the only alternative allowed by these thinkers. Of course +'independence,' if absolute, would be preposterous, so the only +conclusion allowable is that, in Ritchie's words, 'every single event +is ultimately related to every other, and determined by the whole +to which it belongs.' The whole complete block-universe +through-and-through, therefore, or no universe at all! + +Professor Taylor is so _naif_ in this habit of thinking only in +extremes that he charges the pluralists with cutting the ground from +under their own feet in not consistently following it themselves. What +pluralists say is that a universe really connected loosely, after the +pattern of our daily experience, is possible, and that for certain +reasons it is the hypothesis to be preferred. What Professor Taylor +thinks they naturally must or should say is that any other sort of +universe is logically impossible, and that a totality of things +interrelated like the world of the monists is not an hypothesis that +can be seriously thought out at all.[11] + +Meanwhile no sensible pluralist ever flies or wants to fly to this +dogmatic extreme. + +If chance is spoken of as an ingredient of the universe, absolutists +interpret it to mean that double sevens are as likely to be thrown out +of a dice box as double sixes are. If free-will is spoken of, that +must mean that an english general is as likely to eat his prisoners +to-day as a Maori chief was a hundred years ago. It is as likely--I am +using Mr. McTaggart's examples--that a majority of Londoners will +burn themselves alive to-morrow as that they will partake of food, as +likely that I shall be hanged for brushing my hair as for committing +a murder,[12] and so forth, through various suppositions that no +indeterminist ever sees real reason to make. + +This habit of thinking only in the most violent extremes reminds me +of what Mr. Wells says of the current objections to socialism, in his +wonderful little book, 'New worlds for old.' The commonest vice of the +human mind is its disposition to see everything as yes or no, as black +or white, its incapacity for discrimination of intermediate shades. +So the critics agree to some hard and fast impossible definition of +socialism, and extract absurdities from it as a conjurer gets rabbits +from a hat. Socialism abolishes property, abolishes the family, and +the rest. The method, Mr. Wells continues, is always the same: It +is to assume that whatever the socialist postulates as desirable is +wanted without limit of qualification,--for socialist read pluralist +and the parallel holds good,--it is to imagine that whatever proposal +is made by him is to be carried out by uncontrolled monomaniacs, and +so to make a picture of the socialist dream which can be presented to +the simple-minded person in doubt--'This is socialism'--or pluralism, +as the case may be. 'Surely!--SURELY! you don't want _this!_' + +How often have I been replied to, when expressing doubts of the +logical necessity of the absolute, of flying to the opposite extreme: +'But surely, SURELY there must be _some_ connexion among things!' As +if I must necessarily be an uncontrolled monomanic insanely denying +any connexion whatever. The whole question revolves in very truth +about the word 'some.' Radical empiricism and pluralism stand out for +the legitimacy of the notion of _some_: each part of the world is in +some ways connected, in some other ways not connected with its other +parts, and the ways can be discriminated, for many of them are +obvious, and their differences are obvious to view. Absolutism, on its +side, seems to hold that 'some' is a category ruinously infected +with self-contradictoriness, and that the only categories inwardly +consistent and therefore pertinent to reality are 'all' and 'none.' + +The question runs into the still more general one with which Mr. +Bradley and later writers of the monistic school have made us +abundantly familiar--the question, namely, whether all the relations +with other things, possible to a being, are pre-included in its +intrinsic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to +some of these relations, it can _be_ without reference to them, and, +if it ever does enter into them, do so adventitiously and as it +were by an after-thought. This is the great question as to whether +'external' relations can exist. They seem to, undoubtedly. My +manuscript, for example, is 'on' the desk. The relation of being 'on' +doesn't seem to implicate or involve in any way the inner meaning +of the manuscript or the inner structure of the desk--these objects +engage in it only by their outsides, it seems only a temporary +accident in their respective histories. Moreover, the 'on' fails to +appear to our senses as one of those unintelligible 'betweens' that +have to be separately hooked on the terms they pretend to connect. +All this innocent sense-appearance, however, we are told, cannot pass +muster in the eyes of reason. It is a tissue of self-contradiction +which only the complete absorption of the desk and the manuscript into +the higher unity of a more absolute reality can overcome. + +The reasoning by which this conclusion is supported is too subtle and +complicated to be properly dealt with in a public lecture, and you +will thank me for not inviting you to consider it at all.[13] I feel +the more free to pass it by now as I think that the cursory account of +the absolutistic attitude which I have already given is sufficient for +our present purpose, and that my own verdict on the philosophy of +the absolute as 'not proven'--please observe that I go no farther +now--need not be backed by argument at every special point. Flanking +operations are less costly and in some ways more effective than +frontal attacks. Possibly you will yourselves think after hearing my +remaining lectures that the alternative of an universe absolutely +rational or absolutely irrational is forced and strained, and that +a _via media_ exists which some of you may agree with me is to +be preferred. _Some_ rationality certainly does characterize our +universe; and, weighing one kind with another, we may deem that the +incomplete kinds that appear are on the whole as acceptable as +the through-and-through sort of rationality on which the monistic +systematizers insist. + +All the said systematizers who have written since Hegel have owed +their inspiration largely to him. Even when they have found no use +for his particular triadic dialectic, they have drawn confidence +and courage from his authoritative and conquering tone. I have said +nothing about Hegel in this lecture, so I must repair the omission in +the next. + + + + +LECTURE III + + +HEGEL AND HIS METHOD + +Directly or indirectly, that strange and powerful genius Hegel has +done more to strengthen idealistic pantheism in thoughtful circles +than all other influences put together. I must talk a little about him +before drawing my final conclusions about the cogency of the arguments +for the absolute. In no philosophy is the fact that a philosopher's +vision and the technique he uses in proof of it are two different +things more palpably evident than in Hegel. The vision in his case +was that of a world in which reason holds all things in solution and +accounts for all the irrationality that superficially appears by +taking it up as a 'moment' into itself. This vision was so intense in +Hegel, and the tone of authority with which he spoke from out of the +midst of it was so weighty, that the impression he made has never been +effaced. Once dilated to the scale of the master's eye, the disciples' +sight could not contract to any lesser prospect. The technique which +Hegel used to prove his vision was the so-called dialectic method, but +here his fortune has been quite contrary. Hardly a recent disciple has +felt his particular applications of the method to be satisfactory. +Many have let them drop entirely, treating them rather as a sort of +provisional stop-gap, symbolic of what might some day prove possible +of execution, but having no literal cogency or value now. Yet these +very same disciples hold to the vision itself as a revelation that can +never pass away. The case is curious and worthy of our study. + +It is still more curious in that these same disciples, altho they are +usually willing to abandon any particular instance of the dialectic +method to its critics, are unshakably sure that in some shape the +dialectic method is the key to truth. What, then, is the dialectic +method? It is itself a part of the hegelian vision or intuition, and +a part that finds the strongest echo in empiricism and common sense. +Great injustice is done to Hegel by treating him as primarily a +reasoner. He is in reality a naively observant man, only beset with a +perverse preference for the use of technical and logical jargon. He +plants himself in the empirical flux of things and gets the impression +of what happens. His mind is in very truth _impressionistic_; and his +thought, when once you put yourself at the animating centre of it, is +the easiest thing in the world to catch the pulse of and to follow. + +Any author is easy if you can catch the centre of his vision. From +the centre in Hegel come those towering sentences of his that are +comparable only to Luther's, as where, speaking of the ontological +proof of God's existence from the concept of him as the _ens +perfectissimum_ to which no attribute can be lacking, he says: 'It +would be strange if the Notion, the very heart of the mind, or, in +a word, the concrete totality we call God, were not rich enough +to embrace so poor a category as Being, the very poorest and most +abstract of all--for nothing can be more insignificant than Being.' +But if Hegel's central thought is easy to catch, his abominable habits +of speech make his application of it to details exceedingly difficult +to follow. His passion for the slipshod in the way of sentences, +his unprincipled playing fast and loose with terms; his dreadful +vocabulary, calling what completes a thing its 'negation,' for +example; his systematic refusal to let you know whether he is talking +logic or physics or psychology, his whole deliberately adopted policy +of ambiguity and vagueness, in short: all these things make his +present-day readers wish to tear their hair--or his--out in +desperation. Like Byron's corsair, he has left a name 'to other times, +linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.' + +The virtue was the vision, which was really in two parts. The first +part was that reason is all-inclusive, the second was that things +are 'dialectic.' Let me say a word about this second part of Hegel's +vision. + +The impression that any _naif_ person gets who plants himself +innocently in the flux of things is that things are off their balance. +Whatever equilibriums our finite experiences attain to are but +provisional. Martinique volcanoes shatter our wordsworthian +equilibrium with nature. Accidents, either moral, mental, or physical, +break up the slowly built-up equilibriums men reach in family life +and in their civic and professional relations. Intellectual enigmas +frustrate our scientific systems, and the ultimate cruelty of the +universe upsets our religious attitudes and outlooks. Of no special +system of good attained does the universe recognize the value as +sacred. Down it tumbles, over it goes, to feed the ravenous appetite +for destruction, of the larger system of history in which it stood +for a moment as a landing-place and stepping-stone. This dogging of +everything by its negative, its fate, its undoing, this perpetual +moving on to something future which shall supersede the present, +this is the hegelian intuition of the essential provisionality, and +consequent unreality, of everything empirical and finite. Take any +concrete finite thing and try to hold it fast. You cannot, for so +held, it proves not to be concrete at all, but an arbitrary extract or +abstract which you have made from the remainder of empirical reality. +The rest of things invades and overflows both it and you together, +and defeats your rash attempt. Any partial view whatever of the world +tears the part out of its relations, leaves out some truth concerning +it, is untrue of it, falsifies it. The full truth about anything +involves more than that thing. In the end nothing less than the whole +of everything can be the truth of anything at all. + +Taken so far, and taken in the rough, Hegel is not only harmless, but +accurate. There is a dialectic movement in things, if such it please +you to call it, one that the whole constitution of concrete life +establishes; but it is one that can be described and accounted for in +terms of the pluralistic vision of things far more naturally than in +the monistic terms to which Hegel finally reduced it. Pluralistic +empiricism knows that everything is in an environment, a surrounding +world of other things, and that if you leave it to work there it will +inevitably meet with friction and opposition from its neighbors. Its +rivals and enemies will destroy it unless it can buy them off by +compromising some part of its original pretensions. + +But Hegel saw this undeniable characteristic of the world we live in +in a non-empirical light. Let the _mental idea_ of the thing work in +your thought all alone, he fancied, and just the same consequences +will follow. It will be negated by the opposite ideas that dog it, +and can survive only by entering, along with them, into some kind +of treaty. This treaty will be an instance of the so-called 'higher +synthesis' of everything with its negative; and Hegel's originality +lay in transporting the process from the sphere of percepts to that of +concepts and treating it as the universal method by which every kind +of life, logical, physical, or psychological, is mediated. Not to the +sensible facts as such, then, did Hegel point for the secret of what +keeps existence going, but rather to the conceptual way of treating +them. Concepts were not in his eyes the static self-contained things +that previous logicians had supposed, but were germinative, and passed +beyond themselves into each other by what he called their immanent +dialectic. In ignoring each other as they do, they virtually exclude +and deny each other, he thought, and thus in a manner introduce each +other. So the dialectic logic, according to him, had to supersede the +'logic of identity' in which, since Aristotle, all Europe had been +brought up. + +This view of concepts is Hegel's revolutionary performance; but so +studiously vague and ambiguous are all his expressions of it that one +can hardly tell whether it is the concepts as such, or the sensible +experiences and elements conceived, that Hegel really means to work +with. The only thing that is certain is that whatever you may say of +his procedure, some one will accuse you of misunderstanding it. I make +no claim to understanding it, I treat it merely impressionistically. + +So treating it, I regret that he should have called it by the name of +logic. Clinging as he did to the vision of a really living world, and +refusing to be content with a chopped-up intellectualist picture +of it, it is a pity that he should have adopted the very word that +intellectualism had already pre-empted. But he clung fast to the old +rationalist contempt for the immediately given world of sense and all +its squalid particulars, and never tolerated the notion that the form +of philosophy might be empirical only. His own system had to be a +product of eternal reason, so the word 'logic,' with its suggestions +of coercive necessity, was the only word he could find natural. He +pretended therefore to be using the _a priori_ method, and to be +working by a scanty equipment of ancient logical terms--position, +negation, reflection, universal, particular, individual, and the like. +But what he really worked by was his own empirical perceptions, which +exceeded and overflowed his miserably insufficient logical categories +in every instance of their use. + +What he did with the category of negation was his most original +stroke. The orthodox opinion is that you can advance logically through +the field of concepts only by going from the same to the same. Hegel +felt deeply the sterility of this law of conceptual thought; he +saw that in a fashion negation also relates things; and he had the +brilliant idea of transcending the ordinary logic by treating advance +from the different to the different as if it were also a necessity of +thought. 'The so-called maxim of identity,' he wrote, 'is supposed to +be accepted by the consciousness of every one. But the language which +such a law demands, "a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism, +mind is mind," deserves to be called silliness. No mind either speaks +or thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this law, and no +existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. We must never view +identity as abstract identity, to the exclusion of all difference. +That is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from what +alone deserves the name of philosophy. If thinking were no more than +registering abstract identities, it would be a most superfluous +performance. Things and concepts are identical with themselves only in +so far as at the same time they involve distinction.'[1] + +The distinction that Hegel has in mind here is naturally in the first +instance distinction from all other things or concepts. But in his +hands this quickly develops into contradiction of them, and finally, +reflected back upon itself, into self-contradiction; and the immanent +self-contradictoriness of all finite concepts thenceforth becomes the +propulsive logical force that moves the world.[2] 'Isolate a thing +from all its relations,' says Dr. Edward Caird,[3] expounding Hegel, +'and try to assert it by itself; you find that it has negated itself +as well as its relations. The thing in itself is nothing.' Or, to +quote Hegel's own words: 'When we suppose an existent A, and another, +B, B is at first defined as the other. But A is just as much the other +of B. Both are others in the same fashion.... "Other" is the other by +itself, therefore the other of every other, consequently the other of +itself, the simply unlike itself, the self-negator, the self-alterer,' +etc.[4] Hegel writes elsewhere: 'The finite, as implicitly other than +what it is, is forced to surrender its own immediate or natural being, +and to turn suddenly into its opposite.... Dialectic is the universal +and irresistible power before which nothing can stay.... _Summum jus, +summa injuria_--to drive an abstract right to excess is to commit +injustice.... Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism lead to one +another. Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit outwits itself. Joy +brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile.'[5] To which one well +might add that most human institutions, by the purely technical and +professional manner in which they come to be administered, end by +becoming obstacles to the very purposes which their founders had in +view. + +Once catch well the knack of this scheme of thought and you are lucky +if you ever get away from it. It is all you can see. Let any one +pronounce anything, and your feeling of a contradiction being implied +becomes a habit, almost a motor habit in some persons who symbolize by +a stereotyped gesture the position, sublation, and final reinstatement +involved. If you say 'two' or 'many,' your speech betrayeth you, for +the very name collects them into one. If you express doubt, your +expression contradicts its content, for the doubt itself is not +doubted but affirmed. If you say 'disorder,' what is that but a +certain bad kind of order? if you say 'indetermination,' you are +determining just _that_. If you say 'nothing but the unexpected +happens,' the unexpected becomes what you expect. If you say 'all +things are relative,' to what is the all of them itself relative? If +you say 'no more,' you have said more already, by implying a region +in which no more is found; to know a limit as such is consequently +already to have got beyond it; And so forth, throughout as many +examples as one cares to cite. + +Whatever you posit appears thus as one-sided, and negates its other, +which, being equally one-sided, negates _it_; and, since this +situation remains unstable, the two contradictory terms have together, +according to Hegel, to engender a higher truth of which they both +appear as indispensable members, mutually mediating aspects of that +higher concept of situation in thought. + +Every higher total, however provisional and relative, thus reconciles +the contradictions which its parts, abstracted from it, prove +implicitly to contain. Rationalism, you remember, is what I called the +way of thinking that methodically subordinates parts to wholes, so +Hegel here is rationalistic through and through. The only whole by +which _all_ contradictions are reconciled is for him the absolute +whole of wholes, the all-inclusive reason to which Hegel himself gave +the name of the absolute Idea, but which I shall continue to call 'the +absolute' purely and simply, as I have done hitherto. + +Empirical instances of the way in which higher unities reconcile +contradictions are innumerable, so here again Hegel's vision, taken +merely impressionistically, agrees with countless facts. Somehow life +does, out of its total resources, find ways of satisfying opposites +at once. This is precisely the paradoxical aspect which much of our +civilization presents. Peace we secure by armaments, liberty by laws +and constitutions; simplicity and naturalness are the consummate +result of artificial breeding and training; health, strength, and +wealth are increased only by lavish use, expense, and wear. Our +mistrust of mistrust engenders our commercial system of credit; our +tolerance of anarchistic and revolutionary utterances is the only way +of lessening their danger; our charity has to say no to beggars in +order not to defeat its own desires; the true epicurean has to observe +great sobriety; the way to certainty lies through radical doubt; +virtue signifies not innocence but the knowledge of sin and its +overcoming; by obeying nature, we command her, etc. The ethical and +the religious life are full of such contradictions held in solution. +You hate your enemy?--well, forgive him, and thereby heap coals of +fire on his head; to realize yourself, renounce yourself; to save your +soul, first lose it; in short, die to live. + +From such massive examples one easily generalizes Hegel's vision. +Roughly, his 'dialectic' picture is a fair account of a good deal of +the world. It sounds paradoxical, but whenever you once place yourself +at the point of view; of any higher synthesis, you see exactly how +it does in a fashion take up opposites into itself. As an example, +consider the conflict between our carnivorous appetites and hunting +instincts and the sympathy with animals which our refinement is +bringing in its train. We have found how to reconcile these opposites +most effectively by establishing game-laws and close seasons and by +keeping domestic herds. The creatures preserved thus are preserved for +the sake of slaughter, truly, but if not preserved for that reason, +not one of them would be alive at all. Their will to live and our +will to kill them thus harmoniously combine in this peculiar higher +synthesis of domestication. + +Merely as a reporter of certain empirical aspects of the actual, +Hegel, then, is great and true. But he aimed at being something far +greater than an empirical reporter, so I must say something about that +essential aspect of his thought. Hegel was dominated by the notion of +a truth that should prove incontrovertible, binding on every one, +and certain, which should be _the_ truth, one, indivisible, eternal, +objective, and necessary, to which all our particular thinking +must lead as to its consummation. This is the dogmatic ideal, +the postulate, uncriticised, undoubted, and unchallenged, of all +rationalizers in philosophy. '_I have never doubted_,' a recent Oxford +writer says, that truth is universal and single and timeless, a single +content or significance, one and whole and complete.[6] Advance in +thinking, in the hegelian universe, has, in short, to proceed by the +apodictic words _must be_ rather than by those inferior hypothetic +words _may be_, which are all that empiricists can use. + +Now Hegel found that his idea of an immanent movement through +the field of concepts by way of 'dialectic' negation played most +beautifully into the hands of this rationalistic demand for something +absolute and _inconcussum_ in the way of truth. It is easy to see how. +If you affirm anything, for example that A is, and simply leave the +matter thus, you leave it at the mercy of any one who may supervene +and say 'not A, but B is.' If he does say so, your statement doesn't +refute him, it simply contradicts him, just as his contradicts you. +The only way of making your affirmation about A _self-securing_ is by +getting it into a form which will by implication negate all possible +negations in advance. The mere absence of negation is not enough; it +must be present, but present with its fangs drawn. What you posit as A +must already have cancelled the alternative or made it innocuous, by +having negated it in advance. Double negation is the only form of +affirmation that fully plays into the hands of the dogmatic ideal. +Simply and innocently affirmative statements are good enough for +empiricists, but unfit for rationalist use, lying open as they do to +every accidental contradictor, and exposed to every puff of doubt. +The _final_ truth must be something to which there is no imaginable +alternative, because it contains all its possible alternatives inside +of itself as moments already taken account of and overcome. Whatever +involves its own alternatives as elements of itself is, in a phrase +often repeated, its 'own other,' made so by the _methode der absoluten +negativitaet_. + +Formally, this scheme of an organism of truth that has already fed as +it were on its own liability to death, so that, death once dead +for it, there's no more dying then, is the very fulfilment of the +rationalistic aspiration. That one and only whole, with all its +parts involved in it, negating and making one another impossible if +abstracted and taken singly, but necessitating and holding one another +in place if the whole of them be taken integrally, is the literal +ideal sought after; it is the very diagram and picture of that notion +of _the_ truth with no outlying alternative, to which nothing can be +added, nor from it anything withdrawn, and all variations from which +are absurd, which so dominates the human imagination. Once we have +taken in the features of this diagram that so successfully solves +the world-old problem, the older ways of proving the necessity of +judgments cease to give us satisfaction. Hegel's way we think must +be the right way. The true must be essentially the self-reflecting +self-contained recurrent, that which secures itself by including its +own other and negating it; that makes a spherical system with no loose +ends hanging out for foreignness to get a hold upon; that is forever +rounded in and closed, not strung along rectilinearly and open at its +ends like that universe of simply collective or additive form which +Hegel calls the world of the bad infinite, and which is all that +empiricism, starting with simply posited single parts and elements, is +ever able to attain to. + +No one can possibly deny the sublimity of this hegelian conception. +It is surely in the grand style, if there be such a thing as a grand +style in philosophy. For us, however, it remains, so far, a merely +formal and diagrammatic conception; for with the actual content +of absolute truth, as Hegel materially tries to set it forth, few +disciples have been satisfied, and I do not propose to refer at all to +the concreter parts of his philosophy. The main thing now is to grasp +the generalized vision, and feel the authority of the abstract scheme +of a statement self-secured by involving double negation. Absolutists +who make no use of Hegel's own technique are really working by his +method. You remember the proofs of the absolute which I instanced in +my last lecture, Lotze's and Royce's proofs by _reductio ad absurdum_, +to the effect that any smallest connexion rashly supposed in things +will logically work out into absolute union, and any minimal +disconnexion into absolute disunion,--these are really arguments +framed on the hegelian pattern. The truth is that which you implicitly +affirm in the very attempt to deny it; it is that from which every +variation refutes itself by proving self-contradictory. This is the +supreme insight of rationalism, and to-day the best _must-be's_ of +rationalist argumentation are but so many attempts to communicate it +to the hearer. + +Thus, you see, my last lecture and this lecture make connexion again +and we can consider Hegel and the other absolutists to be supporting +the same system. The next point I wish to dwell on is the part played +by what I have called vicious intellectualism in this wonderful +system's structure. + +Rationalism in general thinks it gets the fulness of truth by turning +away from sensation to conception, conception obviously giving the +more universal and immutable picture. Intellectualism in the vicious +sense I have already defined as the habit of assuming that a concept +_ex_cludes from any reality conceived by its means everything not +included in the concept's definition. I called such intellectualism +illegitimate as I found it used in Lotze's, Royce's, and Bradley's +proofs of the absolute (which absolute I consequently held to be +non-proven by their arguments), and I left off by asserting my own +belief that a pluralistic and incompletely integrated universe, +describable only by the free use of the word 'some,' is a legitimate +hypothesis. + +Now Hegel himself, in building up his method of double negation, +offers the vividest possible example of this vice of intellectualism. +Every idea of a finite thing is of course a concept of _that_ thing +and not a concept of anything else. But Hegel treats this not being a +concept of anything else as if it were _equivalent to the concept of +anything else not being_, or in other words as if it were a denial +or negation of everything else. Then, as the other things, thus +implicitly contradicted by the thing first conceived, also by the same +law contradict _it_, the pulse of dialectic commences to beat and the +famous triads begin to grind out the cosmos. If any one finds +the process here to be a luminous one, he must be left to the +illumination, he must remain an undisturbed hegelian. What others feel +as the intolerable ambiguity, verbosity, and unscrupulousness of the +master's way of deducing things, he will probably ascribe--since +divine oracles are notoriously hard to interpret--to the 'difficulty' +that habitually accompanies profundity. For my own part, there seems +something grotesque and _saugrenu_ in the pretension of a style so +disobedient to the first rules of sound communication between minds, +to be the authentic mother-tongue of reason, and to keep step more +accurately than any other style does with the absolute's own ways +of thinking. I do not therefore take Hegel's technical apparatus +seriously at all. I regard him rather as one of those numerous +original seers who can never learn how to articulate. His would-be +coercive logic counts for nothing in my eyes; but that does not in +the least impugn the philosophic importance of his conception of the +absolute, if we take it merely hypothetically as one of the great +types of cosmic vision. + +Taken thus hypothetically, I wish to discuss it briefly. But before +doing so I must call your attention to an odd peculiarity in the +hegelian procedure. The peculiarity is one which will come before us +again for a final judgment in my seventh lecture, so at present I only +note it in passing. Hegel, you remember, considers that the immediate +finite data of experience are 'untrue' because they are not their own +others. They are negated by what is external to them. The absolute +is true because it and it only has no external environment, and has +attained to being its own other. (These words sound queer enough, but +those of you who know something of Hegel's text will follow them.) +Granting his premise that to be true a thing must in some sort be its +own other, everything hinges on whether he is right in holding that +the several pieces of finite experience themselves cannot be said +to be in any wise _their_ own others. When conceptually or +intellectualistically treated, they of course cannot be their own +others. Every abstract concept as such excludes what it doesn't +include, and if such concepts are adequate substitutes for +reality's concrete pulses, the latter must square themselves with +intellectualistic logic, and no one of them in any sense can claim to +be its own other. If, however, the conceptual treatment of the flow of +reality should prove for any good reason to be inadequate and to have +a practical rather than a theoretical or speculative value, then an +independent empirical look into the constitution of reality's pulses +might possibly show that some of them _are_ their own others, and +indeed are so in the self-same sense in which the absolute is +maintained to be so by Hegel. When we come to my sixth lecture, +on Professor Bergson, I shall in effect defend this very view, +strengthening my thesis by his authority. I am unwilling to say +anything more about the point at this time, and what I have just said +of it is only a sort of surveyor's note of where our present position +lies in the general framework of these lectures. + +Let us turn now at last to the great question of fact, _Does the +absolute exist or not_? to which all our previous discussion has been +preliminary. I may sum up that discussion by saying that whether +there really be an absolute or not, no one makes himself absurd +or self-contradictory by doubting or denying it. The charges of +self-contradiction, where they do not rest on purely verbal reasoning, +rest on a vicious intellectualism. I will not recapitulate my +criticisms. I will simply ask you to change the _venue_, and to +discuss the absolute now as if it were only an open hypothesis. As +such, is it more probable or more improbable? + +But first of all I must parenthetically ask you to distinguish the +notion of the absolute carefully from that of another object with +which it is liable to become heedlessly entangled. That other object +is the 'God' of common people in their religion, and the creator-God +of orthodox christian theology. Only thoroughgoing monists or +pantheists believe in the absolute. The God of our popular +Christianity is but one member of a pluralistic system. He and we +stand outside of each other, just as the devil, the saints, and the +angels stand outside of both of us. I can hardly conceive of anything +more different from the absolute than the God, say, of David or of +Isaiah. _That_ God is an essentially finite being _in_ the cosmos, +not with the cosmos in him, and indeed he has a very local habitation +there, and very one-sided local and personal attachments. If it should +prove probable that the absolute does not exist, it will not follow in +the slightest degree that a God like that of David, Isaiah, or Jesus +may not exist, or may not be the most important existence in the +universe for us to acknowledge. I pray you, then, not to confound the +two ideas as you listen to the criticisms I shall have to proffer. +I hold to the finite God, for reasons which I shall touch on in the +seventh of these lectures; but I hold that his rival and competitor--I +feel almost tempted to say his enemy--the absolute, is not only not +forced on us by logic, but that it is an improbable hypothesis. + +The great claim made for the absolute is that by supposing it we make +the world appear more rational. Any hypothesis that does that will +always be accepted as more probably true than an hypothesis that makes +the world appear irrational. Men are once for all so made that they +prefer a rational world to believe in and to live in. But rationality +has at least four dimensions, intellectual, aesthetical, moral, and +practical; and to find a world rational to the maximal degree _in all +these respects simultaneously_ is no easy matter. Intellectually, the +world of mechanical materialism is the most rational, for we subject +its events to mathematical calculation. But the mechanical world +is ugly, as arithmetic is ugly, and it is non-moral. Morally, +the theistic world is rational enough, but full of intellectual +frustrations. The practical world of affairs, in its turn, so +supremely rational to the politician, the military man, or the man of +conquering business-faculty that he never would vote to change the +type of it, is irrational to moral and artistic temperaments; so that +whatever demand for rationality we find satisfied by a philosophic +hypothesis, we are liable to find some other demand for rationality +unsatisfied by the same hypothesis. The rationality we gain in one +coin we thus pay for in another; and the problem accordingly seems at +first sight to resolve itself into that of getting a conception which +will yield the largest _balance_ of rationality rather than one which +will yield perfect rationality of every description. In general, it +may be said that if a man's conception of the world lets loose any +action in him that is easy, or any faculty which he is fond of +exercising, he will deem it rational in so far forth, be the faculty +that of computing, fighting, lecturing, classifying, framing schematic +tabulations, getting the better end of a bargain, patiently waiting +and enduring, preaching, joke-making, or what you like. Albeit the +absolute is defined as being necessarily an embodiment of objectively +perfect rationality, it is fair to its english advocates to say that +those who have espoused the hypothesis most concretely and seriously +have usually avowed the irrationality to their own minds of certain +elements in it. + +Probably the weightiest contribution to our feeling of the rationality +of the universe which the notion of the absolute brings is the +assurance that however disturbed the surface may be, at bottom all is +well with the cosmos--central peace abiding at the heart of endless +agitation. This conception is rational in many ways, beautiful +aesthetically, beautiful intellectually (could we only follow it into +detail), and beautiful morally, if the enjoyment of security can be +accounted moral. Practically it is less beautiful; for, as we saw in +our last lecture, in representing the deepest reality of the world as +static and without a history, it loosens the world's hold upon our +sympathies and leaves the soul of it foreign. Nevertheless it does +give _peace_, and that kind of rationality is so paramountly demanded +by men that to the end of time there will be absolutists, men who +choose belief in a static eternal, rather than admit that the finite +world of change and striving, even with a God as one of the strivers, +is itself eternal. For such minds Professor Royce's words will always +be the truest: 'The very presence of ill in the temporal order is the +condition of the perfection of the eternal order.... We long for the +absolute only in so far as in us the absolute also longs, and seeks +through our very temporal striving, the peace that is nowhere in time, +but only, and yet absolutely, in eternity. Were there no longing in +time there would be no peace in eternity.... God [_i.e._ the absolute] +who here in me aims at what I now temporally miss, not only possesses +in the eternal world the goal after which I strive, but comes to +possess it even through and because of my sorrow. Through this my +tribulation the absolute triumph then is won.... In the absolute I am +fulfilled. Yet my very fulfilment demands and therefore can transcend +this sorrow.'[7] Royce is particularly felicitous in his ability to +cite parts of finite experience to which he finds his picture of this +absolute experience analogous. But it is hard to portray the absolute +at all without rising into what might be called the 'inspired' style +of language--I use the word not ironically, but prosaically and +descriptively, to designate the only literary form that goes with the +kind of emotion that the absolute arouses. One can follow the pathway +of reasoning soberly enough,[8] but the picture itself has to be +effulgent. This admirable faculty of transcending, whilst inwardly +preserving, every contrariety, is the absolute's characteristic form +of rationality. We are but syllables in the mouth of the Lord; if the +whole sentence is divine, each syllable is absolutely what it should +be, in spite of all appearances. In making up the balance for or +against absolutism, this emotional value weights heavily the credit +side of the account. + +The trouble is that we are able to see so little into the positive +detail of it, and that if once admitted not to be coercively proven +by the intellectualist arguments, it remains only a hypothetic +possibility. + +On the debit side of the account the absolute, taken seriously, and +not as a mere name for our right occasionally to drop the strenuous +mood and take a moral holiday, introduces all those tremendous +irrationalities into the universe which a frankly pluralistic theism +escapes, but which have been flung as a reproach at every form of +monistic theism or pantheism. It introduces a speculative 'problem +of evil' namely, and leaves us wondering why the perfection of the +absolute should require just such particular hideous forms of life as +darken the day for our human imaginations. If they were forced on it +by something alien, and to 'overcome' them the absolute had still to +keep hold of them, we could understand its feeling of triumph, though +we, so far as we were ourselves among the elements overcome, could +acquiesce but sullenly in the resultant situation, and would never +just have chosen it as the most rational one conceivable. But the +absolute is represented as a being without environment, upon which +nothing alien can be forced, and which has spontaneously chosen from +within to give itself the spectacle of all that evil rather than a +spectacle with less evil in it.[9] Its perfection is represented as +the source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is +the tremendous imperfection of all finite experience. In whatever +sense the word 'rationality' may be taken, it is vain to contend that +the impression made on our finite minds by such a way of representing +things is altogether rational. Theologians have felt its irrationality +acutely, and the 'fall,' the predestination, and the election which +the situation involves have given them more trouble than anything else +in their attempt to pantheize Christianity. The whole business remains +a puzzle, both intellectually and morally. + +Grant that the spectacle or world-romance offered to itself by the +absolute is in the absolute's eyes perfect. Why would not the world be +more perfect by having the affair remain in just those terms, and +by not having any finite spectators to come in and add to what was +perfect already their innumerable imperfect manners of seeing the same +spectacle? Suppose the entire universe to consist of one superb copy +of a book, fit for the ideal reader. Is that universe improved or +deteriorated by having myriads of garbled and misprinted separate +leaves and chapters also created, giving false impressions of the book +to whoever looks at them? To say the least, the balance of rationality +is not obviously in favor of such added mutilations. So this question +becomes urgent: Why, the absolute's own total vision of things +being so rational, was it necessary to comminute it into all these +coexisting inferior fragmentary visions? + +Leibnitz in his theodicy represents God as limited by an antecedent +reason in things which makes certain combinations logically +incompatible, certain goods impossible. He surveys in advance all the +universes he might create, and by an act of what Leibnitz calls his +antecedent will he chooses our actual world as the one in which the +evil, unhappily necessary anyhow, is at its minimum. It is the best of +all the worlds that are possible, therefore, but by no means the most +abstractly desirable world. Having made this mental choice, God next +proceeds to what Leibnitz calls his act of consequent or decretory +will: he says '_Fiat_' and the world selected springs into objective +being, with all the finite creatures in it to suffer from its +imperfections without sharing in its creator's atoning vision. + +Lotze has made some penetrating remarks on this conception of +Leibnitz's, and they exactly fall in with what I say of the absolutist +conception. The world projected out of the creative mind by the +_fiat_, and existing in detachment from its author, is a sphere of +being where the parts realize themselves only singly. If the divine +value of them is evident only when they are collectively looked at, +then, Lotze rightly says, the world surely becomes poorer and not +richer for God's utterance of the _fiat_. He might much better have +remained contented with his merely antecedent choice of the scheme, +without following it up by a creative decree. The scheme _as such_ was +admirable; it could only lose by being translated into reality.[10] +Why, I similarly ask, should the absolute ever have lapsed from the +perfection of its own integral experience of things, and refracted +itself into all our finite experiences? + +It is but fair to recent english absolutists to say that many of them +have confessed the imperfect rationality of the absolute from this +point of view. Mr. McTaggart, for example, writes: 'Does not our very +failure to perceive the perfection of the universe destroy it? ... In +so far as we do not see the perfection of the universe, we are not +perfect ourselves. And as we are parts of the universe, that cannot be +perfect.'[11] + +And Mr. Joachim finds just the same difficulty. Calling the hypothesis +of the absolute by the name of the 'coherence theory of truth,' he +calls the problem of understanding how the complete coherence of all +things in the absolute should involve as a necessary moment in +its self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds, a +self-assertion which in its extreme form is error,--he calls this +problem, I say, an insoluble puzzle. If truth be the universal _fons +et origo_, how does error slip in? 'The coherence theory of truth,' he +concludes, 'may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very +entrance of the harbor.'[12] Yet in spite of this rather bad form +of irrationality, Mr. Joachim stoutly asserts his 'immediate +certainty'[13] of the theory shipwrecked, the correctness of which +he says he has 'never doubted.' This candid confession of a fixed +attitude of faith in the absolute, which even one's own criticisms and +perplexities fail to disturb, seems to me very significant. Not only +empiricists, but absolutists also, would all, if they were as candid +as this author, confess that the prime thing in their philosophy +is their vision of a truth possible, which they then employ their +reasoning to convert, as best it can, into a certainty or probability. + +I can imagine a believer in the absolute retorting at this point that +_he_ at any rate is not dealing with mere probabilities, but that +the nature of things logically requires the multitudinous erroneous +copies, and that therefore the universe cannot be the absolute's book +alone. For, he will ask, is not the absolute defined as the total +consciousness of everything that is? Must not its field of view +consist of parts? And what can the parts of a total consciousness be +unless they be fractional consciousnesses? Our finite minds _must_ +therefore coexist with the absolute mind. We are its constituents, and +it cannot live without us.--But if any one of you feels tempted to +retort in this wise, let me remind you that you are frankly employing +pluralistic weapons, and thereby giving up the absolutist cause. The +notion that the absolute is made of constituents on which its being +depends is the rankest empiricism. The absolute as such has _objects_, +not constituents, and if the objects develop selfhoods upon their own +several accounts, those selfhoods must be set down as facts additional +to the absolute consciousness, and not as elements implicated in its +definition. The absolute is a rationalist conception. Rationalism +goes from wholes to parts, and always assumes wholes to be +self-sufficing.[14] + +My conclusion, so far, then, is this, that altho the hypothesis of the +absolute, in yielding a certain kind of religious peace, performs +a most important rationalizing function, it nevertheless, from +the intellectual point of view, remains decidedly irrational. The +_ideally_ perfect whole is certainly that whole of which the _parts +also are perfect_--if we can depend on logic for anything, we can +depend on it for that definition. The absolute is defined as the +ideally perfect whole, yet most of its parts, if not all, are +admittedly imperfect. Evidently the conception lacks internal +consistency, and yields us a problem rather than a solution. It +creates a speculative puzzle, the so-called mystery of evil and of +error, from which a pluralistic metaphysic is entirely free. + +In any pluralistic metaphysic, the problems that evil presents are +practical, not speculative. Not why evil should exist at all, but how +we can lessen the actual amount of it, is the sole question we need +there consider. 'God,' in the religious life of ordinary men, is the +name not of the whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal +tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to +co-operate in his purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. +He works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When +John Mill said that the notion of God's omnipotence must be given up, +if God is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately +right; yet so prevalent is the lazy monism that idly haunts the region +of God's name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally +treated as a paradox: God, it was said, _could_ not be finite. I +believe that the only God worthy of the name _must_ be finite, and I +shall return to this point in a later lecture. If the absolute exist +in addition--and the hypothesis must, in spite of its irrational +features, still be left open--then the absolute is only the wider +cosmic whole of which our God is but the most ideal portion, and which +in the more usual human sense is hardly to be termed a religious +hypothesis at all. 'Cosmic emotion' is the better name for the +reaction it may awaken. + +Observe that all the irrationalities and puzzles which the absolute +gives rise to, and from which the finite God remains free, are due to +the fact that the absolute has nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of +itself. The finite God whom I contrast with it may conceivably have +_almost_ nothing outside of himself; he may already have triumphed +over and absorbed all but the minutest fraction of the universe; but +that fraction, however small, reduces him to the status of a +relative being, and in principle the universe is saved from all the +irrationalities incidental to absolutism. The only irrationality left +would be the irrationality of which pluralism as such is accused, and +of this I hope to say a word more later. + +I have tired you with so many subtleties in this lecture that I will +add only two other counts to my indictment. + +First, then, let me remind you that _the absolute is useless for +deductive purposes_. It gives us absolute safety if you will, but +it is compatible with every relative danger. You cannot enter the +phenomenal world with the notion of it in your grasp, and name +beforehand any detail which you are likely to meet there. Whatever the +details of experience may prove to be, _after the fact of them_ +the absolute will adopt them. It is an hypothesis that functions +retrospectively only, not prospectively. _That_, whatever it may be, +will have been in point of fact the sort of world which the absolute +was pleased to offer to itself as a spectacle. + +Again, the absolute is always represented idealistically, as the +all-knower. Thinking this view consistently out leads one to frame +an almost ridiculous conception of the absolute mind, owing to the +enormous mass of unprofitable information which it would then seem +obliged to carry. One of the many _reductiones ad absurdum_ of +pluralism by which idealism thinks it proves the absolute One is as +follows: Let there be many facts; but since on idealist principles +facts exist only by being known, the many facts will therefore mean +many knowers. But that there are so many knowers is itself a fact, +which in turn requires _its_ knower, so the one absolute knower has +eventually to be brought in. _All_ facts lead to him. If it be a fact +that this table is not a chair, not a rhinoceros, not a logarithm, not +a mile away from the door, not worth five hundred pounds sterling, not +a thousand centuries old, the absolute must even now be articulately +aware of all these negations. Along with what everything is it must +also be conscious of everything which it is not. This infinite +atmosphere of explicit negativity--observe that it has to be +explicit--around everything seems to us so useless an encumbrance as +to make the absolute still more foreign to our sympathy. Furthermore, +if it be a fact that certain ideas are silly, the absolute has to have +already thought the silly ideas to establish them in silliness. The +rubbish in its mind would thus appear easily to outweigh in amount the +more desirable material. One would expect it fairly to burst with such +an obesity, plethora, and superfoetation of useless information.[15] + +I will spare you further objections. The sum of it all is that the +absolute is not forced on our belief by logic, that it involves +features of irrationality peculiar to itself, and that a thinker +to whom it does not come as an 'immediate certainty' (to use Mr. +Joachim's words), is in no way bound to treat it as anything but an +emotionally rather sublime hypothesis. As such, it might, with all its +defects, be, on account of its peace-conferring power and its formal +grandeur, more rational than anything else in the field. But meanwhile +the strung-along unfinished world in time is its rival: _reality MAY +exist in distributive form, in the shape not of an all but of a set of +eaches, just as it seems to_--this is the anti-absolutist hypothesis. +_Prima facie_ there is this in favor of the eaches, that they are at +any rate real enough to have made themselves at least _appear_ to +every one, whereas the absolute has as yet appeared immediately to +only a few mystics, and indeed to them very ambiguously. The advocates +of the absolute assure us that any distributive form of being is +infected and undermined by self-contradiction. If we are unable to +assimilate their arguments, and we have been unable, the only course +we can take, it seems to me, is to let the absolute bury the absolute, +and to seek reality in more promising directions, even among the +details of the finite and the immediately given. + +If these words of mine sound in bad taste to some of you, or even +sacrilegious, I am sorry. Perhaps the impression may be mitigated by +what I have to say in later lectures. + + + + +LECTURE IV + + +CONCERNING FECHNER + +The prestige of the absolute has rather crumbled in our hands. +The logical proofs of it miss fire; the portraits which its best +court-painters show of it are featureless and foggy in the extreme; +and, apart from the cold comfort of assuring us that with _it_ all is +well, and that to see that all is well with us also we need only rise +to its eternal point of view, it yields us no relief whatever. It +introduces, on the contrary, into philosophy and theology certain +poisonous difficulties of which but for its intrusion we never should +have heard. + +But if we drop the absolute out of the world, must we then conclude +that the world contains nothing better in the way of consciousness +than our consciousness? Is our whole instinctive belief in higher +presences, our persistent inner turning towards divine companionship, +to count for nothing? Is it but the pathetic illusion of beings with +incorrigibly social and imaginative minds? + +Such a negative conclusion would, I believe, be desperately hasty, +a sort of pouring out of the child with the bath. Logically it is +possible to believe in superhuman beings without identifying them with +the absolute at all. The treaty of offensive and defensive alliance +which certain groups of the Christian clergy have recently made with +our transcendentalist philosophers seems to me to be based on a +well-meaning but baleful mistake. Neither the Jehovah of the old +testament nor the heavenly father of the new has anything in common +with the absolute except that they are all three greater than man; +and if you say that the notion of the absolute is what the gods of +Abraham, of David, and of Jesus, after first developing into each +other, were inevitably destined to develop into in more reflective +and modern minds, I reply that although in certain specifically +philosophical minds this may have been the case, in minds more +properly to be termed religious the development has followed quite +another path. The whole history of evangelical Christianity is there +to prove it. I propose in these lectures to plead for that other line +of development. To set the doctrine of the absolute in its proper +framework, so that it shall not fill the whole welkin and exclude all +alternative possibilities of higher thought--as it seems to do for +many students who approach it with a limited previous acquaintance +with philosophy--I will contrast it with a system which, abstractly +considered, seems at first to have much in common with absolutism, but +which, when taken concretely and temperamentally, really stands at the +opposite pole. I refer to the philosophy of Gustav Theodor Fechner, a +writer but little known as yet to English readers, but destined, I am +persuaded, to wield more and more influence as time goes on. + +It is the intense concreteness of Fechner, his fertility of detail, +which fills me with an admiration which I should like to make this +audience share. Among the philosophic cranks of my acquaintance in the +past was a lady all the tenets of whose system I have forgotten except +one. Had she been born in the Ionian Archipelago some three thousand +years ago, that one doctrine would probably have made her name sure +of a place in every university curriculum and examination paper. The +world, she said, is composed of only two elements, the Thick, namely, +and the Thin. No one can deny the truth of this analysis, as far as it +goes (though in the light of our contemporary knowledge of nature it +has itself a rather 'thin' sound), and it is nowhere truer than in +that part of the world called philosophy. I am sure, for example, that +many of you, listening to what poor account I have been able to +give of transcendental idealism, have received an impression of its +arguments being strangely thin, and of the terms it leaves us with +being shiveringly thin wrappings for so thick and burly a world as +this. Some of you of course will charge the thinness to my exposition; +but thin as that has been, I believe the doctrines reported on to have +been thinner. From Green to Haldane the absolute proposed to us to +straighten out the confusions of the thicket of experience in which +our life is passed remains a pure abstraction which hardly any one +tries to make a whit concreter. If we open Green, we get nothing but +the transcendental ego of apperception (Kant's name for the fact that +to be counted in experience a thing has to be witnessed), blown up +into a sort of timeless soap-bubble large enough to mirror the whole +universe. Nature, Green keeps insisting, consists only in +relations, and these imply the action of a mind that is eternal; +a self-distinguishing consciousness which itself escapes from the +relations by which it determines other things. Present to whatever is +in succession, it is not in succession itself. If we take the Cairds, +they tell us little more of the principle of the universe--it is +always a return into the identity of the self from the difference of +its objects. It separates itself from them and so becomes conscious of +them in their separation from one another, while at the same time it +binds them together as elements in one higher self-consciousness. + +This seems the very quintessence of thinness; and the matter hardly +grows thicker when we gather, after enormous amounts of reading, that +the great enveloping self in question is absolute reason as such, and +that as such it is characterized by the habit of using certain jejune +'categories' with which to perform its eminent relating work. The +whole active material of natural fact is tried out, and only the +barest intellectualistic formalism remains. + +Hegel tried, as we saw, to make the system concreter by making the +relations between things 'dialectic,' but if we turn to those who use +his name most worshipfully, we find them giving up all the particulars +of his attempt, and simply praising his intention--much as in our +manner we have praised it ourselves. Mr. Haldane, for example, in his +wonderfully clever Gifford lectures, praises Hegel to the skies, but +what he tells of him amounts to little more than this, that 'the +categories in which the mind arranges its experiences, and gives +meaning to them, the universals in which the particulars are grasped +in the individual, are a logical chain, in which the first presupposes +the last, and the last is its presupposition and its truth.' He hardly +tries at all to thicken this thin logical scheme. He says indeed +that absolute mind in itself, and absolute mind in its hetereity or +otherness, under the distinction which it sets up of itself from +itself, have as their real _prius_ absolute mind in synthesis; and, +this being absolute mind's true nature, its dialectic character must +show itself in such concrete forms as Goethe's and Wordsworth's +poetry, as well as in religious forms. 'The nature of God, the nature +of absolute mind, is to exhibit the triple movement of dialectic, and +so the nature of God as presented in religion must be a triplicity, +a trinity.' But beyond thus naming Goethe and Wordsworth and +establishing the trinity, Mr. Haldane's Hegelianism carries us hardly +an inch into the concrete detail of the world we actually inhabit. + +Equally thin is Mr. Taylor, both in his principles and in their +results. Following Mr. Bradley, he starts by assuring us that reality +cannot be self-contradictory, but to be related to anything really +outside of one's self is to be self-contradictory, so the ultimate +reality must be a single all-inclusive systematic whole. Yet all he +can say of this whole at the end of his excellently written book is +that the notion of it 'can make no addition to our information and can +of itself supply no motives for practical endeavor.' + +Mr. McTaggart treats us to almost as thin a fare. 'The main practical +interest of Hegel's philosophy,' he says, 'is to be found in the +abstract certainty which the logic gives us that all reality is +rational and righteous, even when we cannot see in the least how it is +so.... Not that it shows us how the facts around us are good, not that +it shows us how we can make them better, but that it proves that they, +like other reality, are _sub specie eternitatis_, perfectly good, and +_sub specie temporis_, destined to become perfectly good.' + +Here again, no detail whatever, only the abstract certainty that +whatever the detail may prove to be, it will be good. Common +non-dialectical men have already this certainty as a result of the +generous vital enthusiasm about the universe with which they are born. +The peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is its sovereign contempt +for merely vital functions like enthusiasm, and its pretension to turn +our simple and immediate trusts and faiths into the form of logically +mediated certainties, to question which would be absurd. But the whole +basis on which Mr. McTaggart's own certainty so solidly rests, settles +down into the one nutshell of an assertion into which he puts Hegel's +gospel, namely, that in every bit of experience and thought, however +finite, the whole of reality (the absolute idea, as Hegel calls it) is +'implicitly present.' + +This indeed is Hegel's _vision_, and Hegel thought that the details of +his dialectic proved its truth. But disciples who treat the details of +the proof as unsatisfactory and yet cling to the vision, are surely, +in spite of their pretension to a more rational consciousness, no +better than common men with their enthusiasms or deliberately adopted +faiths. We have ourselves seen some of the weakness of the monistic +proofs. Mr. McTaggart picks plenty of holes of his own in Hegel's +logic, and finally concludes that 'all true philosophy must be +mystical, not indeed in its methods but in its final conclusions,' +which is as much as to say that the rationalistic methods leave us +in the lurch, in spite of all their superiority, and that in the end +vision and faith must eke them out. But how abstract and thin is +here the vision, to say nothing of the faith! The whole of reality, +explicitly absent from our finite experiences, must nevertheless +be present in them all implicitly, altho no one of us can ever see +how--the bare word 'implicit' here bearing the whole pyramid of the +monistic system on its slender point. Mr. Joachim's monistic system of +truth rests on an even slenderer point.--_I have never doubted_,' +he says, 'that universal and timeless truth is a single content or +significance, one and whole and complete,' and he candidly confesses +the failure of rationalistic attempts 'to raise this immediate +certainty' to the level of reflective knowledge. There is, in short, +no mediation for him between the Truth in capital letters and all +the little 'lower-case' truths--and errors--which life presents. The +psychological fact that he never has 'doubted' is enough. + +The whole monistic pyramid, resting on points as thin as these, seems +to me to be a _machtspruch_, a product of will far more than one of +reason. Unity is good, therefore things _shall_ cohere; they _shall_ +be one; there _shall_ be categories to make them one, no matter what +empirical disjunctions may appear. In Hegel's own writings, the +_shall-be_ temper is ubiquitous and towering; it overrides verbal and +logical resistances alike. Hegel's error, as Professor Royce so well +says, 'lay not in introducing logic into passion,' as some people +charge, 'but in conceiving the logic of passion as the only logic.... +He is [thus] suggestive,' Royce says, 'but never final. His system as +a system has crumbled, but his vital comprehension of our life remains +forever.'[1] + +That vital comprehension we have already seen. It is that there is a +sense in which real things are not merely their own bare selves, but +may vaguely be treated as also their own others, and that ordinary +logic, since it denies this, must be overcome. Ordinary logic denies +this because it substitutes concepts for real things, and concepts +_are_ their own bare selves and nothing else. What Royce calls Hegel's +'system' was Hegel's attempt to make us believe that he was working +by concepts and grinding out a higher style of logic, when in reality +sensible experiences, hypotheses, and passion furnished him with all +his results. + +What I myself may mean by things being their own others, we shall see +in a later lecture. It is now time to take our look at Fechner, whose +thickness is a refreshing contrast to the thin, abstract, indigent, +and threadbare appearance, the starving, school-room aspect, which the +speculations of most of our absolutist philosophers present. + +There is something really weird and uncanny in the contrast between +the abstract pretensions of rationalism and what rationalistic methods +concretely can do. If the 'logical prius' of our mind were really the +'implicit presence' of the whole 'concrete universal,' the whole of +reason, or reality, or spirit, or the absolute idea, or whatever it +may be called, in all our finite thinking, and if this reason worked +(for example) by the dialectical method, doesn't it seem odd that +in the greatest instance of rationalization mankind has known, in +'science,' namely, the dialectical method should never once have been +tried? Not a solitary instance of the use of it in science occurs +to my mind. Hypotheses, and deductions from these, controlled by +sense-observations and analogies with what we know elsewhere, are to +be thanked for all of science's results. + +Fechner used no methods but these latter ones in arguing for his +metaphysical conclusions about reality--but let me first rehearse a +few of the facts about his life. + +Born in 1801, the son of a poor country pastor in Saxony, he lived +from 1817 to 1887, when he died, seventy years therefore, at Leipzig, +a typical _gelehrter_ of the old-fashioned german stripe. His means +were always scanty, so his only extravagances could be in the way +of thought, but these were gorgeous ones. He passed his medical +examinations at Leipzig University at the age of twenty-one, but +decided, instead of becoming a doctor, to devote himself to physical +science. It was ten years before he was made professor of physics, +although he soon was authorized to lecture. Meanwhile, he had to make +both ends meet, and this he did by voluminous literary labors. He +translated, for example, the four volumes of Biot's treatise on +physics, and the six of Thenard's work on chemistry, and took care of +their enlarged editions later. He edited repertories of chemistry +and physics, a pharmaceutical journal, and an encyclopaedia in eight +volumes, of which he wrote about one third. He published physical +treatises and experimental investigations of his own, especially in +electricity. Electrical measurements, as you know, are the basis of +electrical science, and Fechner's measurements in galvanism, performed +with the simplest self-made apparatus, are classic to this day. +During this time he also published a number of half-philosophical, +half-humorous writings, which have gone through several editions, +under the name of Dr. Mises, besides poems, literary and artistic +essays, and other occasional articles. + +But overwork, poverty, and an eye-trouble produced by his observations +on after-images in the retina (also a classic piece of investigation) +produced in Fechner, then about thirty-eight years old, a terrific +attack of nervous prostration with painful hyperaesthesia of all the +functions, from which he suffered three years, cut off entirely from +active life. Present-day medicine would have classed poor Fechner's +malady quickly enough, as partly a habit-neurosis, but its +severity was such that in his day it was treated as a visitation +incomprehensible in its malignity; and when he suddenly began to get +well, both Fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine +miracle. This illness, bringing Fechner face to face with inner +desperation, made a great crisis in his life. 'Had I not then clung to +the faith,' he writes, 'that clinging to faith would somehow or other +work its reward, _so haette ich jene zeit nicht ausgehalten_.' His +religious and cosmological faiths saved him--thenceforward one great +aim with him was to work out and communicate these faiths to the +world. He did so on the largest scale; but he did many other things +too ere he died. + +A book on the atomic theory, classic also; four elaborate mathematical +and experimental volumes on what he called psychophysics--many persons +consider Fechner to have practically founded scientific psychology in +the first of these books; a volume on organic evolution, and two works +on experimental aesthetics, in which again Fechner is considered by +some judges to have laid the foundations of a new science, must be +included among these other performances. Of the more religious and +philosophical works, I shall immediately give a further account. + +All Leipzig mourned him when he died, for he was the pattern of the +ideal german scholar, as daringly original in his thought as he was +homely in his life, a modest, genial, laborious slave to truth and +learning, and withal the owner of an admirable literary style of the +vernacular sort. The materialistic generation, that in the fifties and +sixties called his speculations fantastic, had been replaced by one +with greater liberty of imagination, and a Preyer, a Wundt, a Paulsen, +and a Lasswitz could now speak of Fechner as their master. + +His mind was indeed one of those multitudinously organized cross-roads +of truth which are occupied only at rare intervals by children of men, +and from which nothing is either too far or too near to be seen in due +perspective. Patientest observation, exactest mathematics, shrewdest +discrimination, humanest feeling, flourished in him on the largest +scale, with no apparent detriment to one another. He was in fact a +philosopher in the 'great' sense, altho he cared so much less than +most philosophers care for abstractions of the 'thin' order. For him +the abstract lived in the concrete, and the hidden motive of all he +did was to bring what he called the daylight view of the world into +ever greater evidence, that daylight view being this, that the whole +universe in its different spans and wave-lengths, exclusions and +envelopments, is everywhere alive and conscious. It has taken fifty +years for his chief book, 'Zend-avesta,' to pass into a second edition +(1901). 'One swallow,' he cheerfully writes, 'does not make a summer. +But the first swallow would not come unless the summer were coming; +and for me that summer means my daylight view some time prevailing.' + +The original sin, according to Fechner, of both our popular and +our scientific thinking, is our inveterate habit of regarding the +spiritual not as the rule but as an exception in the midst of nature. +Instead of believing our life to be fed at the breasts of the greater +life, our individuality to be sustained by the greater individuality, +which must necessarily have more consciousness and more independence +than all that it brings forth, we habitually treat whatever lies +outside of our life as so much slag and ashes of life only; or if we +believe in a Divine Spirit, we fancy him on the one side as bodiless, +and nature as soulless on the other. What comfort, or peace, Fechner +asks, can come from such a doctrine? The flowers wither at its breath, +the stars turn into stone; our own body grows unworthy of our spirit +and sinks to a tenement for carnal senses only. The book of nature +turns into a volume on mechanics, in which whatever has life is +treated as a sort of anomaly; a great chasm of separation yawns +between us and all that is higher than ourselves; and God becomes a +thin nest of abstractions. + +Fechner's great instrument for vivifying the daylight view is +analogy; not a rationalistic argument is to be found in all his +many pages--only reasonings like those which men continually use in +practical life. For example: My house is built by some one, the world +too is built by some one. The world is greater than my house, it +must be a greater some one who built the world. My body moves by the +influence of my feeling and will; the sun, moon, sea, and wind, being +themselves more powerful, move by the influence of some more powerful +feeling and will. I live now, and change from one day to another; I +shall live hereafter, and change still more, etc. + +Bain defines genius as the power of seeing analogies. The number +that Fechner could perceive was prodigious; but he insisted on the +differences as well. Neglect to make allowance for these, he said, is +the common fallacy in analogical reasoning. Most of us, for example, +reasoning justly that, since all the minds we know are connected with +bodies, therefore God's mind should be connected with a body, proceed +to suppose that that body must be just an animal body over again, and +paint an altogether human picture of God. But all that the analogy +comports is _a_ body--the particular features of _our_ body are +adaptations to a habitat so different from God's that if God have +a physical body at all, it must be utterly different from ours in +structure. Throughout his writings Fechner makes difference and +analogy walk abreast, and by his extraordinary power of noticing +both, he converts what would ordinarily pass for objections to his +conclusions into factors of their support. + +The vaster orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. The +entire earth on which we live must have, according to Fechner, its own +collective consciousness. So must each sun, moon, and planet; so must +the whole solar system have its own wider consciousness, in which the +consciousness of our earth plays one part. So has the entire starry +system as such its consciousness; and if that starry system be not the +sum of all that _is_, materially considered, then that whole system, +along with whatever else may be, is the body of that absolutely +totalized consciousness of the universe to which men give the name of +God. + +Speculatively Fechner is thus a monist in his theology; but there is +room in his universe for every grade of spiritual being between man +and the final all-inclusive God; and in suggesting what the positive +content of all this super-humanity may be, he hardly lets his +imagination fly beyond simple spirits of the planetary order. The +earth-soul he passionately believes in; he treats the earth as our +special human guardian angel; we can pray to the earth as men pray to +their saints; but I think that in his system, as in so many of the +actual historic theologies, the supreme God marks only a sort of limit +of enclosure of the worlds above man. He is left thin and abstract in +his majesty, men preferring to carry on their personal transactions +with the many less remote and abstract messengers and mediators whom +the divine order provides. + +I shall ask later whether the abstractly monistic turn which Fechner's +speculations took was necessitated by logic. I believe it not to have +been required. Meanwhile let me lead you a little more into the +detail of his thought. Inevitably one does him miserable injustice +by summarizing and abridging him. For altho the type of reasoning he +employs is almost childlike for simplicity, and his bare conclusions +can be written on a single page, the _power_ of the man is due +altogether to the profuseness of his concrete imagination, to the +multitude of the points which he considers successively, to the +cumulative effect of his learning, of his thoroughness, and of the +ingenuity of his detail, to his admirably homely style, to the +sincerity with which his pages glow, and finally to the impression he +gives of a man who doesn't live at second-hand, but who _sees_, who in +fact speaks as one having authority, and not as if he were one of the +common herd of professorial philosophic scribes. + +Abstractly set down, his most important conclusion for my purpose in +these lectures is that the constitution of the world is identical +throughout. In ourselves, visual consciousness goes with our eyes, +tactile consciousness with our skin. But altho neither skin nor eye +knows aught of the sensations of the other, they come together and +figure in some sort of relation and combination in the more inclusive +consciousness which each of us names his _self_. Quite similarly, +then, says Fechner, we must suppose that my consciousness of myself +and yours of yourself, altho in their immediacy they keep separate +and know nothing of each other, are yet known and used together in a +higher consciousness, that of the human race, say, into which they +enter as constituent parts. Similarly, the whole human and animal +kingdoms come together as conditions of a consciousness of still wider +scope. This combines in the soul of the earth with the consciousness +of the vegetable kingdom, which in turn contributes its share of +experience to that of the whole solar system, and so on from synthesis +to synthesis and height to height, till an absolutely universal +consciousness is reached. + +A vast analogical series, in which the basis of the analogy consists +of facts directly observable in ourselves. + +The supposition of an earth-consciousness meets a strong instinctive +prejudice which Fechner ingeniously tries to overcome. Man's mind is +the highest consciousness upon the earth, we think--the earth itself +being in all ways man's inferior. How should its consciousness, if it +have one, be superior to his? + +What are the marks of superiority which we are tempted to use here? If +we look more carefully into them, Fechner points out that the earth +possesses each and all of them more perfectly than we. He considers in +detail the points of difference between us, and shows them all to +make for the earth's higher rank. I will touch on only a few of these +points. + +One of them of course is independence of other external beings. +External to the earth are only the other heavenly bodies. All the +things on which we externally depend for life--air, water, plant and +animal food, fellow men, etc.--are included in her as her constituent +parts. She is self-sufficing in a million respects in which we are not +so. We depend on her for almost everything, she on us for but a small +portion of her history. She swings us in her orbit from winter to +summer and revolves us from day into night and from night into day. + +Complexity in unity is another sign of superiority. The total earth's +complexity far exceeds that of any organism, for she includes all our +organisms in herself, along with an infinite number of things that our +organisms fail to include. Yet how simple and massive are the phases +of her own proper life! As the total bearing of any animal is sedate +and tranquil compared with the agitation of its blood corpuscles, so +is the earth a sedate and tranquil being compared with the animals +whom she supports. + +To develop from within, instead of being fashioned from without, is +also counted as something superior in men's eyes. An egg is a higher +style of being than a piece of clay which an external modeler makes +into the image of a bird. Well, the earth's history develops from +within. It is like that of a wonderful egg which the sun's heat, like +that of a mother-hen, has stimulated to its cycles of evolutionary +change. + +Individuality of type, and difference from other beings of its type, +is another mark of rank. The earth differs from every other planet, +and as a class planetary beings are extraordinarily distinct from +other beings. + +Long ago the earth was called an animal; but a planet is a higher +class of being than either man or animal; not only quantitatively +greater, like a vaster and more awkward whale or elephant, but a being +whose enormous size requires an altogether different plan of life. Our +animal organization comes from our inferiority. Our need of moving to +and fro, of stretching our limbs and bending our bodies, shows only +our defect. What are our legs but crutches, by means of which, with +restless efforts, we go hunting after the things we have not inside +of ourselves. But the earth is no such cripple; why should she who +already possesses within herself the things we so painfully pursue, +have limbs analogous to ours? Shall she mimic a small part of herself? +What need has she of arms, with nothing to reach for? of a neck, with +no head to carry? of eyes or nose when she finds her way through space +without either, and has the millions of eyes of all her animals to +guide their movements on her surface, and all their noses to smell the +flowers that grow? For, as we are ourselves a part of the earth, so +our organs are her organs. She is, as it were, eye and ear over her +whole extent--all that we see and hear in separation she sees and +hears at once. She brings forth living beings of countless kinds upon +her surface, and their multitudinous conscious relations with each +other she takes up into her higher and more general conscious life. + +Most of us, considering the theory that the whole terrestrial mass is +animated as our bodies are, make the mistake of working the analogy +too literally, and allowing for no differences. If the earth be a +sentient organism, we say, where are her brain and nerves? What +corresponds to her heart and lungs? In other words, we expect +functions which she already performs through us, to be performed +outside of us again, and in just the same way. But we see perfectly +well how the earth performs some of these functions in a way unlike +our way. If you speak of circulation, what need has she of a heart +when the sun keeps all the showers of rain that fall upon her and all +the springs and brooks and rivers that irrigate her, going? What need +has she of internal lungs, when her whole sensitive surface is in +living commerce with the atmosphere that clings to it? + +The organ that gives us most trouble is the brain. All the +consciousness we directly know seems tied to brains.--Can there be +consciousness, we ask, where there is no brain? But our brain, which +primarily serves to correlate our muscular reactions with the external +objects on which we depend, performs a function which the earth +performs in an entirely different way. She has no proper muscles or +limbs of her own, and the only objects external to her are the other +stars. To these her whole mass reacts by most exquisite alterations in +its total gait, and by still more exquisite vibratory responses in +its substance. Her ocean reflects the lights of heaven as in a mighty +mirror, her atmosphere refracts them like a monstrous lens, the +clouds and snow-fields combine them into white, the woods and flowers +disperse them into colors. Polarization, interference, absorption, +awaken sensibilities in matter of which our senses are too coarse to +take any note. + +For these cosmic relations of hers, then, she no more needs a special +brain than she needs eyes or ears. _Our_ brains do indeed unify and +correlate innumerable functions. Our eyes know nothing of sound, our +ears nothing of light, but, having brains, we can feel sound and light +together, and compare them. We account for this by the fibres which in +the brain connect the optical with the acoustic centre, but just how +these fibres bring together not only the sensations, but the centres, +we fail to see. But if fibres are indeed all that is needed to do that +trick, has not the earth pathways, by which you and I are physically +continuous, more than enough to do for our two minds what the +brain-fibres do for the sounds and sights in a single mind? Must every +higher means of unification between things be a literal _brain_-fibre, +and go by that name? Cannot the earth-mind know otherwise the contents +of our minds together? + +Fechner's imagination, insisting on the differences as well as on the +resemblances, thus tries to make our picture of the whole earth's life +more concrete. He revels in the thought of its perfections. To carry +her precious freight through the hours and seasons what form could be +more excellent than hers--being as it is horse, wheels, and wagon all +in one. Think of her beauty--a shining ball, sky-blue and sun-lit over +one half, the other bathed in starry night, reflecting the heavens +from all her waters, myriads of lights and shadows in the folds of her +mountains and windings of her valleys, she would be a spectacle of +rainbow glory, could one only see her from afar as we see parts of her +from her own mountain-tops. Every quality of landscape that has a +name would then be visible in her at once--all that is delicate or +graceful, all that is quiet, or wild, or romantic, or desolate, or +cheerful, or luxuriant, or fresh. That landscape is her face--a +peopled landscape, too, for men's eyes would appear in it like +diamonds among the dew-drops. Green would be the dominant color, but +the blue atmosphere and the clouds would enfold her as a bride is +shrouded in her veil--a veil the vapory transparent folds of which +the earth, through her ministers the winds, never tires of laying and +folding about herself anew. + +Every element has its own living denizens. Can the celestial ocean of +ether, whose waves are light, in which the earth herself floats, not +have hers, higher by as much as their element is higher, swimming +without fins, flying without wings, moving, immense and tranquil, as +by a half-spiritual force through the half-spiritual sea which they +inhabit, rejoicing in the exchange of luminous influence with one +another, following the slightest pull of one another's attraction, and +harboring, each of them, an inexhaustible inward wealth? + +Men have always made fables about angels, dwelling in the light, +needing no earthly food or drink, messengers between ourselves and +God. Here are actually existent beings, dwelling in the light and +moving through the sky, needing neither food nor drink, intermediaries +between God and us, obeying his commands. So, if the heavens really +are the home of angels, the heavenly bodies must be those very angels, +for other creatures _there_ are none. Yes! the earth is our great +common guardian angel, who watches over all our interests combined. + +In a striking page Fechner relates one of his moments of direct vision +of this truth. + +'On a certain spring morning I went out to walk. The fields were +green, the birds sang, the dew glistened, the smoke was rising, here +and there a man appeared; a light as of transfiguration lay on all +things. It was only a little bit of the earth; it was only one moment +of her existence; and yet as my look embraced her more and more it +seemed to me not only so beautiful an idea, but so true and clear +a fact, that she is an angel, an angel so rich and fresh and +flower-like, and yet going her round in the skies so firmly and so +at one with herself, turning her whole living face to Heaven, and +carrying me along with her into that Heaven, that I asked myself how +the opinions of men could ever have so spun themselves away from life +so far as to deem the earth only a dry clod, and to seek for angels +above it or about it in the emptiness of the sky,--only to find them +nowhere.... But such an experience as this passes for fantastic. The +earth is a globular body, and what more she may be, one can find in +mineralogical cabinets.'[2] + +Where there is no vision the people perish. Few professorial +philosophers have any vision. Fechner had vision, and that is why one +can read him over and over again, and each time bring away a fresh +sense of reality. + +His earliest book was a vision of what the inner life of plants may be +like. He called it 'Nanna.' In the development of animals the nervous +system is the central fact. Plants develop centrifugally, spread their +organs abroad. For that reason people suppose that they can have no +consciousness, for they lack the unity which the central nervous +system provides. But the plant's consciousness may be of another type, +being connected with other structures. Violins and pianos give out +sounds because they have strings. Does it follow that nothing but +strings can give out sound? How then about flutes and organ-pipes? +Of course their sounds are of a different quality, and so may the +consciousness of plants be of a quality correlated exclusively with +the kind of organization that | they possess. Nutrition, respiration, +propagation take place in them without nerves. In us these functions +are conscious only in unusual states, normally their consciousness is +eclipsed by that which goes with the brain. No such eclipse occurs in +plants, and their lower consciousness may therefore be all the more +lively. With nothing to do but to drink the light and air with their +leaves, to let their cells proliferate, to feel their rootlets draw +the sap, is it conceivable that they should not consciously suffer +if water, light, and air are suddenly withdrawn? or that when the +flowering and fertilization which are the culmination of their life +take place, they should not feel their own existence more intensely +and enjoy something like what we call pleasure in ourselves? Does +the water-lily, rocking in her triple bath of water, air, and light, +relish in no wise her own beauty? When the plant in our room turns to +the light, closes her blossoms in the dark, responds to our watering +or pruning by increase of size or change of shape and bloom, who has +the right to say she does not feel, or that she plays a purely passive +part? Truly plants can foresee nothing, neither the scythe of the +mower, nor the hand extended to pluck their flowers. They can neither +run away nor cry out. But this only proves how different their modes +of feeling life must be from those of animals that live by eyes and +ears and locomotive organs, it does not prove that they have no mode +of feeling life at all. + +How scanty and scattered would sensation be on our globe, if the +feeling-life of plants were blotted from existence. Solitary would +consciousness move through the woods in the shape of some deer or +other quadruped, or fly about the flowers in that of some insect, but +can we really suppose that the Nature through which God's breath blows +is such a barren wilderness as this? + +I have probably by this time said enough to acquaint those of you who +have never seen these metaphysical writings of Fechner with their more +general characteristics, and I hope that some of you may now feel like +reading them yourselves.[3] The special thought of Fechner's with +which in these lectures I have most practical concern, is his +belief that the more inclusive forms of consciousness are in part +_constituted_ by the more limited forms. Not that they are the mere +sum of the more limited forms. As our mind is not the bare sum of +our sights plus our sounds plus our pains, but in adding these terms +together also finds relations among them and weaves them into schemes +and forms and objects of which no one sense in its separate estate +knows anything, so the earth-soul traces relations between the +contents of my mind and the contents of yours of which neither of +our separate minds is conscious. It has schemes, forms, and objects +proportionate to its wider field, which our mental fields are far too +narrow to cognize. By ourselves we are simply out of relation with +each other, for it we are both of us there, and _different_ from each +other, which is a positive relation. What we are without knowing, it +knows that we are. We are closed against its world, but that world is +not closed against us. It is as if the total universe of inner life +had a sort of grain or direction, a sort of valvular structure, +permitting knowledge to flow in one way only, so that the wider might +always have the narrower under observation, but never the narrower the +wider. + +Fechner's great analogy here is the relation of the senses to our +individual minds. When our eyes are open their sensations enter into +our general mental life, which grows incessantly by the addition of +what they see. Close the eyes, however, and the visual additions stop, +nothing but thoughts and memories of the past visual experiences +remain--in combination of course with the enormous stock of other +thoughts and memories, and with the data coming in from the senses +not yet closed. Our eye-sensations of themselves know nothing of this +enormous life into which they fall. Fechner thinks, as any common man +would think, that they are taken into it directly when they occur, +and form part of it just as they are. They don't stay outside and +get represented inside by their copies. It is only the memories and +concepts of them that are copies; the sensible perceptions themselves +are taken in or walled out in their own proper persons according as +the eyes are open or shut. + +Fechner likens our individual persons on the earth unto so many +sense-organs of the earth's soul. We add to its perceptive life so +long as our own life lasts. It absorbs our perceptions, just as they +occur, into its larger sphere of knowledge, and combines them with the +other data there. When one of us dies, it is as if an eye of the world +were closed, for all _perceptive_ contributions from that particular +quarter cease. But the memories and conceptual relations that have +spun themselves round the perceptions of that person remain in the +larger earth-life as distinct as ever, and form new relations and grow +and develop throughout all the future, in the same way in which our +own distinct objects of thought, once stored in memory, form new +relations and develop throughout our whole finite life. This is +Fechner's theory of immortality, first published in the little +'Buechlein des lebens nach dem tode,' in 1836, and re-edited in greatly +improved shape in the last volume of his 'Zend-avesta.' + +We rise upon the earth as wavelets rise upon the ocean. We grow out of +her soil as leaves grow from a tree. The wavelets catch the sunbeams +separately, the leaves stir when the branches do not move. They +realize their own events apart, just as in our own consciousness, when +anything becomes emphatic, the background fades from observation. Yet +the event works back upon the background, as the wavelet works upon +the waves, or as the leaf's movements work upon the sap inside the +branch. The whole sea and the whole tree are registers of what has +happened, and are different for the wave's and the leaf's action +having occurred. A grafted twig may modify its stock to the roots:--so +our outlived private experiences, impressed on the whole earth-mind as +memories, lead the immortal life of ideas there, and become parts of +the great system, fully distinguished from one another, just as we +ourselves when alive were distinct, realizing themselves no longer +isolatedly, but along with one another as so many partial systems, +entering thus into new combinations, being affected by the perceptive +experiences of those living then, and affecting the living in their +turn--altho they are so seldom recognized by living men to do so. + +If you imagine that this entrance after the death of the body into a +common life of higher type means a merging and loss of our distinct +personality, Fechner asks you whether a visual sensation of our own +exists in any sense _less for itself_ or _less distinctly_, when +it enters into our higher relational consciousness and is there +distinguished and defined. + +--But here I must stop my reporting and send you to his volumes. Thus +is the universe alive, according to this philosopher! I think you +will admit that he makes it more _thickly_ alive than do the other +philosophers who, following rationalistic methods solely, gain the +same results, but only in the thinnest outlines. Both Fechner and +Professor Royce, for example, believe ultimately in one all-inclusive +mind. Both believe that we, just as we stand here, are constituent +parts of that mind. No other _content_ has it than us, with all the +other creatures like or unlike us, and the relations which it finds +between us. Our eaches, collected into one, are substantively +identical with its all, tho the all is perfect while no each is +perfect, so that we have to admit that new qualities as well as +unperceived relations accrue from the collective form. It is thus +superior to the distributive form. But having reached this result, +Royce (tho his treatment of the subject on its moral side seems to +me infinitely richer and thicker than that of any other contemporary +idealistic philosopher) leaves us very much to our own devices. +Fechner, on the contrary, tries to trace the superiorities due to the +more collective form in as much detail as he can. He marks the various +intermediary stages and halting places of collectivity,--as we are to +our separate senses, so is the earth to us, so is the solar system +to the earth, etc.,--and if, in order to escape an infinitely long +summation, he posits a complete God as the all-container and leaves +him about as indefinite in feature as the idealists leave their +absolute, he yet provides us with a very definite gate of approach to +him in the shape of the earth-soul, through which in the nature of +things we must first make connexion with all the more enveloping +superhuman realms, and with which our more immediate religious +commerce at any rate has to be carried on. + +Ordinary monistic idealism leaves everything intermediary out. It +recognizes only the extremes, as if, after the first rude face of the +phenomenal world in all its particularity, nothing but the supreme in +all its perfection could be found. First, you and I, just as we are in +this room; and the moment we get below that surface, the unutterable +absolute itself! Doesn't this show a singularly indigent imagination? +Isn't this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in +it for a long hierarchy of beings? Materialistic science makes it +infinitely richer in terms, with its molecules, and ether, and +electrons, and what not. Absolute idealism, thinking of reality only +under intellectual forms, knows not what to do with _bodies_ of +any grade, and can make no use of any psychophysical analogy or +correspondence. The resultant thinness is startling when compared with +the thickness and articulation of such a universe as Fechner paints. +May not satisfaction with the rationalistic absolute as the alpha +and omega, and treatment of it in all its abstraction as an adequate +religious object, argue a certain native poverty of mental demand? +Things reveal themselves soonest to those who most passionately want +them, for our need sharpens our wit. To a mind content with little, +the much in the universe may always remain hid. + +To be candid, one of my reasons for saying so much about Fechner has +been to make the thinness of our current transcendentalism appear +more evident by an effect of contrast. Scholasticism ran thick; Hegel +himself ran thick; but english and american transcendentalisms run +thin. If philosophy is more a matter of passionate vision than of +logic,--and I believe it is, logic only finding reasons for the vision +afterwards,--must not such thinness come either from the vision being +defective in the disciples, or from their passion, matched with +Fechner's or with Hegel's own passion, being as moonlight unto +sunlight or as water unto wine?[4] + +But I have also a much deeper reason for making Fechner a part of my +text. His _assumption that conscious experiences freely compound and +separate themselves_, the same assumption by which absolutism explains +the relation of our minds to the eternal mind, and the same by +which empiricism explains the composition of the human mind out of +subordinate mental elements, is not one which we ought to let pass +without scrutiny. I shall scrutinize it in the next lecture. + + + + +LECTURE V + + +THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS + +In my last lecture I gave a miserably scanty outline of the way +of thinking of a philosopher remarkable for the almost unexampled +richness of his imagination of details. I owe to Fechner's shade an +apology for presenting him in a manner so unfair to the most essential +quality of his genius; but the time allotted is too short to say more +about the particulars of his work, so I proceed to the programme +I suggested at the end of our last hour. I wish to discuss the +assumption that states of consciousness, so-called, can separate and +combine themselves freely, and keep their own identity unchanged while +forming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope. + +Let me first explain just what I mean by this. While you listen to +my voice, for example, you are perhaps inattentive to some bodily +sensation due to your clothing or your posture. Yet that sensation +would seem probably to be there, for in an instant, by a change of +attention, you can have it in one field of consciousness with the +voice. It seems as if it existed first in a separate form, and then as +if, without itself changing, it combined with your other co-existent +sensations. It is after this analogy that pantheistic idealism thinks +that we exist in the absolute. The absolute, it thinks, makes the +world by knowing the whole of it at once in one undivided eternal +act.[1] To 'be,' _really_ to be, is to be as it knows us to be, along +with everything else, namely, and clothed with the fulness of our +meaning. Meanwhile we _are_ at the same time not only really and as it +knows us, but also apparently, for to our separate single selves we +appear _without_ most other things and unable to declare with +any fulness what our own meaning is. Now the classic doctrine of +pantheistic idealism, from the Upanishads down to Josiah Royce, is +that the finite knowers, in spite of their apparent ignorance, are one +with the knower of the all. In the most limited moments of our private +experience, the absolute idea, as Dr. McTaggart told us, is implicitly +contained. The moments, as Royce says, exist only in relation to it. +They are true or erroneous only through its overshadowing presence. Of +the larger self that alone eternally is, they are the organic parts. +They _are_, only inasmuch as they are implicated in its being. + +There is thus in reality but this one self, consciously inclusive of +all the lesser selves, _logos_, problem-solver, and all-knower; and +Royce ingeniously compares the ignorance that in our persons breaks +out in the midst of its complete knowledge and isolates me from you +and both of us from it, to the inattention into which our finite minds +are liable to fall with respect to such implicitly present details as +those corporeal sensations to which I made allusion just now. Those +sensations stand to our total private minds in the same relation in +which our private minds stand to the absolute mind. Privacy means +ignorance--I still quote Royce--and ignorance means inattention. We +are finite because our wills, as such, are only fragments of the +absolute will; because will means interest, and an incomplete will +means an incomplete interest; and because incompleteness of interest +means inattention to much that a fuller interest would bring us to +perceive.[2] + +In this account Royce makes by far the manliest of the post-hegelian +attempts to read some empirically apprehensible content into the +notion of our relation to the absolute mind. + +I have to admit, now that I propose to you to scrutinize this +assumption rather closely, that trepidation seizes me. The subject is +a subtle and abstruse one. It is one thing to delve into subtleties by +one's self with pen in hand, or to study out abstruse points in +books, but quite another thing to make a popular lecture out of them. +Nevertheless I must not flinch from my task here, for I think that +this particular point forms perhaps the vital knot of the present +philosophic situation, and I imagine that the times are ripe, or +almost ripe, for a serious attempt to be made at its untying. + +It may perhaps help to lessen the arduousness of the subject if I put +the first part of what I have to say in the form of a direct personal +confession. + +In the year 1890 I published a work on psychology in which it became +my duty to discuss the value of a certain explanation of our higher +mental states that had come into favor among the more biologically +inclined psychologists. Suggested partly by the association of ideas, +and partly by the analogy of chemical compounds, this opinion was +that complex mental states are resultants of the self-compounding of +simpler ones. The Mills had spoken of mental chemistry; Wundt of a +'psychic synthesis,' which might develop properties not contained in +the elements; and such writers as Spencer, Taine, Fiske, Barratt, and +Clifford had propounded a great evolutionary theory in which, in the +absence of souls, selves, or other principles of unity, primordial +units of mind-stuff or mind-dust were represented as summing +themselves together in successive stages of compounding and +re-compounding, and thus engendering our higher and more complex +states of mind. The elementary feeling of A, let us say, and the +elementary feeling of B, when they occur in certain conditions, +combine, according to this doctrine, into a feeling of A-plus-B, and +this in turn combines with a similarly generated feeling of C-plus-D, +until at last the whole alphabet may appear together in one field of +awareness, without any other witnessing principle or principles beyond +the feelings of the several letters themselves, being supposed to +exist. What each of them witnesses separately, 'all' of them are +supposed to witness in conjunction. But their distributive knowledge +doesn't _give rise_ to their collective knowledge by any act, it _is_ +their collective knowledge. The lower forms of consciousness 'taken +together' _are_ the higher. It, 'taken apart,' consists of nothing +and _is_ nothing but them. This, at least, is the most obvious way +of understanding the doctrine, and is the way I understood it in the +chapter in my psychology. + +Superficially looked at, this seems just like the combination of H_2 +and O into water, but looked at more closely, the analogy halts badly. +When a chemist tells us that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen +combine themselves of their own accord into the new compound substance +'water,' he knows (if he believes in the mechanical view of nature) +that this is only an elliptical statement for a more complex fact. +That fact is that when H_2 and O, instead of keeping far apart, get +into closer quarters, say into the position H-O-H, they _affect +surrounding bodies differently_: they now wet our skin, dissolve +sugar, put out fire, etc., which they didn't in their former +positions. 'Water' is but _our name_ for what acts thus peculiarly. +But if the skin, sugar, and fire were absent, no witness would speak +of water at all. He would still talk of the H and O distributively, +merely noting that they acted now in the new position H-O-H. + +In the older psychologies the soul or self took the place of the +sugar, fire, or skin. The lower feelings produced _effects on it_, +and their apparent compounds were only its reactions. As you tickle +a man's face with a feather, and he laughs, so when you tickle his +intellectual principle with a retinal feeling, say, and a muscular +feeling at once, it laughs responsively by its category of 'space,' +but it would be false to treat the space as simply made of those +simpler feelings. It is rather a new and unique psychic creation which +their combined action on the mind is able to evoke. + +I found myself obliged, in discussing the mind-dust theory, to urge +this last alternative view. The so-called mental compounds are simple +psychic reactions of a higher type. The form itself of them, I said, +is something new. We can't say that awareness of the alphabet as +such is nothing more than twenty-six awarenesses, each of a separate +letter; for those are twenty-six distinct awarenesses, of single +letters _without_ others, while their so-called sum is one awareness, +of every letter _with_ its comrades. There is thus something new in +the collective consciousness. It knows the same letters, indeed, but +it knows them in this novel way. It is safer, I said (for I fought shy +of admitting a self or soul or other agent of combination), to treat +the consciousness of the alphabet as a twenty-seventh fact, the +substitute and not the sum of the twenty-six simpler consciousnesses, +and to say that while under certain physiological conditions they +alone are produced, other more complex physiological conditions result +in its production instead. Do not talk, therefore, I said, of the +higher states _consisting_ of the simpler, or _being_ the same with +them; talk rather of their _knowing the same things_. They are +different mental facts, but they apprehend, each in its own peculiar +way, the same objective A, B, C, and D. + +The theory of combination, I was forced to conclude, is thus +untenable, being both logically nonsensical and practically +unnecessary. Say what you will, twelve thoughts, each of a single +word, are not the self-same mental thing as one thought of the whole +sentence. The higher thoughts, I insisted, are psychic units, not +compounds; but for all that, they may know together as a collective +multitude the very same objects which under other conditions are known +separately by as many simple thoughts. + +For many years I held rigorously to this view,[3] and the reasons for +doing so seemed to me during all those years to apply also to the +opinion that the absolute mind stands to our minds in the relation of +a whole to its parts. If untenable in finite psychology, that opinion +ought to be untenable in metaphysics also. The great transcendentalist +metaphor has always been, as I lately reminded you, a grammatical +sentence. Physically such a sentence is of course composed of clauses, +these of words, the words of syllables, and the syllables of letters. +We may take each word in, yet not understand the sentence; but if +suddenly the meaning of the whole sentence flashes, the sense of each +word is taken up into that whole meaning. Just so, according to +our transcendentalist teachers, the absolute mind thinks the whole +sentence, while we, according to our rank as thinkers, think a clause, +a word, a syllable, or a letter. Most of us are, as I said, mere +syllables in the mouth of Allah. And as Allah comes first in the order +of being, so comes first the entire sentence, the _logos_ that forms +the eternal absolute thought. Students of language tell us that speech +began with men's efforts to make _statements_. The rude synthetic +vocal utterances first used for this effect slowly got stereotyped, +and then much later got decomposed into grammatical parts. It is not +as if men had first invented letters and made syllables of them, then +made words of the syllables and sentences of the words;--they actually +followed the reverse order. So, the transcendentalists affirm, the +complete absolute thought is the pre-condition of our thoughts, and +we finite creatures _are_ only in so far as it owns us as its verbal +fragments. + +The metaphor is so beautiful, and applies, moreover, so literally to +such a multitude of the minor wholes of experience, that by merely +hearing it most of us are convinced that it must apply universally. +We see that no smallest raindrop can come into being without a whole +shower, no single feather without a whole bird, neck and crop, beak +and tail, coming into being simultaneously: so we unhesitatingly lay +down the law that no part of anything can be except so far as the +whole also is. And then, since everything whatever is part of the +whole universe, and since (if we are idealists) nothing, whether part +or whole, exists except for a witness, we proceed to the conclusion +that the unmitigated absolute as witness of the whole is the one sole +ground of being of every partial fact, the fact of our own existence +included. We think of ourselves as being only a few of the feathers, +so to speak, which help to constitute that absolute bird. Extending +the analogy of certain wholes, of which we have familiar experience, +to the whole of wholes, we easily become absolute idealists. + +But if, instead of yielding to the seductions of our metaphor, be +it sentence, shower, or bird, we analyze more carefully the notion +suggested by it that we are constituent parts of the absolute's +eternal field of consciousness, we find grave difficulties arising. +First, the difficulty I found with the mind-dust theory. If the +absolute makes us by knowing us, how can we exist otherwise than _as_ +it knows us? But it knows each of us indivisibly from everything else. +Yet if to exist means nothing but to be experienced, as idealism +affirms, we surely exist otherwise, for we experience _ourselves_ +ignorantly and in division. We indeed differ from the absolute not +only by defect, but by excess. Our ignorances, for example, bring +curiosities and doubts by which it cannot be troubled, for it owns +eternally the solution of every problem. Our impotence entails pains, +our imperfection sins, which its perfection keeps at a distance. What +I said of the alphabet-form and the letters holds good of the absolute +experience and our experiences. Their relation, whatever it may be, +seems not to be that of identity. + +It is impossible to reconcile the peculiarities of our experience with +our being only the absolute's mental objects. A God, as distinguished +from the absolute, creates things by projecting them beyond himself as +so many substances, each endowed with _perseity_, as the scholastics +call it. But objects of thought are not things _per se_. They are +there only _for_ their thinker, and only _as_ he thinks them. How, +then, can they become severally alive on their own accounts and think +themselves quite otherwise than as he thinks them? It is as if the +characters in a novel were to get up from the pages, and walk away and +transact business of their own outside of the author's story. + +A third difficulty is this: The bird-metaphor is physical, but we +see on reflection that in the _physical_ world there is no real +compounding. 'Wholes' are not realities there, parts only are +realities. 'Bird' is only our _name_ for the physical fact of a +certain grouping of organs, just as 'Charles's Wain' is our name for a +certain grouping of stars. The 'whole,' be it bird or constellation, +is nothing but our vision, nothing but an effect on our sensorium when +a lot of things act on it together. It is not realized by any organ +or any star, or experienced apart from the consciousness of an +onlooker.[4] In the physical world taken by itself there _is_ thus no +'all,' there are only the 'eaches'--at least that is the 'scientific' +view. + +In the mental world, on the contrary, wholes do in point of fact +realize themselves _per se_. The meaning of the whole sentence is +just as much a real experience as the feeling of each word is; the +absolute's experience _is_ for itself, as much as yours is for +yourself or mine for myself. So the feather-and-bird analogy won't +work unless you make the absolute into a distinct sort of mental agent +with a vision produced in it _by_ our several minds analogous to the +'bird'-vision which the feathers, beak, etc., produce _in_ those same +minds. The 'whole,' which is _its_ experience, would then be its +unifying reaction on our experiences, and not those very experiences +self-combined. Such a view as this would go with theism, for the +theistic God is a separate being; but it would not go with pantheistic +idealism, the very essence of which is to insist that we are literally +_parts_ of God, and he only ourselves in our totality--the word +'ourselves' here standing of course for all the universe's finite +facts. + +I am dragging you into depths unsuitable, I fear, for a rapid lecture. +Such difficulties as these have to be teased out with a needle, so to +speak, and lecturers should take only bird's-eye views. The practical +upshot of the matter, however, so far as I am concerned, is this, that +if I had been lecturing on the absolute a very few years ago, I should +unhesitatingly have urged these difficulties, and developed them at +still greater length, to show that the hypothesis of the absolute +was not only non-coercive from the logical point of view, but +self-contradictory as well, its notion that parts and whole are only +two names for the same thing not bearing critical scrutiny. If you +stick to purely physical terms like stars, there is no whole. If you +call the whole mental, then the so-called whole, instead of being one +fact with the parts, appears rather as the integral reaction on those +parts of an independent higher witness, such as the theistic God is +supposed to be. + +So long as this was the state of my own mind, I could accept the +notion of self-compounding in the supernal spheres of experience no +more easily than in that chapter on mind-dust I had accepted it in +the lower spheres. I found myself compelled, therefore, to call +the absolute impossible; and the untrammelled freedom with which +pantheistic or monistic idealists stepped over the logical barriers +which Lotze and others had set down long before I had--I had done +little more than quote these previous critics in my chapter--surprised +me not a little, and made me, I have to confess, both resentful and +envious. Envious because in the bottom of my heart I wanted the same +freedom myself, for motives which I shall develop later; and resentful +because my absolutist friends seemed to me to be stealing the +privilege of blowing both hot and cold. To establish their absolute +they used an intellectualist type of logic which they disregarded when +employed against it. It seemed to me that they ought at least to have +mentioned the objections that had stopped me so completely. I had +yielded to them against my 'will to believe,' out of pure logical +scrupulosity. They, professing to loathe the will to believe and to +follow purest rationality, had simply ignored them. The method was +easy, but hardly to be called candid. Fechner indeed was candid +enough, for he had never thought of the objections, but later writers, +like Royce, who should presumably have heard them, had passed them by +in silence. I felt as if these philosophers were granting their will +to believe in monism too easy a license. My own conscience would +permit me no such license. + +So much for the personal confession by which you have allowed me to +introduce the subject. Let us now consider it more objectively. + +The fundamental difficulty I have found is the number of +contradictions which idealistic monists seem to disregard. In the +first place they attribute to all existence a mental or experiential +character, but I find their simultaneous belief that the higher and +the lower in the universe are entitatively identical, incompatible +with this character. Incompatible in consequence of the generally +accepted doctrine that, whether Berkeley were right or not in saying +of material existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_, it is undoubtedly +right to say of _mental_ existence that its _esse_ is _sentiri_ or +_experiri_. If I feel pain, it is just pain that I feel, however I +may have come by the feeling. No one pretends that pain as such only +appears like pain, but in itself is different, for to be as a mental +experience _is_ only to appear to some one. + +The idealists in question ought then to do one of two things, but they +do neither. They ought either to refute the notion that as mental +states appear, so they are; or, still keeping that notion, they +ought to admit a distinct agent of unification to do the work of +the all-knower, just as our respective souls or selves in popular +philosophy do the work of partial knowers. Otherwise it is like a +joint-stock company all shareholders and no treasurer or director. If +our finite minds formed a billion facts, then its mind, knowing our +billion, would make a universe composed of a billion and one facts. +But transcendental idealism is quite as unfriendly to active +principles called souls as physiological psychology is, Kant having, +as it thinks, definitively demolished them. And altho some disciples +speak of the transcendental ego of apperception (which they celebrate +as Kant's most precious legacy to posterity) as if it were a combining +agent, the drift of monistic authority is certainly in the direction +of treating it as only an all-witness, whose field of vision we finite +witnesses do not cause, but constitute rather. We are the letters, it +is the alphabet; we are the features, it is the face; not indeed as if +either alphabet or face were something additional to the letters or +the features, but rather as if it were only another name for the very +letters or features themselves. The all-form assuredly differs from +the each-form, but the _matter_ is the same in both, and the each-form +only an unaccountable appearance. + +But this, as you see, contradicts the other idealist principle, of +a mental fact being just what it appears to be. If their forms +of appearance are so different, the all and the eaches cannot be +identical. + +The way out (unless, indeed, we are willing to discard the logic of +identity altogether) would seem to be frankly to write down the all +and the eaches as two distinct orders of witness, each minor witness +being aware of its own 'content' solely, while the greater witness +knows the minor witnesses, knows their whole content pooled together, +knows their relations to one another, and knows of just how much each +one of them is ignorant. + +The two types of witnessing are here palpably non-identical. We get a +pluralism, not a monism, out of them. In my psychology-chapter I +had resorted openly to such pluralism, treating each total field of +consciousness as a distinct entity, and maintaining that the higher +fields merely supersede the lower functionally by knowing more about +the same objects. + +The monists themselves writhe like worms on the hook to escape +pluralistic or at least dualistic language, but they cannot escape it. +They speak of the eternal and the temporal 'points of view'; of the +universe in its infinite 'aspect' or in its finite 'capacity'; they +say that '_qua_ absolute' it is one thing, '_qua_ relative' another; +they contrast its 'truth' with its appearances; they distinguish the +total from the partial way of 'taking' it, etc.; but they forget that, +on idealistic principles, to make such distinctions is tantamount to +making different beings, or at any rate that varying points of view, +aspects, appearances, ways of taking, and the like, are meaningless +phrases unless we suppose outside of the unchanging content of reality +a diversity of witnesses who experience or take it variously, the +absolute mind being just the witness that takes it most completely. + +For consider the matter one moment longer, if you can. Ask what this +notion implies, of appearing differently from different points of +view. If there be no outside witness, a thing can appear only to +itself, the eaches or parts to their several selves temporally, the +all or whole to itself eternally. Different 'selves' thus break out +inside of what the absolutist insists to be intrinsically one fact. +But how can what is _actually_ one be _effectively_ so many? Put your +witnesses anywhere, whether outside or inside of what is witnessed, +in the last resort your witnesses must on idealistic principles be +distinct, for what is witnessed is different. + +I fear that I am expressing myself with terrible obscurity--some of +you, I know, are groaning over the logic-chopping. Be a pluralist or +be a monist, you say, for heaven's sake, no matter which, so long as +you stop arguing. It reminds one of Chesterton's epigram that the only +thing that ever drives human beings insane is logic. But whether I be +sane or insane, you cannot fail, even tho you be transcendentalists +yourselves, to recognize to some degree by my trouble the difficulties +that beset monistic idealism. What boots it to call the parts and the +whole the same body of experience, when in the same breath you have to +say that the all 'as such' means one sort of experience and each part +'as such' means another? + +Difficulties, then, so far, but no stable solution as yet, for I have +been talking only critically. You will probably be relieved to hear, +then, that having rounded this corner, I shall begin to consider what +may be the possibilities of getting farther. + +To clear the path, I beg you first to note one point. What has so +troubled my logical conscience is not so much the absolute by itself +as the whole class of suppositions of which it is the supreme +example, collective experiences namely, claiming identity with their +constituent parts, yet experiencing things quite differently from +these latter. If _any_ such collective experience can be, then of +course, so far as the mere logic of the case goes, the absolute may +be. In a previous lecture I have talked against the absolute from +other points of view. In this lecture I have meant merely to take it +as the example most prominent at Oxford of the thing which has given +me such logical perplexity. I don't logically see how a collective +experience of any grade whatever can be treated as logically identical +with a lot of distributive experiences. They form two different +concepts. The absolute happens to be the only collective experience +concerning which Oxford idealists have urged the identity, so I took +it as my prerogative instance. But Fechner's earth-soul, or any stage +of being below or above that, would have served my purpose just +as well: the same logical objection applies to these collective +experiences as to the absolute. + +So much, then, in order that you may not be confused about my +strategical objective. The real point to defend against the logic that +I have used is the identity of the collective and distributive anyhow, +not the particular example of such identity known as the absolute. + +So now for the directer question. Shall we say that every complex +mental fact is a separate psychic entity succeeding upon a lot of +other psychic entities which are erroneously called its parts, and +superseding them in function, but not literally being composed of +them? This was the course I took in my psychology; and if followed in +theology, we should have to deny the absolute as usually conceived, +and replace it by the 'God' of theism. We should also have to deny +Fechner's 'earth-soul' and all other superhuman collections of +experience of every grade, so far at least as these are held to be +compounded of our simpler souls in the way which Fechner believed +in; and we should have to make all these denials in the name of the +incorruptible logic of self-identity, teaching us that to call a thing +and its other the same is to commit the crime of self-contradiction. + +But if we realize the whole philosophic situation thus produced, +we see that it is almost intolerable. Loyal to the logical kind of +rationality, it is disloyal to every other kind. It makes the universe +discontinuous. These fields of experience that replace each other +so punctually, each knowing the same matter, but in ever-widening +contexts, from simplest feeling up to absolute knowledge, _can_ +they have no _being_ in common when their cognitive function is so +manifestly common? The regular succession of them is on such terms an +unintelligible miracle. If you reply that their common _object_ is +of itself enough to make the many witnesses continuous, the same +implacable logic follows you--how _can_ one and the same object appear +so variously? Its diverse appearances break it into a plurality; and +our world of objects then falls into discontinuous pieces quite as +much as did our world of subjects. The resultant irrationality is +really intolerable. + +I said awhile ago that I was envious of Fechner and the other +pantheists because I myself wanted the same freedom that I saw them +unscrupulously enjoying, of letting mental fields compound themselves +and so make the universe more continuous, but that my conscience held +me prisoner. In my heart of hearts, however, I knew that my situation +was absurd and could be only provisional. That secret of a continuous +life which the universe knows by heart and acts on every instant +cannot be a contradiction incarnate. If logic says it is one, so +much the worse for logic. Logic being the lesser thing, the static +incomplete abstraction, must succumb to reality, not reality to logic. +Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in its +chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the +universe that engendered it. Fechner, Royce, and Hegel seem on the +truer path. Fechner has never heard of logic's veto, Royce hears the +voice but cannily ignores the utterances, Hegel hears them but to +spurn them--and all go on their way rejoicing. Shall we alone obey the +veto? + +Sincerely, and patiently as I could, I struggled with the problem for +years, covering hundreds of sheets of paper with notes and memoranda +and discussions with myself over the difficulty. How can many +consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? How can one and +the same identical fact experience itself so diversely? The struggle +was vain; I found myself in an _impasse_. I saw that I must either +forswear that 'psychology without a soul' to which my whole +psychological and kantian education had committed me,--I must, in +short, bring back distinct spiritual agents to know the mental states, +now singly and now in combination, in a word bring back scholasticism +and common sense--or else I must squarely confess the solution of +the problem impossible, and then either give up my intellectualistic +logic, the logic of identity, and adopt some higher (or lower) form +of rationality, or, finally, face the fact that life is logically +irrational. + +Sincerely, this is the actual trilemma that confronts every one of us. +Those of you who are scholastic-minded, or simply common-sense minded, +will smile at the elaborate groans of my parturient mountain resulting +in nothing but this mouse. Accept the spiritual agents, for heaven's +sake, you will say, and leave off your ridiculous pedantry. Let but +our 'souls' combine our sensations by their intellectual faculties, +and let but 'God' replace the pantheistic world-soul, and your wheels +will go round again--you will enjoy both life and logic together. + +This solution is obvious and I know that many of you will adopt it. It +is comfortable, and all our habits of speech support it. Yet it is not +for idle or fantastical reasons that the notion of the substantial +soul, so freely used by common men and the more popular philosophies, +has fallen upon such evil days, and has no prestige in the eyes of +critical thinkers. It only shares the fate of other unrepresentable +substances and principles. They are without exception all so barren +that to sincere inquirers they appear as little more than names +masquerading--Wo die begriffe fehlen da stellt ein wort zur rechten +zeit sich ein. You see no deeper into the fact that a hundred +sensations get compounded or known together by thinking that a 'soul' +does the compounding than you see into a man's living eighty years by +thinking of him as an octogenarian, or into our having five fingers by +calling us pentadactyls. Souls have worn out both themselves and +their welcome, that is the plain truth. Philosophy ought to get the +manifolds of experience unified on principles less empty. Like the +word 'cause,' the word 'soul' is but a theoretic stop-gap--it marks a +place and claims it for a future explanation to occupy. + +This being our post-humian and post-kantian state of mind, I will ask +your permission to leave the soul wholly out of the present discussion +and to consider only the residual dilemma. Some day, indeed, souls may +get their innings again in philosophy--I am quite ready to admit that +possibility--they form a category of thought too natural to the human +mind to expire without prolonged resistance. But if the belief in the +soul ever does come to life after the many funeral-discourses which +humian and kantian criticism have preached over it, I am sure it will +be only when some one has found in the term a pragmatic significance +that has hitherto eluded observation. When that champion speaks, as +he well may speak some day, it will be time to consider souls more +seriously. + +Let us leave out the soul, then, and confront what I just called +the residual dilemma. Can we, on the one hand, give up the logic +of identity?--can we, on the other, believe human experience to be +fundamentally irrational? Neither is easy, yet it would seem that we +must do one or the other. + +Few philosophers have had the frankness fairly to admit the necessity +of choosing between the 'horns' offered. Reality must be rational, +they have said, and since the ordinary intellectualist logic is +the only usual test of rationality, reality and logic must agree +'somehow.' Hegel was the first non-mystical writer to face the +dilemma squarely and throw away the ordinary logic, saving a +pseudo-rationality for the universe by inventing the higher logic of +the 'dialectic process.' Bradley holds to the intellectualist logic, +and by dint of it convicts the human universe of being irrationality +incarnate. But what must be and can be, is, he says; there must and +can be relief from _that_ irrationality; and the absolute must already +have got the relief in secret ways of its own, impossible for us to +guess at. _We_ of course get no relief, so Bradley's is a rather +ascetic doctrine. Royce and Taylor accept similar solutions, only they +emphasize the irrationality of our finite universe less than Bradley +does; and Royce in particular, being unusually 'thick' for an +idealist, tries to bring the absolute's secret forms of relief more +sympathetically home to our imagination. + +Well, what must we do in this tragic predicament? For my own part, I +have finally found myself compelled to _give up the logic_, fairly, +squarely, and irrevocably. It has an imperishable use in human life, +but that use is not to make us theoretically acquainted with the +essential nature of reality--just what it is I can perhaps suggest +to you a little later. Reality, life, experience, concreteness, +immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows and +surrounds it. If you like to employ words eulogistically, as most +men do, and so encourage confusion, you may say that reality obeys a +higher logic, or enjoys a higher rationality. But I think that +even eulogistic words should be used rather to distinguish than +to commingle meanings, so I prefer bluntly to call reality if not +irrational then at least non-rational in its constitution,--and by +reality here I mean reality where things _happen_, all temporal +reality without exception. I myself find no good warrant for even +suspecting the existence of any reality of a higher denomination than +that distributed and strung-along and flowing sort of reality which we +finite beings swim in. That is the sort of reality given us, and that +is the sort with which logic is so incommensurable. If there be any +higher sort of reality--the 'absolute,' for example--that sort, by +the confession of those who believe in it, is still less amenable +to ordinary logic; it transcends logic and is therefore still less +rational in the intellectualist sense, so it cannot help us to save +our logic as an adequate definer and confiner of existence. + +These sayings will sound queer and dark, probably they will sound +quite wild or childish in the absence of explanatory comment. Only the +persuasion that I soon can explain them, if not satisfactorily to all +of you, at least intelligibly, emboldens me to state them thus baldly +as a sort of programme. Please take them as a thesis, therefore, to be +defended by later pleading. + +I told you that I had long and sincerely wrestled with the dilemma. I +have now to confess (and this will probably re-animate your interest) +that I should not now be emancipated, not now subordinate logic with +so very light a heart, or throw it out of the deeper regions of +philosophy to take its rightful and respectable place in the world of +simple human practice, if I had not been influenced by a comparatively +young and very original french writer, Professor Henri Bergson. +Reading his works is what has made me bold. If I had not read +Bergson, I should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper +privately, in the hope of making ends meet that were never meant to +meet, and trying to discover some mode of conceiving the behavior of +reality which should leave no discrepancy between it and the accepted +laws of the logic of identity. It is certain, at any rate, that +without the confidence which being able to lean on Bergson's authority +gives me I should never have ventured to urge these particular views +of mine upon this ultra-critical audience. + +I must therefore, in order to make my own views more intelligible, +give some preliminary account of the bergsonian philosophy. But here, +as in Fechner's case, I must confine myself only to the features +that are essential to the present purpose, and not entangle you in +collateral details, however interesting otherwise. For our present +purpose, then, the essential contribution of Bergson to philosophy +is his criticism of intellectualism. In my opinion he has killed +intellectualism definitively and without hope of recovery. I don't +see how it can ever revive again in its ancient platonizing role of +claiming to be the most authentic, intimate, and exhaustive definer +of the nature of reality. Others, as Kant for example, have denied +intellectualism's pretensions to define reality _an sich_ or in its +absolute capacity; but Kant still leaves it laying down laws--and laws +from which there is no appeal--to all our human experience; while what +Bergson denies is that its methods give any adequate account of this +human experience in its very finiteness. Just how Bergson accomplishes +all this I must try to tell in my imperfect way in the next lecture; +but since I have already used the words 'logic,' 'logic of identity, +intellectualistic logic,' and 'intellectualism' so often, and +sometimes used them as if they required no particular explanation, it +will be wise at this point to say at greater length than heretofore in +what sense I take these terms when I claim that Bergson has refuted +their pretension to decide what reality can or cannot be. Just what I +mean by intellectualism is therefore what I shall try to give a fuller +idea of during the remainder of this present hour. + +In recent controversies some participants have shown resentment +at being classed as intellectualists. I mean to use the word +disparagingly, but shall be sorry if it works offence. Intellectualism +has its source in the faculty which gives us our chief superiority to +the brutes, our power, namely, of translating the crude flux of our +merely feeling-experience into a conceptual order. An immediate +experience, as yet unnamed or classed, is a mere _that_ that we +undergo, a thing that asks, '_What_ am I?' When we name and class it, +we say for the first time what it is, and all these whats are abstract +names or concepts. Each concept means a particular _kind_ of thing, +and as things seem once for all to have been created in kinds, a far +more efficient handling of a given bit of experience begins as soon as +we have classed the various parts of it. Once classed, a thing can be +treated by the law of its class, and the advantages are endless. Both +theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts +is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives. We come back +into the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an +increase both of vision and of power. It is no wonder that earlier +thinkers, forgetting that concepts are only man-made extracts from the +temporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type +of being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in +nature to the turbid, restless lower world. The latter then appears as +but their corruption and falsification. + +Intellectualism in the vicious sense began when Socrates and Plato +taught that what a thing really is, is told us by its _definition_. +Ever since Socrates we have been taught that reality consists of +essences, not of appearances, and that the essences of things are +known whenever we know their definitions. So first we identify +the thing with a concept and then we identify the concept with a +definition, and only then, inasmuch as the thing _is_ whatever the +definition expresses, are we sure of apprehending the real essence of +it or the full truth about it. + +So far no harm is done. The misuse of concepts begins with the habit +of employing them privatively as well as positively, using them not +merely to assign properties to things, but to deny the very properties +with which the things sensibly present themselves. Logic can extract +all its possible consequences from any definition, and the logician +who is _unerbittlich consequent_ is often tempted, when he cannot +extract a certain property from a definition, to deny that the +concrete object to which the definition applies can possibly possess +that property. The definition that fails to yield it must exclude or +negate it. This is Hegel's regular method of establishing his system. + +It is but the old story, of a useful practice first becoming a method, +then a habit, and finally a tyranny that defeats the end it was used +for. Concepts, first employed to make things intelligible, are clung +to even when they make them unintelligible. Thus it comes that when +once you have conceived things as 'independent,' you must proceed to +deny the possibility of any connexion whatever among them, because +the notion of connexion is not contained in the definition of +independence. For a like reason you must deny any possible forms or +modes of unity among things which you have begun by defining as a +'many.' We have cast a glance at Hegel's and Bradley's use of this +sort of reasoning, and you will remember Sigwart's epigram that +according to it a horseman can never in his life go on foot, or a +photographer ever do anything but photograph. + +The classic extreme in this direction is the denial of the possibility +of change, and the consequent branding of the world of change as +unreal, by certain philosophers. The definition of A is changeless, +so is the definition of B. The one definition cannot change into +the other, so the notion that a concrete thing A should change into +another concrete thing B is made Out to be contrary to reason. In Mr. +Bradley's difficulty in seeing how sugar can be sweet intellectualism +outstrips itself and becomes openly a sort of verbalism. Sugar is just +sugar and sweet is just sweet; neither is the other; nor can the +word 'is' ever be understood to join any subject to its predicate +rationally. Nothing 'between' things can connect them, for 'between' +is just that third thing, 'between,' and would need itself to be +connected to the first and second things by two still finer betweens, +and so on ad infinitum. + +The particular intellectualistic difficulty that had held my own +thought so long in a vise was, as we have seen at such tedious length, +the impossibility of understanding how 'your' experience and 'mine,' +which 'as such' are defined as not conscious of each other, can +nevertheless at the same time be members of a world-experience defined +expressly as having all its parts co-conscious, or known together. The +definitions are contradictory, so the things defined can in no way be +united. You see how unintelligible intellectualism here seems to make +the world of our most accomplished philosophers. Neither as they +use it nor as we use it does it do anything but make nature look +irrational and seem impossible. + +In my next lecture, using Bergson as my principal topic, I shall enter +into more concrete details and try, by giving up intellectualism +frankly, to make, if not the world, at least my own general thesis, +less unintelligible. + + + + +LECTURE VI + + +BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM + +I gave you a very stiff lecture last time, and I fear that this one +can be little less so. The best way of entering into it will be to +begin immediately with Bergson's philosophy, since I told you that +that was what had led me personally to renounce the intellectualistic +method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of +what can or cannot be. + +Professor Henri Bergson is a young man, comparatively, as influential +philosophers go, having been born at Paris in 1859. His career has +been the perfectly routine one of a successful french professor. +Entering the ecole normale superieure at the age of twenty-two, he +spent the next seventeen years teaching at _lycees_, provincial or +parisian, until his fortieth year, when he was made professor at the +said ecole normale. Since 1900 he has been professor at the College de +France, and member of the Institute since 1900. So far as the outward +facts go, Bergson's career has then been commonplace to the utmost. +Neither one of Taine's famous principles of explanation of great +men, _the race, the environment, or the moment_, no, nor all three +together, will explain that peculiar way of looking at things that +constitutes his mental individuality. Originality in men dates from +nothing previous, other things date from it, rather. I have to confess +that Bergson's originality is so profuse that many of his ideas baffle +me entirely. I doubt whether any one understands him all over, so to +speak; and I am sure that he would himself be the first to see that +this must be, and to confess that things which he himself has not yet +thought out clearly, had yet to be mentioned and have a tentative +place assigned them in his philosophy. Many of us are profusely +original, in that no man can understand us--violently peculiar ways +of looking at things are no great rarity. The rarity is when great +peculiarity of vision is allied with great lucidity and unusual +command of all the classic expository apparatus. Bergson's resources +in the way of erudition are remarkable, and in the way of expression +they are simply phenomenal. This is why in France, where _l'art de +bien dire_ counts for so much and is so sure of appreciation, he has +immediately taken so eminent a place in public esteem. Old-fashioned +professors, whom his ideas quite fail to satisfy, nevertheless speak +of his talent almost with bated breath, while the youngsters flock to +him as to a master. + +If anything can make hard things easy to follow, it is a style like +Bergson's. A 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lately +called it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a +flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a +crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movements +of one's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of putting things is what +all readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in +advance to become his disciple. It is a miracle, and he a real +magician. + +M. Bergson, if I am rightly informed, came into philosophy through the +gateway of mathematics. The old antinomies of the infinite were, +I imagine, the irritant that first woke his faculties from their +dogmatic slumber. You all remember Zeno's famous paradox, or sophism, +as many of our logic books still call it, of Achilles and the +tortoise. Give that reptile ever so small an advance and the swift +runner Achilles can never overtake him, much less get ahead of him; +for if space and time are infinitely divisible (as our intellects +tell us they must be), by the time Achilles reaches the tortoise's +starting-point, the tortoise has already got ahead of _that_ +starting-point, and so on _ad infinitum_, the interval between the +pursuer and the pursued growing endlessly minuter, but never becoming +wholly obliterated. The common way of showing up the sophism here is +by pointing out the ambiguity of the expression 'never can overtake.' +What the word 'never' falsely suggests, it is said, is an infinite +duration of time; what it really means is the inexhaustible number of +the steps of which the overtaking must consist. But if these steps are +infinitely short, a finite time will suffice for them; and in point of +fact they do rapidly converge, whatever be the original interval +or the contrasted speeds, toward infinitesimal shortness. This +proportionality of the shortness of the times to that of the spaces +required frees us, it is claimed, from the sophism which the word +'never' suggests. + +But this criticism misses Zeno's point entirely. Zeno would have been +perfectly willing to grant that if the tortoise can be overtaken at +all, he can be overtaken in (say) twenty seconds, but he would still +have insisted that he can't be overtaken at all. Leave Achilles and +the tortoise out of the account altogether, he would have said--they +complicate the case unnecessarily. Take any single process of change +whatever, take the twenty seconds themselves elapsing. If time be +infinitely divisible, and it must be so on intellectualist principles, +they simply cannot elapse, their end cannot be reached; for no matter +how much of them has already elapsed, before the remainder, however +minute, can have wholly elapsed, the earlier half of it must first +have elapsed. And this ever re-arising need of making the earlier half +elapse _first_ leaves time with always something to do _before_ the +last thing is done, so that the last thing never gets done. Expressed +in bare numbers, it is like the convergent series 1/2 plus 1/4 plus +1/8..., of which the limit is one. But this limit, simply because it +is a limit, stands outside the series, the value of which approaches +it indefinitely but never touches it. If in the natural world there +were no other way of getting things save by such successive addition +of their logically involved fractions, no complete units or whole +things would ever come into being, for the fractions' sum would always +leave a remainder. But in point of fact nature doesn't make eggs by +making first half an egg, then a quarter, then an eighth, etc., and +adding them together. She either makes a whole egg at once or none +at all, and so of all her other units. It is only in the sphere of +change, then, where one phase of a thing must needs come into being +before another phase can come that Zeno's paradox gives trouble. + +And it gives trouble then only if the succession of steps of change +be infinitely divisible. If a bottle had to be emptied by an infinite +number of successive decrements, it is mathematically impossible that +the emptying should ever positively terminate. In point of fact, +however, bottles and coffee-pots empty themselves by a finite number +of decrements, each of definite amount. Either a whole drop emerges or +nothing emerges from the spout. If all change went thus drop-wise, +so to speak, if real time sprouted or grew by units of duration of +determinate amount, just as our perceptions of it grow by pulses, +there would be no zenonian paradoxes or kantian antinomies to trouble +us. All our sensible experiences, as we get them immediately, do thus +change by discrete pulses of perception, each of which keeps us saying +'more, more, more,' or 'less, less, less,' as the definite increments +or diminutions make themselves felt. The discreteness is still more +obvious when, instead of old things changing, they cease, or when +altogether new things come. Fechner's term of the 'threshold,' which +has played such a part in the psychology of perception, is only one +way of naming the quantitative discreteness in the change of all our +sensible experiences. They come to us in drops. Time itself comes in +drops. + +Our ideal decomposition of the drops which are all that we feel into +still finer fractions is but an incident in that great transformation +of the perceptual order into a conceptual order of which I spoke in +my last lecture. It is made in the interest of our rationalizing +intellect solely. The times directly _felt_ in the experiences of +living subjects have originally no common measure. Let a lump of sugar +melt in a glass, to use one of M. Bergson's instances. We feel the +time to be long while waiting for the process to end, but who knows +how long or how short it feels to the sugar? All _felt_ times coexist +and overlap or compenetrate each other thus vaguely, but the artifice +of plotting them on a common scale helps us to reduce their aboriginal +confusion, and it helps us still more to plot, against the same scale, +the successive possible steps into which nature's various changes may +be resolved, either sensibly or conceivably. We thus straighten out +the aboriginal privacy and vagueness, and can date things publicly, as +it were, and by each other. The notion of one objective and 'evenly +flowing' time, cut into numbered instants, applies itself as a common +measure to all the steps and phases, no matter how many, into which we +cut the processes of nature. They are now definitely contemporary, +or later or earlier one than another, and we can handle them +mathematically, as we say, and far better, practically as well as +theoretically, for having thus correlated them one to one with each +other on the common schematic or conceptual time-scale. + +Motion, to take a good example, is originally a turbid sensation, of +which the native shape is perhaps best preserved in the phenomenon of +vertigo. In vertigo we feel that movement _is_, and is more or less +violent or rapid, more or less in this direction or that, more or less +alarming or sickening. But a man subject to vertigo may gradually +learn to co-ordinate his felt motion with his real position and that +of other things, and intellectualize it enough to succeed at last in +walking without staggering. The mathematical mind similarly organizes +motion in its way, putting it into a logical definition: motion is now +conceived as 'the occupancy of serially successive points of space +at serially successive instants of time.' With such a definition we +escape wholly from the turbid privacy of sense. But do we not also +escape from sense-reality altogether? Whatever motion really may be, +it surely is not static; but the definition we have gained is of the +absolutely static. It gives a set of one-to-one relations between +space-points and time-points, which relations themselves are as fixed +as the points are. It gives _positions_ assignable ad infinitum, but +how the body gets from one position to another it omits to mention. +The body gets there by moving, of course; but the conceived positions, +however numerously multiplied, contain no element of movement, so +Zeno, using nothing but them in his discussion, has no alternative +but to say that our intellect repudiates motion as a non-reality. +Intellectualism here does what I said it does--it makes experience +less instead of more intelligible. + +We of course need a stable scheme of concepts, stably related with +one another, to lay hold of our experiences and to co-ordinate them +withal. When an experience comes with sufficient saliency to stand +out, we keep the thought of it for future use, and store it in our +conceptual system. What does not of itself stand out, we learn to +_cut_ out; so the system grows completer, and new reality, as it +comes, gets named after and conceptually strung upon this or that +element of it which we have already established. The immutability +of such an abstract system is its great practical merit; the same +identical terms and relations in it can always be recovered and +referred to--change itself is just such an unalterable concept. But +all these abstract concepts are but as flowers gathered, they are only +moments dipped out from the stream of time, snap-shots taken, as by +a kinetoscopic camera, at a life that in its original coming is +continuous. Useful as they are as samples of the garden, or to +re-enter the stream with, or to insert in our revolving lantern, they +have no value but these practical values. You cannot explain by them +what makes any single phenomenon be or go--you merely dot out the path +of appearances which it traverses. For you cannot make continuous +being out of discontinuities, and your concepts are discontinuous. The +stages into which you analyze a change are _states_, the change itself +goes on between them. It lies along their intervals, inhabits what +your definition fails to gather up, and thus eludes conceptual +explanation altogether. + +'When the mathematician,' Bergson writes, 'calculates the state of +a system at the end of a time _t_, nothing need prevent him from +supposing that betweenwhiles the universe vanishes, in order suddenly +to appear again at the due moment in the new configuration. It is +only the _t_-th moment that counts--that which flows throughout the +intervals, namely real time, plays no part in his calculation.... In +short, the world on which the mathematician operates is a world which +dies and is born anew at every instant, like the world which Descartes +thought of when he spoke of a continued creation.' To know adequately +what really _happens_ we ought, Bergson insists, to see into the +intervals, but the mathematician sees only their extremities. He +fixes only a few results, he dots a curve and then interpolates, he +substitutes a tracing for a reality. + +This being so undeniably the case, the history of the way in which +philosophy has dealt with it is curious. The ruling tradition in +philosophy has always been the platonic and aristotelian belief that +fixity is a nobler and worthier thing than change. Reality must be one +and unalterable. Concepts, being themselves fixities, agree best with +this fixed nature of truth, so that for any knowledge of ours to be +quite true it must be knowledge by universal concepts rather than +by particular experiences, for these notoriously are mutable and +corruptible. This is the tradition known as rationalism in philosophy, +and what I have called intellectualism is only the extreme application +of it. In spite of sceptics and empiricists, in spite of Protagoras, +Hume, and James Mill, rationalism has never been seriously questioned, +for its sharpest critics have always had a tender place in their +hearts for it, and have obeyed some of its mandates. They have not +been consistent; they have played fast and loose with the enemy; and +Bergson alone has been radical. + +To show what I mean by this, let me contrast his procedure with that +of some of the transcendentalist philosophers whom I have lately +mentioned. Coming after Kant, these pique themselves on being +'critical,' on building in fact upon Kant's 'critique' of pure reason. +What that critique professed to establish was this, that concepts do +not apprehend reality, but only such appearances as our senses +feed out to them. They give immutable intellectual forms to these +appearances, it is true, but the reality _an sich_ from which in +ultimate resort the sense-appearances have to come remains forever +unintelligible to our intellect. Take motion, for example. Sensibly, +motion comes in drops, waves, or pulses; either some actual amount of +it, or none, being apprehended. This amount is the datum or _gabe_ +which reality feeds out to our intellectual faculty; but our intellect +makes of it a task or _aufgabe_--this pun is one of the most memorable +of Kant's formulas--and insists that in every pulse of it an infinite +number of successive minor pulses shall be ascertainable. These minor +pulses _we_ can indeed _go on_ to ascertain or to compute indefinitely +if we have patience; but it would contradict the definition of an +infinite number to suppose the endless series of them to have actually +counted _themselves_ out piecemeal. Zeno made this manifest; so the +infinity which our intellect requires of the sense-datum is thus +a future and potential rather than a past and actual infinity of +structure. The datum after it has made itself must be decompos_able_ +ad infinitum by our conception, but of the steps by which that +structure actually got composed we know nothing. Our intellect casts, +in short, no ray of light on the processes by which experiences _get +made_. + +Kant's monistic successors have in general found the data of immediate +experience even more self-contradictory, when intellectually treated, +than Kant did. Not only the character of infinity involved in the +relation of various empirical data to their 'conditions,' but the very +notion that empirical things should be related to one another at all, +has seemed to them, when the intellectualistic fit was upon them, full +of paradox and contradiction. We saw in a former lecture numerous +instances of this from Hegel, Bradley, Royce, and others. We saw also +where the solution of such an intolerable state of things was sought +for by these authors. Whereas Kant had placed it outside of and +_before_ our experience, in the _dinge an sich_ which are the causes +of the latter, his monistic successors all look for it either _after_ +experience, as its absolute completion, or else consider it to be even +now implicit within experience as its ideal signification. Kant and +his successors look, in short, in diametrically opposite directions. +Do not be misled by Kant's admission of theism into his system. +His God is the ordinary dualistic God of Christianity, to whom his +philosophy simply opens the door; he has nothing whatsoever in common +with the 'absolute spirit' set up by his successors. So far as this +absolute spirit is logically derived from Kant, it is not from his +God, but from entirely different elements of his philosophy. First +from his notion that an unconditioned totality of the conditions of +any experience must be assignable; and then from his other notion that +the presence of some witness, or ego of apperception, is the most +universal of all the conditions in question. The post-kantians make +of the witness-condition what is called a concrete universal, an +individualized all-witness or world-self, which shall imply in its +rational constitution each and all of the other conditions put +together, and therefore necessitate each and all of the conditioned +experiences. + +Abridgments like this of other men's opinions are very unsatisfactory, +they always work injustice; but in this case those of you who are +familiar with the literature will see immediately what I have in mind; +and to the others, if there be any here, it will suffice to say that +what I am trying so pedantically to point out is only the fact that +monistic idealists after Kant have invariably sought relief from the +supposed contradictions of our world of sense by looking forward +toward an _ens rationis_ conceived as its integration or logical +completion, while he looked backward toward non-rational _dinge an +sich_ conceived as its cause. Pluralistic empiricists, on the other +hand, have remained in the world of sense, either naively and because +they overlooked the intellectualistic contradictions, or because, not +able to ignore them, they thought they could refute them by a superior +use of the same intellectualistic logic. Thus it is that John Mill +pretends to refute the Achilles-tortoise fallacy. + +The important point to notice here is the intellectualist logic. Both +sides treat it as authoritative, but they do so capriciously: the +absolutists smashing the world of sense by its means, the empiricists +smashing the absolute--for the absolute, they say, is the quintessence +of all logical contradictions. Neither side attains consistency. +The Hegelians have to invoke a higher logic to supersede the purely +destructive efforts of their first logic. The empiricists use their +logic against the absolute, but refuse to use it against finite +experience. Each party uses it or drops it to suit the vision it has +faith in, but neither impugns in principle its general theoretic +authority. + +Bergson alone challenges its theoretic authority in principle. He +alone denies that mere conceptual logic can tell us what is impossible +or possible in the world of being or fact; and he does so for reasons +which at the same time that they rule logic out from lordship over the +whole of life, establish a vast and definite sphere of influence where +its sovereignty is indisputable. Bergson's own text, felicitous as +it is, is too intricate for quotation, so I must use my own inferior +words in explaining what I mean by saying this. + +In the first place, logic, giving primarily the relations between +concepts as such, and the relations between natural facts only +secondarily or so far as the facts have been already identified with +concepts and defined by them, must of course stand or fall with the +conceptual method. But the conceptual method is a transformation which +the flux of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice +essentially and only subordinately in the interests of theory. We +live forward, we understand backward, said a danish writer; and to +understand life by concepts is to arrest its movement, cutting it up +into bits as if with scissors, and immobilizing these in our logical +herbarium where, comparing them as dried specimens, we can ascertain +which of them statically includes or excludes which other. This +treatment supposes life to have already accomplished itself, for the +concepts, being so many views taken after the fact, are retrospective +and post mortem. Nevertheless we can draw conclusions from them and +project them into the future. We cannot learn from them how life made +itself go, or how it will make itself go; but, on the supposition that +its ways of making itself go are unchanging, we can calculate what +positions of imagined arrest it will exhibit hereafter under given +conditions. We can compute, for instance, at what point Achilles +will be, and where the tortoise will be, at the end of the twentieth +minute. Achilles may then be at a point far ahead; but the full detail +of how he will have managed practically to get there our logic never +gives us--we have seen, indeed, that it finds that its results +contradict the facts of nature. The computations which the other +sciences make differ in no respect from those of mathematics. The +concepts used are all of them dots through which, by interpolation or +extrapolation, curves are drawn, while along the curves other dots are +found as consequences. The latest refinements of logic dispense +with the curves altogether, and deal solely with the dots and their +correspondences each to each in various series. The authors of these +recent improvements tell us expressly that their aim is to abolish the +last vestiges of intuition, _videlicet_ of concrete reality, from the +field of reasoning, which then will operate literally on mental dots +or bare abstract units of discourse, and on the ways in which they may +be strung in naked series. + +This is all very esoteric, and my own understanding of it is most +likely misunderstanding. So I speak here only by way of brief reminder +to those who know. For the rest of us it is enough to recognize this +fact, that altho by means of concepts cut out from the sensible flux +of the past, we can re-descend upon the future flux and, making +another cut, say what particular thing is likely to be found there; +and that altho in this sense concepts give us knowledge, and may be +said to have some theoretic value (especially when the particular +thing foretold is one in which we take no present practical interest); +yet in the deeper sense of giving _insight_ they have no theoretic +value, for they quite fail to connect us with the inner life of the +flux, or with the causes that govern its direction. Instead of being +interpreters of reality, concepts negate the inwardness of reality +altogether. They make the whole notion of a causal influence between +finite things incomprehensible. No real activities and indeed no real +connexions of any kind can obtain if we follow the conceptual logic; +for to be distinguishable, according to what I call intellectualism, +is to be incapable of connexion. The work begun by Zeno, and continued +by Hume, Kant, Herbart, Hegel, and Bradley, does not stop till +sensible reality lies entirely disintegrated at the feet of 'reason.' + +Of the 'absolute' reality which reason proposes to substitute for +sensible reality I shall have more to say presently. Meanwhile you see +what Professor Bergson means by insisting that the function of the +intellect is practical rather than theoretical. Sensible reality is +too concrete to be entirely manageable--look at the narrow range of it +which is all that any animal, living in it exclusively as he does, is +able to compass. To get from one point in it to another we have to +plough or wade through the whole intolerable interval. No detail is +spared us; it is as bad as the barbed-wire complications at Port +Arthur, and we grow old and die in the process. But with our faculty +of abstracting and fixing concepts we are there in a second, almost as +if we controlled a fourth dimension, skipping the intermediaries as +by a divine winged power, and getting at the exact point we require +without entanglement with any context. What we do in fact is to +_harness up_ reality in our conceptual systems in order to drive it +the better. This process is practical because all the termini to which +we drive are _particular_ termini, even when they are facts of the +mental order. But the sciences in which the conceptual method chiefly +celebrates its triumphs are those of space and matter, where the +transformations of external things are dealt with. To deal with moral +facts conceptually, we have first to transform them, substitute +brain-diagrams or physical metaphors, treat ideas as atoms, interests +as mechanical forces, our conscious 'selves' as 'streams,' and the +like. Paradoxical effect! as Bergson well remarks, if our intellectual +life were not practical but destined to reveal the inner natures. +One would then suppose that it would find itself most at home in the +domain of its own intellectual realities. But it is precisely there +that it finds itself at the end of its tether. We know the inner +movements of our spirit only perceptually. We feel them live in us, +but can give no distinct account of their elements, nor definitely +predict their future; while things that lie along the world of space, +things of the sort that we literally _handle_, are what our intellects +cope with most successfully. Does not this confirm us in the view that +the original and still surviving function of our intellectual life +is to guide us in the practical adaptation of our expectancies and +activities? + +One can easily get into a verbal mess at this point, and my own +experience with pragmatism' makes me shrink from the dangers that lie +in the word 'practical,' and far rather than stand out against you for +that word, I am quite willing to part company with Professor Bergson, +and to ascribe a primarily theoretical function to our intellect, +provided you on your part then agree to discriminate 'theoretic' or +scientific knowledge from the deeper 'speculative' knowledge aspired +to by most philosophers, and concede that theoretic knowledge, +which is knowledge _about_ things, as distinguished from living or +sympathetic acquaintance with them, touches only the outer surface of +reality. The surface which theoretic knowledge taken in this sense +covers may indeed be enormous in extent; it may dot the whole diameter +of space and time with its conceptual creations; but it does not +penetrate a millimeter into the solid dimension. That inner dimension +of reality is occupied by the _activities_ that keep it going, but the +intellect, speaking through Hume, Kant & Co., finds itself obliged to +deny, and persists in denying, that activities have any intelligible +existence. What exists for _thought_, we are told, is at most the +results that we illusorily ascribe to such activities, strung along +the surfaces of space and time by _regeln der verknuepfung_, laws of +nature which state only coexistences and successions.[1] + +Thought deals thus solely with surfaces. It can name the thickness +of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is +essential and permanent, not temporary. + +The only way in which to apprehend reality's thickness is either to +experience it directly by being a part of reality one's self, or to +evoke it in imagination by sympathetically divining some one else's +inner life. But what we thus immediately experience or concretely +divine is very limited in duration, whereas abstractly we are able to +conceive eternities. Could we feel a million years concretely as we +now feel a passing minute, we should have very little employment for +our conceptual faculty. We should know the whole period fully at every +moment of its passage, whereas we must now construct it laboriously by +means of concepts which we project. Direct acquaintance and conceptual +knowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the +other's defects. If what we care most about be the synoptic treatment +of phenomena, the vision of the far and the gathering of the scattered +like, we must follow the conceptual method. But if, as metaphysicians, +we are more curious about the inner nature of reality or about what +really makes it go, we must turn our backs upon our winged concepts +altogether, and bury ourselves in the thickness of those passing +moments over the surface of which they fly, and on particular points +of which they occasionally rest and perch. + +Professor Bergson thus inverts the traditional platonic doctrine +absolutely. Instead of intellectual knowledge being the profounder, +he calls it the more superficial. Instead of being the only adequate +knowledge, it is grossly inadequate, and its only superiority is the +practical one of enabling us to make short cuts through experience +and thereby to save time. The one thing it cannot do is to reveal the +nature of things--which last remark, if not clear already, will become +clearer as I proceed. Dive back into the flux itself, then, Bergson +tells us, if you wish to _know_ reality, that flux which Platonism, in +its strange belief that only the immutable is excellent, has always +spurned; turn your face toward sensation, that flesh-bound thing which +rationalism has always loaded with abuse.--This, you see, is exactly +the opposite remedy from that of looking forward into the absolute, +which our idealistic contemporaries prescribe. It violates our mental +habits, being a kind of passive and receptive listening quite contrary +to that effort to react noisily and verbally on everything, which is +our usual intellectual pose. + +What, then, are the peculiar features in the perceptual flux which the +conceptual translation so fatally leaves out? + +The essence of life is its continuously changing character; but our +concepts are all discontinuous and fixed, and the only mode of making +them coincide with life is by arbitrarily supposing positions of +arrest therein. With such arrests our concepts may be made congruent. +But these concepts are not _parts_ of reality, not real positions +taken by it, but _suppositions_ rather, notes taken by ourselves, and +you can no more dip up the substance of reality with them than you can +dip up water with a net, however finely meshed. + +When we conceptualize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything +but what we have fixed. A concept means a _that-and-no-other_. +Conceptually, time excludes space; motion and rest exclude each other; +approach excludes contact; presence excludes absence; unity excludes +plurality; independence excludes relativity; 'mine' excludes 'yours'; +this connexion excludes that connexion--and so on indefinitely; +whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences +compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is +excluded and what not. Past and future, for example, conceptually +separated by the cut to which we give the name of present, and defined +as being the opposite sides of that cut, are to some extent, however +brief, co-present with each other throughout experience. The literally +present moment is a purely verbal supposition, not a position; the +only present ever realized concretely being the 'passing moment' in +which the dying rearward of time and its dawning future forever mix +their lights. Say 'now' and it _was_ even while you say it. + +It is just intellectualism's attempt to substitute static cuts +for units of experienced duration that makes real motion so +unintelligible. The conception of the first half of the interval +between Achilles and the tortoise excludes that of the last half, and +the mathematical necessity of traversing it separately before the last +half is traversed stands permanently in the way of the last half ever +being traversed. Meanwhile the living Achilles (who, for the purposes +of this discussion, is only the abstract name of one phenomenon of +impetus, just as the tortoise is of another) asks no leave of logic. +The velocity of his acts is an indivisible nature in them like the +expansive tension in a spring compressed. We define it conceptually as +[_s/t_], but the _s_ and _t_ are only artificial cuts made after the +fact, and indeed most artificial when we treat them in both runners +as the same tracts of 'objective' space and time, for the experienced +spaces and times in which the tortoise inwardly lives are probably +as different as his velocity from the same things in Achilles. The +impetus of Achilles is one concrete fact, and carries space, time, and +conquest over the inferior creature's motion indivisibly in it. He +perceives nothing, while running, of the mathematician's homogeneous +time and space, of the infinitely numerous succession of cuts in both, +or of their order. End and beginning come for him in the one onrush, +and all that he actually experiences is that, in the midst of a +certain intense effort of his own, the rival is in point of fact +outstripped. + +We are so inveterately wedded to the conceptual decomposition of life +that I know that this will seem to you like putting muddiest confusion +in place of clearest thought, and relapsing into a molluscoid state +of mind. Yet I ask you whether the absolute superiority of our higher +thought is so very clear, if all that it can find is impossibility in +tasks which sense-experience so easily performs. + +What makes you call real life confusion is that it presents, as +if they were dissolved in one another, a lot of differents which +conception breaks life's flow by keeping apart. But _are_ not +differents actually dissolved in one another? Hasn't every bit of +experience its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity, +its urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which +can exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it? +They exist only _durcheinander_. Reality always is, in M. Bergson's +phrase, an endosmosis or conflux of the same with the different: they +compenetrate and telescope. For conceptual logic, the same is nothing +but the same, and all sames with a third thing are the same with each +other. Not so in concrete experience. Two spots on our skin, each of +which feels the same as a third spot when touched along with it, are +felt as different from each other. Two tones, neither distinguishable +from a third tone, are perfectly distinct from each other. The whole +process of life is due to life's violation of our logical axioms. +Take its continuity as an example. Terms like A and C appear to be +connected by intermediaries, by B for example. Intellectualism calls +this absurd, for 'B-connected-with-A' is, 'as such,' a different term +from 'B-connected-with-C.' But real life laughs at logic's veto. +Imagine a heavy log which takes two men to carry it. First A and B +take it. Then C takes hold and A drops off; then D takes hold and B +drops off, so that C and D now bear it; and so on. The log meanwhile +never drops, and keeps its sameness throughout the journey. Even so +it is with all our experiences. Their changes are not complete +annihilations followed by complete creations of something absolutely +novel. There is partial decay and partial growth, and all the while a +nucleus of relative constancy from which what decays drops off, and +which takes into itself whatever is grafted on, until at length +something wholly different has taken its place. In such a process we +are as sure, in spite of intellectualist logic with its 'as suches,' +that it _is_ the same nucleus which is able now to make connexion with +what goes and again with what comes, as we are sure that the same +point can lie on diverse lines that intersect there. Without being one +throughout, such a universe is continuous. Its members interdigitate +with their next neighbors in manifold directions, and there are no +clean cuts between them anywhere. + +The great clash of intellectualist logic with sensible experience is +where the experience is that of influence exerted. Intellectualism +denies (as we saw in lecture ii) that finite things can act on one +another, for all things, once translated into concepts, remain shut up +to themselves. To act on anything means to get into it somehow; but +that would mean to get out of one's self and be one's other, which is +self-contradictory, etc. Meanwhile each of us actually _is_ his own +other to that extent, livingly knowing how to perform the trick which +logic tells us can't be done. My thoughts animate and actuate this +very body which you see and hear, and thereby influence your thoughts. +The dynamic current somehow does get from me to you, however numerous +the intermediary conductors may have to be. Distinctions may be +insulators in logic as much as they like, but in life distinct things +can and do commune together every moment. + +The conflict of the two ways of knowing is best summed up in the +intellectualist doctrine that 'the same cannot exist in many +relations.' This follows of course from the concepts of the two +relations being so distinct that 'what-is-in-the-one' means 'as such' +something distinct from what 'what-is-in-the-other' means. It is like +Mill's ironical saying, that we should not think of Newton as both an +Englishman and a mathematician, because an Englishman as such is not +a mathematician and a mathematician as such is not an Englishman. But +the real Newton was somehow both things at once; and throughout the +whole finite universe each real thing proves to be many differents +without undergoing the necessity of breaking into disconnected +editions of itself. + +These few indications will perhaps suffice to put you at the +bergsonian point of view. The immediate experience of life solves the +problems which so baffle our conceptual intelligence: How can what is +manifold be one? how can things get out of themselves? how be their +own others? how be both distinct and connected? how can they act on +one another? how be for others and yet for themselves? how be absent +and present at once? The intellect asks these questions much as we +might ask how anything can both separate and unite things, or how +sounds can grow more alike by continuing to grow more different. If +you already know space sensibly, you can answer the former question by +pointing to any interval in it, long or short; if you know the musical +scale, you can answer the latter by sounding an octave; but then you +must first have the sensible knowledge of these realities. Similarly +Bergson answers the intellectualist conundrums by pointing back to our +various finite sensational experiences and saying, 'Lo, even thus; +even so are these other problems solved livingly.' + +When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can +reconstruct it in its wholeness. Out of no amount of discreteness +can you manufacture the concrete. But place yourself at a bound, or +_d'emblee_, as M. Bergson says, inside of the living, moving, active +thickness of the real, and all the abstractions and distinctions +are given into your hand: you can now make the intellectualist +substitutions to your heart's content. Install yourself in phenomenal +movement, for example, and velocity, succession, dates, positions, and +innumerable other things are given you in the bargain. But with only +an abstract succession of dates and positions you can never patch up +movement itself. It slips through their intervals and is lost. + +So it is with every concrete thing, however complicated. Our +intellectual handling of it is a retrospective patchwork, a +post-mortem dissection, and can follow any order we find most +expedient. We can make the thing seem self-contradictory whenever +we wish to. But place yourself at the point of view of the thing's +interior _doing_, and all these back-looking and conflicting +conceptions lie harmoniously in your hand. Get at the expanding centre +of a human character, the _elan vital_ of a man, as Bergson calls it, +by living sympathy, and at a stroke you see how it makes those who see +it from without interpret it in such diverse ways. It is something +that breaks into both honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, +stupidity and insight, at the touch of varying circumstances, and you +feel exactly why and how it does this, and never seek to identify +it stably with any of these single abstractions. Only your +intellectualist does that,--and you now also feel why _he_ must do it +to the end. + +Place yourself similarly at the centre of a man's philosophic vision +and you understand at once all the different things it makes him write +or say. But keep outside, use your post-mortem method, try to build +the philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and then +another and seeking to make them fit, and of course you fail. You +crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a building, tumbling +into every microscopic crack or fissure, finding nothing but +inconsistencies, and never suspecting that a centre exists. I hope +that some of the philosophers in this audience may occasionally have +had something different from this intellectualist type of criticism +applied to their own works! + +What really _exists_ is not things made but things in the making. Once +made, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative conceptual +decompositions can be used in defining them. But put yourself _in the +making_ by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the +whole range of possible decompositions coming at once into your +possession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of +them is the more absolutely true. Reality _falls_ in passing into +conceptual analysis; it _mounts_ in living its own undivided life--it +buds and bourgeons, changes and creates. Once adopt the movement of +this life in any given instance and you know what Bergson calls the +_devenir reel_ by which the thing evolves and grows. Philosophy should +seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality, +not follow science in vainly patching together fragments of its dead +results. + +Thus much of M. Bergson's philosophy is sufficient for my purpose in +these lectures, so here I will stop, leaving unnoticed all its other +constituent features, original and interesting tho they be. You may +say, and doubtless some of you now are saying inwardly, that his +remanding us to sensation in this wise is only a regress, a return to +that ultra-crude empiricism which your own idealists since Green +have buried ten times over. I confess that it is indeed a return to +empiricism, but I think that the return in such accomplished shape +only proves the latter's immortal truth. What won't stay buried must +have some genuine life. _Am anfang war die tat_; fact is a _first_; to +which all our conceptual handling comes as an inadequate second, +never its full equivalent. When I read recent transcendentalist +literature--I must partly except my colleague Royce!--I get nothing +but a sort of marking of time, champing of jaws, pawing of the ground, +and resettling into the same attitude, like a weary horse in a stall +with an empty manger. It is but turning over the same few threadbare +categories, bringing the same objections, and urging the same answers +and solutions, with never a new fact or a new horizon coming into +sight. But open Bergson, and new horizons loom on every page you read. +It is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells +of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded +professors have written about what other previous professors have +thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. + +That he gives us no closed-in system will of course be fatal to him in +intellectualist eyes. He only evokes and invites; but he first annuls +the intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with +a philosophical conscience never quite set free before. As a french +disciple of his well expresses it: 'Bergson claims of us first of all +a certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a +logical revolution. But those who have once found themselves flexible +enough for the execution of such a psychological change of front, +discover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient +attitude of mind. They are now Bergsonians ... and possess the +principal thoughts of the master all at once. They have understood in +the fashion in which one loves, they have caught the whole melody and +can thereafter admire at their leisure the originality, the fecundity, +and the imaginative genius with which its author develops, transposes, +and varies in a thousand ways by the orchestration of his style and +dialectic, the original theme.'[2] + +This, scant as it is, is all I have to say about Bergson on this +occasion--I hope it may send some of you to his original text. I must +now turn back to the point where I found it advisable to appeal to his +ideas. You remember my own intellectualist difficulties in the last +lecture, about how a lot of separate consciousnesses can at the same +time be one collective thing. How, I asked, can one and the same +identical content of experience, of which on idealist principles the +_esse_ is to be felt, be felt so diversely if itself be the only +feeler? The usual way of escape by 'quatenus' or 'as such' won't +help us here if we are radical intellectualists, I said, for +appearance-together is as such _not_ appearance-apart, the world _qua_ +many is not the world _qua_ one, as absolutism claims. If we hold to +Hume's maxim, which later intellectualism uses so well, that whatever +things are distinguished are as separate as if there were no manner of +connexion between them, there seemed no way out of the difficulty save +by stepping outside of experience altogether and invoking different +spiritual agents, selves or souls, to realize the diversity required. +But this rescue by 'scholastic entities' I was unwilling to accept any +more than pantheistic idealists accept it. + +Yet, to quote Fechner's phrase again, 'nichts wirkliches kann +unmoeglich sein,' the actual cannot be impossible, and what _is_ actual +at every moment of our lives is the sort of thing which I now +proceed to remind you of. You can hear the vibration of an electric +contact-maker, smell the ozone, see the sparks, and feel the thrill, +co-consciously as it were or in one field of experience. But you can +also isolate any one of these sensations by shutting out the rest. If +you close your eyes, hold your nose, and remove your hand, you can get +the sensation of sound alone, but it seems still the same sensation +that it was; and if you restore the action of the other organs, the +sound coalesces with the feeling, the sight, and the smell sensations +again. Now the natural way of talking of all this[3] is to say that +certain sensations are experienced, now singly, and now together +with other sensations, in a common conscious field. Fluctuations of +attention give analogous results. We let a sensation in or keep it out +by changing our attention; and similarly we let an item of memory in +or drop it out. [Please don't raise the question here of how these +changes _come to pass_. The immediate condition is probably cerebral +in every instance, but it would be irrelevant now to consider it, for +now we are thinking only of results, and I repeat that the natural way +of thinking of them is that which intellectualist criticism finds so +absurd.] + +The absurdity charged is that the self-same should function so +differently, now with and now without something else. But this it +sensibly seems to do. This very desk which I strike with my hand +strikes in turn your eyes. It functions at once as a physical object +in the outer world and as a mental object in our sundry mental worlds. +The very body of mine that _my_ thought actuates is the body whose +gestures are _your_ visual object and to which you give my name. The +very log which John helped to carry is the log now borne by James. The +very girl you love is simultaneously entangled elsewhere. The very +place behind me is in front of you. Look where you will, you gather +only examples of the same amid the different, and of different +relations existing as it were in solution in the same thing. _Qua_ +this an experience is not the same as it is _qua_ that, truly enough; +but the _quas_ are conceptual shots of ours at its post-mortem +remains, and in its sensational immediacy everything is all at once +whatever different things it is at once at all. It is before C and +after A, far from you and near to me, without this associate and with +that one, active and passive, physical and mental, a whole of +parts and part of a higher whole, all simultaneously and without +interference or need of doubling-up its being, so long as we keep to +what I call the 'immediate' point of view, the point of view in which +we follow our sensational life's continuity, and to which all living +language conforms. It is only when you try--to continue using the +hegelian vocabulary--to 'mediate' the immediate, or to substitute +concepts for sensational life, that intellectualism celebrates +its triumph and the immanent-self-contradictoriness of all this +smooth-running finite experience gets proved. + +Of the oddity of inventing as a remedy for the inconveniences +resulting from this situation a supernumerary conceptual object +called an absolute, into which you pack the self-same contradictions +unreduced, I will say something in the next lecture. The absolute is +said to perform its feats by taking up its other into itself. But +that is exactly what is done when every individual morsel of the +sensational stream takes up the adjacent morsels by coalescing with +them. This is just what we mean by the stream's sensible continuity. +No element _there_ cuts itself off from any other element, as concepts +cut themselves from concepts. No part _there_ is so small as not to be +a place of conflux. No part there is not really _next_ its neighbors; +which means that there is literally nothing between; which means +again that no part goes exactly so far and no farther; that no part +absolutely excludes another, but that they compenetrate and are +cohesive; that if you tear out one, its roots bring out more with +them; that whatever is real is telescoped and diffused into other +reals; that, in short, every minutest thing is already its hegelian +'own other,' in the fullest sense of the term. + +Of course this _sounds_ self-contradictory, but as the immediate facts +don't sound at all, but simply _are_, until we conceptualize and name +them vocally, the contradiction results only from the conceptual +or discursive form being substituted for the real form. But if, as +Bergson shows, that form is superimposed for practical ends only, in +order to let us jump about over life instead of wading through it; +and if it cannot even pretend to reveal anything of what life's inner +nature is or ought to be; why then we can turn a deaf ear to its +accusations. The resolve to turn the deaf ear is the inner crisis or +'catastrophe' of which M. Bergson's disciple whom I lately quoted +spoke. We are so subject to the philosophic tradition which treats +_logos_ or discursive thought generally as the sole avenue to truth, +that to fall back on raw unverbalized life as more of a revealer, and +to think of concepts as the merely practical things which Bergson +calls them, comes very hard. It is putting off our proud maturity of +mind and becoming again as foolish little children in the eyes of +reason. But difficult as such a revolution is, there is no other way, +I believe, to the possession of reality, and I permit myself to hope +that some of you may share my opinion after you have heard my next +lecture. + + + + +LECTURE VII + + +THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE + +I fear that few of you will have been able to obey Bergson's call upon +you to look towards the sensational life for the fuller knowledge of +reality, or to sympathize with his attempt to limit the divine right +of concepts to rule our mind absolutely. It is too much like looking +downward and not up. Philosophy, you will say, doesn't lie flat on its +belly in the middle of experience, in the very thick of its sand and +gravel, as this Bergsonism does, never getting a peep at anything from +above. Philosophy is essentially the vision of things from above. +It doesn't simply feel the detail of things, it comprehends their +intelligible plan, sees their forms and principles, their categories +and rules, their order and necessity. It takes the superior point of +view of the architect. Is it conceivable that it should ever forsake +that point of view and abandon itself to a slovenly life of immediate +feeling? To say nothing of your traditional Oxford devotion to +Aristotle and Plato, the leaven of T.H. Green probably works still +too strongly here for his anti-sensationalism to be outgrown quickly. +Green more than any one realized that knowledge _about_ things was +knowledge of their relations; but nothing could persuade him that our +sensational life could contain any relational element. He followed +the strict intellectualist method with sensations. What they were not +expressly defined as including, they must exclude. Sensations are not +defined as relations, so in the end Green thought that they could +get related together only by the action on them from above of a +'self-distinguishing' absolute and eternal mind, present to that which +is related, but not related itself. 'A relation,' he said, 'is not +contingent with the contingency of feeling. It is permanent with +the permanence of the combining and comparing thought which alone +constitutes it.'[1] In other words, relations are purely conceptual +objects, and the sensational life as such cannot relate itself +together. Sensation in itself, Green wrote, is fleeting, momentary, +unnameable (because, while we name it, it has become another), and for +the same reason unknowable, the very negation of knowability. Were +there no permanent objects of conception for our sensations to be +'referred to,' there would be no significant names, but only noises, +and a consistent sensationalism must be speechless.[2] Green's +intellectualism was so earnest that it produced a natural and an +inevitable effect. But the atomistic and unrelated sensations which he +had in mind were purely fictitious products of his rationalist fancy. +The psychology of our own day disavows them utterly,[3] and Green's +laborious belaboring of poor old Locke for not having first seen that +his ideas of sensation were just that impracticable sort of thing, and +then fled to transcendental idealism as a remedy,--his belaboring of +poor old Locke for this, I say, is pathetic. Every examiner of the +sensible life _in concreto_ must see that relations of every sort, of +time, space, difference, likeness, change, rate, cause, or what not, +are just as integral members of the sensational flux as terms are, and +that conjunctive relations are just as true members of the flux as +disjunctive relations are.[4] This is what in some recent writings of +mine I have called the 'radically empiricist' doctrine (in distinction +from the doctrine of mental atoms which the name empiricism so +often suggests). Intellectualistic critics of sensation insist that +sensations are _disjoined_ only. Radical empiricism insists +that conjunctions between them are just as immediately given as +disjunctions are, and that relations, whether disjunctive or +conjunctive, are in their original sensible givenness just as fleeting +and momentary (in Green's words), and just as 'particular,' as terms +are. Later, both terms and relations get universalized by being +conceptualized and named.[5] But all the thickness, concreteness, and +individuality of experience exists in the immediate and relatively +unnamed stages of it, to the richness of which, and to the standing +inadequacy of our conceptions to match it, Professor Bergson so +emphatically calls our attention. And now I am happy to say that we +can begin to gather together some of the separate threads of our +argument, and see a little better the general kind of conclusion +toward which we are tending. Pray go back with me to the lecture +before the last, and recall what I said about the difficulty of seeing +how states of consciousness can compound themselves. The difficulty +seemed to be the same, you remember, whether we took it in psychology +as the composition of finite states of mind out of simpler finite +states, or in metaphysics as the composition of the absolute mind out +of finite minds in general. It is the general conceptualist difficulty +of any one thing being the same with many things, either at once or +in succession, for the abstract concepts of oneness and manyness must +needs exclude each other. In the particular instance that we have +dwelt on so long, the one thing is the all-form of experience, the +many things are the each-forms of experience in you and me. To call +them the same we must treat them as if each were simultaneously +its own other, a feat on conceptualist principles impossible of +performance. + +On the principle of going behind the conceptual function altogether, +however, and looking to the more primitive flux of the sensational +life for reality's true shape, a way is open to us, as I tried in my +last lecture to show. Not only the absolute is its own other, but the +simplest bits of immediate experience are their own others, if that +hegelian phrase be once for all allowed. The concrete pulses of +experience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual +substitutes for them are confined by. They run into one another +continuously and seem to interpenetrate. What in them is relation and +what is matter related is hard to discern. You feel no one of them as +inwardly simple, and no two as wholly without confluence where they +touch. There is no datum so small as not to show this mystery, if +mystery it be. The tiniest feeling that we can possibly have comes +with an earlier and a later part and with a sense of their continuous +procession. Mr. Shadworth Hodgson showed long ago that there is +literally no such object as the present moment except as an unreal +postulate of abstract thought.[6] The 'passing' moment is, as I +already have reminded you, the minimal fact, with the 'apparition of +difference' inside of it as well as outside. If we do not feel both +past and present in one field of feeling, we feel them not at all. We +have the same many-in-one in the matter that fills the passing time. +The rush of our thought forward through its fringes is the everlasting +peculiarity of its life. We realize this life as something always off +its balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a +darkness through a dawn into a brightness that we feel to be the dawn +fulfilled. In the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as +an alteration. 'Yes,' we say at the full brightness, '_this_ is what I +just meant.' 'No,' we feel at the dawning, 'this is not yet the full +meaning, there is more to come.' In every crescendo of sensation, in +every effort to recall, in every progress towards the satisfaction +of desire, this succession of an emptiness and fulness that have +reference to each other and are one flesh is the essence of the +phenomenon. In every hindrance of desire the sense of an ideal +presence which is absent in fact, of an absent, in a word, which the +only function of the present is to _mean_, is even more notoriously +there. And in the movement of pure thought we have the same +phenomenon. When I say _Socrates is mortal_, the moment _Socrates_ is +incomplete; it falls forward through the _is_ which is pure movement, +into the _mortal_ which is indeed bare mortal on the tongue, but +for the mind is _that mortal_, the _mortal Socrates_, at last +satisfactorily disposed of and told off.[7] + +Here, then, inside of the minimal pulses of experience, is realized +that very inner complexity which the transcendentalists say only the +absolute can genuinely possess. The gist of the matter is always the +same--something ever goes indissolubly with something else. You cannot +separate the same from its other, except by abandoning the real +altogether and taking to the conceptual system. What is immediately +given in the single and particular instance is always something pooled +and mutual, something with no dark spot, no point of ignorance. No one +elementary bit of reality is eclipsed from the next bit's point of +view, if only we take reality sensibly and in small enough pulses--and +by us it has to be taken pulse-wise, for our span of consciousness is +too short to grasp the larger collectivity of things except nominally +and abstractly. No more of reality collected together at once is +extant anywhere, perhaps, than in my experience of reading this page, +or in yours of listening; yet within those bits of experience as +they come to pass we get a fulness of content that no conceptual +description can equal. Sensational experiences _are_ their 'own +others,' then, both internally and externally. Inwardly they are one +with their parts, and outwardly they pass continuously into their next +neighbors, so that events separated by years of time in a man's life +hang together unbrokenly by the intermediary events. Their _names_, +to be sure, cut them into separate conceptual entities, but no cuts +existed in the continuum in which they originally came. + +If, with all this in our mind, we turn to our own particular +predicament, we see that our old objection to the self-compounding of +states of consciousness, our accusation that it was impossible for +purely logical reasons, is unfounded in principle. Every smallest +state of consciousness, concretely taken, overflows its own +definition. Only concepts are self-identical; only 'reason' deals with +closed equations; nature is but a name for excess; every point in +her opens out and runs into the more; and the only question, with +reference to any point we may be considering, is how far into the +rest of nature we may have to go in order to get entirely beyond its +overflow. In the pulse of inner life immediately present now in each +of us is a little past, a little future, a little awareness of our own +body, of each other's persons, of these sublimities we are trying to +talk about, of the earth's geography and the direction of history, +of truth and error, of good and bad, and of who knows how much more? +Feeling, however dimly and subconsciously, all these things, your +pulse of inner life is continuous with them, belongs to them and they +to it. You can't identify it with either one of them rather than with +the others, for if you let it develop into no matter which of those +directions, what it develops into will look back on it and say, 'That +was the original germ of me.' + +In _principle_, then, the real units of our immediately-felt life are +unlike the units that intellectualist logic holds to and makes its +calculations with. They are not separate from their own others, and +you have to take them at widely separated dates to find any two of +them that seem unblent. Then indeed they do appear separate even as +their concepts are separate; a chasm yawns between them; but the chasm +itself is but an intellectualist fiction, got by abstracting from the +continuous sheet of experiences with which the intermediary time was +filled. It is like the log carried first by William and Henry, then +by William, Henry, and John, then by Henry and John, then by John and +Peter, and so on. All real units of experience _overlap_. Let a row of +equidistant dots on a sheet of paper symbolize the concepts by which +we intellectualize the world. Let a ruler long enough to cover at +least three dots stand for our sensible experience. Then the conceived +changes of the sensible experience can be symbolized by sliding the +ruler along the line of dots. One concept after another will apply to +it, one after another drop away, but it will always cover at least two +of them, and no dots less than three will ever adequately cover _it_. +You falsify it if you treat it conceptually, or by the law of dots. + +What is true here of successive states must also be true of +simultaneous characters. They also overlap each other with their +being. My present field of consciousness is a centre surrounded by a +fringe that shades insensibly into a subconscious more. I use three +separate terms here to describe, this fact; but I might as well use +three hundred, for the fact is all shades and no boundaries. Which +part of it properly is in my consciousness, which out? If I name what +is out, it already has come in. The centre works in one way while the +margins work in another, and presently overpower the centre and are +central themselves. What we conceptually identify ourselves with and +say we are thinking of at any time is the centre; but our _full_ self +is the whole field, with all those indefinitely radiating subconscious +possibilities of increase that we can only feel without conceiving, +and can hardly begin to analyze. The collective and the distributive +ways of being coexist here, for each part functions distinctly, makes +connexion with its own peculiar region in the still wider rest of +experience and tends to draw us into that line, and yet the whole is +somehow felt as one pulse of our life,--not conceived so, but felt so. + +In principle, then, as I said, intellectualism's edge is broken; it +can only approximate to reality, and its logic is inapplicable to our +inner life, which spurns its vetoes and mocks at its impossibilities. +Every bit of us at every moment is part and parcel of a wider self, it +quivers along various radii like the wind-rose on a compass, and the +actual in it is continuously one with possibles not yet in our present +sight.[8] And just as we are co-conscious with our own momentary +margin, may not we ourselves form the margin of some more really +central self in things which is co-conscious with the whole of us? May +not you and I be confluent in a higher consciousness, and confluently +active there, tho we now know it not? + +I am tiring myself and you, I know, by vainly seeking to describe +by concepts and words what I say at the same time exceeds either +conceptualization or verbalization. As long as one continues +_talking_, intellectualism remains in undisturbed possession of the +field. The return to life can't come about by talking. It is an _act_; +to make you return to life, I must set an example for your imitation, +I must deafen you to talk, or to the importance of talk, by showing +you, as Bergson does, that the concepts we talk with are made for +purposes of _practice_ and not for purposes of insight. Or I must +_point_, point to the mere _that_ of life, and you by inner sympathy +must fill out the _what_ for yourselves. The minds of some of you, +I know, will absolutely refuse to do so, refuse to think in +non-conceptualized terms. I myself absolutely refused to do so +for years together, even after I knew that the denial of +manyness-in-oneness by intellectualism must be false, for the same +reality does perform the most various functions at once. But I hoped +ever for a revised intellectualist way round the difficulty, and it +was only after reading Bergson that I saw that to continue using the +intellectualist method was itself the fault. I saw that philosophy had +been on a false scent ever since the days of Socrates and Plato, that +an _intellectual_ answer to the intellectualist's difficulties will +never come, and that the real way out of them, far from consisting in +the discovery of such an answer, consists in simply closing one's ears +to the question. When conceptualism summons life to justify itself +in conceptual terms, it is like a challenge addressed in a foreign +language to some one who is absorbed in his own business; it is +irrelevant to him altogether--he may let it lie unnoticed. I went thus +through the 'inner catastrophe' of which I spoke in the last lecture; +I had literally come to the end of my conceptual stock-in-trade, I was +bankrupt intellectualistically, and had to change my base. No words +of mine will probably convert you, for words can be the names only of +concepts. But if any of you try sincerely and pertinaciously on your +own separate accounts to intellectualize reality, you may be similarly +driven to a change of front. I say no more: I must leave life to teach +the lesson. + +We have now reached a point of view from which the self-compounding of +mind in its smaller and more accessible portions seems a certain +fact, and in which the speculative assumption of a similar but wider +compounding in remoter regions must be reckoned with as a legitimate +hypothesis. The absolute is not the impossible being I once thought +it. Mental facts do function both singly and together, at once, and we +finite minds may simultaneously be co-conscious with one another in a +superhuman intelligence. It is only the extravagant claims of coercive +necessity on the absolute's part that have to be denied by _a priori_ +logic. As an hypothesis trying to make itself probable on analogical +and inductive grounds, the absolute is entitled to a patient hearing. +Which is as much as to say that our serious business from now onward +lies with Fechner and his method, rather than with Hegel, Royce, or +Bradley. Fechner treats the superhuman consciousness he so fervently +believes in as an hypothesis only, which he then recommends by all the +resources of induction and persuasion. + +It is true that Fechner himself is an absolutist in his books, not +actively but passively, if I may say so. He talks not only of the +earth-soul and of the star-souls, but of an integrated soul of all +things in the cosmos without exception, and this he calls God just +as others call it the absolute. Nevertheless he _thinks_ only of +the subordinate superhuman souls, and content with having made his +obeisance once for all to the august total soul of the cosmos, he +leaves it in its lonely sublimity with no attempt to define its +nature. Like the absolute, it is 'out of range,' and not an object for +distincter vision. Psychologically, it seems to me that Fechner's +God is a lazy postulate of his, rather than a part of his system +positively thought out. As we envelop our sight and hearing, so the +earth-soul envelops us, and the star-soul the earth-soul, until--what? +Envelopment can't go on forever; it must have an _abschluss_, a total +envelope must terminate the series, so God is the name that Fechner +gives to this last all-enveloper. But if nothing escapes this +all-enveloper, he is responsible for everything, including evil, and +all the paradoxes and difficulties which I found in the absolute +at the end of our third lecture recur undiminished. Fechner tries +sincerely to grapple with the problem of evil, but he always solves it +in the leibnitzian fashion by making his God non-absolute, placing +him under conditions of 'metaphysical necessity' which even his +omnipotence cannot violate. His will has to struggle with conditions +not imposed on that will by itself. He tolerates provisionally what he +has not created, and then with endless patience tries to overcome it +and live it down. He has, in short, a history. Whenever Fechner tries +to represent him clearly, his God becomes the ordinary God of theism, +and ceases to be the absolutely totalized all-enveloper.[9] In this +shape, he represents the ideal element in things solely, and is our +champion and our helper and we his helpers, against the bad parts of +the universe. + +Fechner was in fact too little of a metaphysician to care for perfect +formal consistency in these abstract regions. He believed in God in +the pluralistic manner, but partly from convention and partly from +what I should call intellectual laziness, if laziness of any kind +could be imputed to a Fechner, he let the usual monistic talk about +him pass unchallenged. I propose to you that we should discuss the +question of God without entangling ourselves in advance in the +monistic assumption. Is it probable that there is any superhuman +consciousness at all, in the first place? When that is settled, the +further question whether its form be monistic or pluralistic is in +order. + +Before advancing to either question, however, and I shall have to deal +with both but very briefly after what has been said already, let me +finish our retrospective survey by one more remark about the curious +logical situation of the absolutists. For what have they invoked the +absolute except as a being the peculiar inner form of which shall +enable it to overcome the contradictions with which intellectualism +has found the finite many as such to be infected? The many-in-one +character that, as we have seen, every smallest tract of finite +experience offers, is considered by intellectualism to be fatal to the +reality of finite experience. What can be distinguished, it tells us, +is separate; and what is separate is unrelated, for a relation, being +a 'between,' would bring only a twofold separation. Hegel, Royce, +Bradley, and the Oxford absolutists in general seem to agree about +this logical absurdity of manyness-in-oneness in the only places where +it is empirically found. But see the curious tactics! Is the absurdity +_reduced_ in the absolute being whom they call in to relieve it? Quite +otherwise, for that being shows it on an infinitely greater scale, and +flaunts it in its very definition. The fact of its not being related +to any outward environment, the fact that all relations are inside of +itself, doesn't save it, for Mr. Bradley's great argument against the +finite is that _in_ any given bit of it (a bit of sugar, for instance) +the presence of a plurality of characters (whiteness and sweetness, +for example) is self-contradictory; so that in the final end all that +the absolute's name appears to stand for is the persistent claim of +outraged human nature that reality _shall_ not be called +absurd. _Somewhere_ there must be an aspect of it guiltless of +self-contradiction. All we can see of the absolute, meanwhile, is +guilty in the same way in which the finite is. Intellectualism sees +what it calls the guilt, when comminuted in the finite object; but +is too near-sighted to see it in the more enormous object. Yet the +absolute's constitution, if imagined at all, has to be imagined after +the analogy of some bit of finite experience. Take any _real_ bit, +suppress its environment and then magnify it to monstrosity, and you +get identically the type of structure of the absolute. It is obvious +that all your difficulties here remain and go with you. If the +relative experience was inwardly absurd, the absolute experience is +infinitely more so. Intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat, +but swallows the whole camel. But this polemic against the absolute +is as odious to me as it is to you, so I will say no more about that +being. It is only one of those wills of the wisp, those lights that +do mislead the morn, that have so often impeded the clear progress of +philosophy, so I will turn to the more general positive question of +whether superhuman unities of consciousness should be considered as +more probable or more improbable. + +In a former lecture I went over some of the fechnerian reasons for +their plausibility, or reasons that at least replied to our more +obvious grounds of doubt concerning them. The numerous facts of +divided or split human personality which the genius of certain medical +men, as Janet, Freud, Prince, Sidis, and others, have unearthed were +unknown in Fechner's time, and neither the phenomena of automatic +writing and speech, nor of mediumship and 'possession' generally, had +been recognized or studied as we now study them, so Fechner's stock of +analogies is scant compared with our present one. He did the best with +what he had, however. For my own part I find in some of these abnormal +or supernormal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior +co-consciousness being possible. I doubt whether we shall ever +understand some of them without using the very letter of Fechner's +conception of a great reservoir in which the memories of earth's +inhabitants are pooled and preserved, and from which, when the +threshold lowers or the valve opens, information ordinarily shut out +leaks into the mind of exceptional individuals among us. But those +regions of inquiry are perhaps too spook-haunted to interest an +academic audience, and the only evidence I feel it now decorous to +bring to the support of Fechner is drawn from ordinary religious +experience. I think it may be asserted that there _are_ religious +experiences of a specific nature, not deducible by analogy or +psychological reasoning from our other sorts of experience. I think +that they point with reasonable probability to the continuity of +our consciousness with a wider spiritual environment from which +the ordinary prudential man (who is the only man that scientific +psychology, so called, takes cognizance of) is shut off. I shall begin +my final lecture by referring to them again briefly. + + + + +LECTURE VIII + + +CONCLUSIONS + +At the close of my last lecture I referred to the existence of +religious experiences of a specific nature. I must now explain just +what I mean by such a claim. Briefly, the facts I have in mind may +all be described as experiences of an unexpected life succeeding upon +death. By this I don't mean immortality, or the death of the body. I +mean the deathlike termination of certain mental processes within the +individual's experience, processes that run to failure, and in some +individuals, at least, eventuate in despair. Just as romantic love +seems a comparatively recent literary invention, so these experiences +of a life that supervenes upon despair seem to have played no great +part in official theology till Luther's time; and possibly the best +way to indicate their character will be to point to a certain contrast +between the inner life of ourselves and of the ancient Greeks and +Romans. + +Mr. Chesterton, I think, says somewhere, that the Greeks and Romans, +in all that concerned their moral life, were an extraordinarily solemn +set of folks. The Athenians thought that the very gods must admire the +rectitude of Phocion and Aristides; and those gentlemen themselves +were apparently of much the same opinion. Cato's veracity was so +impeccable that the extremest incredulity a Roman could express of +anything was to say, 'I would not believe it even if Cato had told +me.' Good was good, and bad was bad, for these people. Hypocrisy, +which church-Christianity brought in, hardly existed; the naturalistic +system held firm; its values showed no hollowness and brooked no +irony. The individual, if virtuous enough, could meet all possible +requirements. The pagan pride had never crumbled. Luther was the first +moralist who broke with any effectiveness through the crust of all +this naturalistic self-sufficiency, thinking (and possibly he was +right) that Saint Paul had done it already. Religious experience of +the lutheran type brings all our naturalistic standards to bankruptcy. +You are strong only by being weak, it shows. You cannot live on pride +or self-sufficingness. There is a light in which all the naturally +founded and currently accepted distinctions, excellences, and +safeguards of our characters appear as utter childishness. Sincerely +to give up one's conceit or hope of being good in one's own right is +the only door to the universe's deeper reaches. + +These deeper reaches are familiar to evangelical Christianity and +to what is nowadays becoming known as 'mind-cure' religion or 'new +thought.' The phenomenon is that of new ranges of life succeeding on +our most despairing moments. There are resources in us that naturalism +with its literal and legal virtues never recks of, possibilities that +take our breath away, of another kind of happiness and power, based on +giving up our own will and letting something higher work for us, and +these seem to show a world wider than either physics or philistine +ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in _spite_ +of certain forms of death, indeed _because_ of certain forms of +death--death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, +of fear and worry, competency and desert, death of everything that +paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their +trust to. + +Reason, operating on our other experiences, even our psychological +experiences, would never have inferred these specifically religious +experiences in advance of their actual coming. She could not suspect +their existence, for they are discontinuous with the 'natural' +experiences they succeed upon and invert their values. But as they +actually come and are given, creation widens to the view of their +recipients. They suggest that our natural experience, our strictly +moralistic and prudential experience, may be only a fragment of real +human experience. They soften nature's outlines and open out the +strangest possibilities and perspectives. + +This is why it seems to me that the logical understanding, working in +abstraction from such specifically religious experiences, will always +omit something, and fail to reach completely adequate conclusions. +Death and failure, it will always say, _are_ death and failure +simply, and can nevermore be one with life; so religious experience, +peculiarly so called, needs, in my opinion, to be carefully considered +and interpreted by every one who aspires to reason out a more complete +philosophy. + +The sort of belief that religious experience of this type naturally +engenders in those who have it is fully in accord with Fechner's +theories. To quote words which I have used elsewhere, the believer +finds that the tenderer parts of his personal life are continuous +with a _more_ of the same quality which is operative in the universe +outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a +fashion get on board of and save himself, when all his lower being has +gone to pieces in the wreck. In a word, the believer is continuous, +to his own consciousness, at any rate, with a wider self from which +saving experiences flow in. Those who have such experiences distinctly +enough and often enough to live in the light of them remain quite +unmoved by criticism, from whatever quarter it may come, be it +academic or scientific, or be it merely the voice of logical +common sense. They have had their vision and they _know_--that is +enough--that we inhabit an invisible spiritual environment from which +help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose +instruments we are. + +One may therefore plead, I think, that Fechner's ideas are not without +direct empirical verification. There is at any rate one side of life +which would be easily explicable if those ideas were true, but of +which there appears no clear explanation so long as we assume either +with naturalism that human consciousness is the highest consciousness +there is, or with dualistic theism that there is a higher mind in the +cosmos, but that it is discontinuous with our own. It has always been +a matter of surprise with me that philosophers of the absolute should +have shown so little interest in this department of life, and so +seldom put its phenomena in evidence, even when it seemed obvious that +personal experience of some kind must have made their confidence in +their own vision so strong. The logician's bias has always been too +much with them. They have preferred the thinner to the thicker method, +dialectical abstraction being so much more dignified and academic than +the confused and unwholesome facts of personal biography. + +In spite of rationalism's disdain for the particular, the personal, +and the unwholesome, the drift of all the evidence we have seems to +me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form +of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be +co-conscious. We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our +libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having +no inkling of the meaning of it all. The intellectualist objections +to this fall away when the authority of intellectualist logic is +undermined by criticism, and then the positive empirical evidence +remains. The analogies with ordinary psychology and with the facts of +pathology, with those of psychical research, so called, and with those +of religious experience, establish, when taken together, a decidedly +_formidable_ probability in favor of a general view of the world +almost identical with Fechner's. The outlines of the superhuman +consciousness thus made probable must remain, however, very vague, and +the number of functionally distinct 'selves' it comports and carries +has to be left entirely problematic. It may be polytheistically or +it may be monotheistically conceived of. Fechner, with his distinct +earth-soul functioning as our guardian angel, seems to me clearly +polytheistic; but the word 'polytheism' usually gives offence, so +perhaps it is better not to use it. Only one thing is certain, and +that is the result of our criticism of the absolute: the only way +to escape from the paradoxes and perplexities that a consistently +thought-out monistic universe suffers from as from a species of +auto-intoxication--the mystery of the 'fall' namely, of reality +lapsing into appearance, truth into error, perfection into +imperfection; of evil, in short; the mystery of universal determinism, +of the block-universe eternal and without a history, etc.;--the only +way of escape, I say, from all this is to be frankly pluralistic and +assume that the superhuman consciousness, however vast it may be, has +itself an external environment, and consequently is finite. Present +day monism carefully repudiates complicity with spinozistic monism. In +that, it explains, the many get dissolved in the one and lost, whereas +in the improved idealistic form they get preserved in all their +manyness as the one's eternal object. The absolute itself is thus +represented by absolutists as having a pluralistic object. But if even +the absolute has to have a pluralistic vision, why should we ourselves +hesitate to be pluralists on our own sole account? Why should we +envelop our many with the 'one' that brings so much poison in its +train? + +The line of least resistance, then, as it seems to me, both in +theology and in philosophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman +consciousness, the notion that it is not all-embracing, the notion, +in other words, that there is a God, but that he is finite, either in +power or in knowledge, or in both at once. These, I need hardly tell +you, are the terms in which common men have usually carried on their +active commerce with God; and the monistic perfections that make the +notion of him so paradoxical practically and morally are the colder +addition of remote professorial minds operating _in distans_ upon +conceptual substitutes for him alone. + +Why cannot 'experience' and 'reason' meet on this common ground? Why +cannot they compromise? May not the godlessness usually but needlessly +associated with the philosophy of immediate experience give way to a +theism now seen to follow directly from that experience more widely +taken? and may not rationalism, satisfied with seeing her _a priori_ +proofs of God so effectively replaced by empirical evidence, abate +something of her absolutist claims? Let God but have the least +infinitesimal _other_ of any kind beside him, and empiricism and +rationalism might strike hands in a lasting treaty of peace. Both +might then leave abstract thinness behind them, and seek together, as +scientific men seek, by using all the analogies and data within reach, +to build up the most probable approximate idea of what the divine +consciousness concretely may be like. I venture to beg the younger +Oxford idealists to consider seriously this alternative. Few men are +as qualified by their intellectual gifts to reap the harvests that +seem certain to any one who, like Fechner and Bergson, will leave the +thinner for the thicker path. + +Compromise and mediation are inseparable from the pluralistic +philosophy. Only monistic dogmatism can say of any of its hypotheses, +'It is either that or nothing; take it or leave it just as it stands.' +The type of monism prevalent at Oxford has kept this steep and brittle +attitude, partly through the proverbial academic preference for thin +and elegant logical solutions, partly from a mistaken notion that the +only solidly grounded basis for religion was along those lines. If +Oxford men could be ignorant of anything, it might almost seem that +they had remained ignorant of the great empirical movement towards +a pluralistic panpsychic view of the universe, into which our own +generation has been drawn, and which threatens to short-circuit their +methods entirely and become their religious rival unless they are +willing to make themselves its allies. Yet, wedded as they seem to +be to the logical machinery and technical apparatus of absolutism, +I cannot but believe that their fidelity to the religious ideal in +general is deeper still. Especially do I find it hard to believe that +the more clerical adherents of the school would hold so fast to its +particular machinery if only they could be made to think that religion +could be secured in some other way. Let empiricism once become +associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange +misunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I +believe that a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be +ready to begin. That great awakening of a new popular interest in +philosophy, which is so striking a phenomenon at the present day in +all countries, is undoubtedly due in part to religious demands. As +the authority of past tradition tends more and more to crumble, men +naturally turn a wistful ear to the authority of reason or to the +evidence of present fact. They will assuredly not be disappointed if +they open their minds to what the thicker and more radical empiricism +has to say. I fully believe that such an empiricism is a more natural +ally than dialectics ever were, or can be, of the religious life. It +is true that superstitions and wild-growing over-beliefs of all +sorts will undoubtedly begin to abound if the notion of higher +consciousnesses enveloping ours, of fechnerian earth-souls and the +like, grows orthodox and fashionable; still more will they superabound +if science ever puts her approving stamp on the phenomena of which +Frederic Myers so earnestly advocated the scientific recognition, the +phenomena of psychic research so-called--and I myself firmly believe +that most of these phenomena are rooted in reality. But ought one +seriously to allow such a timid consideration as that to deter one +from following the evident path of greatest religious promise? Since +when, in this mixed world, was any good thing given us in purest +outline and isolation? One of the chief characteristics of life is +life's redundancy. The sole condition of our having anything, no +matter what, is that we should have so much of it, that we are +fortunate if we do not grow sick of the sight and sound of it +altogether. Everything is smothered in the litter that is fated to +accompany it. Without too much you cannot have enough, of anything. +Lots of inferior books, lots of bad statues, lots of dull speeches, of +tenth-rate men and women, as a condition of the few precious specimens +in either kind being realized! The gold-dust comes to birth with the +quartz-sand all around it, and this is as much a condition of religion +as of any other excellent possession. There must be extrication; there +must be competition for survival; but the clay matrix and the noble +gem must first come into being unsifted. Once extricated, the gem can +be examined separately, conceptualized, defined, and insulated. But +this process of extrication cannot be short-circuited--or if it is, +you get the thin inferior abstractions which we have seen, either +the hollow unreal god of scholastic theology, or the unintelligible +pantheistic monster, instead of the more living divine reality with +which it appears certain that empirical methods tend to connect men in +imagination. + +Arrived at this point, I ask you to go back to my first lecture and +remember, if you can, what I quoted there from your own Professor +Jacks--what he said about the philosopher himself being taken up into +the universe which he is accounting for. This is the fechnerian as +well as the hegelian view, and thus our end rejoins harmoniously our +beginning. Philosophies are intimate parts of the universe, they +express something of its own thought of itself. A philosophy may +indeed be a most momentous reaction of the universe upon itself. It +may, as I said, possess and handle itself differently in consequence +of us philosophers, with our theories, being here; it may trust itself +or mistrust itself the more, and, by doing the one or the other, +deserve more the trust or the mistrust. What mistrusts itself deserves +mistrust. + +This is the philosophy of humanism in the widest sense. Our +philosophies swell the current of being, add their character to it. +They are part of all that we have met, of all that makes us be. As +a French philosopher says, 'Nous sommes du reel dans le reel.' Our +thoughts determine our acts, and our acts redetermine the previous +nature of the world. + +Thus does foreignness get banished from our world, and far more so +when we take the system of it pluralistically than when we take it +monistically. We are indeed internal parts of God and not external +creations, on any possible reading of the panpsychic system. Yet +because God is not the absolute, but is himself a part when the system +is conceived pluralistically, his functions can be taken as not wholly +dissimilar to those of the other smaller parts,--as similar to our +functions consequently. + +Having an environment, being in time, and working out a history just +like ourselves, he escapes from the foreignness from all that is +human, of the static timeless perfect absolute. + +Remember that one of our troubles with that was its essential +foreignness and monstrosity--there really is no other word for it than +that. Its having the all-inclusive form gave to it an essentially +heterogeneous _nature_ from ourselves. And this great difference +between absolutism and pluralism demands no difference in the +universe's material content--it follows from a difference in the form +alone. The all-form or monistic form makes the foreignness result, the +each-form or pluralistic form leaves the intimacy undisturbed. + +No matter what the content of the universe may be, if you only allow +that it is _many_ everywhere and always, that _nothing_ real escapes +from having an environment; so far from defeating its rationality, as +the absolutists so unanimously pretend, you leave it in possession of +the maximum amount of rationality practically attainable by our minds. +Your relations with it, intellectual, emotional, and active, remain +fluent and congruous with your own nature's chief demands. + +It would be a pity if the word 'rationality' were allowed to give us +trouble here. It is one of those eulogistic words that both sides +claim--for almost no one is willing to advertise his philosophy as a +system of irrationality. But like most of the words which people used +eulogistically, the word 'rational' carries too many meanings. The +most objective one is that of the older logic--the connexion between +two things is rational when you can infer one from the other, mortal +from Socrates, _e.g.;_ and you can do that only when they have a +quality in common. But this kind of rationality is just that logic +of identity which all disciples of Hegel find insufficient. They +supersede it by the higher rationality of negation and contradiction +and make the notion vague again. Then you get the aesthetic or +teleologic kinds of rationality, saying that whatever fits in any way, +whatever is beautiful or good, whatever is purposive or gratifies +desire, is rational in so far forth. Then again, according to Hegel, +whatever is 'real' is rational. I myself said awhile ago that whatever +lets loose any action which we are fond of exerting seems rational. It +would be better to give up the word 'rational' altogether than to get +into a merely verbal fight about who has the best right to keep it. + +Perhaps the words 'foreignness' and 'intimacy,' which I put forward +in my first lecture, express the contrast I insist on better than the +words 'rationality' and 'irrationality'--let us stick to them, then. +I now say that the notion of the 'one' breeds foreignness and that of +the 'many' intimacy, for reasons which I have urged at only too great +length, and with which, whether they convince you or not, I may +suppose that you are now well acquainted. But what at bottom is meant +by calling the universe many or by calling it one? + +Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is +many means only that the sundry parts of reality _may be externally +related_. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has +on the pluralistic view a genuinely 'external' environment of some +sort or amount. Things are 'with' one another in many ways, but +nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word +'and' trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes. +'Ever not quite' has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in +the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is +thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. +However much may be collected, however much may report itself as +present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something +else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity. + +Monism, on the other hand, insists that when you come down to reality +as such, to the reality of realities, everything is present +to _everything_ else in one vast instantaneous co-implicated +completeness--nothing can in _any_ sense, functional or substantial, +be really absent from anything else, all things interpenetrate and +telescope together in the great total conflux. + +For pluralism, all that we are required to admit as the constitution +of reality is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every +minimum of finite life. Briefly it is this, that nothing real is +absolutely simple, that every smallest bit of experience is a _multum +in parvo_ plurally related, that each relation is one aspect, +character, or function, way of its being taken, or way of its taking +something else; and that a bit of reality when actively engaged in one +of these relations is not _by that very fact_ engaged in all the other +relations simultaneously. The relations are not _all_ what the French +call _solidaires_ with one another. Without losing its identity a +thing can either take up or drop another thing, like the log I spoke +of, which by taking up new carriers and dropping old ones can travel +anywhere with a light escort. + +For monism, on the contrary, everything, whether we realize it or not, +drags the whole universe along with itself and drops nothing. The log +starts and arrives with all its carriers supporting it. If a thing +were once disconnected, it could never be connected again, according +to monism. The pragmatic difference between the two systems is thus a +definite one. It is just thus, that if _a_ is once out of sight of _b_ +or out of touch with it, or, more briefly, 'out' of it at all, then, +according to monism, it must always remain so, they can never get +together; whereas pluralism admits that on another occasion they may +work together, or in some way be connected again. Monism allows for +no such things as 'other occasions' in reality--in _real_ or absolute +reality, that is. + +The difference I try to describe amounts, you see, to nothing more +than the difference between what I formerly called the each-form and +the all-form of reality. Pluralism lets things really exist in the +each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or +collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. The all-form +allows of no taking up and dropping of connexions, for in the all the +parts are essentially and eternally co-implicated. In the each-form, +on the contrary, a thing may be connected by intermediary things, with +a thing with which it has no immediate or essential connexion. It +is thus at all times in many possible connexions which are not +necessarily actualized at the moment. They depend on which actual path +of intermediation it may functionally strike into: the word 'or' names +a genuine reality. Thus, as I speak here, I may look ahead _or_ to the +right _or_ to the left, and in either case the intervening space and +air and ether enable me to see the faces of a different portion of +this audience. My being here is independent of any one set of these +faces. + +If the each-form be the eternal form of reality no less than it is the +form of temporal appearance, we still have a coherent world, and not +an incarnate incoherence, as is charged by so many absolutists. Our +'multiverse' still makes a 'universe'; for every part, tho it may not +be in actual or immediate connexion, is nevertheless in some possible +or mediated connexion, with every other part however remote, through +the fact that each part hangs together with its very next neighbors in +inextricable interfusion. The type of union, it is true, is different +here from the monistic type of _all-einheit_. It is not a universal +co-implication, or integration of all things _durcheinander_. It is +what I call the strung-along type, the type of continuity, contiguity, +or concatenation. If you prefer greek words, you may call it the +synechistic type. At all events, you see that it forms a definitely +conceivable alternative to the through-and-through unity of all things +at once, which is the type opposed to it by monism. You see also that +it stands or falls with the notion I have taken such pains to defend, +of the through-and-through union of adjacent minima of experience, of +the confluence of every passing moment of concretely felt experience +with its immediately next neighbors. The recognition of this fact of +coalescence of next with next in concrete experience, so that all +the insulating cuts we make there are artificial products of the +conceptualizing faculty, is what distinguishes the empiricism which +I call 'radical,' from the bugaboo empiricism of the traditional +rationalist critics, which (rightly or wrongly) is accused of chopping +up experience into atomistic sensations, incapable of union with one +another until a purely intellectual principle has swooped down upon +them from on high and folded them in its own conjunctive categories. + +Here, then, you have the plain alternative, and the full mystery of +the difference between pluralism and monism, as clearly as I can +set it forth on this occasion. It packs up into a nutshell:--Is the +manyness in oneness that indubitably characterizes the world we +inhabit, a property only of the absolute whole of things, so that you +must postulate that one-enormous-whole indivisibly as the _prius_ +of there being any many at all--in other words, start with the +rationalistic block-universe, entire, unmitigated, and complete?--or +can the finite elements have their own aboriginal forms of manyness in +oneness, and where they have no immediate oneness still be continued +into one another by intermediary terms--each one of these terms being +one with its next neighbors, and yet the total 'oneness' never getting +absolutely complete? + +The alternative is definite. It seems to me, moreover, that the two +horns of it make pragmatically different ethical appeals--at least +they _may_ do so, to certain individuals. But if you consider the +pluralistic horn to be intrinsically irrational, self-contradictory, +and absurd, I can now say no more in its defence. Having done what +I could in my earlier lectures to break the edge of the +intellectualistic _reductiones ad absurdum_, I must leave the issue +in your hands. Whatever I may say, each of you will be sure to take +pluralism or leave it, just as your own sense of rationality moves and +inclines. The only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it is a +fully co-ordinate hypothesis with monism. This world _may_, in the +last resort, be a block-universe; but on the other hand it _may_ be a +universe only strung-along, not rounded in and closed. Reality _may_ +exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. On that +possibility I do insist. + +One's general vision of the probable usually decides such +alternatives. They illustrate what I once wrote of as the 'will to +believe.' In some of my lectures at Harvard I have spoken of what +I call the 'faith-ladder,' as something quite different from the +_sorites_ of the logic-books, yet seeming to have an analogous form. I +think you will quickly recognize in yourselves, as I describe it, the +mental process to which I give this name. + +A conception of the world arises in you somehow, no matter how. Is it +true or not? you ask. + +It _might_ be true somewhere, you say, for it is not +self-contradictory. + +It _may_ be true, you continue, even here and now. + +It is _fit_ to be true, it would be _well if it were true_, it _ought_ +to be true, you presently feel. + +It _must_ be true, something persuasive in you whispers next; and +then--as a final result-- + +It shall be _held for true_, you decide; it _shall be_ as if true, for +_you_. + +And your acting thus may in certain special cases be a means of making +it securely true in the end. + +Not one step in this process is logical, yet it is the way in which +monists and pluralists alike espouse and hold fast to their visions. +It is life exceeding logic, it is the practical reason for which the +theoretic reason finds arguments after the conclusion is once there. +In just this way do some of us hold to the unfinished pluralistic +universe; in just this way do others hold to the timeless universe +eternally complete. + +Meanwhile the incompleteness of the pluralistic universe, thus assumed +and held to as the most probable hypothesis, is also represented by +the pluralistic philosophy as being self-reparative through us, as +getting its disconnections remedied in part by our behavior. 'We use +what we are and have, to know; and what we know, to be and have still +more.'[1] Thus do philosophy and reality, theory and action, work in +the same circle indefinitely. + + +I have now finished these poor lectures, and as you look back on them, +they doubtless seem rambling and inconclusive enough. My only hope is +that they may possibly have proved suggestive; and if indeed they have +been suggestive of one point of method, I am almost willing to let +all other suggestions go. That point is that _it is high time for the +basis of discussion in these questions to be broadened and thickened +up_. It is for that that I have brought in Fechner and Bergson, and +descriptive psychology and religious experiences, and have ventured +even to hint at psychical research and other wild beasts of the +philosophic desert. Owing possibly to the fact that Plato and +Aristotle, with their intellectualism, are the basis of philosophic +study here, the Oxford brand of transcendentalism seems to me to have +confined itself too exclusively to thin logical considerations, that +would hold good in all conceivable worlds, worlds of an empirical +constitution entirely different from ours. It is as if the actual +peculiarities of the world that is were entirely irrelevant to the +content of truth. But they cannot be irrelevant; and the philosophy +of the future must imitate the sciences in taking them more and more +elaborately into account. I urge some of the younger members of +this learned audience to lay this hint to heart. If you can do so +effectively, making still more concrete advances upon the path which +Fechner and Bergson have so enticingly opened up, if you can gather +philosophic conclusions of any kind, monistic or pluralistic, from +the _particulars of life_, I will say, as I now do say, with the +cheerfullest of hearts, 'Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, but +ring the fuller minstrel in.' + + + + +NOTES + + +LECTURE I + +Note 1, page 5.--Bailey: _op. cit._, First Series, p. 52. + +Note 2, page 11.--_Smaller Logic_, Sec. 194. + +Note 3, page 16.--_Exploratio philosophica_, Part I, 1865, pp. +xxxviii, 130. + +Note 4, page 20.--Hinneberg: _Die Kultur der Gegenwart: Systematische +Philosophie_. Leipzig: Teubner, 1907. + + +LECTURE II + +Note 1, page 50.--The difference is that the bad parts of this finite +are eternal and essential for absolutists, whereas pluralists may hope +that they will eventually get sloughed off and become as if they had +not been. + +Note 2, page 51.--Quoted by W. Wallace: _Lectures and Essays_, Oxford, +1898, p. 560. + +Note 3, page 51.--_Logic_, tr. Wallace, 1874, p. 181. + +Note 4, page 52.--_Ibid._, p. 304. + +Note 5, page 53.--_Contemporary Review_, December, 1907, vol. 92, p. +618. + +Note 6, page 57.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 69 ff. + +Note 7, page 62.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. i, pp. 131-132. + +Note 8, page 67.--A good illustration of this is to be found in a +controversy between Mr. Bradley and the present writer, in _Mind_ +for 1893, Mr. Bradley contending (if I understood him rightly) that +'resemblance' is an illegitimate category, because it admits of +degrees, and that the only real relations in comparison are absolute +identity and absolute non-comparability. + +Note 9, page 75.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, p. 184. + +Note 10, page 75.--_Appearance and Reality_, 1893, pp. 141-142. + +Note 11, page 76.--Cf. _Elements of Metaphysics_, p. 88. + +Note 12, page 77.--_Some Dogmas of Religion_, p. 184. + +Note 13, page 80.--For a more detailed criticism of Mr. Bradley's +intellectualism, see Appendix A. + + +LECTURE III + +Note 1, page 94.--Hegel, _Smaller Logic_, pp. 184-185. + +Note 2, page 95.--Cf. Hegel's fine vindication of this function of +contradiction in his _Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. ii, sec. 1, chap, +ii, C, Anmerkung 3. + +Note 3, page 95--_Hegel_, in _Blackwood's Philosophical Classics_, p. +162. + +Note 4, page 95--_Wissenschaft der Logik_, Bk. i, sec. 1, chap, ii, B, +a. + +Note 5, page 96--Wallace's translation of the _Smaller Logic_, p. 128. + +Note 6, page 101--Joachim, _The Nature of Truth_, Oxford, 1906, pp. +22, 178. The argument in case the belief should be doubted would be +the higher synthetic idea: if two truths were possible, the duality of +that possibility would itself be the one truth that would unite them. + +Note 7, page 115.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 385, +386, 409. + +Note 8, page 116.--The best _un_inspired argument (again not +ironical!) which I know is that in Miss M.W. Calkins's excellent book, +_The Persistent Problems of Philosophy_, Macmillan, 1902. + +Note 9, page 117.--Cf. Dr. Fuller's excellent article,' Ethical monism +and the problem of evil,' in the _Harvard Journal of Theology_, vol. +i, No. 2, April, 1908. + +Note 10, page 120.--_Metaphysic_, sec. 79. + +Note 11, page 121.--_Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic_, secs. 150, +153. + +Note 12, page 121.--_The Nature of Truth_, 1906, pp. 170-171. + +Note 13, page 121.--_Ibid._, p. 179. + +Note 14, page 123.--The psychological analogy that certain finite +tracts of consciousness are composed of isolable parts added together, +cannot be used by absolutists as proof that such parts are essential +elements of all consciousness. Other finite fields of consciousness +seem in point of fact not to be similarly resolvable into isolable +parts. + +Note 15, page 128.--Judging by the analogy of the relation which our +central consciousness seems to bear to that of our spinal cord, lower +ganglia, etc., it would seem natural to suppose that in whatever +superhuman mental synthesis there may be, the neglect and elimination +of certain contents of which we are conscious on the human level might +be as characteristic a feature as is the combination and interweaving +of other human contents. + + +LECTURE IV + +Note 1, page 143.--_The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 227. + +Note 2, page 165.--Fechner: _Ueber die Seelenfrage_, 1861, p. 170. + +Note 3, page 168.--Fechner's latest summarizing of his views, _Die +Tagesansicht gegenueber der Nachtansicht_, Leipzig, 1879, is now, I +understand, in process of translation. His _Little Book of Life after +Death_ exists already in two American versions, one published by +Little, Brown & Co., Boston, the other by the Open Court Co., Chicago. + +Note 4, page 176.--Mr. Bradley ought to be to some degree exempted +from my attack in these last pages. Compare especially what he says of +non-human consciousness in his _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 269-272. + + +LECTURE V + +Note 1, page 182.--Royce: _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 379. + +Note 2, page 184.--_The World and the Individual_, vol. ii, pp. 58-62. + +Note 3, page 190.--I hold to it still as the best description of +an enormous number of our higher fields of consciousness. They +demonstrably do not _contain_ the lower states that know the same +objects. Of other fields, however this is not so true; so, in the +_Psychological Review_ for 1895, vol. ii, p. 105 (see especially pp. +119-120), I frankly withdrew, in principle, my former objection to +talking of fields of consciousness being made of simpler 'parts,' +leaving the facts to decide the question in each special case. + +Note 4, page 194.--I abstract from the consciousness attached to the +whole itself, if such consciousness be there. + + +LECTURE VI + +Note 1, page 250.--For a more explicit vindication of the notion of +activity, see Appendix B, where I try to defend its recognition as +a definite form of immediate experience against its rationalistic +critics. + +I subjoin here a few remarks destined to disarm some possible critics +of Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings +of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement +that concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. Understood +in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we +certainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a +theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in +its train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of +his own mouth. His philosophy pretends, if anything, to give a better +insight into truth than rationalistic philosophies give: yet what is +it in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its author not reason by +concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no +insight? + +To this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply. +In using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of +concepts generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary +emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for +they serve in his hands only to 'orient' us, to show us to what +quarter we must _practically turn_ if we wish to gain that completer +insight into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs +our hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. _What +he reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude_. He +but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our +naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense. +This service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which +we may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with +a good philosophic conscience!--who ever conferred on us so valuable a +freedom before? + +By making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the +other counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new order, +with particular relations between them. These relations are just as +much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the +distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it. +Conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of +perception, then; and when the results of these are written down, +we get those bodies of 'mental truth' (as Locke called it) known as +mathematics, logic, and _a priori_ metaphysics. To know all this truth +is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the +relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static +ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or +contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing _happens_ in the realm +of concepts; relations there are 'eternal' only. The theoretic gain +fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real +world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and +history. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right +in turning us away from conception and towards perception. + +By combining concepts with percepts, _we can draw maps of the +distribution_ of other percepts in distant space and time. To know +this distribution is of course a theoretic achievement, but the +achievement is extremely limited, it cannot be effected without +percepts, and even then what it yields is only static relations. From +maps we learn positions only, and the position of a thing is but the +slightest kind of truth about it; but, being indispensable for forming +our plans of action, the conceptual map-making has the enormous +practical importance on which Bergson so rightly insists. + +But concepts, it will be said, do not only give us eternal truths +of comparison and maps of the positions of things, they bring new +_values_ into life. In their mapping function they stand to perception +in general in the same relation in which sight and hearing stand to +touch--Spencer calls these higher senses only organs of anticipatory +touch. But our eyes and ears also open to us worlds of independent +glory: music and decorative art result, and an incredible enhancement +of life's value follows. Even so does the conceptual world bring new +ranges of value and of motivation to our life. Its maps not only serve +us practically, but the mere mental possession of such vast pictures +is of itself an inspiring good. New interests and incitements, and +feelings of power, sublimity, and admiration are aroused. + +Abstractness _per se_ seems to have a touch of ideality. ROYCE'S +'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'Causes,' as +anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their +sordid particulars. The veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to +cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE +contends, in his _Philosophy of Loyalty_, appears another thing +altogether from the true particulars in which it is best to believe. +It transcends in value all those 'expediencies,' and is something to +live for, whether expedient or inexpedient. Truth with a big T is a +'momentous issue'; truths in detail are 'poor scraps,' mere 'crumbling +successes.' (_Op. cit._, Lecture VII, especially Sec. v.) + +Is, now, such bringing into existence of a new _value_ to be regarded +as a theoretic achievement? The question is a nice one, for altho a +value is in one sense an objective quality perceived, the essence of +that quality is its relation to the will, and consists in its being +a dynamogenic spur that makes our action different. So far as their +value-creating function goes, it would thus appear that concepts +connect themselves more with our active than with our theoretic life, +so here again Bergson's formulation seems unobjectionable. Persons who +have certain concepts are animated otherwise, pursue their own +vital careers differently. It doesn't necessarily follow that they +understand other vital careers more intimately. + +Again it may be said that we combine old concepts into new ones, +conceiving thus such realities as the ether, God, souls, or what not, +of which our sensible life alone would leave us altogether ignorant. +This surely is an increase of our knowledge, and may well be called +a theoretical achievement. Yet here again Bergson's criticisms hold +good. Much as conception may tell us _about_ such invisible objects, +it sheds no ray of light into their interior. The completer, indeed, +our definitions of ether-waves, atoms, Gods, or souls become, the less +instead of the more intelligible do they appear to us. The learned +in such things are consequently beginning more and more to ascribe a +solely instrumental value to our concepts of them. Ether and molecules +may be like co-ordinates and averages, only so many crutches by the +help of which we practically perform the operation of getting about +among our sensible experiences. + +We see from these considerations how easily the question of whether +the function of concepts is theoretical or practical may grow into +a logomachy. It may be better from this point of view to refuse to +recognize the alternative as a sharp one. The sole thing that is +certain in the midst of it all is that Bergson is absolutely right +in contending that the whole life of activity and change is inwardly +impenetrable to conceptual treatment, and that it opens itself only to +sympathetic apprehension at the hands of immediate feeling. All the +_whats_ as well as the _thats_ of reality, relational as well as +terminal, are in the end contents of immediate concrete perception. +Yet the remoter unperceived _arrangements_, temporal, spatial, and +logical, of these contents, are also something that we need to know as +well for the pleasure of the knowing as for the practical help. We may +call this need of arrangement a theoretic need or a practical need, +according as we choose to lay the emphasis; but Bergson is accurately +right when he limits conceptual knowledge to arrangement, and when he +insists that arrangement is the mere skirt and skin of the whole of +what we ought to know. + +Note 2, page 266.--Gaston Rageot, _Revue Philosophique_, vol. lxiv, p. +85 (July, 1907). + +Note 3, page 268.--I have myself talked in other ways as plausibly +as I could, in my _Psychology_, and talked truly (as I believe) in +certain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way invincibly +comes back. + + +LECTURE VII + +Note 1, page 278.--_Introduction to Hume_, 1874, p. 151. + +Note 2, page 279.--_Ibid._, pp. 16, 21, 36, _et passim_. + +Note 3, page 279.--See, _inter alia_, the chapter on the 'Stream of +Thought' in my own Psychologies; H. Cornelius, _Psychologie_, 1897, +chaps, i and iii; G.H. Luquet, _Idees Generales de Psychologie_, 1906, +_passim_. + +Note 4, page 280.--Compare, as to all this, an article by the present +writer, entitled 'A world of pure experience,' in the _Journal of +Philosophy_, New York, vol. i, pp. 533, 561 (1905). + +Note 5, page 280.--Green's attempt to discredit sensations by +reminding us of their 'dumbness,' in that they do not come already +_named_, as concepts may be said to do, only shows how intellectualism +is dominated by verbality. The unnamed appears in Green as synonymous +with the unreal. + +Note 6, page 283.--_Philosophy of Reflection_, i, 248 ff. + +Note 7, page 284.--Most of this paragraph is extracted from an address +of mine before the American Psychological Association, printed in the +_Psychological Review_, vol. ii, p. 105. I take pleasure in the +fact that already in 1895 I was so far advanced towards my present +bergsonian position. + +Note 8, page 289.--The conscious self of the moment, the central self, +is probably determined to this privileged position by its functional +connexion with the body's imminent or present acts. It is the present +_acting_ self. Tho the more that surrounds it may be 'subconscious' +to us, yet if in its 'collective capacity' it also exerts an active +function, it may be conscious in a wider way, conscious, as it were, +over our heads. + +On the relations of consciousness to action see Bergson's _Matiere +et Memoire, passim_, especially chap. i. Compare also the hints in +Muensterberg's _Grundzuege der Psychologie_, chap, xv; those in my own +_Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii, pp. 581-592; and those in W. +McDougall's _Physiological Psychology_, chap. vii. + +Note 9, page 295.--Compare _Zend-Avesta_, 2d edition, vol. i, pp. 165 +ff., 181, 206, 244 ff., etc.; _Die Tagesansicht_, etc., chap, v, Sec. 6; +and chap. xv. + + +LECTURE VIII + +Note 1, page 330.--Blondel: _Annales de Philosophie Chretienne_, June, +1906, p. 241. + + + + +APPENDICES + + +APPENDIX A + +THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS[1] + +Experience in its immediacy seems perfectly fluent. The active +sense of living which we all enjoy, before reflection shatters our +instinctive world for us, is self-luminous and suggests no paradoxes. +Its difficulties are disappointments and uncertainties. They are not +intellectual contradictions. + +When the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers +incomprehensibilities in the flowing process. Distinguishing its +elements and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus +disjoins it cannot easily put together. Pyrrhonism accepts the +irrationality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. Other +philosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by +turning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first +negations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let +redemption take the place of innocence. The perfection with which any +philosophy may do this is the measure of its human success and of its +importance in philosophic history. In an article entitled 'A world of +pure experience,[2] I tried my own hand sketchily at + +[Footnote 1: Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, +and Scientific Methods_, vol. ii, New York, 1905, with slight verbal +revision.] + +[Footnote 2: _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific +Methods_, vol. i, No. 20, p. 566.] + +the problem, resisting certain first steps of dialectics by insisting +in a general way that the immediately experienced conjunctive +relations are as real as anything else. If my sketch is not to appear +too _naeif_, I must come closer to details, and in the present essay I +propose to do so. + + +I + +'Pure experience' is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of +life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its +conceptual categories. Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma +from sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an +experience pure in the literal sense of a _that_ which is not yet any +definite _what_, tho ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of +oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don't appear; changing +throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no +points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure +experience in this state is but another name for feeling or sensation. +But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with +emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and +abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with +adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is +only a relative term, meaning the proportional amount of unverbalized +sensation which it still embodies. + +Far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that +of things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space, +and the self envelop everything, betwixt them, and flow together +without interfering. The things that they envelop come as separate in +some ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with +some ideas, and others are irreconcilable. Qualities compenetrate one +space, or exclude each other from it. They cling together persistently +in groups that move as units, or else they separate. Their changes are +abrupt or discontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as +they do so, they fall into either even or irregular series. + +In all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely +co-ordinate matters of immediate feeling. The conjunctions are +as primordial elements of 'fact' as are the distinctions and +disjunctions. In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute +is a new pulse of my life, I feel that the old life continues into it, +and the feeling of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous +feeling of a novelty. They, too, compenetrate harmoniously. +Prepositions, copulas, and conjunctions, 'is,' 'isn't,' 'then,' +'before,' 'in,' 'on,' 'beside,' 'between,' 'next,' 'like,' 'unlike,' +'as,' 'but,' flower out of the stream of pure experience, the stream +of concretes or the sensational stream, as naturally as nouns and +adjectives do, and they melt into it again as fluidly when we apply +them to a new portion of the stream. + + +II + +If now we ask why we must translate experience from a more concrete +or pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with ever more +abounding conceptual distinctions, rationalism and naturalism give +different replies. + +The rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and +its interests imperative; that to understand is simply the duty of +man; and that who questions this need not be argued with, for by the +fact of arguing he gives away his case. + +The naturalist answer is that the environment kills as well as +sustains us, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish the +experient himself is lessened just in the degree in which the elements +in it that have a practical bearing upon life are analyzed out of the +continuum and verbally fixed and coupled together, so that we may know +what is in the wind for us and get ready to react in time. Had pure +experience, the naturalist says, been always perfectly healthy, there +would never have arisen the necessity of isolating or verbalizing +any of its terms. We should just have experienced inarticulately and +unintellectually enjoyed. This leaning on 'reaction' in the naturalist +account implies that, whenever we intellectualize a relatively pure +experience, we ought to do so for the sake of redescending to the +purer or more concrete level again; and that if an intellect stays +aloft among its abstract terms and generalized relations, and does not +reinsert itself with its conclusions into some particular point of +the immediate stream of life, it fails to finish out its function and +leaves its normal race unrun. + +Most rationalists nowadays will agree that naturalism gives a true +enough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first, but +they will deny these latter implications. The case, they will say, +resembles that of sexual love. Originating in the animal need +of getting another generation born, this passion has developed +secondarily such imperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why +another generation ought to be born at all, the answer is: 'Chiefly +that love may go on.' Just so with our intellect: it originated as a +practical means of serving life; but it has developed incidentally the +function of understanding absolute truth; and life itself now seems to +be given chiefly as a means by which that function may be prosecuted. +But truth and the understanding of it lie among the abstracts and +universals, so the intellect now carries on its higher business wholly +in this region, without any need of redescending into pure experience +again. + +If the contrasted tendencies which I thus designate as naturalistic +and rationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an example +will make them more concrete. Mr. Bradley, for instance, is an +ultra-rationalist. He admits that our intellect is primarily +practical, but says that, for philosophers, the practical need is +simply Truth.[1] Truth, moreover, must be assumed 'consistent.' +Immediate experience has to be broken into subjects and qualities, +terms and relations, to be understood as truth at all. Yet when +so broken it is less consistent than ever. Taken raw, it is all +undistinguished. Intellectualized, it is all distinction without +oneness. 'Such an arrangement may _work_, but the theoretic problem is +not solved' (p. 23). The question is, '_How_ the diversity can exist +in harmony with the oneness' (p. 118). To go back to pure experience +is unavailing. 'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. 104). +Even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an _understanding_. 'It is +a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. 108-109). +The experiences offered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect +rejects because they contradict themselves. They offer a complex of +diversities conjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which +it cannot repeat as its own.... For to be satisfied, my intellect must +understand, and it cannot understand by taking a congeries in +the lump' (p. 570). So Mr. Bradley, in the sole interests of +'understanding' (as he conceives that function), turns his back on +finite + +[Footnote 1: _Appearance and Reality_, pp. 152-133.] + +experience forever. Truth must lie in the opposite direction, +the direction of the absolute; and this kind of rationalism and +naturalism, or (as I will now call it) pragmatism, walk thenceforward +upon opposite paths. For the one, those intellectual products are most +true which, turning their face towards the absolute, come nearest to +symbolizing its ways of uniting the many and the one. For the other, +those are most true which most successfully dip back into the finite +stream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some particular +wave or wavelet. Such confluence not only proves the intellectual +operation to have been true (as an addition may 'prove' that a +subtraction is already rightly performed), but it constitutes, +according to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. Only in +so far as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, into sensible +experience again, are our abstracts and universals true or false at +all. + + +III + +In Section the 6th of my article, 'A world of pure experience,' I +adopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one and the same +world is cognized by our different minds; but I left undiscussed the +dialectical arguments which maintain that this is logically absurd. +The usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assumes one +object (to wit, the world) to stand in two relations at once; to my +mind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second +relation cannot logically be the same term which it was at first. + +I have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with +absolutists, and it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly, +if it were valid, that I am bound to give it an attentive ear, and +seriously to search its strength. + +For instance, let the matter in dispute be a term _M_, asserted to be +on the one hand related to _L_, and on the other to _N_; and let the +two cases of relation be symbolized by _L--M_ and _M--N_ respectively. +When, now, I assume that the experience may immediately come and be +given in the shape _L--M--N_, with no trace of doubling or internal +fission in the _M_, I am told that this is all a popular delusion; +that _L--M--N_ logically means two different experiences, _L--M_ and +_M--N_, namely; and that although the absolute may, and indeed must, +from its superior point of view, read its own kind of unity into _M_'s +two editions, yet as elements in finite experience the two _M_'s +lie irretrievably asunder, and the world between them is broken and +unbridged. + +In arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the +logical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking +a concrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the +letter _M_ should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which +noun, being related to _L_ by one of its parts and to _N_ by another, +would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both +relations. Thus, one might say: 'David Hume, who weighed so many stone +by his body, influences posterity by his doctrine.' The body and the +doctrine are two things, between which our finite minds can discover +no real sameness, though the same name covers both of them. And then, +one might continue: 'Only an absolute is capable of uniting such a +non-identity.' We must, I say, avoid this sort of example; for the +dialectic insight, if true at all, must apply to terms and relations +universally. It must be true of abstract units as well as of nouns +collective; and if we prove it by concrete examples, we must take the +simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant material suggestions. + +Taken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention seems +to use as its major premise Hume's notion 'that all our distinct +perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives +any real connexion among distinct existences.' Undoubtedly, since we +use two phrases in talking first about '_M_'s relation to _L_' and +then again about '_M_'s relation to _N_,' we must be having, or must +have had, two distinct perceptions;--and the rest would then seem to +follow duly. But the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be +the fact of the two _phrases_; and this suggests that the argument +may be merely verbal. Can it be that the whole dialectic achievement +consists in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution +similar to that of the language in which we describe it? Must we +assert the objective doubleness of the _M_ merely because we have to +name it twice over when we name its two relations? + +Candidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic +conclusion![1] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple +concrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience +itself belies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate +concepts in analyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be +but substitutional, and that the _M_ in _L--M_ and the _M_ in _M--N_ +_mean_ (_i.e._, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one +self-same piece, _M_, of sensible experience. This persistent identity +of certain units, or emphases, or points, or objects, or members--call +them what you will--of the experience-continuum, is just one of +those conjunctive features of it, on which I am obliged to insist so +emphatically. For samenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible +structure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its +after-image dies away, I still hark back to it as 'that same + +[Footnote 1: Technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of +composition.' A duality, predicable of the two wholes, _L--M_ and +_M--N_, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, _M_.] + +bell-stroke.' When I see a thing _M_, with _L_ to the left of it and +_N_ to the right of it, I see it _as_ one _M_; and if you tell me I +have had to 'take' it twice, I reply that if I 'took' it a thousand +times, I should still _see_ it as a unit.[1] Its unity is aboriginal, +just as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It +comes unbroken as _that M_, as a singular which I encounter; they come +broken, as _those_ takings, as my plurality of operations. The unity +and the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. I do not easily fathom +why my opponents should find the separateness so much more easily +understandable that they must needs infect the whole of finite +experience with it, and relegate the unity (now taken as a bare +postulate and no longer as a thing positively perceivable) to the +region of the absolute's mysteries. I do not easily fathom this, I +say, for the said opponents are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all +that I can catch in their talk is the substitution of what is true of +certain words for what is true of what they signify. They stay with +the words,--not returning to the stream of life whence all the meaning +of them came, and which is always ready to reabsorb them. + +[Footnote 1: I may perhaps refer here to my _Principles of +Psychology_, vol. i, pp. 459 ff. It really seems 'weird' to have to +argue (as I am forced now to do) for the notion that it is one sheet +of paper (with its two surfaces and all that lies between) which is +both under my pen and on the table while I write--the 'claim' that it +is two sheets seems so brazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists +of sincerity!] + + +IV + +For aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to believe that +one thing can be known by many knowers. But the denial of one thing in +many relations is but one application of a still profounder dialectic +difficulty. Man can't be good, said the sophists, for man is _man_ and +_good_ is good; and Hegel and Herbart in their day, more recently H. +Spir, and most recently and elaborately of all, Mr. Bradley, inform us +that a term can logically only be a punctiform unit, and that not one +of the conjunctive relations between things, which experience seems to +yield, is rationally possible. + +Of course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even a +shilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their +face-value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them. +The world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are +conjunctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves +disjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which +they are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang +together similarly, inasmuch as _some_ path of conjunctive transition +by which to pass from one of its parts to another may always be +discernible. Such determinately various hanging-together may be called +_concatenated_ union, to distinguish it from the 'through-and-through' +type of union, 'each in all and all in each' (union of _total +conflux_, as one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain +when things are taken in their absolute reality. In a concatenated +world a partial conflux often is experienced. Our concepts and our +sensations are confluent; successive states of the same ego, and +feelings of the same body are confluent. Where the experience is not +of conflux, it may be of conterminousness (things with but one thing +between); or of contiguousness (nothing between); or of likeness; or +of nearness; or of simultaneousness; or of in-ness; or of on-ness; or +of for-ness; or of simple with-ness; or even of mere and-ness, which +last relation would make of however disjointed a world otherwise, at +any rate for that occasion a universe 'of discourse.' Now Mr. Bradley +tells us that none of these relations, as we actually experience them, +can possibly be real.[1] My next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue +radical empiricism from Mr. Bradley. Fortunately, as it seems to me, +his general contention, that the very notion of relation is + +[Footnote 1: Here again the reader must beware of slipping from +logical into phenomenal considerations. It may well be that we +_attribute_ a certain relation falsely, because the circumstances of +the case, being complex, have deceived us. At a railway station we +may take our own train, and not the one that fills our window, to be +moving. We here put motion in the wrong place in the world, but in its +original place the motion is a part of reality. What Mr. Bradley +means is nothing like this, but rather that such things as motion +are nowhere real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically +incorrigible seats, relations are impossible of comprehension.] + +unthinkable clearly, has been successfully met by many critics.[1] + +It is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and to +the previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. So, +in noticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of +radical empiricism solely. + + +V + +The first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at +their face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some +as more external. When two terms are _similar_, their very natures +enter into the relation. Being _what_ they are, no matter where or +when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues +predicable as long as the terms continue. Other relations, the _where_ +and the _when_, for example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper +may be 'off' or 'on' the table, for example; and in either case the +relation involves only the outside of its terms. Having an outside, +both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is external: +the term's inner nature is irrelevant to it. Any + +[Footnote 1: Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, in his +_Man and the Cosmos_; by L.T. Hobhouse, in chapter xii (the Validity +of Judgment) of his _Theory of Knowledge_; and by F.C.S. Schiller, +in his _Humanism_, Essay XI. Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are +Hodder's, in the _Psychological Review_, vol. i, 307; Stout's, in +the _Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_, 1901-02, p. 1; and +MacLennan's, in the _Journal of Philosophy_, etc., vol. i, 403.] + +book, any table, may fall into the relation, which is created _pro hac +vice_, not by their existence, but by their casual situation. It +is just because so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so +external that a philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism +in its ontology. So far as things have space-relations, for example, +we are free to imagine them with different origins even. If they could +get to _be_, and get into space at all, then they may have done so +separately. Once there, however, they are _additives_ to one another, +and, with no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations +may supervene between them. The question of how things could come +to be, anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their +relations, once the being accomplished, may consist in. + +Mr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as the +space-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely different +subjects from those of which the absence of such relations might +a moment previously have been plausibly asserted. Not only is the +_situation_ different when the book is on the table, but the _book +itself_ is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the +table. He admits that 'such external relations + +[Footnote 1: Once more, don't slip from logical into physical +situations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, +or if it be slight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will +break it down. But such collateral phenomena are not the point at +issue. The point is whether the successive relations 'on' and 'not-on' +can rationally (not physically) hold of the same constant terms, +abstractly taken. Professor A.E. Taylor drops from logical into +material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof +that _A_, 'as contra-distinguished from _B_, is not the same thing as +mere _A_ not in any way affected' (_Elements of Metaphysics_, 1903, p. +145). Note the substitution, for 'related,' of the word 'affected,' +which begs the whole question.] + +seem possible and even existing.... That you do not alter what you +compare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious, +and that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not +occur to common sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these +difficulties.... There is a relation in the result, and this relation, +we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what +does it make a difference? [_doesn't it make a difference to us +onlookers, at least?_] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying +the terms by it? [_Surely the meaning is to tell the truth about their +relative position_.[1]] If, in short, it is external to the terms, how +can it possibly be true _of_ them? [_Is it the 'intimacy' suggested by +the little word 'of,' here, which I have underscored, that is the root +of Mr. Bradley's trouble?_].... If the terms from their inner nature +do not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, +they seem related for no reason at all.... Things are spatially +related, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and +yet in no way themselves + +[Footnote 1: But 'is there any sense,' asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly, +on p. 579, 'and if so, what sense, in truth that is only outside and +"about" things?' Surely such a question may be left unanswered.] + +are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external. But I +reply that, if so, I cannot _understand_ the leaving by the terms of +one set of relations and their adoption of another fresh set. The +process and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it +[_surely they contribute to it all there is 'of' it!_] seem irrational +throughout. [_If 'irrational' here means simply 'non-rational,' +or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no +reproach; if it means 'contradicting' such essence, Mr. Bradley should +show wherein and how_.] But, if they contribute anything, they must +surely be affected internally. [_Why so, if they contribute only their +surface? In such relations as 'on,' 'a foot away,' 'between,' 'next,' +etc., only surfaces are in question_.] ... If the terms contribute +anything whatever, then the terms are affected [_inwardly altered?_] +by the arrangement.... That for working purposes we treat, and do well +to treat, some relations as external merely, I do not deny, and that +of course is not the question at issue here. That question is ... +whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation [_i.e., +a relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their +nature simultaneously_] is possible and forced on us by the facts.'[1] + +Mr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according +to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a +medium of external relations; + +[Footnote 1: _Appearance and Reality_, 2d edition, pp. 575-576.] + +and he then concludes that 'Irrationality and externality cannot be +the last truth about things. Somewhere there must be a reason why this +and that appear together. And this reason and reality must reside in +the whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in +which their internal connexion must lie, and out of which from the +background appear those fresh results which never could have come +from the premises' (p. 577). And he adds that 'Where the whole is +different, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be +different.... They are altered so far only [_how far? farther than +externally, yet not through and through?_], but still they are +altered.... I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by +their whole [_qualified how?--do their external relations, situations, +dates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify +them 'far' enough?_], and that in the second case there is a whole +which differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole; +and I urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are +altered' (p. 579). + +Not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: _und +zwar_ 'so far.' But just _how_ far is the whole problem; and +'through-and-through' would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley's somewhat +undecided utterances[1]) + +[Footnote 1: I say 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' +which sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very +pages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for +example, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its +'character' unchanged, though, in its change of place, its 'existence' +gets altered; or what he says, on p. 579, of the possibility that +an abstract quality A, B, or C, in a thing, 'may throughout remain +unchanged' although the thing be altered; or his admission that in +red-hairedness, both as analyzed out of a man and when given with +the rest of him, there may be 'no change' (p. 580). Why does he +immediately add that for the pluralist to plead the non-mutation of +such abstractions would be an _ignoratio elenchi_? It is impossible to +admit it to be such. The entire _elenchus_ and inquest is just as to +whether parts which you can abstract from existing wholes can also +contribute to other wholes without changing their inner nature. If +they can thus mould various wholes into new _gestalt-qualitaeten_, +then it follows that the same elements are logically able to exist in +different wholes [whether physically able would depend on +additional hypotheses]; that partial changes are thinkable, and +through-and-through change not a dialectic necessity; that monism is +only an hypothesis; and that an additively constituted universe is +a rationally respectable hypothesis also. All the theses of radical +empiricism, in short, follow.] + +to be the full bradleyan answer. The 'whole' which he here treats as +primary and determinative of each part's manner of 'contributing,' +simply _must_, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There _must_ +be total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The +'must' appears here as a _Machtspruch_, as an _ipse dixit_ of Mr. +Bradley's absolutistically tempered 'understanding,' for he candidly +confesses that how the parts _do_ differ as they contribute to +different wholes, is unknown to him (p. 578). + +Although I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr. +Bradley's understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted. +'External relations' stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain, +for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, +but also perfectly intelligible factors of reality. + + +VI + +Mr. Bradley's understanding shows the most extraordinary power of +perceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in +comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say 'neither or both,' +but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain _whats_ +from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness +_as thus isolated_. But this does not prevent him from equally well +understanding their combination with each other as _originally +experienced in the concrete_, or their confluence with new sensible +experiences in which they recur as 'the same.' Returning into the +stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and _thats_ and +abstract _whats_, grow confluent again, and the word 'is' names +all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the +isolation of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to +him impossible.[1] 'To understand a complex _AB_,' he + +[Footnote 1: So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like +this: 'Book,' 'table,' 'on'--how does the existence of these three +abstract elements result in _this_ book being livingly on _this_ +table? Why isn't the table on the book? Or why doesn't the 'on' +connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table? +Mustn't something _in_ each of the three elements already determine +the two others to _it_, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float +vaguely? Mustn't the whole fact be _prefigured in each part_, and +exist _de jure_ before it can exist _de facto_? But, if so, in what +can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of +the whole fact's constitution actuating; every partial factor as its +purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of +looking behind a fact _in esse_ for the ground of the fact, and +finding it in the shape of the very same fact _in posse_? Somewhere we +must leave off with a _constitution_ behind which there is nothing.] + +says, 'I must begin with _A_ or _B_. And beginning, say with _A_, if +I then merely find _B_, I have either lost _A_, or I have got beside +_A_, [_the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction +'external' and therefore unintelligible_] something else, and in +neither case have I understood.[1] For my intellect cannot simply +unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of +togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside _A_ and _B_, you offer +me their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more +than another external element. And "facts," once for all, are for my +intellect not true unless they satisfy it.... The intellect has in its +nature no principle of mere togetherness' (pp. 570, 572). + +Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power +by which we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give +due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and +amputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its +behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he +elsewhere (p. 568) attributes to the intellect a _proprius motus_ of +transition, but says that + +[Footnote 1: Apply this to the case of 'book-on-table'! W.J.] + +when he looks for _these_ transitions in the detail of living +experience, he 'is unable to verify such a solution' (p. 569). + +Yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like +in case we had them. He only defines them negatively--they are not +spatial, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or +otherwise serial; or in any way relational as we naively trace +relations, for relations _separate_ terms, and need themselves to be +hooked on _ad infinitum_. The nearest approach he makes to describing +a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of _A_ and _B_ +as being 'united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the +nature of both alike' (p. 570). But this (which, _pace_ Mr. Bradley, +seems exquisitely analogous to 'taking a congeries in a lump,' if +not to 'swamping') suggests nothing but that _conflux_ which pure +experience so abundantly offers, as when 'space,' 'white,' and 'sweet' +are confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or kinesthetic, dermal, and +optical sensations confluent in 'my hand.'[1] All that I can verify +in the transitions which Mr. Bradley's intellect desiderates as +its _proprius motus_ is a reminiscence of these and other sensible +conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions), + +[Footnote 1: How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes +(or in 'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc.) the relation is an +additional entity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related +again to each! Both Bradley (_Appearance and Reality_, pp. 32-33) and +Royce (_The World and the Individual_, i, 128) lovingly repeat this +piece of profundity.] + +but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized. +Bradley, in short, repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its +image in the water. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest +union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite, +the 'how' of which you 'understand' as soon as you see the fact of +them,[1] for there is no how except the constitution of the fact as +given; with all this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for +some ineffable union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained +it, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full +possession. Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all +of us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed. + +Polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession +in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against +its best known champion would count as either superficiality or +inability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated +in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as +experienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an +empirical theory of knowledge intact, and lets us continue to believe +with common sense that one object _may_ be known, if we have any +ground for thinking that it _is_ known, to many knowers. + +[Footnote 1: The 'why' and the 'whence' are entirely other questions, +not under discussion, as I understand Mr. Bradley. Not how experience +gets itself born, but how it can be what it is after it is born, is +the puzzle.] + + + + +APPENDIX B + + +THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY[1] + +... Mr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to +philosophy, and if one turns to the current literature of the +subject--his own writings included--one easily gathers what he means. +The opponents cannot even understand one another. Mr. Bradley says to +Mr. Ward: 'I do not care what your oracle is, and your preposterous +psychology may here be gospel if you please; ... but if the revelation +does contain a meaning, I will commit myself to this: either the +oracle is so confused that its signification is not discoverable, +or, upon the other hand, if it can be pinned down to any definite +statement, then that statement will be false.'[2] Mr. Ward in turn +says of Mr. Bradley: 'I cannot even imagine the state of mind to which +his description applies.... It reads like an unintentional travesty of +Herbartian Psychology by one who has tried to improve upon it without +being at the pains to master it.' Muensterberg excludes a view opposed +to his own by saying that with any one who holds it a _verstaendigung_ +with him is '_grundsaetzlich ausgeschlossen_'; and Royce, + +[Footnote 1: President's Address before the American Psychological +Association, December, 1904. Reprinted from the _Psychological +Review_, vol. xii, 1905, with slight verbal revision.] + +[Footnote 2: _Appearance and Reality_, p. 117. Obviously written _at_ +Ward, though Ward's name is not mentioned.] + +in a review of Stout,[1] hauls him over the coals at great length for +defending 'efficacy' in a way which I, for one, never gathered from +reading him, and which I have heard Stout himself say was quite +foreign to the intention of his text. + +In these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and +different points of view are talked of _durcheinander_. + +(1) There is a psychological question: Have we perceptions of +activity? and if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have +them? + +(2) There is a metaphysical question: Is there a _fact_ of activity? +and if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what +does it do, if it does anything? And finally there is a logical +question: + +(3) Whence do we _know_ activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or +by some other source of information? Throughout page after page of the +literature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and +mere description of the surface-show of experience is proffered as if +it implicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants, +moreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view +would carry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's +experience it would make if his adversary's were triumphant. + +[Footnote 1: _Mind_, N.S., VI, 379.] + +It seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it +ought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience, +to be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them +somewhat. The pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there +is no difference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact +somewhere; and it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of +opinion by making the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some +practical or particular issue. The principle of pure experience is +also a methodical postulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it +says, except what can be experienced at some definite time by some +experient; and for every feature of fact ever so experienced, a +definite place must be found somewhere in the final system of reality. +In other words: Everything real must be experienceable somewhere, and +every kind of thing experienced must somewhere be real. + +Armed with these rules of method, let us see what face the problems of +activity present to us. + +By the principle of pure experience, either the word 'activity' must +have no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what +it means must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be +definitely pointed out. Whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually +come to make regarding activity, _that sort_ of thing will be what the +judgments are about. The first step to take, then, is to ask where in +the stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity. +What we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later +question. + +Now it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever +we find anything _going on_. Taken in the broadest sense, any +apprehension of something _doing_, is an experience of activity. Were +our world describable only by the words 'nothing happening,' 'nothing +changing,' 'nothing doing,' we should unquestionably call it an +'inactive' world. Bare activity, then, as we may call it, means the +bare fact of event or change. 'Change taking place' is a unique +content of experience, one of those 'conjunctive' objects which +radical empiricism seeks so earnestly to rehabilitate and preserve. +The sense of activity is thus in the broadest and vaguest way +synonymous with the sense of 'life.' We should feel our own subjective +life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming an otherwise inactive +world. Our own reaction on its monotony would be the one thing +experienced there in the form of something coming to pass. + +This seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist +that for an experient to be at all is to be active. It seems to +justify, or at any rate to explain, Mr. Ward's expression that we +_are_ only as we are active,[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. ii, p. 245. One thinks +naturally of the peripatetic _actus primus_ and _actus secundus_ +here.] + +for we _are_ only as experients; and it rules out Mr. Bradley's +contention that 'there is no original experience of anything like +activity.' What we ought to say about activities thus simply given, +whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they effect +anything at all--these are later questions, to be answered only when +the field of experience is enlarged. + +Bare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite +direction, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a +wild _ideenflucht_, or _rhapsodie der wahrnehmungen_, as Kant would +say, would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive +world. + +But in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of +the activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire +and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it +overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of +resistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like +these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed +to activity arise. Here also the notion of causal efficacy comes +to birth. Perhaps the most elaborate work ever done in descriptive +psychology has been the analysis by various recent writers of the more +complex activity-situations. In their descriptions, exquisitely subtle +some of them,[1] the activity appears as the _gestalt-qualitaet_ + +[Footnote 1: Their existence forms a curious commentary on Professor +Munsterberg's dogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He +himself has contributed in a superior way to their description, both +in his _Willenshandlung_, and in his _Grundzuege_, Part II, chap, ix, Sec. +7.] + +or the _fundirte inhalt_ (or as whatever else you may please to call +the conjunctive form) which the content falls into when we experience +it in the ways which the describers set forth. Those factors in those +relations are what we _mean_ by activity-situations; and to the +possible enumeration and accumulation of their circumstances and +ingredients there would seem to be no natural bound. Every hour of +human life could contribute to the picture gallery; and this is the +only fault that one can find with such descriptive industry--where is +it going to stop? Ought we to listen forever to verbal pictures of +what we have already in concrete form in our own breasts?[1] +They never take us off the superficial plane. We knew the facts +already--less spread out and separated, to be sure--but we knew them +still. We always felt our own activity, for example, as 'the expansion +of an idea with which our Self is identified, against an obstacle'; +and the following out of such a definition through a multitude of +cases elaborates the obvious so as to be little more than an exercise +in synonymic speech. + +All the descriptions have to trace familiar outlines, and to use +familiar terms. The activity is, for example, + +[Footnote 1: I ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous +sinner in my own chapter on the will.] + +attributed either to a physical or to a mental agent, and is either +aimless or directed. If directed, it shows tendency. The tendency may +or may not be resisted. If not, we call the activity immanent, as when +a body moves in empty space by its momentum, or our thoughts wander at +their own sweet will. If resistance is met, _its_ agent complicates +the situation. If now, in spite of resistance, the original tendency +continues, effort makes its appearance, and along with effort, strain +or squeeze. Will, in the narrower sense of the word, then comes upon +the scene, whenever, along with the tendency, the strain and squeeze +are sustained. But the resistance may be great enough to check the +tendency, or even to reverse its path. In that case, we (if 'we' were +the original agents or subjects of the tendency) are overpowered. +The phenomenon turns into one of tension simply, or of necessity +succumbed--to, according as the opposing power is only equal, or is +superior to ourselves. + +Whosoever describes an experience in such terms as these, describes an +experience _of_ activity. If the word have any meaning, it must denote +what there is found. _There_ is complete activity in its original and +first intention. What it is 'known-as' is what there appears. The +experiencer of such a situation possesses all that the idea contains. +He feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the +triumph, or the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the +space, the swiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and +color, the pain and pleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining +characters the situation may involve. He goes through all that ever +can be imagined where activity is supposed. If we suppose activities +to go on outside of our experience, it is in forms like these that we +must suppose them, or else give them some other name; for the word +'activity' has no imaginable content whatever save these experiences +of process, obstruction, striving, strain, or release, ultimate +_qualia_ as they are of the life given us to be known. + +Were this the end of the matter, one might think that whenever we had +successfully lived through an activity-situation we should have to be +permitted, without provoking contradiction, to say that we had +been really active, that we had met real resistance and had really +prevailed. Lotze somewhere says that to be an entity all that is +necessary is to _gelten_ as an entity, to operate, or be felt, +experienced, recognized, or in any way realized, as such. In our +activity-experiences the activity assuredly fulfils Lotze's demand. +It makes itself _gelten_. It is witnessed at its work. No matter what +activities there may really be in this extraordinary universe of ours, +it is impossible for us to conceive of any one of them being either +lived through or authentically known otherwise than in this dramatic +shape of something sustaining a felt purpose against felt obstacles +and overcoming or being overcome. What 'sustaining' means here is +clear to any one who has lived through the experience, but to no one +else; just as 'loud,' 'red,' 'sweet,' mean something only to beings +with ears, eyes, and tongues. The _percipi_ in these originals of +experience is the _esse_; the curtain is the picture. If there is +anything hiding in the background, it ought not to be called activity, +but should get itself another name. + +This seems so obviously true that one might well experience +astonishment at finding so many of the ablest writers on the subject +flatly denying that the activity we live through in these situations +is real. Merely to feel active is not to be active, in their sight. +The agents that appear in the experience are not real agents, the +resistances do not really resist, the effects that appear are not +really effects at all.[1] It is evident from this that + +[Footnote 1: _Verborum gratia_:'The feeling of activity is not able, +qua feeling, to tell us anything about activity' (Loveday: _Mind_, +N.S., X., 403); 'A sensation or feeling or sense of activity ... is +not, looked at in another way, a feeling of activity at all. It is a +mere sensation shut up within which you could by no reflection get the +idea of activity.... Whether this experience is or is not later on a +character essential to our perception and our idea of activity, it, as +it comes first, is not in itself an experience of activity at all. It, +as it comes first, is only so for extraneous reasons and only so for +an outside observer' (Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, 2d edition, +p. 605); 'In dem taetigkeitsgefuehle leigt an sich nicht der +geringste beweis fuer das vorhandensein einer psychischen taetigkeit' +(Muensterberg: _Grundzuege_, etc., p. 67). I could multiply similar +quotations, and would have introduced some of them into my text to +make it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of +view in most of these author's discussions (not in Muensterberg's) make +it impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. I am sure in any +case to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note, +by omission of the context, so the less I name names and the more +I stick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of +opinion, the safer it will be. And apropos of misunderstandings, I may +add to this note a complaint on my own account. Professor Stout, in +the excellent chapter on 'Mental Activity,' in vol. i of his _Analytic +Psychology_, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with +certain muscular feelings, and gives quotations to bear him out. They +are from certain paragraphs on 'the Self,' in which my attempt was to +show what the central nucleus of the activities that we call 'ours' +is. I found it in certain intracephalic movements which we habitually +oppose, as 'subjective,' to the activities of the transcorporeal +world. I sought to show that there is no direct evidence that we feel +the activity of an inner spiritual agent as such (I should now say the +activity of 'consciousness' as such, see my paper 'Does consciousness +exist?' in the _Journal of Philosophy_, vol. i, p. 477). There are, in +fact, three distinguishable 'activities' in the field of discussion: +the elementary activity involved in the mere _that_ of experience, in +the fact that _something_ is going on, and the farther specification +of this _something_ into two _whats_, an activity felt as 'ours,' and +an activity ascribed to objects. Stout, as I apprehend him, identifies +'our' activity with that of the total experience-process, and when I +circumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort +of external appendage to itself (pp. 162-163), as if I 'separated the +activity from the process which is active.' But all the processes in +question are active, and their activity is inseparable from their +being. My book raised only the question of _which_ activity deserved +the name of 'ours.' So far as we are 'persons,' and contrasted and +opposed to an 'environment,' movements in our body figure as our +activities; and I am unable to find any other activities that are ours +in this strictly personal sense. There is a wider sense in which +the whole 'choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,' and their +activities, are ours, for they are our 'objects.' But 'we' are here +only another name for the total process of experience, another name +for all that is, in fact; and I was dealing with the personal and +individualized self exclusively in the passages with which Professor +Stout finds fault. + +The individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing properly +called self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. The +world experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness') +comes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision, +centre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is is 'here'; +when the body acts is 'now'; what the body touches is 'this'; all +other things are 'there' and 'then' and 'that.' These words of +emphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference +to a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the +systematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no +developed or active experience exists for us at all except in that +ordered form. So far as 'thoughts' and 'feelings' can be active, their +activity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through +first arousing its activities can they begin to change those of +the rest of the world. The body is the storm centre, the origin +of co-ordinates, the constant place of stress in all that +experience-train. Everything circles round it, and is felt from its +point of view. The word 'I,' then, is primarily a noun of position, +just like 'this' and 'here.' Activities attached to 'this' position +have prerogative emphasis, and, if activities have feelings, must be +felt in a peculiar way. The word 'my' designates the kind of emphasis. +I see no inconsistency whatever in defending, on the one hand, 'my' +activities as unique and opposed to those of outer nature, and, on the +other hand, in affirming, after introspection, that they consist in +movements in the head. The 'my' of them is the emphasis, the feeling +of perspective-interest in which they are dyed.] + +mere descriptive analysis of any one of our activity-experiences is +not the whole story, that there is something still to tell _about_ +them that has led such able writers to conceive of a _Simon-pure_ +activity, of an activity _an sich_, that does, and doesn't merely +appear to us to do, and compared with whose real doing all this +phenomenal activity is but a specious sham. + +The metaphysical question opens here; and I think that the state of +mind of one possessed by it is often something like this: 'It is +all very well,' we may imagine him saying, 'to talk about certain +experience-series taking on the form of feelings of activity, just as +they might take on musical or geometric forms. Suppose that they do +so; suppose that what we feel is a will to stand a strain. Does our +feeling do more than _record_ the fact that the strain is sustained? +The _real_ activity, meanwhile, is the _doing_ of the fact; and what +is the doing made of before the record is made? What in the will +_enables_ it to act thus? And these trains of experience themselves, +in which activities appear, what makes them _go_ at all? Does the +activity in one bit of experience bring the next bit into being? As an +empiricist you cannot say so, for you have just declared activity +to be only a kind of synthetic object, or conjunctive relation +experienced between bits of experience already made. But what made +them at all? What propels experience _ueberhaupt_ into being? _There_ +is the activity that _operates_; the activity _felt_ is only its +superficial sign.' + +To the metaphysical question, popped upon us in this way, I must pay +serious attention ere I end my remarks, but, before doing so, let me +show that without leaving the immediate reticulations of experience, +or asking what makes activity itself act, we still find the +distinction between less real and more real activities forced upon us, +and are driven to much soul-searching on the purely phenomenal plane. + +We must not forget, namely, in talking of the ultimate character of +our activity-experiences, that each of them is but a portion of a +wider world, one link in the vast chain of processes of experience +out of which history is made. Each partial process, to him who lives +through it, defines itself by its origin and its goal; but to an +observer with a wider mind-span who should live outside of it, +that goal would appear but as a provisional halting-place, and the +subjectively felt activity would be seen to continue into objective +activities that led far beyond. We thus acquire a habit, in discussing +activity-experiences, of defining them by their relation to something +more. If an experience be one of narrow span, it will be mistaken as +to what activity it is and whose. You think that _you_ are acting +while you are only obeying some one's push. You think you are doing +_this_, but you are doing something of which you do not dream. For +instance, you think you are but drinking this glass; but you are +really creating the liver-cirrhosis that will end your days. You think +you are just driving this bargain, but, as Stevenson says somewhere, +you are laying down a link in the policy of mankind. + +Generally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision, +regards the _ultimate outcome_ of an activity as what it is more +really doing; and _the most previous agent_ ascertainable, being the +first source of action, he regards as the most real agent in the +field. The others but transmit that agent's impulse; on him we put +responsibility; we name him when one asks us, 'Who's to blame?' + +But the most previous agents ascertainable, instead of being of longer +span, are often of much shorter span than the activity in view. +Brain-cells are our best example. My brain-cells are believed to +excite each other from next to next (by contiguous transmission of +katabolic alteration, let us say), and to have been doing so long +before this present stretch of lecturing-activity on my part began. +If any one cell-group stops its activity, the lecturing will cease or +show disorder of form. _Cessante causa, cessat et effectus_--does not +this look as if the short-span brain activities were the more real +activities, and the lecturing activities on my part only their +effects? Moreover, as Hume so clearly pointed out, in my mental +activity-situation the words physically to be uttered are represented +as the activity's immediate goal. These words, however, cannot be +uttered without intermediate physical processes in the bulb and vagi +nerves, which processes nevertheless fail to figure in the mental +activity-series at all. That series, therefore, since it leaves out +vitally real steps of action, cannot represent the real activities. It +is something purely subjective; the _facts_ of activity are elsewhere. +They are something far more interstitial, so to speak, than what my +feelings record. + +The _real_ facts of activity that have in point of fact been +systematically pleaded for by philosophers have, so far as my +information goes, been of three principal types. + +The first type takes a consciousness of wider time-span than ours to +be the vehicle of the more real activity. Its will is the agent, and +its purpose is the action done. + +The second type assumes that 'ideas' struggling with one another are +the agents, and that the prevalence of one set of them is the action. + +The third type believes that nerve-cells are the agents, and that +resultant motor discharges are the acts achieved. + +Now if we must de-realize our immediately felt activity-situations for +the benefit of either of these types of substitute, we ought to know +what the substitution practically involves. _What practical difference +ought it to make if_, instead of saying naively that 'I' am active now +in delivering this address, I say that _a wider thinker is active_, +or that _certain ideas are active_, or that _certain nerve-cells are +active_, in producing the result? + +This would be the pragmatic meaning of the three hypotheses. Let us +take them in succession in seeking a reply. + +If we assume a wider thinker, it is evident that his purposes envelop +mine. I am really lecturing _for_ him; and altho I cannot surely know +to what end, yet if I take him religiously, I can trust it to be a +good end, and willingly connive. I can be happy in thinking that my +activity transmits his impulse, and that his ends prolong my own. So +long as I take him religiously, in short, he does not de-realize my +activities. He tends rather to corroborate the reality of them, so +long as I believe both them and him to be good. + +When now we turn to ideas, the case is different, inasmuch as ideas +are supposed by the association psychology to influence each other +only from next to next. The 'span' of an idea, or pair of ideas, is +assumed to be much smaller instead of being larger than that of my +total conscious field. The same results may get worked out in both +cases, for this address is being given anyhow. But the ideas supposed +to 'really' work it out had no prevision of the whole of it; and if +I was lecturing for an absolute thinker in the former case, so, +by similar reasoning, are my ideas now lecturing for me, that is, +accomplishing unwittingly a result which I approve and adopt. But, +when this passing lecture is over, there is nothing in the bare notion +that ideas have been its agents that would seem to guarantee that my +present purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. _I_ may have ulterior +developments in view; but there is no certainty that my ideas as such +will wish to, or be able to, work them out. + +The like is true if nerve-cells be the agents. The activity of a +nerve-cell must be conceived of as a tendency of exceedingly short +reach, an 'impulse' barely spanning the way to the next cell--for +surely that amount of actual 'process' must be 'experienced' by the +cells if what happens between them is to deserve the name of activity +at all. But here again the gross resultant, as _I_ perceive it, is +indifferent to the agents, and neither wished or willed or foreseen. +Their being agents now congruous with my will gives me no guarantee +that like results will recur again from their activity. In point of +fact, all sorts of other results do occur. My mistakes, impotencies, +perversions, mental obstructions, and frustrations generally, are also +results of the activity of cells. Altho these are letting me lecture +now, on other occasions they make me do things that I would willingly +not do. + +The question _Whose is the real activity?_ is thus tantamount to the +question _What will be the actual results?_ Its interest is dramatic; +how will things work out? If the agents are of one sort, one way; if +of another sort, they may work out very differently. The pragmatic +meaning of the various alternatives, in short, is great. It makes more +than a merely verbal difference which opinion we take up. + +You see it is the old dispute come back! Materialism and teleology; +elementary short-span actions summing themselves 'blindly,' or far +foreseen ideals coming with effort into act. + +Naively we believe, and humanly and dramatically we like to believe, +that activities both of wider and of narrower span are at work in life +together, that both are real, and that the long-span tendencies yoke +the others in their service, encouraging them in the right direction, +and damping them when they tend in other ways. But how to represent +clearly the _modus operandi_ of such steering of small tendencies +by large ones is a problem which metaphysical thinkers will have to +ruminate upon for many years to come. Even if such control should +eventually grow clearly picturable, the question how far it is +successfully exerted in this actual world can be answered only by +investigating the details of fact. No philosophic knowledge of the +general nature and constitution of tendencies, or of the relation +of larger to smaller ones, can help us to predict which of all the +various competing tendencies that interest us in this universe are +likeliest to prevail. We know as an empirical fact that far-seeing +tendencies often carry out their purpose, but we know also that they +are often defeated by the failure of some contemptibly small process +on which success depends. A little thrombus in a statesman's meningeal +artery will throw an empire out of gear. Therefore I cannot even hint +at any solution of the pragmatic issue. I have only wished to show you +that that issue is what gives the real interest to all inquiries into +what kinds of activity may be real. Are the forces that really act in +the world more foreseeing or more blind? As between 'our' activities +as 'we' experience them, and those of our ideas, or of our +brain-cells, the issue is well defined. + +I said awhile back (p. 381) that I should return to the 'metaphysical' +question before ending; so, with a few words about that, I will now +close my remarks. + +In whatever form we hear this question propounded, I think that it +always arises from two things, a belief that _causality_ must be +exerted in activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made. If we +take an activity-situation at its face-value, it seems as if we caught +_in flagrante delicto_ the very power that makes facts come and be. I +now am eagerly striving, for example, to get this truth which I seem +half to perceive, into words which shall make it show more clearly. If +the words come, it will seem as if the striving itself had drawn or +pulled them into actuality out from the state of merely possible being +in which they were. How is this feat performed? How does the pulling +_pull_? How do I get my hold on words not yet existent, and when they +come, by what means have I _made_ them come? Really it is the problem +of creation; for in the end the question is: How do I make them _be?_ +Real activities are those that really make things be, without which +the things are not, and with which they are there. Activity, so far as +we merely feel it, on the other hand, is only an impression of ours, +it may be maintained; and an impression is, for all this way of +thinking, only a shadow of another fact. + +Arrived at this point, I can do little more than indicate the +principles on which, as it seems to me, a radically empirical +philosophy is obliged to rely in handling such a dispute. + +If there _be_ real creative activities in being, radical empiricism +must say, somewhere they must be immediately lived. Somewhere the +_that_ of efficacious causing and the _what_ of it must be experienced +in one, just as the what and the that of 'cold' are experienced in one +whenever a man has the sensation of cold here and now. It boots not to +say that our sensations are fallible. They are indeed; but to see the +thermometer contradict us when we say 'it is cold' does not abolish +cold as a specific nature from the universe. Cold is in the arctic +circle if not here. Even so, to feel that our train is moving when the +train beside our window moves, to see the moon through a telescope +come twice as near, or to see two pictures as one solid when we look +through a stereoscope at them, leaves motion, nearness, and solidity +still in being--if not here, yet each in its proper seat elsewhere. +And wherever the seat of real causality _is_, as ultimately known 'for +true' (in nerve-processes, if you will, that cause our feelings of +activity as well as the movements which these seem to prompt), a +philosophy of pure experience can consider the real causation as no +other _nature_ of thing than that which even in our most erroneous +experiences appears to be at work. Exactly what appears there is what +we _mean_ by working, tho we may later come to learn that working was +not exactly _there_. Sustaining, persevering, striving, paying with +effort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving our intention--this +_is_ action, this _is_ effectuation in the only shape in which, by +a pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it anywhere can be +discussed. Here is creation in its first intention, here is causality +at work.[1] To treat this offhand as the bare illusory + +[Footnote 1: Let me not be told that this contradicts a former article +of mine, 'Does consciousness exist?' in the _Journal of Philosophy_ +for September 1, 1904 (see especially page 489), in which it was said +that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures +work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water +wets, etc.), but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are +composed of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other: they +check, sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely +associational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my +reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that +energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is +a desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a +feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. +The interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,' +'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental +series. In what we term the physical drama these qualities play +absolutely no part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can +see no inconsistency.] + +surface of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable ontological +principle hidden in the cubic deeps, is, for the more empirical way of +thinking, only animism in another shape. You explain your given fact +by your 'principle,' but the principle itself, when you look clearly +at it, turns out to be nothing but a previous little spiritual copy +of the fact. Away from that one and only kind of fact your mind, +considering causality, can never get.[1] + +[Footnote 1: I have found myself more than once accused in print of +being the assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since +literary misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should +like to say that such an interpretation of the pages I have published +on effort and on will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to +express. I owe all my doctrines on this subject to Renouvier; and +Renouvier, as I understand him, is (or at any rate then was) an out +and out phenomenist, a denier of 'forces' in the most strenuous +sense. Single clauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their +connexion, may possibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal +principle of energy; but I defy any one to show a single sentence +which, taken with its context, should be naturally held to advocate +that view. The misinterpretation probably arose at first from my +having defended (after Renouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. +'Free will' was supposed by my critics to involve a supernatural +agent. As a matter of plain history, the only 'free will' I have +ever thought of defending is the character of novelty in fresh +activity-situations. If an activity-process is the form of a whole +'field of consciousness,' and if each field of consciousness is not +only in its totality unique (as is now commonly admitted), but has +its elements unique (since in that situation they are all dyed in +the total), then novelty is perpetually entering the world and what +happens there is not pure _repetition_, as the dogma of the literal +uniformity of nature requires. Activity-situations come, in short, +each with an original touch. A 'principle' of free will, if there were +one, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but I never +saw, nor do I now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the +phenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.] + +I conclude, then, that real effectual causation as an ultimate nature, +as a 'category,' if you like, of reality, is _just what we feel it +to be_, just that kind of conjunction which our own activity-series +reveal. We have the whole butt and being of it in our hands; and the +healthy thing for philosophy is to leave off grubbing underground for +what effects effectuation, or what makes action act, and to try to +solve the concrete questions of where effectuation in this world is +located, of which things are the true causal agents there, and of what +the more remote effects consist. + +From this point of view the greater sublimity traditionally attributed +to the metaphysical inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely +disappears. If we could know what causation really and +transcendentally is in itself, the only _use_ of the knowledge would +be to help us to recognize an actual cause when we had one, and so to +track the future course of operations more intelligently out. The mere +abstract inquiry into causation's hidden nature is not more sublime +than any other inquiry equally abstract. Causation inhabits no more +sublime level than anything else. It lives, apparently, in the dirt of +the world as well as in the absolute, or in man's unconquerable mind. +The worth and interest of the world consists not in its elements, +be these elements things, or be they the conjunctions of things; it +exists rather in the dramatic outcome of the whole process, and in the +meaning of the succession stages which the elements work out. + +My colleague and master, Josiah Royce, in a page of his review of +Stout's _Analytic Psychology_, in _Mind_ for 1897, has some fine words +on this point with which I cordially agree. I cannot agree with his +separating the notion of efficacy from that of activity altogether +(this I understand to be one contention of his), for activities are +efficacious whenever they are real activities at all. But the inner +nature both of efficacy and of activity are superficial problems, I +understand Royce to say; and the only point for us in solving them +would be their possible use in helping us to solve the far deeper +problem of the course and meaning of the world of life. Life, says +our colleague, is full of significance, of meaning, of success and of +defeat, of hoping and of striving, of longing, of desire, and of inner +value. It is a total presence that embodies worth. To live our own +lives better in this presence is the true reason why we wish to know +the elements of things; so even we psychologists must end on this +pragmatic note. + +The urgent problems of activity are thus more concrete. They all +are problems of the true relation of longer-span to shorter-span +activities. When, for example, a number of 'ideas' (to use the name +traditional in psychology) grow confluent in a larger field of +consciousness, do the smaller activities still coexist with the wider +activities then experienced by the conscious subject? And, if so, do +the wide activities accompany the narrow ones inertly, or do they +exert control? Or do they perhaps utterly supplant and replace them +and short-circuit their effects? Again, when a mental activity-process +and a brain-cell series of activities both terminate in the same +muscular movement, does the mental process steer the neural processes +or not? Or, on the other hand, does it independently short-circuit +their effects? Such are the questions that we must begin with. But so +far am I from suggesting any definitive answer to such questions, +that I hardly yet can put them clearly. They lead, however, into that +region of panpsychic and ontologic speculation of which Professors +Bergson and Strong have lately enlarged the literature in so able and +interesting a way. The results of these authors seem in many respects +dissimilar, and I understand them as yet but imperfectly; but I cannot +help suspecting that the direction of their work is very promising, +and that they have the hunter's instinct for the fruitful trails. + + + + +APPENDIX C + + +ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING + +In my _Principles of Psychology_ (vol. ii, p. 646) I gave the name of +the 'axiom of skipped intermediaries and transferred relations' to a +serial principle of which the foundation of logic, the _dictum de omni +et nullo_ (or, as I expressed it, the rule that what is of a kind is +of that kind's kind), is the most familiar instance. More than the +more is more than the less, equals of equals are equal, sames of the +same are the same, the cause of a cause is the cause of its effects, +are other examples of this serial law. Altho it applies infallibly +and without restriction throughout certain abstract series, where the +'sames,' 'causes,' etc., spoken of, are 'pure,' and have no properties +save their sameness, causality, etc., it cannot be applied offhand to +concrete objects with numerous properties and relations, for it is +hard to trace a straight line of sameness, causation, or whatever it +may be, through a series of such objects without swerving into some +'respect' where the relation, as pursued originally, no longer holds: +the objects have so many 'aspects' that we are constantly deflected +from our original direction, and find, we know not why, that we are +following something different from what we started with. Thus a cat is +in a sense the same as a mouse-trap, and a mouse-trap the same as a +bird-cage; but in no valuable or easily intelligible sense is a cat +the same as a bird-cage. Commodore Perry was in a sense the cause +of the new regime in Japan, and the new regime was the cause of the +russian Douma; but it would hardly profit us to insist on holding to +Perry as the cause of the Douma: the terms have grown too remote to +have any real or practical relation to each other. In every series of +real terms, not only do the terms themselves and their associates +and environments change, but we change, and their _meaning_ for +us changes, so that new kinds of sameness and types of causation +continually come into view and appeal to our interest. Our earlier +lines, having grown irrelevant, are then dropped. The old terms can no +longer be substituted nor the relations 'transferred,' because of so +many new dimensions into which experience has opened. Instead of a +straight line, it now follows a zigzag; and to keep it straight, one +must do violence to its spontaneous development. Not that one might +not possibly, by careful seeking (tho I doubt it), _find_ some line in +nature along which terms literally the same, or causes causal in the +same way, might be serially strung without limit, if one's interest +lay in such finding. Within such lines our axioms might hold, causes +might cause their effect's effects, etc.; but such lines themselves +would, if found, only be partial members of a vast natural network, +within the other lines of which you could not say, in any sense that +a wise man or a sane man would ever think of, in any sense that would +not be concretely _silly_, that the principle of skipt intermediaries +still held good. In the _practical_ world, the world whose +significances we follow, sames of the same are certainly not sames of +one another; and things constantly cause other things without being +held responsible for everything of which those other things are +causes. + +Professor Bergson, believing as he does in a heraclitean 'devenir +reel,' ought, if I rightly understand him, positively to deny that in +the actual world the logical axioms hold good without qualification. +Not only, according to him, do terms change, so that after a certain +time the very elements of things are no longer what they were, but +relations also change, so as no longer to obtain in the same identical +way between the new things that have succeeded upon the old ones. If +this were really so, then however indefinitely sames might still +be substituted for sames in the logical world of nothing but pure +sameness, in the world of real operations every line of sameness +actually started and followed up would eventually give out, and cease +to be traceable any farther. Sames of the same, in such a world, will +not always (or rather, in a strict sense will never) be the same +as one another, for in such a world there _is_ no literal or ideal +sameness among numerical differents. Nor in such a world will it be +true that the cause of the cause is unreservedly the cause of +the effect; for if we follow lines of real causation, instead of +contenting ourselves with Hume's and Kant's eviscerated schematism, we +find that remoter effects are seldom aimed at by causal intentions,[1] +that no one kind of causal activity continues indefinitely, and that +the principle of skipt intermediaries can be talked of only _in +abstracto_.[2] + +Volumes i, ii, and iii of the _Monist_ (1890-1893) contain a number of +articles by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, articles the originality of which +has apparently prevented their making an immediate impression, but +which, if I mistake not, will prove a gold-mine of ideas for thinkers +of the coming generation. Mr. Peirce's views, tho reached so +differently, are altogether congruous with Bergson's. Both +philosophers believe that the appearance of novelty in things is +genuine. To an observer standing outside of its generating causes, +novelty can appear only as so much 'chance'; to one who stands inside +it is the expression of 'free creative activity.' Peirce's 'tychism' +is thus practically synonymous with Bergson's 'devenir reel.' The +common objection to admitting novelties is that by jumping abruptly +in, _ex nihilo_, they shatter the world's rational continuity. Peirce +meets this objection by combining his tychism + +[Footnote 1: Compare the douma with what Perry aimed at.] + +[Footnote 2: Compare Appendix B, as to what I mean here by 'real' +casual activity.] + +with an express doctrine of 'synechism' or continuity, the two +doctrines merging into the higher synthesis on which he bestows the +name of 'agapasticism (_loc. cit._, iii, 188), which means exactly the +same thing as Bergson's 'evolution creatrice.' Novelty, as empirically +found, doesn't arrive by jumps and jolts, it leaks in insensibly, for +adjacents in experience are always interfused, the smallest real datum +being both a coming and a going, and even numerical distinctness being +realized effectively only after a concrete interval has passed. The +intervals also deflect us from the original paths of direction, and +all the old identities at last give out, for the fatally continuous +infiltration of otherness warps things out of every original rut. +Just so, in a curve, the same direction is _never_ followed, and the +conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by +supposing it to do so for however short a time. Peirce speaks of an +'infinitesimal' tendency to diversification. The mathematical notion +of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same +and yet the nascent other, of an identity that won't _keep_ except so +far as it keeps _failing_, that won't _transfer_, any more than the +serial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality +instead of applying them to concepts alone. + +A friend of mine has an idea, which illustrates on such a magnified +scale the impossibility of tracing the same line through reality, that +I will mention it here. He thinks that nothing more is needed to make +history 'scientific' than to get the content of any two epochs (say +the end of the thirteenth and the end of the nineteenth century) +accurately defined, then accurately to define the direction of the +change that led from the one epoch into the other, and finally to +prolong the line of that direction into the future. So prolonging the +line, he thinks, we ought to be able to define the actual state +of things at any future date we please. We all feel the essential +unreality of such a conception of 'history' as this; but if such a +synechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what +really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest, +would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter +pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or +statistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality. + +I can give no further account of Mr. Peirce's ideas in this note, but +I earnestly advise all students of Bergson to compare them with those +of the french philosopher. + + + + +INDEX + + +INDEX TO THE LECTURES + + Absolute, the, 49, 108-109, 114 ff., 173, 175, 190 ff., 203, 271, 292 ff., + 311; not the same as God, 111, 134; its rationality, 114 f.; its + irrationality, 117-129; difficulty of conceiving it, 195. + + Absolutism, 34, 38, 40, 54, 72 f, 79, 122, 310. See Monism. + + Achilles and tortoise, 228, 255. + + All-form, the, 34, 324. + + Analogy, 8, 151 f. + + Angels, 164. + + Antinomies, 231, 239. + + ARISTIDES, 304. + + + BAILEY, S., 5. + + BERGSON, H., Lecture VI, _passim_. His characteristics, 226 f, 266. + + 'Between,' 70. + + Block-universe, 310, 328. + + BRADLEY, F.H., 46, 69, 79, 211, 220, 296. + + Brain, 160. + + + CAIRD, E., 89, 95, 137. + + CATO, 304. + + Causation, 258. See Influence. + + Change, 231, 253. + + CHESTERTON, 203, 303. + + Compounding of mental states, 168, 173, 186 f., 268, 281, 284, 292, 296. + + Concepts, 217, 234 f. + + Conceptual method, 243 f., 246, 253. + + Concrete reality, 283, 286. + + Confluence, 326. + + Conflux, 257. + + Consciousness, superhuman, 156, 310 f.; its compound nature, 168, 173, + 186 f., 289. + + Continuity, 256 f., 325. + + Contradiction, in Hegel, 89 f. + + Creation, 29, 119. + + + Death, 303. + + Degrees, 74. + + Dialectic method, 89. + + Difference, 257 f. + + Diminutive epithets, 12, 24. + Discreteness of change, 231. + + + 'Each-form,' the, 34, 325. + + Earth, the, in Fechner's philosophy, 156; is an angel, 164. + + Earth-soul, 152 f. + + Elan vital, 262. + + Empiricism, 264, 277; and religion, 314; defined, 7. + + Endosmosis, 257. + + Epithets. See Diminutive. + + Evil, 310. + + Experience, 312; religious, 307. + + Extremes, 67, 74. + + + 'Faith-ladder,' 328. + + 'Fall,' the, 119, 310. + + FECHNER, Lecture IV, _passim._ His life, 145-150; he reasons by analogy, + 151; his genius, 154; compared with Royce, 173, 207; not a genuine + monist, 293; his God; and religious experience, 308. + + FERRIER, Jas., 13. + + Finite experience, 39, 48, 182, 192-193. + + Finiteness, of God, 111, 124, 294. + + Foreignness, 31. + + + German manner of philosophizing, 17. + + GOD, 24 f., 111, 124, 193, 240, 294. + + GREEN, T.H., 6, 24, 137, 278. + + + HALDANE, R.B., 138. + + HEGEL, Lecture III, _passim_, 11, 85, 207, 211, 219, 296. His vision, + 88, 98 f., 104; his use of double negation, 102; his vicious + intellectualism 106; Haldane on, 138; McTaggart on, 140; Royce on, 143. + + HODGSON, S.H., 282. + + Horse, 265. + + HUME, 19, 267. + + + Idealism, 36. See Absolutism. + + Identity, 93. + + Immortality, Fechner's view of, 171. + + 'Independent' beings, 55, 58. + + Indeterminism, 77. + + Infinity, 229. + + Influence, 258, 561. + + Intellect, its function is practical, 247 f., 252. + + Intellectualism, vicious, 60, 218. + + Intellectualist logic, 216, 259, 261. + + Intellectualist method, 291. + + Interaction, 56. + + Intimacy, 31. + + Irrationality, 81; of the absolute, 117-129. + + + JACKS, L.P., 35. + + JOACHIM, H., 121, 141. + + JONES, H., 52. + + + KANT, 19, 199, 238, 240. + + + LEIBNITZ, 119. + + Life, 523. + + Log, 323. + + Logic, 92, 211; Intellectualist, 217, 242. + + LOTZE, 55, 120. + + LUTHER, 304. + + + McTAGGART, 51, 74 f., 120, 140 f., 183. + + Manyness in oneness, 322. See Compounding. + + Mental chemistry, 185. + + MILL, J.S., 242, 260. + + Mind, dust theory, 189. + + Mind, the eternal, 137. See Absolute. + + Monism, 36, 117, 125, 201, 313, 321 f.; Fechner's, 153. See Absolutism. + + Monomaniacs, 78. + + Motion, 233, 238, 254; Zeno on, 228. + + MYERS, F.W.H., 315. + + + Nature, 21, 286. + + Negation, 93 f.; double, 102. + + Newton, 260. + + + Other, 95, 312; 'its own other,' 108 f., 282. + + Oxford, _3_, 313, 331. + + + Pantheism, 24, 28. + + PAULSEN, 18, 22. + + Personality, divided, 298. + + Philosophers, their method, 9; their common desire, 11 f.; they must + reason, 13. + + Philosophies, their types, 23, 31. + + PHOCION, 304. + + Plant-soul, 165 f. + + Pluralism, 45, 76, 79, 311, 319, 321 f. + + Polytheism, 310. + + Practical reason, 329. + + Psychic synthesis, 185. See Compounding. + + Psychical research, 299. + + + 'Qua,' 39, 47, 267, 270. + + 'Quatenus,' 47, 267. + + + Rationalism defined, 7, 98; its thinness, 144, 237. + + Rationality, 81, 112 f., 319 f. + + Reality, 262 f., 264, 283 f. + + Reason, 286, 312. + + Relating, 7. + + Relations, 70, 278 ff.; 'external,' 80. + + Religious experiences, 305 f. + + RITCHIE, 72. + + ROYCE, 61 f., 115, 173, 182 f., 197, 207, 212, 265, 296. + + + Same, 269, 281. + + Savage philosophy, 21. + + Science, 145. + + Sensations, 279. + + Socialism, 78. + + SOCRATES, 284. + + Soul, 199, 209. + + 'Some,' 79. + + Sphinx, 22. + + SPINOZA, 47. + + Spiritualistic philosophy, 23. + + Sugar, 220, 232. + + Synthesis, psychic. See Compounding. + + + TAYLOR, A.E., 76, 139, 212. + + Theism, 24. + + Thick, the, 136. + + 'Thickness' of Fechner's philosophy, 144. + + Thin, the, 136. + + Thinness of the current transcendentalism, 144, 174 f. + + Time, 232. + + + Units of reality, 287. + + + Vision, in philosophy, 20. + + + WELLS, H.G., 78. + + Will to believe, 328. + + Witnesses, as implied in experience, 200. + + WUNDT, W., 185. + + + ZENO, 228. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Pluralistic Universe, +by William James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE *** + +***** This file should be named 11984.txt or 11984.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/9/8/11984/ + +Produced by Felicia Urbanski, David Starner, Nicolas Hayes and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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