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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/16712-8.txt b/16712-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..96ce1d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/16712-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2716 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy +by George Santayana + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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: Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy + Five Essays + +Author: George Santayana + +Release Date: September 17, 2005 [EBook #16712] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Michael Ciesielski and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN +MODERN PHILOSOPHY + +_Five Essays_ + + +BY + + +GEORGE SANTAYANA + + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1933 + + + + +Published under the auspices of +THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + +CONTENTS + +I. Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense page 1 + +Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the +occasion of the Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke. +With some Supplementary Notes + + +II. Fifty Years of British Idealism 48 + +Reflections on the republication of Bradley's _Ethical Studies_ + + +III. Revolutions in Science 71 + +Some Comments on the Theory of Relativity and the new Physics + + +IV. A Long Way Round to Nirvana 87 + +Development of a suggestion found in Freud's _Beyond the +Pleasure Principle_ + + +V. The Prestige of the Infinite 102 + +A review of Julien Benda's _Sketch of a consistent theory of +the relations between God and the World_ + + +The Author's acknowledgments are due to the Editors of _The New Adelphi_, +_The Dial_, and the _Journal of Philosophy_, in which one or more of these +Essays originally appeared. + + + + +I + +LOCKE AND THE FRONTIERS OF COMMON SENSE[1] + + +A good portrait of Locke would require an elaborate background. His is not +a figure to stand statuesquely in a void: the pose might not seem grand +enough for bronze or marble. Rather he should be painted in the manner of +the Dutch masters, in a sunny interior, scrupulously furnished with all +the implements of domestic comfort and philosophic enquiry: the Holy Bible +open majestically before him, and beside it that other revelation--the +terrestrial globe. His hand might be pointing to a microscope set for +examining the internal constitution of a beetle: but for the moment his +eye should be seen wandering through the open window, to admire the +blessings of thrift and liberty manifest in the people so worthily busy in +the market-place, wrong as many a monkish notion might be that still +troubled their poor heads. From them his enlarged thoughts would easily +pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting +sail for the Indies, or for savage America. Yes, he too had travelled, and +not only in thought. He knew how many strange nations and false religions +lodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. There were +few ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical +instruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and +no man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of +"the incomparable Mr Newton". Nevertheless, a certain uneasiness in that +spare frame, a certain knitting of the brows in that aquiline countenance, +would suggest that in the midst of their earnest eloquence the +philosopher's thoughts might sometimes come to a stand. Indeed, the +visible scene did not exhaust the complexity of his problem; for there was +also what he called "the scene of ideas", immaterial and private, but +often more crowded and pressing than the public scene. Locke was the +father of modern psychology, and the birth of this airy monster, this +half-natural changeling, was not altogether easy or fortunate.[2] + +I wish my erudition allowed me to fill in this picture as the subject +deserves, and to trace home the sources of Locke's opinions, and their +immense influence. Unfortunately, I can consider him--what is hardly +fair--only as a pure philosopher: for had Locke's mind been more profound, +it might have been less influential. He was in sympathy with the coming +age, and was able to guide it: an age that confided in easy, eloquent +reasoning, and proposed to be saved, in this world and the next, with as +little philosophy and as little religion as possible. Locke played in the +eighteenth century very much the part that fell to Kant in the nineteenth. +When quarrelled with, no less than when embraced, his opinions became a +point of departure for universal developments. The more we look into the +matter, the more we are impressed by the patriarchal dignity of Locke's +mind. Father of psychology, father of the criticism of knowledge, father +of theoretical liberalism, god-father at least of the American political +system, of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedia, at home he was the ancestor of +that whole school of polite moderate opinion which can unite liberal +Christianity with mechanical science and with psychological idealism. He +was invincibly rooted in a prudential morality, in a rationalised +Protestantism, in respect for liberty and law: above all he was deeply +convinced, as he puts it, "that the handsome conveniences of life are +better than nasty penury". Locke still speaks, or spoke until lately, +through many a modern mind, when this mind was most sincere; and two +hundred years before Queen Victoria he was a Victorian in essence. + +A chief element in this modernness of Locke was something that had hardly +appeared before in pure philosophy, although common in religion: I mean, +the tendency to deny one's own presuppositions--not by accident or +inadvertently, but proudly and with an air of triumph. Presuppositions are +imposed on all of us by life itself: for instance the presupposition that +life is to continue, and that it is worth living. Belief is born on the +wing and awakes to many tacit commitments. Afterwards, in reflection, we +may wonder at finding these presuppositions on our hands and, being +ignorant of the natural causes which have imposed them on the animal mind, +we may be offended at them. Their arbitrary and dogmatic character will +tempt us to condemn them, and to take for granted that the analysis which +undermines them is justified, and will prove fruitful. But this critical +assurance in its turn seems to rely on a dubious presupposition, namely, +that human opinion must always evolve in a single line, dialectically, +providentially, and irresistibly. It is at least conceivable that the +opposite should sometimes be the case. Some of the primitive +presuppositions of human reason might have been correct and inevitable, +whilst the tendency to deny them might have sprung from a plausible +misunderstanding, or the exaggeration of a half-truth: so that the +critical opinion itself, after destroying the spontaneous assumptions on +which it rested, might be incapable of subsisting. + +In Locke the central presuppositions, which he embraced heartily and +without question, were those of common sense. He adopted what he calls a +"plain, historical method", fit, in his own words, "to be brought into +well-bred company and polite conversation". Men, "barely by the use of +their natural faculties", might attain to all the knowledge possible or +worth having. All children, he writes, "that are born into this world, +being surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them" +have "a variety of ideas imprinted" on their minds. "External material +things as objects of Sensation, and the operations of our own minds as +objects of Reflection, are to me", he continues, "the only originals from +which all our ideas take their beginnings." "Every act of sensation", he +writes elsewhere, "when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both +parts of nature, the corporeal and the spiritual. For whilst I know, by +seeing or hearing,... that there is some corporeal being without me, the +object of that sensation, I do more certainly know that there is some +spiritual being within me that sees and hears." + +Resting on these clear perceptions, the natural philosophy of Locke falls +into two parts, one strictly physical and scientific, the other critical +and psychological. In respect to the composition of matter, Locke accepted +the most advanced theory of his day, which happened to be a very old one: +the theory of Democritus that the material universe contains nothing but a +multitude of solid atoms coursing through infinite space: but Locke added +a religious note to this materialism by suggesting that infinite space, in +its sublimity, must be an attribute of God. He also believed what few +materialists would venture to assert, that if we could thoroughly examine +the cosmic mechanism we should see the demonstrable necessity of every +complication that ensues, even of the existence and character of mind: for +it was no harder for God to endow matter with the power of thinking than +to endow it with the power of moving. + +In the atomic theory we have a graphic image asserted to describe +accurately, or even exhaustively, the intrinsic constitution of things, or +their primary qualities. Perhaps, in so far as physical hypotheses must +remain graphic at all, it is an inevitable theory. It was first suggested +by the wearing out and dissolution of all material objects, and by the +specks of dust floating in a sunbeam; and it is confirmed, on an enlarged +scale, by the stellar universe as conceived by modern astronomy. When +today we talk of nuclei and electrons, if we imagine them at all, we +imagine them as atoms. But it is all a picture, prophesying what we might +see through a sufficiently powerful microscope; the important +philosophical question is the one raised by the other half of Locke's +natural philosophy, by optics and the general criticism of perception. How +far, if at all, may we trust the images in our minds to reveal the nature +of external things? + +On this point the doctrine of Locke, through Descartes,[3] was also +derived from Democritus. It was that all the sensible qualities of things, +except position, shape, solidity, number and motion, were only ideas in +us, projected and falsely regarded as lodged in things. In the things, +these imputed or secondary qualities were simply powers, inherent in their +atomic constitution, and calculated to excite sensations of that character +in our bodies. This doctrine is readily established by Locke's plain +historical method, when applied to the study of rainbows, mirrors, effects +of perspective, dreams, jaundice, madness, and the will to believe: all of +which go to convince us that the ideas which we impulsively assume to be +qualities of objects are always, in their seat and origin, evolved in our +own heads. + +These two parts of Locke's natural philosophy, however, are not in perfect +equilibrium. _All_ the feelings and ideas of an animal must be equally +conditioned by his organs and passions,[4] and he cannot be aware of what +goes on beyond him, except as it affects his own life.[5] How then could +Locke, or could Democritus, suppose that his ideas of space and atoms were +less human, less graphic, summary, and symbolic, than his sensations of +sound or colour? The language of science, no less than that of sense, +should have been recognised to be a human language; and the nature of +anything existent collateral with ourselves, be that collateral existence +material or mental, should have been confessed to be a subject for faith +and for hypothesis, never, by any possibility, for absolute or direct +intuition. + +There is no occasion to take alarm at this doctrine as if it condemned us +to solitary confinement, and to ignorance of the world in which we live. +We see and know the world through our eyes and our intelligence, in visual +and in intellectual terms: how else should a world be seen or known which +is not the figment of a dream, but a collateral power, pressing and alien? +In the cognisance which an animal may take of his surroundings--and surely +all animals take such cognisance--the subjective and moral character of +his feelings, on finding himself so surrounded, does not destroy their +cognitive value. These feelings, as Locke says, are signs: to take them +for signs is the essence of intelligence. Animals that are sensitive +physically are also sensitive morally, and feel the friendliness or +hostility which surrounds them. Even pain and pleasure are no idle +sensations, satisfied with their own presence: they violently summon +attention to the objects that are their source. Can love or hate be felt +without being felt towards something--something near and potent, yet +external, uncontrolled, and mysterious? When I dodge a missile or pick a +berry, is it likely that my mind should stop to dwell on its pure +sensations or ideas without recognising or pursuing something material? +Analytic reflection often ignores the essential energy of mind, which is +originally more intelligent than sensuous, more appetitive and dogmatic +than aesthetic. But the feelings and ideas of an active animal cannot help +uniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the +natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe +their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, +and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects +which entice that organism or threaten it. + +All ambitions must be defeated when they ask for the impossible. The +ambition to know is not an exception; and certainly our perceptions cannot +tell us how the world would look if nobody saw it, or how valuable it +would be if nobody cared for it. But our perceptions, as Locke again said, +are sufficient for our welfare and appropriate to our condition. They are +not only a wonderful entertainment in themselves, but apart from their +sensuous and grammatical quality, by their distribution and method of +variation, they may inform us most exactly about the order and mechanism +of nature. We see in the science of today how completely the most accurate +knowledge--proved to be accurate by its application in the arts--may shed +every pictorial element, and the whole language of experience, to become a +pure method of calculation and control. And by a pleasant compensation, +our aesthetic life may become freer, more self-sufficing, more humbly +happy in itself: and without trespassing in any way beyond the modesty of +nature, we may consent to be like little children, chirping our human +note; since the life of reason in us may well become science in its +validity, whilst remaining poetry in its texture. + +I think, then, that by a slight re-arrangement of Locke's pronouncements +in natural philosophy, they could be made inwardly consistent, and still +faithful to the first presuppositions of common sense, although certainly +far more chastened and sceptical than impulsive opinion is likely to be +in the first instance. + +There were other presuppositions in the philosophy of Locke besides his +fundamental naturalism; and in his private mind probably the most +important was his Christian faith, which was not only confident and +sincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation. He had friends +among the Cambridge Platonists, and he found in Newton a brilliant example +of scientific rigour capped with mystical insights. Yet if we consider +Locke's philosophical position in the abstract, his Christianity almost +disappears. In form his theology and ethics were strictly rationalistic; +yet one who was a Deist in philosophy might remain a Christian in +religion. There was no great harm in a special revelation, provided it +were simple and short, and left the broad field of truth open in almost +every direction to free and personal investigation. A free man and a good +man would certainly never admit, as coming from God, any doctrine contrary +to his private reason or political interest; and the moral precepts +actually vouchsafed to us in the Gospels were most acceptable, seeing +that they added a sublime eloquence to maxims which sound reason would +have arrived at in any case. + +Evidently common sense had nothing to fear from religious faith of this +character; but the matter could not end there. Common sense is not more +convinced of anything than of the difference between good and evil, +advantage and disaster; and it cannot dispense with a moral interpretation +of the universe. Socrates, who spoke initially for common sense, even +thought the moral interpretation of existence the whole of philosophy. He +would not have seen anything comic in the satire of Molière making his +chorus of young doctors chant in unison that opium causes sleep because it +has a dormitive virtue. The virtues or moral uses of things, according to +Socrates, were the reason why the things had been created and were what +they were; the admirable virtues of opium defined its perfection, and the +perfection of a thing was the full manifestation of its deepest nature. +Doubtless this moral interpretation of the universe had been overdone, and +it had been a capital error in Socrates to make that interpretation +exclusive and to substitute it for natural philosophy. Locke, who was +himself a medical man, knew what a black cloak for ignorance and villainy +Scholastic verbiage might be in that profession. He also knew, being an +enthusiast for experimental science, that in order to control the movement +of matter--which is to realise those virtues and perfections--it is better +to trace the movement of matter materialistically; for it is in the act of +manifesting its own powers, and not, as Socrates and the Scholastics +fancied, by obeying a foreign magic, that matter sometimes assumes or +restores the forms so precious in the healer's or the moralist's eyes. At +the same time, the manner in which the moral world rests upon the natural, +though divined, perhaps, by a few philosophers, has not been generally +understood; and Locke, whose broad humanity could not exclude the moral +interpretation of nature, was driven in the end to the view of Socrates. +He seriously invoked the Scholastic maxim that nothing can produce that +which it does not contain. For this reason the unconscious, after all, +could never have given rise to consciousness. Observation and experiment +could not be allowed to decide this point: the moral interpretation of +things, because more deeply rooted in human experience, must envelop the +physical interpretation, and must have the last word. + +It was characteristic of Locke's simplicity and intensity that he retained +these insulated sympathies in various quarters. A further instance of his +many-sidedness was his fidelity to pure intuition, his respect for the +infallible revelation of ideal being, such as we have of sensible +qualities or of mathematical relations. In dreams and in hallucinations +appearances may deceive us, and the objects we think we see may not exist +at all. Yet in suffering an illusion we must entertain an idea; and the +manifest character of these ideas is that of which alone, Locke thinks, we +can have certain "knowledge". + + "These", he writes, "are two very different things and carefully to + be distinguished: it being one thing to perceive and know the idea + of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind of + particles they must be, and how arranged ... to make any object + appear white or black." "A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he + has them in his mind, that the ideas he calls white and round are + the very ideas they are, and that they are not other ideas which he + calls red or square.... This ... the mind ... always perceives at + first sight; and if ever there happen any doubt about it, it will + always be found to be about the names and not the ideas + themselves." + +This sounds like high Platonic doctrine for a philosopher of the Left; but +Locke's utilitarian temper very soon reasserted itself in this subject. +Mathematical ideas were not only lucid but true: and he demanded this +truth, which he called "reality", of all ideas worthy of consideration: +mere ideas would be worthless. Very likely he forgot, in his philosophic +puritanism, that fiction and music might have an intrinsic charm. Where +the frontier of human wisdom should be drawn in this direction was clearly +indicated, in Locke's day, by Spinoza, who says: + + "If, in keeping non-existent things present to the imagination, the + mind were at the same time aware that those things did not exist, + surely it would regard this gift of imagination as a virtue in its + own constitution, not as a vice: especially if such an imaginative + faculty depended on nothing except the mind's own nature: that is + to say, if this mental faculty of imagination were free". + +But Locke had not so firm a hold on truth that he could afford to play +with fancy; and as he pushed forward the claims of human jurisdiction +rather too far in physics, by assuming the current science to be literally +true, so, in the realm of imagination, he retrenched somewhat illiberally +our legitimate possessions. Strange that as modern philosophy transfers +the visible wealth of nature more and more to the mind, the mind should +seem to lose courage and to become ashamed of its own fertility. The +hard-pressed natural man will not indulge his imagination unless it poses +for truth; and being half aware of this imposition, he is more troubled at +the thought of being deceived than at the fact of being mechanised or +being bored: and he would wish to escape imagination altogether. A good +God, he murmurs, could not have made us poets against our will. + +Against his will, however, Locke was drawn to enlarge the subjective +sphere. The actual existence of mind was evident: you had only to notice +the fact that you were thinking. Conscious mind, being thus known to +exist directly and independently of the body, was a primary constituent of +reality: it was a fact on its own account.[6] Common sense seemed to +testify to this, not only when confronted with the "I think, therefore I +am" of Descartes, but whenever a thought produced an action. Since mind +and body interacted,[7] each must be as real as the other and, as it were, +on the same plane of being. Locke, like a good Protestant, felt the right +of the conscious inner man to assert himself: and when he looked into his +own mind, he found nothing to define this mind except the ideas which +occupied it. The existence which he was so sure of in himself was +therefore the existence of his ideas. + +Here, by an insensible shift in the meaning of the word "idea", a +momentous revolution had taken place in psychology. Ideas had originally +meant objective terms distinguished in thought-images, qualities, +concepts, propositions. But now ideas began to mean living thoughts, +moments or states of consciousness. They became atoms of mind, +constituents of experience, very much as material atoms were conceived to +be constituents of natural objects. Sensations became the only objects of +sensation, and ideas the only objects of ideas; so that the material world +was rendered superfluous, and the only scientific problem was now to +construct a universe in terms of analytic psychology. Locke himself did +not go so far, and continued to assign physical causes and physical +objects to some, at least, of his mental units; and indeed sensations and +ideas could not very well have other than physical causes, the existence +of which this new psychology was soon to deny: so that about the origin of +its data it was afterwards compelled to preserve a discreet silence. But +as to their combinations and reappearances, it was able to invoke the +principle of association: a thread on which many shrewd observations may +be strung, but which also, when pressed, appears to be nothing but a +verbal mask for organic habits in matter. + +The fact is that there are two sorts of unobjectionable psychology, +neither of which describes a mechanism of disembodied mental states, such +as the followers of Locke developed into modern idealism, to the +confusion of common sense.[8] One unobjectionable sort of psychology is +biological, and studies life from the outside. The other sort, relying on +memory and dramatic imagination, reproduces life from the inside, and is +literary. If the literary psychologist is a man of genius, by the +clearness and range of his memory, by quickness of sympathy and power of +suggestion, he may come very near to the truth of experience, as it has +been or might be unrolled in a human being.[9] The ideas with which Locke +operates are simply high lights picked out by attention in this nebulous +continuum, and identified by names. Ideas, in the original ideal sense of +the word, are indeed the only definite terms which attention can +discriminate and rest upon; but the unity of these units is specious, not +existential. If ideas were not logical or aesthetic essences but +self-subsisting feelings, each knowing itself, they would be insulated for +ever; no spirit could ever survey, recognise, or compare them; and mind +would have disappeared in the analysis of mind. + +These considerations might enable us, I think, to mark the just frontier +of common sense even in this debatable land of psychology. All that is +biological, observable, and documentary in psychology falls within the +lines of physical science and offers no difficulty in principle. Nor need +literary psychology form a dangerous salient in the circuit of nature. The +dramatic poet or dramatic historian necessarily retains the presupposition +of a material world, since beyond his personal memory (and even within it) +he has nothing to stimulate and control his dramatic imagination save +knowledge of the material circumstances in which people live, and of the +material expression in action or words which they give to their feelings. +His moral insight simply vivifies the scene that nature and the sciences +of nature spread out before him: they tell him what has happened, and his +heart tells him what has been felt. Only literature can describe +experience for the excellent reason that the terms of experience are moral +and literary from the beginning. Mind is incorrigibly poetical: not +because it is not attentive to material facts and practical exigencies, +but because, being intensely attentive to them, it turns them into +pleasures and pains, and into many-coloured ideas. Yet at every turn there +is a possibility and an occasion for transmuting this poetry into science, +because ideas and emotions, being caused by material events, refer to +these events, and record their order. + +All philosophies are frail, in that they are products of the human mind, +in which everything is essentially reactive, spontaneous, and volatile: +but as in passion and in language, so in philosophy, there are certain +comparatively steady and hereditary principles, forming a sort of orthodox +reason, which is or which may become the current grammar of mankind. Of +philosophers who are orthodox in this sense, only the earliest or the most +powerful, an Aristotle or a Spinoza, need to be remembered, in that they +stamp their language and temper upon human reason itself. The rest of the +orthodox are justly lost in the crowd and relegated to the chorus. The +frailty of heretical philosophers is more conspicuous and interesting: it +makes up the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the mind, or the history of +philosophy. Locke belongs to both camps: he was restive in his orthodoxy +and timid in his heresies; and like so many other initiators of +revolutions, he would be dismayed at the result of his work. In intention +Locke occupied an almost normal philosophic position, rendered precarious +not by what was traditional in it, like the categories of substance and +power, but rather by certain incidental errors--notably by admitting an +experience independent of bodily life, yet compounded and evolving in a +mechanical fashion. But I do not find in him a prickly nest of obsolete +notions and contradictions from which, fledged at last, we have flown to +our present enlightenment. In his person, in his temper, in his +allegiances and hopes, he was the prototype of a race of philosophers +native and dominant among people of English speech, if not in academic +circles, at least in the national mind. If we make allowance for a greater +personal subtlety, and for the diffidence and perplexity inevitable in the +present moral anarchy of the world, we may find this same Lockian +eclecticism and prudence in the late Lord Balfour: and I have myself had +the advantage of being the pupil of a gifted successor and, in many ways, +emulator, of Locke, I mean William James. So great, at bottom, does their +spiritual kinship seem to me to be, that I can hardly conceive Locke +vividly without seeing him as a sort of William James of the seventeenth +century. And who of you has not known some other spontaneous, inquisitive, +unsettled genius, no less preoccupied with the marvellous intelligence of +some Brazilian parrot, than with the sad obstinacy of some Bishop of +Worcester? Here is eternal freshness of conviction and ardour for reform; +great keenness of perception in spots, and in other spots lacunae and +impulsive judgments; distrust of tradition, of words, of constructive +argument; horror of vested interests and of their smooth defenders; a love +of navigating alone and exploring for oneself even the coasts already well +charted by others. Here is romanticism united with a scientific conscience +and power of destructive analysis balanced by moral enthusiasm. Doubtless +Locke might have dug his foundations deeper and integrated his faith +better. His system was no metaphysical castle, no theological acropolis: +rather a homely ancestral manor house built in several styles of +architecture: a Tudor chapel, a Palladian front toward the new +geometrical garden, a Jacobean parlour for political consultation and +learned disputes, and even--since we are almost in the eighteenth +century--a Chinese cabinet full of curios. It was a habitable philosophy, +and not too inharmonious. There was no greater incongruity in its parts +than in the gentle variations of English weather or in the qualified moods +and insights of a civilised mind. Impoverished as we are, morally and +humanly, we can no longer live in such a rambling mansion. It has become a +national monument. On the days when it is open we revisit it with +admiration; and those chambers and garden walks re-echo to us the clear +dogmas and savoury diction of the sage--omnivorous, artless, +loquacious--whose dwelling it was. + + +[1] Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the occasion of +the Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke. + +[2] See note I, p. 26. + +[3] See note II, p. 29. + +[4] See note III, p. 35. + +[5] See note IV, p. 36. + +[6] See note V, p. 37. + +[7] See note VI, p. 39. + +[8] See note VII, p. 43. + +[9] See note VIII, p. 46. + + + + +SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES + + +I + +Page 3. _This airy monster, this half-natural changeling._ + +Monsters and changelings were pointed to by Locke with a certain +controversial relish: they proved that nature was not compressed or +compressible within Aristotelian genera and species, but was a free +mechanism subject to indefinite change. Mechanism in physics is favourable +to liberty in politics and morals: each creature has a right to be what it +spontaneously is, and not what some previous classification alleges that +it ought to have been. The Protestant and revolutionary independence of +Locke's mind here gives us a foretaste of Darwin and even of Nietzsche. +But Locke was moderate even in his radicalisms. A human nature totally +fluid would of itself have proved anarchical; but in order to stem that +natural anarchy it was fortunately possible to invoke the conditions of +prosperity and happiness strictly laid down by the Creator. The +improvidence and naughtiness of nature was called to book at every turn by +the pleasures and pains divinely appended to things enjoined and to things +forbidden, and ultimately by hell and by heaven. Yet if rewards and +punishments were attached to human action and feeling in this perfectly +external and arbitrary fashion, whilst the feelings and actions +spontaneous in mankind counted for nothing in the rule of morals and of +wisdom, we should be living under the most cruel and artificial of +tyrannies; and it would not be long before the authority of such a code +would be called in question and the reality of those arbitrary rewards and +punishments would be denied, both for this world and for any other. In a +truly rational morality moral sanctions would have to vary with the +variation of species, each new race or individual or mode of feeling +finding its natural joy in a new way of life. The monsters would not be +monsters except to rustic prejudice, and the changelings would be simply +experiments in creation. The glee of Locke in seeing nature elude +scholastic conventions would then lose its savour, since those staid +conventions themselves would have become obsolete. Nature would henceforth +present nothing but pervasive metamorphosis, irresponsible and endless. To +correct the weariness of such pure flux we might indeed invoke the idea of +a progress or evolution towards something always higher and better; but +this idea simply reinstates, under a temporal form, the dominance of a +specific standard, to which nature is asked to conform. Genera and species +might shift and glide into one another at will, but always in the +authorised direction. If, on the contrary, transformation had no +predetermined direction, we should be driven back, for a moral principle, +to each of the particular types of life generated on the way: as in +estimating the correctness or beauty of language we appeal to the speech +and genius of each nation at each epoch, without imposing the grammar of +one language or age upon another. It is only in so far as, in the midst of +the flux, certain tropes become organised and recurrent, that any +interests or beauties can be transmitted from moment to moment or from +generation to generation. Physical integration is a prerequisite to moral +integrity; and unless an individual or a species is sufficiently organised +and determinate to aspire to a distinguishable form of life, eschewing all +others, that individual or species can bear no significant name, can +achieve no progress, and can approach no beauty or perfection. + +Thus, so long as in a fluid world there is some measure of life and +organisation, monsters and changelings will always remain possible +physically and regrettable morally. Small deviations from the chosen type +or the chosen direction of progress will continue to be called morbid and +ugly, and great deviations or reversals will continue to be called +monstrous. This is but the seamy side of that spontaneous predilection, +grounded in our deepest nature, by which we recognise beauty and nobleness +at first sight, with immense refreshment and perfect certitude. + + +II + +Page 8. _Through Descartes._ + +Very characteristic was the tireless polemic which Locke carried on +against Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against +sweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims: +children were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were +equal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain was caused by the +paternal slipper before he reflected philosophically that everything must +have a cause. Again, extension was not the essence of matter, which must +be solid as well, to be distinguishable from empty space. Finally, +thinking was not the essence of the soul: a man, without dying, might lose +consciousness: this often happened, or at least could not be prevented +from happening by a definition framed by a French philosopher. These +protests were evidently justified by common sense: yet they missed the +speculative radicalism and depth of the Cartesian doctrines, which had +struck the keynotes of all modern philosophy and science: for they +assumed, for the first time in history, the transcendental point of view. +No wonder that Locke could not do justice to this great novelty: Descartes +himself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the +development of his system; and it was not until adopted by Kant, or rather +by Fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. Even +today philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and +physics with soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes +were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and +authority. A man who has a clear head, and like Descartes is rendered by +his aristocratic pride both courteous and disdainful, may readily conform +to usage in his language, and even in his personal sentiments, without +taking either too seriously: he is not struggling to free his own mind, +which is free already, nor very hopeful of freeing that of most people. +The innate ideas were not explicit thoughts but categories employed +unwittingly, as people in speaking conform to the grammar of the +vernacular without being aware that they do so. As for extension being the +essence of matter, since matter existed and was a substance, it would +always have been more than its essence: a sort of ether the parts of which +might move and might have different and calculable dynamic values. The +gist of this definition of matter was to clear the decks for scientific +calculation, by removing from nature the moral density and moral magic +with which the Socratic philosophy had encumbered it. Science would be +employed in describing the movements of bodies, leaving it for the senses +and feelings to appreciate the cross-lights that might be generated in the +process. Though not following the technique of Descartes, the physics of +our own day realises his ideal, and traces in nature a mathematical +dynamism, perfectly sufficient for exact prevision and mechanical art. + +Similarly, in saying that the essence of the soul was to think, Descartes +detached consciousness, or actual spirit, from the meshes of all unknown +organic or invented mental mechanisms. It was an immense clarification and +liberation in its proper dimension: but this pure consciousness was not a +soul; it was not the animal psyche, or principle of organisation, life, +and passion--a principle which, according to Descartes, was material. To +have called such a material principle the soul would have shocked all +Christian conceptions; but if Descartes had abstained from giving that +consecrated name to mere consciousness, he need not have been wary of +making the latter intermittent and evanescent, as it naturally is. He was +driven to the conclusion that the soul can never stop thinking, by the +desire to placate orthodox opinion, and his own Christian sentiments, at +the expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial +independence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with +it: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the Platonic soul, +which had been a mythological being, a supernatural spirit or daemon or +incubus, incarnate in the natural world, and partly dominating it. The +relations of such a soul to the particular body or bodies which it might +weave for itself on earth, to the actions which it performed through such +bodies, and to the current of its own thoughts, then became questions for +theology, or for a moralistic theory of the universe. They were questions +remote from the preoccupations of the modern mind; yet it was not possible +either for Locke or for Descartes to clear their fresh conceptions +altogether from those ancient dreams. + +What views precisely did Locke oppose to these radical tendencies of +Descartes? + +In respect to the nature of matter, I have indicated above the position +of Locke: pictorially he accepted an ordinary atomism; scientifically, the +physics of Newton. + +On the other two points Locke's convictions were implicit rather than +speculative: he resisted the Cartesian theories without much developing +his own, as after all was natural in a critic engaged in proving that our +natural faculties were not intended for speculation. All knowledge came +from experience, and no man could know the savour of a pineapple without +having tasted it. Yet this savour, according to Locke, did not reside at +first in the pineapple, to be conveyed on contact to the palate and to the +mind; but it was generated in the process of gustation; or perhaps we +should rather say that it was generated in the mind on occasion of that +process. At least, then, in respect to secondary qualities, and to all +moral values, the terms of human knowledge were not drawn from the objects +encountered in the world, but from an innate sensibility proper to the +human body or mind. Experience--if this word meant the lifelong train of +ideas which made a man's moral being--was not a source of knowledge but +was knowledge (or illusion) itself, produced by organs endowed with a +special native sensibility in contact with varying external stimuli. This +conclusion would then not have contradicted, but exactly expressed, the +doctrine of innate categories. + +As to the soul, which might exist without thinking, Locke still called it +an immaterial substance: not so immaterial, however, as not to be conveyed +bodily with him in his coach from London to Oxford. Although, like Hobbes, +Locke believed in the power of the English language to clarify the human +intellect, he here ignored the advice of Hobbes to turn that befuddling +Latin phrase into plain English. Substance meant body: immaterial meant +bodiless: therefore immaterial substance meant bodiless body. True, +substance had not really meant body for Aristotle or the Schoolmen; but +who now knew or cared what anything had meant for them? Locke scornfully +refused to consider what a substantial form may have signified; and in +still maintaining that he had a soul, and calling it a spiritual +substance, he was probably simply protesting that there was something +living and watchful within his breast, the invisible moral agent in all +his thoughts and actions. It was _he_ that had them and did them; and this +self of his was far from being reducible to a merely logical impersonal +subject, an "I think" presupposed in all thought: for what would this "I +think" have become when it was not thinking? On the other hand it mattered +very little what the _substance_ of a thinking being might be: God might +even have endowed the body with the faculty of thinking, and of generating +ideas on occasion of certain impacts. Yet a man was a man for all that: +and Locke was satisfied that he knew, at least well enough for an honest +Englishman, what he was. He was what he felt himself to be: and this inner +man of his was not merely the living self, throbbing now in his heart; it +was all his moral past, all that he remembered to have been. If, from +moment to moment, the self was a spiritual energy astir within, in +retrospect the living present seemed, as it were, to extend its tentacles +and to communicate its subjectivity to his whole personal past. The limits +of his personality were those of his memory, and his experience included +everything that his living mind could appropriate and re-live. In a word, +_he was his idea of himself_: and this insight opens a new chapter not +only in his philosophy but in the history of human self-estimation. +Mankind was henceforth invited not to think of itself as a tribe of +natural beings, nor of souls, with a specific nature and fixed +possibilities. Each man was a romantic personage or literary character: he +was simply what he was thought to be, and might become anything that he +could will to become. The way was opened for Napoleon on the one hand and +for Fichte on the other. + + +III + +Page 9. __All_ ideas must be equally conditioned._ + +Even the mathematical ideas which seem so exactly to describe the dynamic +order of nature are not repetitions of their natural counterpart: for +mathematical form in nature is a web of diffuse relations enacted; in the +mind it is a thought possessed, the logical synthesis of those deployed +relations. To run in a circle is one thing; to conceive a circle is +another. Our mind by its animal roots (which render it relevant to the +realm of matter and cognitive) and by its spiritual actuality (which +renders it original, synthetic, and emotional) is a language, from its +beginnings; almost, we might say, a biological poetry; and the greater the +intellectuality and poetic abstraction the greater the possible range. Yet +we must not expect this scope of speculation in us to go with adequacy or +exhaustiveness: on the contrary, mathematics and religion, each in its way +so sure, leave most of the truth out. + + +IV + +Page 9. _He cannot be aware of what goes on beyond him, except as it +affects his own life._ + +Even that spark of divine intelligence which comes into the animal soul, +as Aristotle says, from beyond the gates, comes and is called down by the +exigencies of physical life. An animal endowed with locomotion cannot +merely feast sensuously on things as they appear, but must react upon them +at the first signal, and in so doing must virtually and in intent envisage +them as they are in themselves. For it is by virtue of their real +constitution and intrinsic energy that they act upon us and suffer change +in turn at our hands; so that whatsoever form things may take to our +senses and intellect, they take that form by exerting their material +powers upon us, and intertwining them in action with our own organisms. + +Thus the appearance of things is always, in some measure, a true index to +their reality. Animals are inevitably engaged in self-transcending action, +and the consciousness of self-transcending action is self-transcendent +knowledge. The very nature of animal life makes it possible, within animal +consciousness, to discount appearance and to correct illusion--things +which in a vegetative or aesthetic sensibility would not be +distinguishable from pure experience itself. But when aroused to +self-transcendent attention, feeling must needs rise to intelligence, so +that external fact and impartial truth come within the range of +consciousness, not indeed by being contained there, but by being aimed at. + + +V + +Page 19. _Conscious mind was a fact on its own account._ + +This conscious mind was a man's moral being, and personal identity could +not extend further than possible memory. This doctrine of Locke's had some +comic applications. The Bishop of Worcester was alarmed. If actions which +a hardened sinner had forgotten were no longer his, a short memory would +be a great blessing in the Day of Judgment. On the other hand, a theology +more plastic than Stillingfleet's would one day find in this same doctrine +a new means of edification. For if I may disown all actions I have +forgotten, may not things not done or witnessed by me in the body be now +appropriated and incorporated in my consciousness, if only I conceive them +vividly? The door is then open to all the noble ambiguities of idealism. +As my consciousness expands, or thinks it expands, into dramatic sympathy +with universal experience, that experience becomes my own. I may say I +have been the agent in all past achievements. Emerson could know that he +was Shakespeare and Caesar and Christ. Futurity is mine also, in every +possible direction at once; and I am one with the spirit of the universe +and with God. + +Locke reassured the Bishop of Worcester, and was humbly confident that +Divine Justice would find a way of vindicating Itself in spite of human +wit. He might have added that if the sin of Adam could not only be imputed +to us juridically but could actually taint our consciousness--as it +certainly does if by Adam we understand our whole material heritage--so +surely the sins done or the habits acquired by the body beyond the scope +of consciousness may taint or clarify this consciousness now. Indeed, the +idea we form of ourselves and of our respective experiences is a figment +of vanity, a product of dramatic imagination, without cognitive import +save as a reading of the hidden forces, physical or divine, which have +formed us and actually govern us. + + +VI + +Page 19. _Mind and body interacted._ + +The self which acts in a man is itself moved by forces which have long +been familiar to common sense, without being understood except +dramatically. These forces are called the passions; or when the dramatic +units distinguished are longish strands rather than striking episodes, +they are called temperament, character, or will; or perhaps, weaving all +these strands and episodes together again into one moral fabric, we call +them simply human nature. But in what does this vague human nature reside, +and how does it operate on the non-human world? Certainly not within the +conscious sphere, or in the superficial miscellany of experience. +Immediate experience is the intermittent chaos which human nature, in +combination with external circumstances, is invoked to support and to +rationalise. Is human nature, then, resident in each individual soul? +Certainly: but the soul is merely another name for that active principle +which we are looking for, to be the seat of our sensibility and the source +of our actions. Is this psychic power, then, resident in the body? +Undoubtedly; since it is hereditary and transmitted by a seed, and +continually aroused and modified by material agencies. + +Since this soul or self in the body is so obscure, the temptation is great +to dramatise its energies and to describe them in myths. Myth is the +normal means of describing those forces of nature which we cannot measure +or understand; if we could understand or measure them we should describe +them prosaically and analytically, in what is called science. But nothing +is less measurable, or less intelligible to us, in spite of being so near +us and familiar, as the life of this carnal instrument, so soft and so +violent, which breeds our sensations and precipitates our actions. We see +today how the Freudian psychology, just because it is not satisfied with +registering the routine of consciousness but endeavours to trace its +hidden mechanism and to unravel its physical causes, is driven to use the +most frankly mythological language. The physiological processes concerned, +though presupposed, are not on the scale of human perception and not +traceable in detail; and the moral action, though familiar in snatches, +has to be patched by invented episodes, and largely attributed to daemonic +personages that never come on the stage. + +Locke, in his psychology of morals, had at first followed the verbal +rationalism by which people attribute motives to themselves and to one +another. Human actions were explained by the alleged pursuit of the +greater prospective pleasure, and avoidance of the greater prospective +pain. But this way of talking, though not so poetical as Freud's, is no +less mythical. Eventual goods and evils have no present existence and no +power: they cannot even be discerned prophetically, save by the vaguest +fancy, entirely based on the present impulses and obsessions of the soul. +No future good, no future evil avails to move us, except--as Locke said +after examining the facts more closely--when a _certain uneasiness_ in the +soul (or in the body) causes us to turn to those untried goods and evils +with a present and living interest. This actual uneasiness, with the dream +pictures which it evokes, is a mere symptom of the direction in which +human nature in us is already moving, or already disposed to move. Without +this prior physical impulse, heaven may beckon and hell may yawn without +causing the least variation in conduct. As in religious conversion all is +due to the call of grace, so in ordinary action all is due to the ripening +of natural impulses and powers within the psyche. The _uneasiness_ +observed by Locke is merely the consciousness of this ripening, before the +field of relevant action has been clearly discerned. + +When all this is considered, the ostensible interaction between mind and +body puts on a new aspect. There are no _purely mental_ ideas or +intentions followed by material effects: there are no material events +followed by a _purely mental_ sensation or idea. Mental events are always +elements in total natural events containing material elements also: +material elements form the organ, the stimulus, and probably also the +object for those mental sensations or ideas. Moreover, the physical strand +alone is found to be continuous and traceable; the conscious strand, the +sequence of mental events, flares up and dies down daily, if not hourly; +and the medley of its immediate features--images, words, moods--juxtaposes +China and Peru, past and future, in the most irresponsible confusion. On +the other hand, in human life it is a part of the conscious +element--intentions, affections, plans, and reasonings--that _explains_ +the course of action: dispersed temporally, our dominant thoughts contain +the reason for our continuous behaviour, and seem to guide it. They are +not so much links in a chain of minute consecutive causes--an idea or an +act of will often takes time to work and works, as it were, only +posthumously--as they are general overarching moral inspirations and +resolves, which the machinery of our bodies executes in its own way, often +rendering our thoughts more precise in the process, or totally +transforming them. We do roughly what we meant to do, barring accidents. +The reasons lie deep in our compound nature, being probably inarticulate; +and our action in a fragmentary way betrays our moral disposition: betrays +it in both senses of the word betray, now revealing it unawares, and now +sadly disappointing it. + +I leave it for the reader's reflection to decide whether we should call +such cohabitation of mind with body interaction, or not rather sympathetic +concomitance, self-annotation, and a partial prophetic awakening to a life +which we are leading automatically. + + +VII + +Page 21. _To the confusion of common sense._ + +Berkeley and his followers sometimes maintain that common sense is on +their side, that they have simply analysed the fact of our experience of +the material world, and if there is any paradox in their idealism, it is +merely verbal and disappears with familiarity. All the "reality", they +say, all the force, obduracy, and fertility of nature subsist undiminished +after we discover that this reality resides, and can only reside, in the +fixed order of our experience. + +But no: analysis of immediate experience will never disclose any fixed +order in it; the surface of experience, when not interpreted +materialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers, +when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of +experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and +relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so +that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our +experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further +biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future +not so much similar to the past, as better. When developed, this +propensity turns into trust in natural or divine laws; but it is contrary +to common sense to expect such laws to operate apart from matter and from +the material continuity of external occasions. This appears clearly in our +trust in persons--a radical animal propensity--which is consonant with +common sense when these persons are living bodies, but becomes +superstitious, or at least highly speculative, when these persons are +disembodied spirits. + +It is a pity that the beautiful system of Berkeley should have appeared in +an unspiritual age, when religion was mundane and perfunctory, and the +free spirit, where it stirred, was romantic and wilful. For that system +was essentially religious: it put the spirit face to face with God, +everywhere, always, and in everything it turned experience into a divine +language for the monition and expression of the inner man. Such an +instrument, in spiritual hands, might have served to dispel all natural +illusions and affections, and to disinfect the spirit of worldliness and +egotism. But Berkeley and his followers had no such thought. All they +wished was to substitute a social for a material world, precisely because +a merely social world might make worldly interests loom larger and might +induce mankind, against the evidence of their senses and the still small +voice in their hearts, to live as if their worldly interests were absolute +and must needs dominate the spirit. + +Morally this system thus came to sanction a human servitude to material +things such as ancient materialists would have scorned; and theoretically +the system did not escape the dogmatic commitments of common sense against +which it protested. For far from withdrawing into the depths of the +private spirit, it professed to describe universal experience and the +evolution of all human ideas. This notion of "experience" originally +presupposed a natural agent or subject to endure that experience, and to +profit by it, by learning to live in better harmony with external +circumstances. Each agent or subject of experience might, at other times, +become an object of experience also: for they all formed part of a +material world, which they might envisage in common in their perceptions. +Now the criticism which repudiates this common material medium, like all +criticism or doubt, is secondary and partial: it continues to operate with +all the assumptions of common sense, save the one which it is expressly +criticising. So, in repudiating the material world, this philosophy +retains the notion of various agents or subjects gathering experience; and +we are not expected to doubt that there are just as many streams of +experience without a world, as there were people in the world when the +world existed. But the number and nature of these experiences have now +become undiscoverable, the material persons having been removed who +formerly were so placed as to gather easily imagined experiences, and to +be able to communicate them; and the very notion of experience has been +emptied of its meaning, when no external common world subsists to impose +that same experience on everybody. It was not knowledge of existing +experiences _in vacuo_ that led common sense to assume a material world, +but knowledge of an existing material world led it to assume existing, and +regularly reproducible, experiences. + +Thus the whole social convention posited by empirical idealism is borrowed +without leave, and rests on the belief in nature for which it is +substituted. + + +VIII + +Page 21. _The literary psychologist may come very near to the truth of +experience._ + +Experience cannot be in itself an object of science, because it is +essentially invisible, immeasurable, fugitive, and private; and although +it may be shared or repeated, the evidence for that repetition or that +unanimity cannot be found by comparing a present experience with another +experience by hypothesis absent. Both the absent experience and its +agreement with the present experience must be imagined freely and credited +instinctively, in view of the known circumstances in which the absent +experience is conceived to have occurred. The only instrument for +conceiving experience at large is accordingly private imagination; and +such imagination cannot be tested, although it may be guided and perhaps +recast by fresh observations or reports concerning the action and language +of other people. For action and language, being contagious, and being the +material counterpart of experience in each of us, may voluntarily or +involuntarily suggest our respective experience to one another, by causing +each to re-enact more or less accurately within himself the experience of +the rest. Thus alien thoughts and feelings are revealed or suggested to us +in common life, not without a subjective transformation increasing, so to +speak, as the square of the distance: and even the record of experience in +people's own words, when these are not names for recognisable external +things, awakens in the reader, in another age or country, quite +incommensurable ideas. Yet, under favourable circumstances, such +suggestion or revelation of experience, without ever becoming science, may +become public unanimity in sentiment, and may produce a truthful and +lively dramatic literature. + +All modern philosophy, in so far as it is a description of experience and +not of nature, therefore seems to belong to the sphere of literature, and +to be without scientific value. + + + + +II + +FIFTY YEARS OF BRITISH IDEALISM[10] + + +After fifty years, an old milestone in the path of philosophy, Bradley's +_Ethical Studies_, has been set up again, as if to mark the distance which +English opinion has traversed in the interval. It has passed from insular +dogmatism to universal bewilderment; and a chief agent in the change has +been Bradley himself, with his scornful and delicate intellect, his wit, +his candour, his persistence, and the baffling futility of his +conclusions. In this early book we see him coming forth like a young David +against every clumsy champion of utilitarianism, hedonism, positivism, or +empiricism. And how smooth and polished were the little stones in his +sling! How fatally they would have lodged in the forehead of that +composite monster, if only it had had a forehead! Some of them might even +have done murderous execution in Bradley's own camp: for instance, this +pebble cast playfully at the metaphysical idol called "Law": "It is +_always_ wet on half-holidays because of the Law of Raininess, but +_sometimes_ it is _not_ wet, because of the Supplementary Law of +Sunshine". + +Bradley and his friends achieved a notable victory in the academic field: +philosophic authority and influence passed largely into their hands in all +English-speaking universities. But it was not exactly from these seats of +learning that naturalism and utilitarianism needed to be dislodged; like +the corresponding radicalisms of our day, these doctrines prevailed rather +in certain political and intellectual circles outside, consciously +revolutionary and often half-educated; and I am afraid that the braggart +Goliaths of today need chastening at least as much as those of fifty years +ago. In a country officially Christian, and especially in Oxford, it is +natural and fitting that academic authority should belong to orthodox +tradition--theological, Platonic, and Aristotelian. Bradley, save for a +few learned quotations, strangely ignored this orthodoxy entrenched +behind his back. In contrast with it he was himself a heretic, with first +principles devastating every settled belief: and it was really this +venerable silent partner at home that his victory superseded, at least in +appearance and for a season. David did not slay Goliath, but he dethroned +Saul. Saul was indeed already under a cloud, and all in David's heart was +not unkindness in that direction. Bradley might almost be called an +unbelieving Newman; time, especially, seems to have brought his suffering +and refined spirit into greater sympathy with ancient sanctities. +Originally, for instance, venting the hearty Protestant sentiment that +only the Christianity of laymen is sound, he had written: "I am happy to +say that 'religieux' has no English equivalent". But a later note says: +"This is not true except of Modern English only. And, in any case, it +won't do, and was wrong and due to ignorance. However secluded the +religious life, it may be practical indirectly _if_ through the unity of +the spiritual body it can be taken as vicarious". The "_if_" here saves +the principle that all values must be social, and that the social organism +is the sole moral reality: yet how near this bubble comes to being +pricked! We seem clearly to feel that the question is not whether +spiritual life subserves animal society, but whether animal society ever +is stirred and hallowed into spiritual life. + +All this, however, in that age of progress, was regarded as obsolete: +there was no longer to be any spirit except the spirit of the times. True, +the ritualists might be striving to revive the latent energies of +religious devotion, with some dubious help from aestheticism: but against +the rising tide of mechanical progress and romantic anarchy, and against +the mania for rewriting history, traditional philosophy then seemed +helpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover +its intellectual courage. For the moment, speculative radicals saw light +in a different quarter. German idealism was nothing if not self-confident; +it was relatively new; it was encyclopaedic in its display of knowledge, +which it could manipulate dialectically with dazzling, if not stable, +results; it was Protestant in temper and autonomous in principle; and +altogether it seemed a sovereign and providential means of suddenly +turning the tables on the threatened naturalism. By developing romantic +intuition from within and packing all knowledge into one picture, the +universe might be shown to be, like intuition itself, thoroughly +spiritual, personal, and subjective. + +The fundamental axiom of the new logic was that the only possible reality +was consciousness. + + "People find", writes Bradley, "a subject and an object correlated + in consciousness.... To go out of that unity is for us literally to + go out of our minds.... When mind is made only a part of the whole, + there is a question which _must_ be answered.... If about any + matter we know nothing whatsoever, can we say anything about it? + Can we even say that it is? And if it is not in consciousness, how + can we know it?... And conversely, if we know it, it cannot be not + mind." + +Bradley challenged his contemporaries to refute this argument; and not +being able to do so, many of them felt constrained to accept it, perhaps +not without grave misgivings. For was it not always a rooted conviction of +the British mind that knowledge brings material power, and that any +figments of consciousness (in religion, for instance) not bringing +material power are dangerous bewitchments, and not properly knowledge? +Yet it is no less characteristic of the British mind to yield +occasionally, up to a certain point, to some such enthusiastic fancy, +provided that its incompatibility with honest action may be denied or +ignored. So in this case British idealists, in the act of defining +knowledge idealistically, as the presence to consciousness of its own +phenomena, never really ceased to assume transcendent knowledge of a +self-existing world, social and psychological, if not material: and they +continued scrupulously to readjust their ideas to those dark facts, often +more faithfully than the avowed positivists or scientific psychologists. + +What could ethics properly be to a philosopher who on principle might not +trespass beyond the limits of consciousness? Only ethical sentiment. +Bradley was satisfied to appeal to the moral consciousness of his day, +without seeking to transform it. The most intentionally eloquent passage +in his book describes war-fever unifying and carrying away a whole people: +that was the summit of moral consciousness and of mystic virtue. His aim, +even in ethics, was avowedly to describe that which exists, to describe +moral experience, without proposing a different form for it. A man must be +a man of his own time, or nothing; to set up to be better than the world +was the beginning of immorality; and virtue lay in accepting one's station +and its duties. The moralist should fill his mind with a concrete picture +of the task and standards of his age and nation, and should graft his own +ideals upon that tree; this need not prevent moral consciousness from +including a decided esteem for non-political excellences like health, +beauty, or intelligence, which are not ordinarily called virtues by modern +moralists. Yet they were undeniably good; better, perhaps, than any +painful and laborious dutifulness; so that the strictly moral +consciousness might run over, and presently lose itself in "something +higher". Indeed, even health, beauty, and intelligence, which seemed at +first so clearly good, might lose their sharpness on a wider view. In the +panorama that would ultimately fill the mind these so-called goods and +virtues could not be conceived without their complementary vices and +evils. Thus all moral consciousness, and even all vital preference might +ultimately be superseded: they might appear to have belonged to a partial +and rather low stage in the self-development of consciousness. + +With this dissolution of his moral judgments always in prospect, why +should Bradley, or any idealist, have pursued ethical studies at all? +Since all phases of life were equally necessary to enrich an infinite +consciousness, which must know both good and evil in order to merge and to +transcend them, he could hardly nurse any intense enthusiasm for a +different complexion to be given to the lives of men. His moral +passion--for he had it, caustic and burning clear--was purely +intellectual: it was shame that in England the moral consciousness should +have been expressed in systems dialectically so primitive as those of the +positivists and utilitarians. He acknowledged, somewhat superciliously, +that their hearts were in the right place; yet, if we are to have ethics +at all, were not their thoughts in the right place also? They were +concerned not with analysis of the moral consciousness but with the +conduct of affairs and the reform of institutions. The spectacle of human +wretchedness profoundly moved them; their minds were bent on transforming +society, so that a man's station and its duties might cease to be what a +decayed feudal organisation and an inhuman industrialism had made of them. +They revolted against the miserable condition of the masses of mankind, +and against the miserable consolations which official religion, or a +philosophy like Bradley's, offered them in their misery. The utilitarians +were at least intent on existence and on the course of events; they wished +to transform institutions to fit human nature better, and to educate human +nature by those new institutions so that it might better realise its +latent capacities. These are matters which a man may modify by his acts +and they are therefore the proper concern of the moralist. Were they much +to blame if they neglected to define pleasure or happiness and used +catch-words, dialectically vague, to indicate a direction of effort +politically quite unmistakable? Doubtless their political action, like +their philosophical nomenclature, was revolutionary and relied too much on +wayward feelings ignorant of their own causes. Revolution, no less than +tradition, is but a casual and clumsy expression of human nature in +contact with circumstances; yet pain and pleasure and spontaneous hopes, +however foolish, are direct expressions of that contact, and speak for the +soul; whereas a man's station and its duties are purely conventional, and +may altogether misrepresent his native capacities. The protest of human +nature against the world and its oppressions is the strong side of every +rebellion; it was the _moral_ side of utilitarianism, of the rebellion +against irrational morality. + +Unfortunately the English reformers were themselves idealists of a sort, +entangled in the vehicles of perception, and talking about sensations and +ideas, pleasures and pains, as if these had been the elements of human +nature, or even of nature at large: and only the most meagre of verbal +systems, and the most artificial, can be constructed out of such +materials. Moreover, they spoke much of pleasure and happiness, and hardly +at all of misery and pain: whereas it would have been wiser, and truer to +their real inspiration, to have laid all the emphasis on evils to be +abated, leaving the good to shape itself in freedom. Suffering is the +instant and obvious sign of some outrage done to human nature; without +this natural recoil, actual or imminent, no morality would have any +sanction, and no precept could be imperative. What silliness to command me +to pursue pleasure or to avoid it, if in any case everything would be +well! Save for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, I +am deeply free to walk as I will. The choice of pleasure for a principle +of morals was particularly unfortunate in the British utilitarians; it +lent them an air of frivolity absurdly contrary to their true character. +Pleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of Aristippus, a +semi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on +the lips of humanists in the eighteenth century, who, however sordid their +lives may sometimes have been, could still move in imagination to the +music of Mozart, in the landscape of Watteau or of Fragonard. But in the +land and age of Dickens the moral ideal was not so much pleasure as +kindness: this tenderer word not only expresses better the motive at work, +but it points to the distressing presence of misery in the world, to make +natural kindness laborious and earnest, and turn it into a legislative +system. + +Bradley's hostility to pleasure was not fanatical: one's station and its +duties might have their agreeable side. "It is probably good for you", he +tells us, "to have, say, not less than two glasses of wine after dinner. +Six on ordinary occasions is perhaps too many; but as to three or four, +they are neither one way nor the other." If the voluptuary was condemned, +it was for the commonplace reason which a hedonist, too, might invoke, +that a life of pleasure soon palls and becomes unpleasant. Bradley's +objection to pleasure was merely speculative: he found it too "abstract". +To call a pleasure when actually felt an abstraction is an exquisite +absurdity: but pleasure, in its absolute essence, is certainly simple and +indefinable. If instead of enjoying it on the wing, and as an earnest of +the soul's momentary harmony, we attempt to arrest and observe it, we find +it strangely dumb; we are not informed by it concerning its occasion, nor +carried from it by any logical implication to the natural object in which +it might be found. A pure hedonist ought therefore to be rather relieved +if all images lapsed from his consciousness and he could luxuriate in +sheer pleasure, dark and overwhelming. True, such bliss would be rather +inhuman, and of the sort which we rashly assign to the oyster: but why +should a radical and intrepid philosopher be ashamed of that? The +condition of Bradley's Absolute--feeling in which all distinctions are +transcended and merged--seems to be something of that kind; but there +would be a strange irony in attributing this mystical and rapturous ideal +to such ponderous worthies as Mill and Spencer, whose minds were nothing +if not anxious, perturbed, instrumental, and full of respect for +variegated facts, and who were probably incapable of tasting pure pleasure +at all. + +But if pleasure, in its pure essence, might really be the highest good for +a mystic who should be lost in it, it would be no guide to a moralist +wishing to control events, and to distribute particular pleasures or +series of pleasures as richly as possible in the world. For this purpose +he would need to understand human nature and its variable functions, in +which different persons and peoples may find their sincere pleasures; and +this knowledge would first lend to his general love of pleasure any point +of application in the governance of life or in benevolent legislation. +Some concrete image of a happy human world would take the place of the +futile truism that pleasure is good and pain evil. This is, of course, +what utilitarian moralists meant to do, and actually did, in so far as +their human sympathies extended, which was not to the highest things; but +it was not what they said, and Bradley had a clear advantage over them in +the war of words. A pleasure is not a programme: it exists here and not +there, for me and for no one else, once and never again. When past, it +leaves the will as empty and as devoid of allegiance as if it had never +existed; pleasure is sand, though it have the colour of gold. But this is +evidently true of all existence. Each living moment, each dead man, each +cycle of the universe leaves nothing behind it but a void which perhaps +something kindred may refill. A Hegel, after identifying himself for a +moment with the Absolute Idea, is in his existence no less subject to +sleepiness, irritation, and death than if he had been modestly satisfied +with the joys of an oyster. It is only their common form, or their common +worship, that can give to the quick moments of life any mutual relevance +or sympathy; and existence would not come at all within sight of a good, +either momentary or final, if it were not inwardly directed upon realising +some definite essence. For the rest this essence may be as simple as you +will, if the nature directed upon it is unified and simple; and it would +be mere intellectual snobbery to condemn pleasure because it has not so +many subdivisions in it as an encyclopaedia of the sciences. For the +moralist pleasure and pain may even be the better guides, because they +express more directly and boldly the instinctive direction of animal life, +and thereby mark more clearly the genuine difference between good and +evil. + +We may well say with Bradley that the good is self-realisation; but what +is the self? Certainly not the feeling or consciousness of the moment, nor +the life of the world, nor pure spirit. The self that can systematically +distinguish good from evil is an animal soul. It grows from a seed; its +potentiality is definite and its fate precarious; and in man it requires +society to rear it and tradition to educate it. The good is accordingly +social, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the +individual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good +for him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society +that is a nuisance. To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or +the individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the Greeks, sometimes +invoked to support this form of idolatry, were never guilty of it; on the +contrary, their lawgivers were always reforming and planning the state so +that the soul might be perfect in it. Discipline is a help to the spirit: +but even social relations, when like love, friendship, or sport they are +spontaneous and good in themselves, retire as far as possible from the +pressure of the world, and build their paradise apart, simple, and hidden +in the wilderness; while all the ultimate hopes and assurances of the +spirit escape altogether into the silent society of nature, of truth, of +essence, far from those fatuous worldly conventions which hardly make up +for their tyranny by their instability: for the prevalent moral fashion is +always growing old, and human nature is always becoming young again. +World-worship is the expedient of those who, having lost the soul that is +in them, look for it in things external, where there is no soul: and by a +curious recoil, it is also the expedient of those who seek their lost soul +in actual consciousness, where it also is not: for sensations and ideas +are not the soul but only passing and partial products of its profound +animal life. Moral consciousness in particular would never have arisen and +would be gratuitous, save for the ferocious bias of a natural living +creature, defending itself against its thousand enemies. + +Nor would knowledge in its turn be knowledge if it were merely intuition +of essence, such as the sensualist, the poet, or the dialectician may rest +in. If the imagery of logic or passion ever comes to convey _knowledge_, +it does so by virtue of a concomitant physical adjustment to external +things; for the nerve of real or transcendent knowledge is the notice +which one part of the world may take of another part; and it is this +momentous cognisance, no matter what intangible feelings may supply terms +for its prosody, that enlarges the mind to some practical purpose and +informs it about the world. Consciousness then ceases to be passive sense +or idle ideation and becomes belief and intelligence. Then the essences +which form the "content of consciousness" may be vivified and trippingly +run over, like the syllables of a familiar word, in the active recognition +of things and people and of all the ominous or pliable forces of nature. +For essences, being eternal and non-existent in themselves, cannot come to +consciousness by their own initiative, but only as occasion and the subtle +movements of the soul may evoke their forms; so that the fact that they +are given to consciousness has a natural status and setting in the +material world, and is part of the same natural event as the movement of +the soul and body which supports that consciousness. + +There is therefore no need of refuting idealism, which is an honest +examination of conscience in a reflective mind. Refutations and proofs +depend on pregnant meanings assigned to terms, meanings first rendered +explicit and unambiguous by those very proofs or refutations. On any +different acceptation of those terms, these proofs and refutations fall +to the ground; and it remains a question for good sense, not for logic at +all, how far the terms in either case describe anything existent. If by +"knowledge" we understand intuition of essences, idealism follows; but it +follows only in respect to essences given in intuition: nothing follows +concerning the seat, origin, conditions, or symptomatic value of such +intuition, nor even that such intuition ever actually occurs. Idealism, +therefore, without being refuted, may be hemmed in and humanised by +natural knowledge about it and about its place in human speculation; the +most recalcitrant materialist (like myself) might see its plausibility +during a somewhat adolescent phase of self-consciousness. Consciousness +itself he might accept and relish as the natural spiritual resonance of +action and passion, recognising it in its proud isolation and specious +autonomy, like the mountain republics of Andorra and San Marino. + +German idealism is a mighty pose, an attitude always possible to a +self-conscious and reflective being: but it is hardly a system, since it +contradicts beliefs which in action are inevitable; it may therefore be +readily swallowed, but it can never be digested. Neither of its two +ingredients--romantic scepticism and romantic superstition--agrees +particularly with the British stomach. Not romantic scepticism: for in +England an instinctive distrust of too much clearness and logic, a +difficulty in drawing all the consequences of any principle, soon gave to +this most radical of philosophies a prim and religious air: its purity was +alloyed with all sorts of conventions: so much so that we find British +Hegelians often deeply engaged in psychology, cosmology, or religion, as +if they took their idealism for a kind of physics, and wished merely to +reinterpret the facts of nature in an edifying way, without uprooting them +from their natural places. This has been made easier by giving idealism an +objective, non-psychological turn: events, and especially feelings and +ideas, will then be swallowed up in the essences which they display. Thus +Bradley maintained that two thoughts, no matter how remote from each other +in time or space, were identically the same, and not merely similar, if +only they contemplated the same idea. Mind itself ceased in this way to +mean a series of existing feelings and was identified with intelligence; +and intelligence in its turn was identified with the Idea or Logos which +might be the ultimate theme of intelligence. There could be only one mind, +so conceived, since there could be only one total system in the universe +visible to omniscience. + +As to romantic scepticism, we may see by contrast what it would be, when +left to itself, if we consider those lucid Italians who have taken up +their idealism late and with open eyes. In Croce and Gentile the +transcendental attitude is kept pure: for them there is really no universe +save spirit creating its experience; and if we ask whence or on what +principle occasions arise for all this compulsory fiction, we are reminded +that this question, with any answer which spirit might invent for it, +belongs not to philosophy but to some special science like physiology, +itself, of course, only a particular product of creative thought. Thus the +more impetuously the inquisitive squirrel would rush from his cage, the +faster and faster he causes the cage to whirl about his ears. He has not +the remotest chance of reaching his imaginary bait--God, nature, or +truth; for to seek such things is to presuppose them, and to presuppose +anything, if spirit be absolute, is to invent it. Even those philosophies +of history which the idealist may for some secret reason be impelled to +construct would be superstitious, according to his own principles, if he +took them for more than poetic fictions of the historian; so that in the +study of history, as in every other study, all the diligence and sober +learning which the philosopher may possess are non-philosophical, since +they presuppose independent events and material documents. Thus perfect +idealism turns out to be pure literary sport, like lyric poetry, in which +no truth is conveyed save the miscellaneous truths taken over from common +sense or the special sciences; and the gay spirit, supposed to be living +and shining of its own sweet will, can find nothing to live or shine upon +save the common natural world. + +Such at least would be the case if romantic superstition did not +supervene, demanding that the spirit should impose some arbitrary rhythm +or destiny on the world which it creates: but this side of idealism has +been cultivated chiefly by the intrepid Germans: some of them, like +Spengler and Keyserling, still thrive and grow famous on it without a +blush. The modest English in these matters take shelter under the wing of +science speculatively extended, or traditional religion prudently +rationalised: the scope of the spirit, like its psychological +distribution, is conceived realistically. It might almost prove an +euthanasia for British idealism to lose itself in the new metaphysics of +nature which the mathematicians are evolving; and since this metaphysics, +though materialistic in effect, is more subtle and abstruse than popular +materialism, British idealism might perhaps be said to survive in it, +having now passed victoriously into its opposite, and being merged in +something higher. + + +[10] _Ethical Studies_, by F.H. Bradley, O.M., LL.D. (Glasgow), late +Fellow of Merton College, Oxford; second edition revised, with +additional notes by the Author. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1927. + + + + +III + +REVOLUTIONS IN SCIENCE + + +Since the beginning of the twentieth century, science has gained notably +in expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with +inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the +depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing +success, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may +tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home +before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, +to hold hands, and to commune with the dear departed. + +Practically there may be no harm in such a division of labour, the +inventors doing the work and the professors the talking. The experts may +themselves be inexpert in verbal expression, or content with stock +phrases, or profoundly sceptical, or too busy to think. Nevertheless, +skill and understanding are at their best when they go together and adorn +the same mind. Modern science until lately had realised this ideal: it was +an extension of common perception and common sense. We could trust it +implicitly, as we do a map or a calendar; it was not true for us merely in +an argumentative or visionary sense, as are religion and philosophy. +Geography went hand in hand with travel, Copernican astronomy with +circumnavigation of the globe: and even the theory of evolution and the +historical sciences in the nineteenth century were continuous with liberal +reform: people saw in the past, as they then learned to conceive it, +simply an extension of those transformations which they were witnessing in +the present. They could think they knew the world as a man knows his +native town, or the contents of his chest of drawers: nature was our home, +and science was our home knowledge. For it is not intrinsic clearness or +coherence that make ideas persuasive, but connection with action, or with +some voluminous inner response, which is readiness to act. It is a sense +of on-coming fate, a compulsion to do or to suffer, that produces the +illusion of perfect knowledge. + +I call it illusion, although our contact with things may be real, and our +sensations and thoughts may be inevitable and honest; because nevertheless +it is always an illusion to suppose that our images are the intrinsic +qualities of things, or reproduce them exactly. The Ptolemaic system, for +instance, was perfectly scientific; it was based on careful and prolonged +observation and on just reasoning; but it was modelled on an image--the +spherical blue dome of the heavens--proper only to an observer on the +earth, and not transferable to a universe which is diffuse, centreless, +fluid, and perhaps infinite. When the imagination, for any reason, comes +to be peopled with images of the latter sort, the modern, and especially +the latest, astronomy becomes more persuasive. For although I suspect that +even Einstein is an imperfect relativist, and retains Euclidean space and +absolute time at the bottom of his calculation, and recovers them at the +end, yet the effort to express the system of nature as it would appear +from _any_ station and to _any_ sensorium seems to be eminently +enlightening. + +Theory and practice in the latest science are still allied, otherwise +neither of them would prosper as it does; but each has taken a leap in its +own direction. The distance between them has become greater than the naked +eye can measure, and each of them in itself has become unintelligible. We +roll and fly at dizzy speeds, and hear at incredible distances; at the +same time we imagine and calculate to incredible depths. The technique of +science, like that of industry, has become a thing in itself; the one +veils its object, which is nature, as the other defeats its purpose, which +is happiness. Science often seems to be less the study of things than the +study of science. It is now more scholastic than philosophy ever was. We +are invited to conceive organisms within organisms, so minute, so free, +and so dynamic, that the heart of matter seems to explode into an endless +discharge of fireworks, or a mathematical nightmare realised in a thousand +places at once, and become the substance of the world. What is even more +remarkable--for the notion of infinite organisation has been familiar to +the learned at least since the time of Leibniz--the theatre of science is +transformed no less than the actors and the play. The upright walls of +space, the steady tread of time, begin to fail us; they bend now so +obligingly to our perspectives that we no longer seem to travel through +them, but to carry them with us, shooting them out or weaving them about +us according to some native fatality, which is left unexplained. We seem +to have reverted in some sense from Copernicus to Ptolemy: except that the +centre is now occupied, not by the solid earth, but by _any_ geometrical +point chosen for the origin of calculation. Time, too, is not measured by +the sun or stars, but by _any_ "clock"--that is, by any recurrent rhythm +taken as a standard of comparison. It would seem that the existence and +energy of each chosen centre, as well as its career and encounters, hang +on the collateral existence of other centres of force, among which it must +wend its way: yet the only witness to their presence, and the only known +property of their substance, is their "radio-activity", or the physical +light which they shed. Light, in its physical being, is accordingly the +measure of all things in this new philosophy: and if we ask ourselves why +this element should have been preferred, the answer is not far to seek. +Light is the only medium through which very remote or very minute +particles of matter can be revealed to science. Whatever the nature of +things may be intrinsically, science must accordingly express the universe +in terms of light. + +These reforms have come from within: they are triumphs of method. We make +an evident advance in logic, and in that parsimony which is dear to +philosophers (though not to nature), if we refuse to assign given terms +and relations to any prior medium, such as absolute time or space, which +cannot be given with them. Observable spaces and times, like the facts +observed in them, are given separately and in a desultory fashion. +Initially, then, there are as many spaces and times as there are +observers, or rather observations; these are the specious times and spaces +of dreams, of sensuous life, and of romantic biography. Each is centred +here and now, and stretched outwards, forward, and back, as far as +imagination has the strength to project it. Then, when objects and events +have been posited as self-existent, and when a "clock" and a system of +co-ordinates have been established for measuring them, a single +mathematical space and time may be deployed about them, conceived to +contain all things, and to supply them with their respective places and +dates. This gives us the cosmos of classical physics. But this system +involves the uncritical notion of light and matter travelling through +media previously existing, and being carried down, like a boat drifting +down stream, by a flowing time which has a pace of its own, and imposes it +on all existence. In reality, each "clock" and each landscape is +self-centred and initially absolute: its time and space are irrelevant to +those of any other landscape or "clock", unless the objects or events +revealed there, being posited as self-existent, actually coincide with +those revealed also in another landscape, or dated by another "clock". It +is only by travelling along its own path at its own rate that experience +or light can ever reach a point lying on another path also, so that two +observations, and two measures, may coincide at their ultimate terms, +their starting-points or their ends. Positions are therefore not +independent of the journey which terminates in them, and thereby +individuates them; and dates are not independent of the events which +distinguish them. The flux of existence comes first: matter and light +distend time by their pulses, they distend space by their deployments. + +This, if I understand it, is one half the new theory; the other half is +not less acceptable. Newton had described motion as a result of two +principles: the first, inertia, was supposed to be inherent in bodies; the +second, gravity, was incidental to their co-existence. Yet inherent +inertia can only be observed relatively: it makes no difference to me +whether I am said to be moving at a great speed or absolutely at rest, if +I am not jolted or breathless, and if my felt environment does not change. +Inertia, or weight, in so far as it denotes something intrinsic, seems to +be but another name for substance or the principle of existence: in so far +as it denotes the first law of motion, it seems to be relative to an +environment. It would therefore be preferable to combine inertia and +attraction in a single formula, expressing the behaviour of bodies towards +one another in all their conjunctions, without introducing any inherent +forces or absolute measures. This seems to have been done by Einstein, or +at least impressively suggested: and it has been found that the new +calculations correspond to certain delicate observations more accurately +than the old. + +This revolution in science seems, then, to be perfectly legal, and ought +to be welcomed; yet only under one important moral condition, and with a +paradoxical result. The moral condition is that the pride of science +should turn into humility, that it should no longer imagine that it is +laying bare the intrinsic nature of things. And the paradoxical result is +this: that the forms of science are optional, like various languages or +methods of notation. One may be more convenient or subtle than another, +according to the place, senses, interests, and scope of the explorer; a +reform in science may render the old theories antiquated, like the habit +of wearing togas, or of going naked; but it cannot render them false, or +itself true. Science, when it is more than the gossip of adventure or of +experiment, yields practical assurances couched in symbolic terms, but no +ultimate insight: so that the intellectual vacancy of the expert, which I +was deriding, is a sort of warrant of his solidity. It is rather when the +expert prophesies, when he propounds a new philosophy founded on his +latest experiments, that we may justly smile at his system, and wait for +the next. + +Self-knowledge--and the new science is full of self-knowledge--is a great +liberator: if perhaps it imposes some retrenchment, essentially it revives +courage. Then at last we see what we are and what we can do. The spirit +can abandon its vain commitments and false pretensions, like a young man +free at last to throw off his clothes and run naked along the sands. +Intelligence is never gayer, never surer, than when it is strictly formal, +satisfied with the evidence of its materials, as with the lights of +jewels, and filled with mounting speculations, as with a sort of laughter. +If all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire +to the condition of mathematics. Their logic is their spontaneous and +intelligible side: and while they differ from mathematics and from one +another in being directed in the first instance upon various +unintelligible existing objects, yet as they advance, they unite: because +they are everywhere striving to discover in those miscellaneous objects +some intelligible order and method. And as the emotion of the pure artist, +whatever may be his materials, lies in finding in them some formal harmony +or imposing it upon them, so the interest of the scientific mind, in so +far as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal +pattern. The mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the +engineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for +himself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations: +and it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds +that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify +them; much as if a composer found that the sailors could heave better when +singing his songs. + +Yet such independence, however glorious inwardly, cannot help diminishing +the prestige of the arts in the world. If science misled us before, when +it was full of clearness and confidence, how shall we trust it now that it +is all mystery and paradox? If classical physics needed this fundamental +revision, near to experience and fruitful as it was, what revision will +not romantic physics require? Nor is the future alone insecure: even now +the prophets hardly understand one another, or perhaps themselves; and +some of them interlard their science with the most dubious metaphysics. +Naturally the enemies of science have not been slow to seize this +opportunity: the soft-hearted, the muddle-headed, the superstitious are +all raising their voices, no longer in desperate resistance to science, +but hopefully, and in its name. Science, they tell us, is no longer +hostile to religion, or to divination of any sort. Indeed, divination is a +science too. Physics is no longer materialistic since space is now curved, +and filled with an ether through which light travels at 300,000 kilometres +per second--an immaterial rate: because if anything material ventured to +move at that forbidden speed, it would be so flattened that it would cease +to exist. Indeed, matter is now hardly needed at all; its place has been +taken by radio-activity, and by electrons which dart and whirl with such +miraculous swiftness, that occasionally, for no known reason, they can +skip from orbit to orbit without traversing the intervening positions--an +evident proof of free-will in them. Or if solids should still seem to be +material, there are astral bodies as well which are immaterial although +physical; and as to ether and electricity, they are the very substance of +spirit. All this I find announced in newspapers and even in books as the +breakdown of scientific materialism: and yet, when was materialism more +arrant and barbarous than in these announcements? Something no doubt has +broken down: but I am afraid it is rather the habit of thinking clearly +and the power to discern the difference between material and spiritual +things. + +The latest revolution in science will probably not be the last. I do not +know what internal difficulties, contradictions, or ominous obscurities +may exist in the new theories, or what logical seeds of change, perhaps of +radical change, might be discovered there by a competent critic. I base my +expectation on two circumstances somewhat more external and visible to the +lay mind. One circumstance is that the new theories seem to be affected, +and partly inspired, by a particular philosophy, itself utterly insecure. +This philosophy regards the point of view as controlling or even creating +the object seen; in other words, it identifies the object with the +experience or the knowledge of it: it is essentially a subjective, +psychological, Protestant philosophy. The study of perspectives, which a +severer critic might call illusions, is one of the most interesting and +enlightening of studies, and for my own part I should be content to dwell +almost exclusively in that poetic and moral atmosphere, in the realm of +literature and of humanism. Yet I cannot help seeing that neither in logic +nor in natural genesis can perspectives be the ultimate object of science, +since a plurality of points of view, somehow comparable, must be assumed +in the beginning, as well as common principles of projection, and ulterior +points of contact or coincidence. Such assumptions, which must persist +throughout, seem to presuppose an absolute system of nature behind all the +relative systems of science. + +The other circumstance which points to further revolutions is social. The +new science is unintelligible to almost all of us; it can be tested only +by very delicate observations and very difficult reasoning. We accept it +on the authority of a few professors who themselves have accepted it with +a contagious alacrity, as if caught in a whirlwind. It has sprung up +mysteriously and mightily, like mysticism in a cloister or theology in a +council: a Soviet of learned men has proclaimed it. Moreover, it is not +merely a system among systems, but a movement among movements. A system, +even when it has serious rivals, may be maintained for centuries as +religions are maintained, institutionally; but a movement comes to an end; +it is followed presently by a period of assimilation which transforms it, +or by a movement in some other direction. I ask myself accordingly whether +the condition of the world in the coming years will be favourable to +refined and paradoxical science. The extension of education will have +enabled the uneducated to pronounce upon everything. Will the patronage of +capital and enterprise subsist, to encourage discovery and reward +invention? Will a jealous and dogmatic democracy respect the +unintelligible insight of the few? Will a perhaps starving democracy +support materially its Soviet of seers? But let us suppose that no +utilitarian fanaticism supervenes, and no intellectual surfeit or +discouragement. May not the very profundity of the new science and its +metaphysical affinities lead it to bolder developments, inscrutable to the +public and incompatible with one another, like the gnostic sects of +declining antiquity? Then perhaps that luminous modern thing which until +recently was called science, in contrast to all personal philosophies, may +cease to exist altogether, being petrified into routine in the +practitioners, and fading in the professors into abstruse speculations. + + + + +IV + +A LONG WAY ROUND TO NIRVANA + + +That the end of life is death may be called a truism, since the various +kinds of immortality that might perhaps supervene would none of them +abolish death, but at best would weave life and death together into the +texture of a more comprehensive destiny. The end of one life might be the +beginning of another, if the Creator had composed his great work like a +dramatic poet, assigning successive lines to different characters. Death +would then be merely the cue at the end of each speech, summoning the next +personage to break in and keep the ball rolling. Or perhaps, as some +suppose, all the characters are assumed in turn by a single supernatural +Spirit, who amid his endless improvisations is imagining himself living +for the moment in this particular solar and social system. Death in such a +universal monologue would be but a change of scene or of metre, while in +the scramble of a real comedy it would be a change of actors. In either +case every voice would be silenced sooner or later, and death would end +each particular life, in spite of all possible sequels. + +The relapse of created things into nothing is no violent fatality, but +something naturally quite smooth and proper. This has been set forth +recently, in a novel way, by a philosopher from whom we hardly expected +such a lesson, namely Professor Sigmund Freud. He has now broadened his +conception of sexual craving or _libido_ into a general principle of +attraction or concretion in matter, like the Eros of the ancient poets +Hesiod and Empedocles. The windows of that stuffy clinic have been thrown +open; that smell of acrid disinfectants, those hysterical shrieks, have +escaped into the cold night. The troubles of the sick soul, we are given +to understand, as well as their cure, after all flow from the stars. + +I am glad that Freud has resisted the tendency to represent this principle +of Love as the only principle in nature. Unity somehow exercises an evil +spell over metaphysicians. It is admitted that in real life it is not well +for One to be alone, and I think pure unity is no less barren and +graceless in metaphysics. You must have plurality to start with, or +trinity, or at least duality, if you wish to get anywhere, even if you +wish to get effectively into the bosom of the One, abandoning your +separate existence. Freud, like Empedocles, has prudently introduced a +prior principle for Love to play with; not Strife, however (which is only +an incident in Love), but Inertia, or the tendency towards peace and +death. Let us suppose that matter was originally dead, and perfectly +content to be so, and that it still relapses, when it can, into its old +equilibrium. But the homogeneous (as Spencer would say) when it is finite +is unstable: and matter, presumably not being co-extensive with space, +necessarily forms aggregates which have an inside and an outside. The +parts of such bodies are accordingly differently exposed to external +influences and differently related to one another. This inequality, even +in what seems most quiescent, is big with changes, destined to produce in +time a wonderful complexity. It is the source of all uneasiness, of life, +and of love. + + "Let us imagine [writes Freud][11] an undifferentiated vesicle of + sensitive substance: then its surface, exposed as it is to the + outer world, is by its very position differentiated, and serves as + an organ for receiving stimuli.... This morsel of living substance + floats about in an outer world which is charged with the most + potent energies, and it would be destroyed ... if it were not + furnished with protection against stimulation. [On the other hand] + the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier against + excitations emanating from within.... The most prolific sources of + such excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism.... + The child never gets tired of demanding the repetition of a game + ... he wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, + insists inexorably on exact repetition, and corrects each deviation + which the narrator lets slip by mistake.... According to this, _an + instinct would be a tendency in living organic matter impelling it + towards reinstatement of an earlier condition_, one which it had + abandoned under the influence of external disturbing forces--a kind + of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation + of inertia in organic life. + + "If, then, all organic instincts are conservative, historically + acquired, and directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of + something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of + organic development to the credit of external, disturbing, and + distracting influences. The rudimentary creature would from its + very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances + had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course + of existence.... It would be counter to the conservative nature of + instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. + It must be rather an ancient starting point, which the living being + left long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the + circuitous paths of development.... _The goal of all life is + death...._ + + "Through a long period of time the living substance may have ... + had death within easy reach ... until decisive external influences + altered in such a way as to compel [it] to ever greater deviations + from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and + circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These + circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative + instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of + life as we know it." + +Freud puts forth these interesting suggestions with much modesty, +admitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more +important to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that, +for all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies. +When we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an _Élan vital_, +or general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used +are no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion conveyed is +false--false, I mean, to the organic source of life and aspiration, to the +simple naturalness of nature: whereas the suggestion conveyed by Freud's +speculations is true. In what sense can myths and metaphors be true or +false? In the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from +literary psychology, they may report the general movement and the +pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise +sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek +mythology was true and Calvinist theology was false. The chief terms +employed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: "unconscious +wishes", "the pleasure-principle", "the Oedipus complex", "Narcissism", +"the censor"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened +up, in such terms, into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh +start may be made with fewer encumbrances and less morbid inhibition. "The +shortcomings of our description", Freud says, "would probably disappear if +for psychological terms we could substitute physiological or chemical +ones. These too only constitute a metaphorical language, but one familiar +to us for a much longer time, and perhaps also simpler." All human +discourse is metaphorical, in that our perceptions and thoughts are +adventitious signs for their objects, as names are, and by no means copies +of what is going on materially in the depths of nature; but just as the +sportsman's eye, which yields but a summary graphic image, can trace the +flight of a bird through the air quite well enough to shoot it and bring +it down, so the myths of a wise philosopher about the origin of life or of +dreams, though expressed symbolically, may reveal the pertinent movement +of nature to us, and may kindle in us just sentiments and true +expectations in respect to our fate--for his own soul is the bird this +sportsman is shooting. + +Now I think these new myths of Freud's about life, like his old ones +about dreams, are calculated to enlighten and to chasten us enormously +about ourselves. The human spirit, when it awakes, finds itself in +trouble; it is burdened, for no reason it can assign, with all sorts of +anxieties about food, pressures, pricks, noises, and pains. It is born, as +another wise myth has it, in original sin. And the passions and ambitions +of life, as they come on, only complicate this burden and make it heavier, +without rendering it less incessant or gratuitous. Whence this fatality, +and whither does it lead? It comes from heredity, and it leads to +propagation. When we ask how heredity could be started or transmitted, our +ignorance of nature and of past time reduces us to silence or to wild +conjectures. Something--let us call it matter--must always have existed, +and some of its parts, under pressure of the others, must have got tied up +into knots, like the mainspring of a watch, in such a violent and unhappy +manner that when the pressure is relaxed they fly open as fast as they +can, and unravel themselves with a vast sense of relief. Hence the longing +to satisfy latent passions, with the fugitive pleasure in doing so. But +the external agencies that originally wound up that mainspring never +cease to operate; every fresh stimulus gives it another turn, until it +snaps, or grows flaccid, or is unhinged. Moreover, from time to time, when +circumstances change, these external agencies may encrust that primary +organ with minor organs attached to it. Every impression, every adventure, +leaves a trace or rather a seed behind it. It produces a further +complication in the structure of the body, a fresh charge, which tends to +repeat the impressed motion in season and out of season. Hence that +perpetual docility or ductility in living substance which enables it to +learn tricks, to remember facts, and (when the seeds of past experiences +marry and cross in the brain) to imagine new experiences, pleasing or +horrible. Every act initiates a new habit and may implant a new instinct. +We see people even late in life carried away by political or religious +contagions or developing strange vices; there would be no peace in old +age, but rather a greater and greater obsession by all sorts of cares, +were it not that time, in exposing us to many adventitious influences, +weakens or discharges our primitive passions; we are less greedy, less +lusty, less hopeful, less generous. But these weakened primitive impulses +are naturally by far the strongest and most deeply rooted in the organism: +so that although an old man may be converted or may take up some hobby, +there is usually something thin in his elderly zeal, compared with the +heartiness of youth; nor is it edifying to see a soul in which the plainer +human passions are extinct becoming a hotbed of chance delusions. + +In any case each fresh habit taking root in the organism forms a little +mainspring or instinct of its own, like a parasite; so that an elaborate +mechanism is gradually developed, where each lever and spring holds the +other down, and all hold the mainspring down together, allowing it to +unwind itself only very gradually, and meantime keeping the whole clock +ticking and revolving, and causing the smooth outer face which it turns to +the world, so clean and innocent, to mark the time of day amiably for the +passer-by. But there is a terribly complicated labour going on beneath, +propelled with difficulty, and balanced precariously, with much secret +friction and failure. No wonder that the engine often gets visibly out of +order, or stops short: the marvel is that it ever manages to go at all. +Nor is it satisfied with simply revolving and, when at last dismounted, +starting afresh in the person of some seed it has dropped, a portion of +its substance with all its concentrated instincts wound up tightly within +it, and eager to repeat the ancestral experiment; all this growth is not +merely material and vain. Each clock in revolving strikes the hour, even +the quarters, and often with lovely chimes. These chimes we call +perceptions, feelings, purposes, and dreams; and it is because we are +taken up entirely with this mental music, and perhaps think that it sounds +of itself and needs no music-box to make it, that we find such difficulty +in conceiving the nature of our own clocks and are compelled to describe +them only musically, that is, in myths. But the ineptitude of our +aesthetic minds to unravel the nature of mechanism does not deprive these +minds of their own clearness and euphony. Besides sounding their various +musical notes, they have the cognitive function of indicating the hour and +catching the echoes of distant events or of maturing inward dispositions. +This information and emotion, added to incidental pleasures in satisfying +our various passions, make up the life of an incarnate spirit. They +reconcile it to the external fatality that has wound up the organism, and +is breaking it down; and they rescue this organism and all its works from +the indignity of being a vain complication and a waste of motion. + +That the end of life should be death may sound sad: yet what other end can +anything have? The end of an evening party is to go to bed; but its use is +to gather congenial people together, that they may pass the time +pleasantly. An invitation to the dance is not rendered ironical because +the dance cannot last for ever; the youngest of us and the most vigorously +wound up, after a few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and +prancing. The transitoriness of things is essential to their physical +being, and not at all sad in itself; it becomes sad by virtue of a +sentimental illusion, which makes us imagine that they wish to endure, and +that their end is always untimely; but in a healthy nature it is not so. +What is truly sad is to have some impulse frustrated in the midst of its +career, and robbed of its chosen object; and what is painful is to have an +organ lacerated or destroyed when it is still vigorous, and not ready for +its natural sleep and dissolution. We must not confuse the itch which our +unsatisfied instincts continue to cause with the pleasure of satisfying +and dismissing each of them in turn. Could they all be satisfied +harmoniously we should be satisfied once for all and completely. Then +doing and dying would coincide throughout and be a perfect pleasure. + +This same insight is contained in another wise myth which has inspired +morality and religion in India from time immemorial: I mean the doctrine +of Karma. We are born, it says, with a heritage, a character imposed, and +a long task assigned, all due to the ignorance which in our past lives has +led us into all sorts of commitments. These obligations we must pay off, +relieving the pure spirit within us from its accumulated burdens, from +debts and assets both equally oppressive. We cannot disentangle ourselves +by mere frivolity, nor by suicide: frivolity would only involve us more +deeply in the toils of fate, and suicide would but truncate our misery and +leave us for ever a confessed failure. When life is understood to be a +process of redemption, its various phases are taken up in turn without +haste and without undue attachment; their coming and going have all the +keenness of pleasure, the holiness of sacrifice, and the beauty of art. +The point is to have expressed and discharged all that was latent in us; +and to this perfect relief various temperaments and various traditions +assign different names, calling it having one's day, or doing one's duty, +or realising one's ideal, or saving one's soul. The task in any case is +definite and imposed on us by nature, whether we recognise it or not; +therefore we can make true moral progress or fall into real errors. Wisdom +and genius lie in discerning this prescribed task and in doing it readily, +cleanly, and without distraction. Folly on the contrary imagines that any +scent is worth following, that we have an infinite nature, or no nature in +particular, that life begins without obligations and can do business +without capital, and that the will is vacuously free, instead of being a +specific burden and a tight hereditary knot to be unravelled. Some +philosophers without self-knowledge think that the variations and further +entanglements which the future may bring are the manifestation of spirit; +but they are, as Freud has indicated, imposed on living beings by external +pressure, and take shape in the realm of matter. It is only after the +organs of spirit are formed mechanically that spirit can exist, and can +distinguish the better from the worse in the fate of those organs, and +therefore in its own fate. Spirit has nothing to do with infinite +existence. Infinite existence is something physical and ambiguous; there +is no scale in it and no centre. The depths of the human heart are finite, +and they are dark only to ignorance. Deep and dark as a soul may be when +you look down into it from outside, it is something perfectly natural; and +the same understanding that can unearth our suppressed young passions, and +dispel our stubborn bad habits, can show us where our true good lies. +Nature has marked out the path for us beforehand; there are snares in it, +but also primroses, and it leads to peace. + + + + +V + +THE PRESTIGE OF THE INFINITE + + +"The more complex the world becomes and the more it rises above the +indeterminate, so much the farther removed it is from God; that is to say, +so much the more impious it is." M. Julien Benda[12] is not led to this +startling utterance by any political or sentimental grudge. It is not the +late war, nor the peace of Versailles, nor the parlous state of the arts, +nor the decay of morality and prosperity that disgusts him with our +confused world. It is simply overmastering respect for the infinite. _La +Trahison des Clercs_, or Treason of the Levites, with which he had +previously upbraided the intellectuals of his time, now appears to consist +precisely in coveting a part in this world's inheritance, and forgetting +that the inheritance of the Levites is the Lord: which, being interpreted +philosophically, means that a philosopher is bound to measure all things +by the infinite. + +This infinite is not rhetorical, as if we spoke of infinite thought or +infinite love: it is physico-mathematical. Nothing but number, M. Benda +tells us, seems to him intelligible. Time, space, volume, and complexity +(which appears to the senses as quality) stretch in a series of units, +positions, or degrees, to infinity, as number does: and in such +homogeneous series, infinite in both directions, there will be no fixed +point of origin for counting or surveying the whole and no particular +predominant scale. Every position will be essentially identical with every +other; every suggested structure will be collapsible and reversible; and +the position and relations of every unit will be indistinguishable from +those of every other. In the infinite, M. Benda says, the parts have no +identity: each number in the scale, as we begin counting from different +points of origin, bears also every other number. + +This is no mere mathematical puzzle; the thought has a strange moral +eloquence. Seen in their infinite setting, which we may presume to be +their ultimate environment, all things lose their central position and +their dominant emphasis. The contrary of what we first think of them or of +ourselves--for instance that we are alive, while they are dead or +unborn--is also true. Egotism becomes absurd; pride and shame become the +vainest of illusions. If then it be repugnant to reason that the series of +numbers, moments, positions, and volumes should be limited--and the human +spirit has a great affinity to the infinite--all specific quality and +variety in things must be superficial and deeply unreal. They are masks in +the carnival of phenomena, to be observed without conviction, and secretly +dismissed as ironical by those who have laid up their treasure in the +infinite. + +This mathematical dissolution of particulars is reinforced by moral +considerations which are more familiar. Existence--any specific fact +asserting itself in any particular place or moment--is inevitably +contingent, arbitrary, gratuitous, and insecure. A sense of insecurity is +likely to be the first wedge by which repentance penetrates into the +animal heart. If a man did not foresee death and fear it, he might never +come at all to the unnatural thought of renouncing life. In fact, he does +not often remember death: yet his whole gay world is secretly afraid of +being found out, of being foiled in the systematic bluff by which it lives +as if its life were immortal; and far more than the brave young man fears +death in his own person, the whole life of the world fears to be exorcised +by self-knowledge, and lost in air. And with good reason: because, whether +we stop to notice this circumstance or not, every fact, every laborious +beloved achievement of man or of nature, has come to exist against +infinite odds. In the dark grab-bag of Being, this chosen fact was +surrounded by innumerable possible variations or contradictions of it; and +each of those possibilities, happening not to be realised here and now, +yet possesses intrinsically exactly the same aptitude or claim to +existence. Nor are these claims and aptitudes merely imaginary and +practically contemptible. The flux of existence is continually repenting +of its choices, and giving everything actual the lie, by continually +substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. +_This_ world, _any_ world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its +glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some +obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. +"The world", M. Benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel +it to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting itself +and coming to exist; and I feel it to be pitiful, when I consider how it +hung on a mere nothing that this particular world should never have +existed." And though this so accidental world, by its manifold beauties +and excitements, may arouse our romantic enthusiasm, it is fundamentally +an _unholy_ world. Its creation, he adds in italics, "_is something which +reason would wish had never taken place_". + +For we must not suppose that God, when God is defined as infinite Being, +can be the creator of the world. Such a notion would hopelessly destroy +that coherence in thought to which M. Benda aspires. The infinite cannot +be selective; it cannot possess a particular structure (such, for +instance, as the Trinity) nor a particular quality (such as goodness). It +cannot exert power or give direction. Nothing can be responsible for the +world except the world itself. It has created, or is creating, itself +perpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which +may be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the +original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from +God. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly +free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a +terrible nightmare to itself by its automatic monotony, that still is only +its own work and, figuratively speaking, its own fault. Nothing save its +own arbitrary and needless pressure keeps it going in that round. This +fatality is impressive, and popular religion has symbolised it in the +person of a deity far more often recognised and worshipped than infinite +Being. This popular deity, a symbol for the forces of nature and history, +the patron of human welfare and morality, M. Benda calls the imperial God. + + "It is clear that these two Gods ... have nothing to do with one + another. The God whom Marshal de Villars, rising in his stirrups + and pointing his drawn sword heavenwards, thanks on the evening of + Denain, is one God: quite another is the God within whose bosom the + author of the _Imitation_, in a corner of his cell, feels the + nothingness of all human victories." + +It follows from this, if we are coherent, that any "return to God" which +ascetic philosophy may bring about cannot be a social reform, a transition +to some better form of natural existence in a promised land, a renovated +earth, or a material or temporal heaven. Nor can the error of creation be +corrected violently by a second arbitrary act, such as suicide, or the +annihilation of the universe by some ultimate general collapse. If such +events happen, they still leave the door open to new creations and fresh +errors. But the marvel is (I will return to this point presently) that the +world, in the person of a human individual endowed with reason, may +perceive the error of its ways and correct it ideally, in the sphere of +estimation and worship. Such is the only possible salvation. Reason, in +order to save us, and we, in order to be saved, must both subsist: we must +both be incidents in the existing world. We may then, by the operation of +reason in us, recover our allegiance to the infinite, for we are bone of +its bone and flesh of its flesh: and by our secret sympathy with it we may +rescind every particular claim and dismiss silently every particular form +of being, as something unreal and unholy. + +An even more cogent reason why M. Benda's God cannot have been the creator +of the world is that avowedly this God has never existed. We are expressly +warned that "if God is infinite Being he excludes existence, in so far as +to exist means to be distinct. In the sense which everybody attaches to +the word existence, God, as I conceive him, _does not exist_". Of course, +in the mind of a lover of the infinite, this fact is not derogatory to +God, but derogatory to existence. The infinite remains the first and the +ultimate term in thought, the fundamental dimension common to all things, +however otherwise they may be qualified; it remains the eternal background +against which they all are defined and into which they soon disappear. +Evidently, in this divine--because indestructible and necessary--dimension, +Being is incapable of making choices, adopting paths of evolution, or +exercising power; it knows nothing of phenomena; it is not their cause +nor their sanction. It is incapable of love, wrath, or any other passion. +"I will add", writes M. Benda, "something else which theories of an +impersonal deity have less often pointed out. Since infinity is +incompatible with personal being, God is incapable of morality." Thus mere +intuition and analysis of the infinite, since this infinite is itself +passive and indifferent, may prove a subtle antidote to passion, to folly, +and even to life. + +I think M. Benda succeeds admirably in the purpose announced in his title +of rendering his discourse coherent. If once we accept his definitions, +his corollaries follow. Clearly and bravely he disengages his idea of +infinity from other properties usually assigned to the deity, such as +power, omniscience, goodness, and tutelary functions in respect to life, +or to some special human society. But coherence is not completeness, nor +even a reasonable measure of descriptive truth; and certain considerations +are omitted from M. Benda's view which are of such moment that, if they +were included, they might transform the whole issue. Perhaps the chief of +these omissions is that of an organ for thought. M. Benda throughout is +engaged simply in clarifying his own ideas, and repeatedly disclaims any +ulterior pretensions. He finds in the panorama of his thoughts an idea of +infinite Being, or God, and proceeds to study the relation of that +conception to all others. It is a task of critical analysis and religious +confession: and nothing could be more legitimate and, to some of us, more +interesting. But whence these various ideas, and whence the spell which +the idea of infinite Being in particular casts over the meditative mind? +Unless we can view these movements of thought in their natural setting and +order of genesis, we shall be in danger of turning autobiography into +cosmology and inwardness into folly. + +One of the most notable points in M. Benda's analysis is his insistence on +the leap involved in passing from infinite Being to any particular fact or +system of facts; and again the leap involved in passing, when the +converted spirit "returns to God", from specific animal interests--no +matter how generous, social, or altruistic these interests may be--to +absolute renunciation and sympathy with the absolute. "That a will to +return to God should arise in the phenomenal world seems to be a miracle +no less wonderful (though it be less wondered at) than that the world +should arise in the bosom of God." "Love of man, charity, humanitarianism +are nothing but the selfishness of the race, by which each animal species +assures its specific existence." "To surrender one's individuality for the +benefit of a larger self is something quite different from +disinterestedness; it is the exact opposite." And certainly, if we +regarded infinite Being as a cosmological medium--say, empty space and +time--there would be a miraculous break, an unaccountable new beginning, +if that glassy expanse was suddenly wrinkled by something called energy. +But in fact there need never have been such a leap, or such a miracle, +because there could never have been such a transition. Infinite Being is +not a material vacuum "in the bosom" of which a world might arise. It is a +Platonic idea--though Plato never entertained it--an essence, non-existent +and immutable, not in the same field of reality at all as a world of +moving and colliding things. Such an essence is not conceivably the seat +of the variations that enliven the world. It is only in thought that we +may pass from infinite Being to an existing universe; and when we turn +from one to the other, and say that now energy has emerged from the bosom +of God, we are turning over a new leaf, or rather picking up an entirely +different volume. The natural world is composed of objects and events +which theory may regard as transformations of a hypothetical energy; an +energy which M. Benda--who when he comes down to the physical world is a +good materialist--conceives to have condensed and distributed itself into +matter, which in turn composed organisms and ultimately generated +consciousness and reason. But in whatever manner the natural world may +have evolved, it is found and posited by us in perception and action, not, +like infinite Being, defined in thought. This contrast is ontological, and +excludes any derivation of the one object from the other. M. Benda himself +tells us so; and we may wonder why he introduced infinite Being at all +into his description of the world. The reason doubtless is that he was not +engaged in describing the world, except by the way, but rather in +classifying and clarifying his ideas in view of determining his moral +allegiance. And he arranged his terms, whether ideal or materials, in a +single series, because they were alike present to his intuition, and he +was concerned to arrange them in a hierarchy, according to their moral +dignity. + +Not only is infinite Being an incongruous and obstructive term to describe +the substance of the world (which, if it subtends the changes in the world +and causes them, must evidently change with them), but even mathematical +space and time, in their ideal infinity, may be very far from describing +truly the medium and groundwork of the universe. That is a question for +investigation and hypothesis, not for intuition. But in the life of +intuition, when that life takes a mathematical turn, empty space and time +and their definable structure may be important themes; while, when the +same life becomes a discipline of the affections, we see by this latest +example, as well as by many a renowned predecessor of M. Benda, that +infinite Being may dominate the scene. + +Nor is this eventual dominance so foreign to the natural mind, or such a +miraculous conversion, as it might seem. Here, too, there is no derivation +of object from object, but an alternative for the mind. As M. Benda points +out, natural interests and sympathies may expand indefinitely, so as to +embrace a family, a nation, or the whole animate universe; we might even +be chiefly occupied with liberal pursuits, such as science or music; the +more we laboured at these things and delighted in them, the less ready +should we be for renunciation and detachment. Must conversion then descend +upon us from heaven like a thunderbolt? Far from it. We need not look for +the principle of spiritual life in the distance: we have it at home from +the beginning. Even the idea of infinite Being, though unnamed, is +probably familiar. Perhaps in the biography of the human race, or of each +budding mind, the infinite or indeterminate may have been the primary +datum. On that homogeneous sensuous background, blank at first but +secretly plastic, a spot here and a movement there may gradually have +become discernible, until the whole picture of nature and history had +shaped itself as we see it. A certain sense of that primitive datum, the +infinite or indeterminate, may always remain as it were the outstretched +canvas on which every picture is painted. And when the pictures vanish, as +in deep sleep, the ancient simplicity and quietness may be actually +recovered, in a conscious union with Brahma. So sensuous, so intimate, so +unsophisticated the "return to God" may be for the spirit, without +excluding the other avenues, intellectual and ascetic, by which this +return may be effected in waking life, though then not so much in act as +in intent only and allegiance. + +I confess that formerly I had some difficulty in sharing the supreme +respect for infinite Being which animates so many saints: it seemed to me +the dazed, the empty, the deluded side of spirituality. Why rest in an +object which can be redeemed from blank negation only by a blank +intensity? But time has taught me not to despise any form of vital +imagination, any discipline which may achieve perfection after any kind. +Intuition is a broadly based activity; it engages elaborate organs and +sums up and synthesises accumulated impressions. It may therefore easily +pour the riches of its ancestry into the image or the sentiment which it +evokes, poor as this sentiment or image might seem if expressed in words. +In rapt or ecstatic moments, the vital momentum, often the moral escape, +is everything, and the achievement, apart from that blessed relief, little +or nothing. Infinite Being may profit in this way by offering a contrast +to infinite annoyance. Moreover, in my own way, I have discerned in pure +Being the involution of all forms. As felt, pure Being may be +indeterminate, but as conceived reflectively it includes all +determinations: so that when deployed into the realm of essence, infinite +or indeterminate Being truly contains entertainment for all eternity. + +M. Benda feels this pregnancy of the infinite on the mathematical side; +but he hardly notices the fact, proclaimed so gloriously by Spinoza, that +the infinity of extension is only one of an infinity of infinites. There +is an aesthetic infinite, or many aesthetic infinites, composed of all the +forms which nature or imagination might exhibit; and where imagination +fails, there are infinite remainders of the unimagined. The version which +M. Benda gives us of infinite Being, limited to the mathematical +dimension, is therefore unnecessarily cold and stark. His one infinity is +monochrome, whereas the total infinity of essence, in which an infinity of +outlines is only one item, is infinitely many-coloured. Phenomena +therefore fall, in their essential variety, within and not without +infinite Being: so that in "returning to God" we might take the whole +world with us, not indeed in its blind movement and piecemeal +illumination, as events occur, but in an after-image and panoramic +portrait, as events are gathered together in the realm of truth. + +On the whole I think M. Benda's two Gods are less unfriendly to one +another than his aggrieved tone might suggest. This pregnant little book +ends on a tragic note. + + "Hitherto human self-assertion in the state or the family, while + serving the imperial God, has paid some grudging honours, at least + verbally, to the infinite God as well, under the guise of + liberalism, love of mankind, or the negation of classes. But today + this imperfect homage is retracted, and nothing is reverenced + except that which gives strength. If anyone preaches human + kindness, it is in order to establish a "strong" community + martially trained, like a super-state, to oppose everything not + included within it, and to become omnipotent in the art of + utilising the non-human forces of nature.... The will to return to + God may prove to have been, in the history of the phenomenal world, + a sublime accident." + +Certainly the will to "return to God", if not an accident, is an incident +in the life of the world; and the whole world itself is a sublime +accident, in the sense that its existence is contingent, groundless, and +precarious. Yet so long as the imperial God continues successfully to keep +our world going, it will be no accident, but a natural necessity, that +many a mind should turn to the thought of the infinite with awe, with a +sense of liberation, and even with joy. The infinite God owes all his +worshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the +imperial God in creating reflective and speculative minds. Or (to drop +these mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe +to nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look +beyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may _look_ beyond, and +take comfort in the vision, they cannot _pass_ beyond. As M. Benda says, +the most faithful Levite can return to the infinite only in his thought; +in his life he must remain a lay creature. Yet nature, in forming the +human soul, unintentionally unlocked for the mind the doors to truth and +to essence, partly by obliging the soul to attend to things which are +outside, and partly by endowing the soul with far greater potentialities +of sensation and invention than daily life is likely to call forth. Our +minds are therefore naturally dissatisfied with their lot and +speculatively directed upon an outspread universe in which our persons +count for almost nothing. These insights are calculated to give our brutal +wills some pause. Intuition of the infinite and recourse to the infinite +for religious inspiration follow of themselves, and can never be +suppressed altogether, so long as life is conscious and experience +provokes reflection. + +Spirit is certainly not one of the forces producing spirit, but neither is +it a contrary force. It is the actuality of feeling, of observation, of +meaning. Spirit has no unmannerly quarrel with its parents, its hosts, or +even its gaolers: they know not what they do. Yet spirit belongs +intrinsically to another sphere, and cannot help wondering at the world, +and suffering in it. The man in whom spirit is awake will continue to +live and act, but with a difference. In so far as he has become pure +spirit he will have transcended the fear of death or defeat; for now his +instinctive fear, which will subsist, will be neutralised by an equally +sincere consent to die and to fail. He will live henceforth in a truer and +more serene sympathy with nature than is possible to rival natural beings. +Natural beings are perpetually struggling to live only, and not to die; so +that their will is in hopeless rebellion against the divine decrees which +they must obey notwithstanding. The spiritual man, on the contrary, in so +far as he has already passed intellectually into the eternal world, no +longer endures unwillingly the continual death involved in living, or the +final death involved in having been born. He renounces everything +religiously in the very act of attaining it, resigning existence itself as +gladly as he accepts it, or even more gladly; because the emphasis which +action and passion lend to the passing moment seems to him arbitrary and +violent; and as each task or experience is dismissed in turn, he accounts +the end of it more blessed than the beginning. + + +[11] The following quotations are drawn from _Beyond the Pleasure +Principle_, by Sigmund Freud; authorised translation by C.J.M. Hubback. +The International Psycho-Analytic Press, 1922, pp. 29-48. The italics +are in the original. + +[12] _Essai d'un Discours cohérent sur les Rapports de Dieu et du +Monde._ Par Julien Benda. 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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: Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy + Five Essays + +Author: George Santayana + +Release Date: September 17, 2005 [EBook #16712] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Michael Ciesielski and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<div id='frontmatter'> +<h1>SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN +MODERN PHILOSOPHY</h1> + +<h2><i>Five Essays</i></h2> + +<div style='height:2pc;'><br /></div> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<div style='height:2pc;'><br /></div> + +<h2>GEORGE SANTAYANA</h2> + +<div style='height:1pc;'><br /></div> + + +<p class="ctr">NEW YORK<br /> +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br /> +1933</p> + +<p class="ctr">Published under the auspices of<br /> +THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE</p> + +<p class="ctr">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN</p> + +</div> + + +<div style='height:3pc;'><br /></div> + + +<div id='tocCon'> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table id='toc' summary='Table of Contents'> +<tr><th /><th><i>page</i></th></tr> + +<tr><td><a href="#I">I. Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense</a> + +<p>Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature +on the occasion of the Tercentenary of the +birth of John Locke. With some <a href="#SUPPLEMENTARY_NOTES">Supplementary +Notes</a></p></td> <td>1</td></tr> + + +<tr><td><a href="#II">II. Fifty Years of British Idealism</a> + +<p>Reflections on the republication of Bradley's +<i>Ethical Studies</i></p></td> <td>48</td></tr> + + +<tr><td><a href="#III">III. Revolutions in Science</a> + +<p>Some Comments on the Theory of Relativity +and the new Physics</p></td><td>71</td></tr> + + +<tr><td><a href="#IV">IV. A Long Way Round to Nirvana</a> + +<p>Development of a suggestion found in Freud's +<i>Beyond the Pleasure Principle</i></p></td> <td>87</td></tr> + + +<tr><td><a href="#V">V. The Prestige of the Infinite</a> + +<p>A review of Julien Benda's <i>Sketch of a consistent +theory of the relations between God and the World</i></p></td><td>102</td></tr> +</table> + +</div> + +<p>The Author's acknowledgments are due to the Editors of <i>The New Adelphi</i>, +<i>The Dial</i>, and the <i>Journal of Philosophy</i>, in which one or more of these +Essays originally appeared.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2> + +<h2>LOCKE AND THE FRONTIERS OF COMMON SENSE<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h2> + +<p>A good portrait of Locke would require an elaborate background. His is not +a figure to stand statuesquely in a void: the pose might not seem grand +enough for bronze or marble. Rather he should be painted in the manner of +the Dutch masters, in a sunny interior, scrupulously furnished with all +the implements of domestic comfort and philosophic enquiry: the Holy Bible +open majestically before him, and beside it that other revelation—the +terrestrial globe. His hand might be pointing to a microscope set for +examining the internal constitution of a beetle: but for the moment his +eye should be seen wandering through the open window, to admire the +blessings of thrift and liberty manifest in the people so worthily busy in +the market-place, wrong as many <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>a monkish notion might be that still +troubled their poor heads. From them his enlarged thoughts would easily +pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting +sail for the Indies, or for savage America. Yes, he too had travelled, and +not only in thought. He knew how many strange nations and false religions +lodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. There were +few ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical +instruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and +no man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of +"the incomparable Mr Newton". Nevertheless, a certain uneasiness in that +spare frame, a certain knitting of the brows in that aquiline countenance, +would suggest that in the midst of their earnest eloquence the +philosopher's thoughts might sometimes come to a stand. Indeed, the +visible scene did not exhaust the complexity of his problem; for there was +also what he called "the scene of ideas", immaterial and private, but +often more crowded and pressing than the public scene. Locke was the +father of modern psycho<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>logy, and the birth of this airy monster, this +half-natural changeling, was not altogether easy or fortunate.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>I wish my erudition allowed me to fill in this picture as the subject +deserves, and to trace home the sources of Locke's opinions, and their +immense influence. Unfortunately, I can consider him—what is hardly +fair—only as a pure philosopher: for had Locke's mind been more profound, +it might have been less influential. He was in sympathy with the coming +age, and was able to guide it: an age that confided in easy, eloquent +reasoning, and proposed to be saved, in this world and the next, with as +little philosophy and as little religion as possible. Locke played in the +eighteenth century very much the part that fell to Kant in the nineteenth. +When quarrelled with, no less than when embraced, his opinions became a +point of departure for universal developments. The more we look into the +matter, the more we are impressed by the patriarchal dignity of Locke's +mind. Father of psychology, father of the criticism of knowledge, father +of theoretical liberalism, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>god-father at least of the American political +system, of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedia, at home he was the ancestor of +that whole school of polite moderate opinion which can unite liberal +Christianity with mechanical science and with psychological idealism. He +was invincibly rooted in a prudential morality, in a rationalised +Protestantism, in respect for liberty and law: above all he was deeply +convinced, as he puts it, "that the handsome conveniences of life are +better than nasty penury". Locke still speaks, or spoke until lately, +through many a modern mind, when this mind was most sincere; and two +hundred years before Queen Victoria he was a Victorian in essence.</p> + +<p>A chief element in this modernness of Locke was something that had hardly +appeared before in pure philosophy, although common in religion: I mean, +the tendency to deny one's own presuppositions—not by accident or +inadvertently, but proudly and with an air of triumph. Presuppositions are +imposed on all of us by life itself: for instance the presupposition that +life is to continue, and that it is worth living. Belief is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span>born on the +wing and awakes to many tacit commitments. Afterwards, in reflection, we +may wonder at finding these presuppositions on our hands and, being +ignorant of the natural causes which have imposed them on the animal mind, +we may be offended at them. Their arbitrary and dogmatic character will +tempt us to condemn them, and to take for granted that the analysis which +undermines them is justified, and will prove fruitful. But this critical +assurance in its turn seems to rely on a dubious presupposition, namely, +that human opinion must always evolve in a single line, dialectically, +providentially, and irresistibly. It is at least conceivable that the +opposite should sometimes be the case. Some of the primitive +presuppositions of human reason might have been correct and inevitable, +whilst the tendency to deny them might have sprung from a plausible +misunderstanding, or the exaggeration of a half-truth: so that the +critical opinion itself, after destroying the spontaneous assumptions on +which it rested, might be incapable of subsisting.</p> + +<p>In Locke the central presuppositions, which he embraced heartily and +without question, were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>those of common sense. He adopted what he calls a +"plain, historical method", fit, in his own words, "to be brought into +well-bred company and polite conversation". Men, "barely by the use of +their natural faculties", might attain to all the knowledge possible or +worth having. All children, he writes, "that are born into this world, +being surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them" +have "a variety of ideas imprinted" on their minds. "External material +things as objects of Sensation, and the operations of our own minds as +objects of Reflection, are to me", he continues, "the only originals from +which all our ideas take their beginnings." "Every act of sensation", he +writes elsewhere, "when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both +parts of nature, the corporeal and the spiritual. For whilst I know, by +seeing or hearing,... that there is some corporeal being without me, the +object of that sensation, I do more certainly know that there is some +spiritual being within me that sees and hears."</p> + +<p>Resting on these clear perceptions, the natural philosophy of Locke falls +into two parts, one <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>strictly physical and scientific, the other critical +and psychological. In respect to the composition of matter, Locke accepted +the most advanced theory of his day, which happened to be a very old one: +the theory of Democritus that the material universe contains nothing but a +multitude of solid atoms coursing through infinite space: but Locke added +a religious note to this materialism by suggesting that infinite space, in +its sublimity, must be an attribute of God. He also believed what few +materialists would venture to assert, that if we could thoroughly examine +the cosmic mechanism we should see the demonstrable necessity of every +complication that ensues, even of the existence and character of mind: for +it was no harder for God to endow matter with the power of thinking than +to endow it with the power of moving.</p> + +<p>In the atomic theory we have a graphic image asserted to describe +accurately, or even exhaustively, the intrinsic constitution of things, or +their primary qualities. Perhaps, in so far as physical hypotheses must +remain graphic at all, it is an inevitable theory. It was first suggested +by the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>wearing out and dissolution of all material objects, and by the +specks of dust floating in a sunbeam; and it is confirmed, on an enlarged +scale, by the stellar universe as conceived by modern astronomy. When +today we talk of nuclei and electrons, if we imagine them at all, we +imagine them as atoms. But it is all a picture, prophesying what we might +see through a sufficiently powerful microscope; the important +philosophical question is the one raised by the other half of Locke's +natural philosophy, by optics and the general criticism of perception. How +far, if at all, may we trust the images in our minds to reveal the nature +of external things?</p> + +<p>On this point the doctrine of Locke, through Descartes,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> was also +derived from Democritus. It was that all the sensible qualities of things, +except position, shape, solidity, number and motion, were only ideas in +us, projected and falsely regarded as lodged in things. In the things, +these imputed or secondary qualities were simply powers, inherent in their +atomic constitution, and calculated to excite sensations of that character +in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>our bodies. This doctrine is readily established by Locke's plain +historical method, when applied to the study of rainbows, mirrors, effects +of perspective, dreams, jaundice, madness, and the will to believe: all of +which go to convince us that the ideas which we impulsively assume to be +qualities of objects are always, in their seat and origin, evolved in our +own heads.</p> + +<p>These two parts of Locke's natural philosophy, however, are not in perfect +equilibrium. <i>All</i> the feelings and ideas of an animal must be equally +conditioned by his organs and passions,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> and he cannot be aware of what +goes on beyond him, except as it affects his own life.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> How then could +Locke, or could Democritus, suppose that his ideas of space and atoms were +less human, less graphic, summary, and symbolic, than his sensations of +sound or colour? The language of science, no less than that of sense, +should have been recognised to be a human language; and the nature of +anything existent collateral with ourselves, be that collateral existence +material or mental, should have been confessed to be a subject for faith +and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>for hypothesis, never, by any possibility, for absolute or direct +intuition.</p> + +<p>There is no occasion to take alarm at this doctrine as if it condemned us +to solitary confinement, and to ignorance of the world in which we live. +We see and know the world through our eyes and our intelligence, in visual +and in intellectual terms: how else should a world be seen or known which +is not the figment of a dream, but a collateral power, pressing and alien? +In the cognisance which an animal may take of his surroundings—and surely +all animals take such cognisance—the subjective and moral character of +his feelings, on finding himself so surrounded, does not destroy their +cognitive value. These feelings, as Locke says, are signs: to take them +for signs is the essence of intelligence. Animals that are sensitive +physically are also sensitive morally, and feel the friendliness or +hostility which surrounds them. Even pain and pleasure are no idle +sensations, satisfied with their own presence: they violently summon +attention to the objects that are their source. Can love or hate be felt +without being felt towards something—something near and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>potent, yet +external, uncontrolled, and mysterious? When I dodge a missile or pick a +berry, is it likely that my mind should stop to dwell on its pure +sensations or ideas without recognising or pursuing something material? +Analytic reflection often ignores the essential energy of mind, which is +originally more intelligent than sensuous, more appetitive and dogmatic +than aesthetic. But the feelings and ideas of an active animal cannot help +uniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the +natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe +their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, +and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects +which entice that organism or threaten it.</p> + +<p>All ambitions must be defeated when they ask for the impossible. The +ambition to know is not an exception; and certainly our perceptions cannot +tell us how the world would look if nobody saw it, or how valuable it +would be if nobody cared for it. But our perceptions, as Locke again said, +are sufficient for our welfare and appro<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>priate to our condition. They are +not only a wonderful entertainment in themselves, but apart from their +sensuous and grammatical quality, by their distribution and method of +variation, they may inform us most exactly about the order and mechanism +of nature. We see in the science of today how completely the most accurate +knowledge—proved to be accurate by its application in the arts—may shed +every pictorial element, and the whole language of experience, to become a +pure method of calculation and control. And by a pleasant compensation, +our aesthetic life may become freer, more self-sufficing, more humbly +happy in itself: and without trespassing in any way beyond the modesty of +nature, we may consent to be like little children, chirping our human +note; since the life of reason in us may well become science in its +validity, whilst remaining poetry in its texture.</p> + +<p>I think, then, that by a slight re-arrangement of Locke's pronouncements +in natural philosophy, they could be made inwardly consistent, and still +faithful to the first presuppositions of common sense, although certainly +far more chastened and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span>sceptical than impulsive opinion is likely to be +in the first instance.</p> + +<p>There were other presuppositions in the philosophy of Locke besides his +fundamental naturalism; and in his private mind probably the most +important was his Christian faith, which was not only confident and +sincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation. He had friends +among the Cambridge Platonists, and he found in Newton a brilliant example +of scientific rigour capped with mystical insights. Yet if we consider +Locke's philosophical position in the abstract, his Christianity almost +disappears. In form his theology and ethics were strictly rationalistic; +yet one who was a Deist in philosophy might remain a Christian in +religion. There was no great harm in a special revelation, provided it +were simple and short, and left the broad field of truth open in almost +every direction to free and personal investigation. A free man and a good +man would certainly never admit, as coming from God, any doctrine contrary +to his private reason or political interest; and the moral precepts +actually vouchsafed to us in the Gospels were most acceptable, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>seeing +that they added a sublime eloquence to maxims which sound reason would +have arrived at in any case.</p> + +<p>Evidently common sense had nothing to fear from religious faith of this +character; but the matter could not end there. Common sense is not more +convinced of anything than of the difference between good and evil, +advantage and disaster; and it cannot dispense with a moral interpretation +of the universe. Socrates, who spoke initially for common sense, even +thought the moral interpretation of existence the whole of philosophy. He +would not have seen anything comic in the satire of Molière making his +chorus of young doctors chant in unison that opium causes sleep because it +has a dormitive virtue. The virtues or moral uses of things, according to +Socrates, were the reason why the things had been created and were what +they were; the admirable virtues of opium defined its perfection, and the +perfection of a thing was the full manifestation of its deepest nature. +Doubtless this moral interpretation of the universe had been overdone, and +it had been a capital error in Socrates to make that <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>interpretation +exclusive and to substitute it for natural philosophy. Locke, who was +himself a medical man, knew what a black cloak for ignorance and villainy +Scholastic verbiage might be in that profession. He also knew, being an +enthusiast for experimental science, that in order to control the movement +of matter—which is to realise those virtues and perfections—it is better +to trace the movement of matter materialistically; for it is in the act of +manifesting its own powers, and not, as Socrates and the Scholastics +fancied, by obeying a foreign magic, that matter sometimes assumes or +restores the forms so precious in the healer's or the moralist's eyes. At +the same time, the manner in which the moral world rests upon the natural, +though divined, perhaps, by a few philosophers, has not been generally +understood; and Locke, whose broad humanity could not exclude the moral +interpretation of nature, was driven in the end to the view of Socrates. +He seriously invoked the Scholastic maxim that nothing can produce that +which it does not contain. For this reason the unconscious, after all, +could never have given rise to consciousness. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>Observation and experiment +could not be allowed to decide this point: the moral interpretation of +things, because more deeply rooted in human experience, must envelop the +physical interpretation, and must have the last word.</p> + +<p>It was characteristic of Locke's simplicity and intensity that he retained +these insulated sympathies in various quarters. A further instance of his +many-sidedness was his fidelity to pure intuition, his respect for the +infallible revelation of ideal being, such as we have of sensible +qualities or of mathematical relations. In dreams and in hallucinations +appearances may deceive us, and the objects we think we see may not exist +at all. Yet in suffering an illusion we must entertain an idea; and the +manifest character of these ideas is that of which alone, Locke thinks, we +can have certain "knowledge".</p> + +<blockquote><p>"These", he writes, "are two very different things and carefully to +be distinguished: it being one thing to perceive and know the idea +of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind of +particles they must be, and how arranged ... to make any object +appear white or black." "A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he +has them in his mind, that the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span>ideas he calls white and round are +the very ideas they are, and that they are not other ideas which he +calls red or square.... This ... the mind ... always perceives at +first sight; and if ever there happen any doubt about it, it will +always be found to be about the names and not the ideas +themselves."</p></blockquote> + +<p>This sounds like high Platonic doctrine for a philosopher of the Left; but +Locke's utilitarian temper very soon reasserted itself in this subject. +Mathematical ideas were not only lucid but true: and he demanded this +truth, which he called "reality", of all ideas worthy of consideration: +mere ideas would be worthless. Very likely he forgot, in his philosophic +puritanism, that fiction and music might have an intrinsic charm. Where +the frontier of human wisdom should be drawn in this direction was clearly +indicated, in Locke's day, by Spinoza, who says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"If, in keeping non-existent things present to the imagination, the +mind were at the same time aware that those things did not exist, +surely it would regard this gift of imagination as a virtue in its +own constitution, not as a vice: especially if such an imaginative +faculty depended on nothing except the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>mind's own nature: that is +to say, if this mental faculty of imagination were free".</p></blockquote> + +<p>But Locke had not so firm a hold on truth that he could afford to play +with fancy; and as he pushed forward the claims of human jurisdiction +rather too far in physics, by assuming the current science to be literally +true, so, in the realm of imagination, he retrenched somewhat illiberally +our legitimate possessions. Strange that as modern philosophy transfers +the visible wealth of nature more and more to the mind, the mind should +seem to lose courage and to become ashamed of its own fertility. The +hard-pressed natural man will not indulge his imagination unless it poses +for truth; and being half aware of this imposition, he is more troubled at +the thought of being deceived than at the fact of being mechanised or +being bored: and he would wish to escape imagination altogether. A good +God, he murmurs, could not have made us poets against our will.</p> + +<p>Against his will, however, Locke was drawn to enlarge the subjective +sphere. The actual existence of mind was evident: you had only to notice +the fact that you were thinking. Conscious mind, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>being thus known to +exist directly and independently of the body, was a primary constituent of +reality: it was a fact on its own account.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Common sense seemed to +testify to this, not only when confronted with the "I think, therefore I +am" of Descartes, but whenever a thought produced an action. Since mind +and body interacted,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> each must be as real as the other and, as it were, +on the same plane of being. Locke, like a good Protestant, felt the right +of the conscious inner man to assert himself: and when he looked into his +own mind, he found nothing to define this mind except the ideas which +occupied it. The existence which he was so sure of in himself was +therefore the existence of his ideas.</p> + +<p>Here, by an insensible shift in the meaning of the word "idea", a +momentous revolution had taken place in psychology. Ideas had originally +meant objective terms distinguished in thought-images, qualities, +concepts, propositions. But now ideas began to mean living thoughts, +moments or states of consciousness. They became atoms of mind, +constituents of experience, very <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span>much as material atoms were conceived to +be constituents of natural objects. Sensations became the only objects of +sensation, and ideas the only objects of ideas; so that the material world +was rendered superfluous, and the only scientific problem was now to +construct a universe in terms of analytic psychology. Locke himself did +not go so far, and continued to assign physical causes and physical +objects to some, at least, of his mental units; and indeed sensations and +ideas could not very well have other than physical causes, the existence +of which this new psychology was soon to deny: so that about the origin of +its data it was afterwards compelled to preserve a discreet silence. But +as to their combinations and reappearances, it was able to invoke the +principle of association: a thread on which many shrewd observations may +be strung, but which also, when pressed, appears to be nothing but a +verbal mask for organic habits in matter.</p> + +<p>The fact is that there are two sorts of unobjectionable psychology, +neither of which describes a mechanism of disembodied mental states, such +as the followers of Locke developed into modern <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span>idealism, to the +confusion of common sense.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> One unobjectionable sort of psychology is +biological, and studies life from the outside. The other sort, relying on +memory and dramatic imagination, reproduces life from the inside, and is +literary. If the literary psychologist is a man of genius, by the +clearness and range of his memory, by quickness of sympathy and power of +suggestion, he may come very near to the truth of experience, as it has +been or might be unrolled in a human being.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> The ideas with which Locke +operates are simply high lights picked out by attention in this nebulous +continuum, and identified by names. Ideas, in the original ideal sense of +the word, are indeed the only definite terms which attention can +discriminate and rest upon; but the unity of these units is specious, not +existential. If ideas were not logical or aesthetic essences but +self-subsisting feelings, each knowing itself, they would be insulated for +ever; no spirit could ever survey, recognise, or compare them; and mind +would have disappeared in the analysis of mind.</p> + +<p>These considerations might enable us, I think, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>to mark the just frontier +of common sense even in this debatable land of psychology. All that is +biological, observable, and documentary in psychology falls within the +lines of physical science and offers no difficulty in principle. Nor need +literary psychology form a dangerous salient in the circuit of nature. The +dramatic poet or dramatic historian necessarily retains the presupposition +of a material world, since beyond his personal memory (and even within it) +he has nothing to stimulate and control his dramatic imagination save +knowledge of the material circumstances in which people live, and of the +material expression in action or words which they give to their feelings. +His moral insight simply vivifies the scene that nature and the sciences +of nature spread out before him: they tell him what has happened, and his +heart tells him what has been felt. Only literature can describe +experience for the excellent reason that the terms of experience are moral +and literary from the beginning. Mind is incorrigibly poetical: not +because it is not attentive to material facts and practical exigencies, +but because, being intensely attentive to them, it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>turns them into +pleasures and pains, and into many-coloured ideas. Yet at every turn there +is a possibility and an occasion for transmuting this poetry into science, +because ideas and emotions, being caused by material events, refer to +these events, and record their order.</p> + +<p>All philosophies are frail, in that they are products of the human mind, +in which everything is essentially reactive, spontaneous, and volatile: +but as in passion and in language, so in philosophy, there are certain +comparatively steady and hereditary principles, forming a sort of orthodox +reason, which is or which may become the current grammar of mankind. Of +philosophers who are orthodox in this sense, only the earliest or the most +powerful, an Aristotle or a Spinoza, need to be remembered, in that they +stamp their language and temper upon human reason itself. The rest of the +orthodox are justly lost in the crowd and relegated to the chorus. The +frailty of heretical philosophers is more conspicuous and interesting: it +makes up the <i>chronique scandaleuse</i> of the mind, or the history of +philosophy. Locke belongs to both camps: he was restive in his orthodoxy +and timid <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>in his heresies; and like so many other initiators of +revolutions, he would be dismayed at the result of his work. In intention +Locke occupied an almost normal philosophic position, rendered precarious +not by what was traditional in it, like the categories of substance and +power, but rather by certain incidental errors—notably by admitting an +experience independent of bodily life, yet compounded and evolving in a +mechanical fashion. But I do not find in him a prickly nest of obsolete +notions and contradictions from which, fledged at last, we have flown to +our present enlightenment. In his person, in his temper, in his +allegiances and hopes, he was the prototype of a race of philosophers +native and dominant among people of English speech, if not in academic +circles, at least in the national mind. If we make allowance for a greater +personal subtlety, and for the diffidence and perplexity inevitable in the +present moral anarchy of the world, we may find this same Lockian +eclecticism and prudence in the late Lord Balfour: and I have myself had +the advantage of being the pupil of a gifted successor and, in many ways, +emulator, of Locke, I mean <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>William James. So great, at bottom, does their +spiritual kinship seem to me to be, that I can hardly conceive Locke +vividly without seeing him as a sort of William James of the seventeenth +century. And who of you has not known some other spontaneous, inquisitive, +unsettled genius, no less preoccupied with the marvellous intelligence of +some Brazilian parrot, than with the sad obstinacy of some Bishop of +Worcester? Here is eternal freshness of conviction and ardour for reform; +great keenness of perception in spots, and in other spots lacunae and +impulsive judgments; distrust of tradition, of words, of constructive +argument; horror of vested interests and of their smooth defenders; a love +of navigating alone and exploring for oneself even the coasts already well +charted by others. Here is romanticism united with a scientific conscience +and power of destructive analysis balanced by moral enthusiasm. Doubtless +Locke might have dug his foundations deeper and integrated his faith +better. His system was no metaphysical castle, no theological acropolis: +rather a homely ancestral manor house built in several styles of +architecture: a Tudor chapel, a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>Palladian front toward the new +geometrical garden, a Jacobean parlour for political consultation and +learned disputes, and even—since we are almost in the eighteenth +century—a Chinese cabinet full of curios. It was a habitable philosophy, +and not too inharmonious. There was no greater incongruity in its parts +than in the gentle variations of English weather or in the qualified moods +and insights of a civilised mind. Impoverished as we are, morally and +humanly, we can no longer live in such a rambling mansion. It has become a +national monument. On the days when it is open we revisit it with +admiration; and those chambers and garden walks re-echo to us the clear +dogmas and savoury diction of the sage—omnivorous, artless, +loquacious—whose dwelling it was.</p> + + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the +occasion of the Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke.</p></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="SUPPLEMENTARY_NOTES" id="SUPPLEMENTARY_NOTES"></a>SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES</h2> + + +<h3>I</h3> + +<h4><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">Page 3.</a> <i>This airy monster, this half-natural changeling.</i></h4> + +<p>Monsters and changelings were pointed to by Locke with a certain +controversial relish: they proved that nature was not compressed or +compressible <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>within Aristotelian genera and species, but was a free +mechanism subject to indefinite change. Mechanism in physics is favourable +to liberty in politics and morals: each creature has a right to be what it +spontaneously is, and not what some previous classification alleges that +it ought to have been. The Protestant and revolutionary independence of +Locke's mind here gives us a foretaste of Darwin and even of Nietzsche. +But Locke was moderate even in his radicalisms. A human nature totally +fluid would of itself have proved anarchical; but in order to stem that +natural anarchy it was fortunately possible to invoke the conditions of +prosperity and happiness strictly laid down by the Creator. The +improvidence and naughtiness of nature was called to book at every turn by +the pleasures and pains divinely appended to things enjoined and to things +forbidden, and ultimately by hell and by heaven. Yet if rewards and +punishments were attached to human action and feeling in this perfectly +external and arbitrary fashion, whilst the feelings and actions +spontaneous in mankind counted for nothing in the rule of morals and of +wisdom, we should be living under the most cruel and artificial of +tyrannies; and it would not be long before the authority of such a code +would be called in question and the reality of those arbitrary rewards and +punishments would be denied, both for this world and for any other. In a +truly rational morality moral sanctions would have <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>to vary with the +variation of species, each new race or individual or mode of feeling +finding its natural joy in a new way of life. The monsters would not be +monsters except to rustic prejudice, and the changelings would be simply +experiments in creation. The glee of Locke in seeing nature elude +scholastic conventions would then lose its savour, since those staid +conventions themselves would have become obsolete. Nature would henceforth +present nothing but pervasive metamorphosis, irresponsible and endless. To +correct the weariness of such pure flux we might indeed invoke the idea of +a progress or evolution towards something always higher and better; but +this idea simply reinstates, under a temporal form, the dominance of a +specific standard, to which nature is asked to conform. Genera and species +might shift and glide into one another at will, but always in the +authorised direction. If, on the contrary, transformation had no +predetermined direction, we should be driven back, for a moral principle, +to each of the particular types of life generated on the way: as in +estimating the correctness or beauty of language we appeal to the speech +and genius of each nation at each epoch, without imposing the grammar of +one language or age upon another. It is only in so far as, in the midst of +the flux, certain tropes become organised and recurrent, that any +interests or beauties can be transmitted from moment to moment or from +generation to genera<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>tion. Physical integration is a prerequisite to moral +integrity; and unless an individual or a species is sufficiently organised +and determinate to aspire to a distinguishable form of life, eschewing all +others, that individual or species can bear no significant name, can +achieve no progress, and can approach no beauty or perfection.</p> + +<p>Thus, so long as in a fluid world there is some measure of life and +organisation, monsters and changelings will always remain possible +physically and regrettable morally. Small deviations from the chosen type +or the chosen direction of progress will continue to be called morbid and +ugly, and great deviations or reversals will continue to be called +monstrous. This is but the seamy side of that spontaneous predilection, +grounded in our deepest nature, by which we recognise beauty and nobleness +at first sight, with immense refreshment and perfect certitude.</p> + + +<h3>II</h3> + + +<h4> + <a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a> + <a href="#FNanchor_3_3">Page 8.</a> + <i> + Through Descartes. + </i> +</h4> + +<p>Very characteristic was the tireless polemic which Locke carried on +against Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against +sweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims: +children were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were +equal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain was caused <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span>by the +paternal slipper before he reflected philosophically that everything must +have a cause. Again, extension was not the essence of matter, which must +be solid as well, to be distinguishable from empty space. Finally, +thinking was not the essence of the soul: a man, without dying, might lose +consciousness: this often happened, or at least could not be prevented +from happening by a definition framed by a French philosopher. These +protests were evidently justified by common sense: yet they missed the +speculative radicalism and depth of the Cartesian doctrines, which had +struck the keynotes of all modern philosophy and science: for they +assumed, for the first time in history, the transcendental point of view. +No wonder that Locke could not do justice to this great novelty: Descartes +himself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the +development of his system; and it was not until adopted by Kant, or rather +by Fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. Even +today philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and +physics with soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes +were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and +authority. A man who has a clear head, and like Descartes is rendered by +his aristocratic pride both courteous and disdainful, may readily conform +to usage in his language, and even in his personal sentiments, without +taking either too <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span>seriously: he is not struggling to free his own mind, +which is free already, nor very hopeful of freeing that of most people. +The innate ideas were not explicit thoughts but categories employed +unwittingly, as people in speaking conform to the grammar of the +vernacular without being aware that they do so. As for extension being the +essence of matter, since matter existed and was a substance, it would +always have been more than its essence: a sort of ether the parts of which +might move and might have different and calculable dynamic values. The +gist of this definition of matter was to clear the decks for scientific +calculation, by removing from nature the moral density and moral magic +with which the Socratic philosophy had encumbered it. Science would be +employed in describing the movements of bodies, leaving it for the senses +and feelings to appreciate the cross-lights that might be generated in the +process. Though not following the technique of Descartes, the physics of +our own day realises his ideal, and traces in nature a mathematical +dynamism, perfectly sufficient for exact prevision and mechanical art.</p> + +<p>Similarly, in saying that the essence of the soul was to think, Descartes +detached consciousness, or actual spirit, from the meshes of all unknown +organic or invented mental mechanisms. It was an immense clarification and +liberation in its proper dimension: but this pure consciousness was not a +soul; it was not the animal psyche, or principle of organisation, life, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span>and passion—a principle which, according to Descartes, was material. To +have called such a material principle the soul would have shocked all +Christian conceptions; but if Descartes had abstained from giving that +consecrated name to mere consciousness, he need not have been wary of +making the latter intermittent and evanescent, as it naturally is. He was +driven to the conclusion that the soul can never stop thinking, by the +desire to placate orthodox opinion, and his own Christian sentiments, at +the expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial +independence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with +it: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the Platonic soul, +which had been a mythological being, a supernatural spirit or daemon or +incubus, incarnate in the natural world, and partly dominating it. The +relations of such a soul to the particular body or bodies which it might +weave for itself on earth, to the actions which it performed through such +bodies, and to the current of its own thoughts, then became questions for +theology, or for a moralistic theory of the universe. They were questions +remote from the preoccupations of the modern mind; yet it was not possible +either for Locke or for Descartes to clear their fresh conceptions +altogether from those ancient dreams.</p> + +<p>What views precisely did Locke oppose to these radical tendencies of +Descartes?</p> + +<p>In respect to the nature of matter, I have indicated <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span>above the position +of Locke: pictorially he accepted an ordinary atomism; scientifically, the +physics of Newton.</p> + +<p>On the other two points Locke's convictions were implicit rather than +speculative: he resisted the Cartesian theories without much developing +his own, as after all was natural in a critic engaged in proving that our +natural faculties were not intended for speculation. All knowledge came +from experience, and no man could know the savour of a pineapple without +having tasted it. Yet this savour, according to Locke, did not reside at +first in the pineapple, to be conveyed on contact to the palate and to the +mind; but it was generated in the process of gustation; or perhaps we +should rather say that it was generated in the mind on occasion of that +process. At least, then, in respect to secondary qualities, and to all +moral values, the terms of human knowledge were not drawn from the objects +encountered in the world, but from an innate sensibility proper to the +human body or mind. Experience—if this word meant the lifelong train of +ideas which made a man's moral being—was not a source of knowledge but +was knowledge (or illusion) itself, produced by organs endowed with a +special native sensibility in contact with varying external stimuli. This +conclusion would then not have contradicted, but exactly expressed, the +doctrine of innate categories.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>As to the soul, which might exist without thinking, Locke still called it +an immaterial substance: not so immaterial, however, as not to be conveyed +bodily with him in his coach from London to Oxford. Although, like Hobbes, +Locke believed in the power of the English language to clarify the human +intellect, he here ignored the advice of Hobbes to turn that befuddling +Latin phrase into plain English. Substance meant body: immaterial meant +bodiless: therefore immaterial substance meant bodiless body. True, +substance had not really meant body for Aristotle or the Schoolmen; but +who now knew or cared what anything had meant for them? Locke scornfully +refused to consider what a substantial form may have signified; and in +still maintaining that he had a soul, and calling it a spiritual +substance, he was probably simply protesting that there was something +living and watchful within his breast, the invisible moral agent in all +his thoughts and actions. It was <i>he</i> that had them and did them; and this +self of his was far from being reducible to a merely logical impersonal +subject, an "I think" presupposed in all thought: for what would this "I +think" have become when it was not thinking? On the other hand it mattered +very little what the <i>substance</i> of a thinking being might be: God might +even have endowed the body with the faculty of thinking, and of generating +ideas on occasion of certain impacts. Yet a man was a man for all that: +and Locke was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>satisfied that he knew, at least well enough for an honest +Englishman, what he was. He was what he felt himself to be: and this inner +man of his was not merely the living self, throbbing now in his heart; it +was all his moral past, all that he remembered to have been. If, from +moment to moment, the self was a spiritual energy astir within, in +retrospect the living present seemed, as it were, to extend its tentacles +and to communicate its subjectivity to his whole personal past. The limits +of his personality were those of his memory, and his experience included +everything that his living mind could appropriate and re-live. In a word, +<i>he was his idea of himself</i>: and this insight opens a new chapter not +only in his philosophy but in the history of human self-estimation. +Mankind was henceforth invited not to think of itself as a tribe of +natural beings, nor of souls, with a specific nature and fixed +possibilities. Each man was a romantic personage or literary character: he +was simply what he was thought to be, and might become anything that he +could will to become. The way was opened for Napoleon on the one hand and +for Fichte on the other.</p> + + +<h3>III</h3> + +<h4> + <a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a> + <a href="#FNanchor_4_4">Page 9.</a> + <i> + <em>All</em> ideas must be equally conditioned. + </i> +</h4> + +<p>Even the mathematical ideas which seem so exactly to describe the dynamic +order of nature are <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>not repetitions of their natural counterpart: for +mathematical form in nature is a web of diffuse relations enacted; in the +mind it is a thought possessed, the logical synthesis of those deployed +relations. To run in a circle is one thing; to conceive a circle is +another. Our mind by its animal roots (which render it relevant to the +realm of matter and cognitive) and by its spiritual actuality (which +renders it original, synthetic, and emotional) is a language, from its +beginnings; almost, we might say, a biological poetry; and the greater the +intellectuality and poetic abstraction the greater the possible range. Yet +we must not expect this scope of speculation in us to go with adequacy or +exhaustiveness: on the contrary, mathematics and religion, each in its way +so sure, leave most of the truth out.</p> + + +<h3>IV</h3> + +<h4> + <a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a> + <a href="#FNanchor_5_5">Page 9.</a> + <i> + He cannot be aware of what goes on beyond him, except as it affects his own life. + </i> +</h4> + +<p>Even that spark of divine intelligence which comes into the animal soul, +as Aristotle says, from beyond the gates, comes and is called down by the +exigencies of physical life. An animal endowed with locomotion cannot +merely feast sensuously on things as they appear, but must react upon them +at the first signal, and in so doing must virtually and in intent envisage +them as they are in themselves. For it is by <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span>virtue of their real +constitution and intrinsic energy that they act upon us and suffer change +in turn at our hands; so that whatsoever form things may take to our +senses and intellect, they take that form by exerting their material +powers upon us, and intertwining them in action with our own organisms.</p> + +<p>Thus the appearance of things is always, in some measure, a true index to +their reality. Animals are inevitably engaged in self-transcending action, +and the consciousness of self-transcending action is self-transcendent +knowledge. The very nature of animal life makes it possible, within animal +consciousness, to discount appearance and to correct illusion—things +which in a vegetative or aesthetic sensibility would not be +distinguishable from pure experience itself. But when aroused to +self-transcendent attention, feeling must needs rise to intelligence, so +that external fact and impartial truth come within the range of +consciousness, not indeed by being contained there, but by being aimed at.</p> + + +<h3>V</h3> + +<h4> + <a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a> + <a href="#FNanchor_6_6">Page 19.</a> + <i> + Conscious mind was a fact on its own account. + </i> +</h4> + + +<p>This conscious mind was a man's moral being, and personal identity could +not extend further than possible memory. This doctrine of Locke's had some +comic applications. The Bishop of Worcester was alarmed. If actions which +a hardened sinner had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span>forgotten were no longer his, a short memory would +be a great blessing in the Day of Judgment. On the other hand, a theology +more plastic than Stillingfleet's would one day find in this same doctrine +a new means of edification. For if I may disown all actions I have +forgotten, may not things not done or witnessed by me in the body be now +appropriated and incorporated in my consciousness, if only I conceive them +vividly? The door is then open to all the noble ambiguities of idealism. +As my consciousness expands, or thinks it expands, into dramatic sympathy +with universal experience, that experience becomes my own. I may say I +have been the agent in all past achievements. Emerson could know that he +was Shakespeare and Caesar and Christ. Futurity is mine also, in every +possible direction at once; and I am one with the spirit of the universe +and with God.</p> + +<p>Locke reassured the Bishop of Worcester, and was humbly confident that +Divine Justice would find a way of vindicating Itself in spite of human +wit. He might have added that if the sin of Adam could not only be imputed +to us juridically but could actually taint our consciousness—as it +certainly does if by Adam we understand our whole material heritage—so +surely the sins done or the habits acquired by the body beyond the scope +of consciousness may taint or clarify this consciousness now. Indeed, the +idea we form of ourselves and of our respective experi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span>ences is a figment +of vanity, a product of dramatic imagination, without cognitive import +save as a reading of the hidden forces, physical or divine, which have +formed us and actually govern us.</p> + + +<h3>VI</h3> + +<h4> + <a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a> + <a href="#FNanchor_7_7">Page 19.</a> + <i> + Mind and body interacted. + </i> +</h4> + +<p>The self which acts in a man is itself moved by forces which have long +been familiar to common sense, without being understood except +dramatically. These forces are called the passions; or when the dramatic +units distinguished are longish strands rather than striking episodes, +they are called temperament, character, or will; or perhaps, weaving all +these strands and episodes together again into one moral fabric, we call +them simply human nature. But in what does this vague human nature reside, +and how does it operate on the non-human world? Certainly not within the +conscious sphere, or in the superficial miscellany of experience. +Immediate experience is the intermittent chaos which human nature, in +combination with external circumstances, is invoked to support and to +rationalise. Is human nature, then, resident in each individual soul? +Certainly: but the soul is merely another name for that active principle +which we are looking for, to be the seat of our sensibility and the source +of our actions. Is this psychic power, then, resident in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>body? +Undoubtedly; since it is hereditary and transmitted by a seed, and +continually aroused and modified by material agencies.</p> + +<p>Since this soul or self in the body is so obscure, the temptation is great +to dramatise its energies and to describe them in myths. Myth is the +normal means of describing those forces of nature which we cannot measure +or understand; if we could understand or measure them we should describe +them prosaically and analytically, in what is called science. But nothing +is less measurable, or less intelligible to us, in spite of being so near +us and familiar, as the life of this carnal instrument, so soft and so +violent, which breeds our sensations and precipitates our actions. We see +today how the Freudian psychology, just because it is not satisfied with +registering the routine of consciousness but endeavours to trace its +hidden mechanism and to unravel its physical causes, is driven to use the +most frankly mythological language. The physiological processes concerned, +though presupposed, are not on the scale of human perception and not +traceable in detail; and the moral action, though familiar in snatches, +has to be patched by invented episodes, and largely attributed to daemonic +personages that never come on the stage.</p> + +<p>Locke, in his psychology of morals, had at first followed the verbal +rationalism by which people attribute motives to themselves and to one +another. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>Human actions were explained by the alleged pursuit of the +greater prospective pleasure, and avoidance of the greater prospective +pain. But this way of talking, though not so poetical as Freud's, is no +less mythical. Eventual goods and evils have no present existence and no +power: they cannot even be discerned prophetically, save by the vaguest +fancy, entirely based on the present impulses and obsessions of the soul. +No future good, no future evil avails to move us, except—as Locke said +after examining the facts more closely—when a <i>certain uneasiness</i> in the +soul (or in the body) causes us to turn to those untried goods and evils +with a present and living interest. This actual uneasiness, with the dream +pictures which it evokes, is a mere symptom of the direction in which +human nature in us is already moving, or already disposed to move. Without +this prior physical impulse, heaven may beckon and hell may yawn without +causing the least variation in conduct. As in religious conversion all is +due to the call of grace, so in ordinary action all is due to the ripening +of natural impulses and powers within the psyche. The <i>uneasiness</i> +observed by Locke is merely the consciousness of this ripening, before the +field of relevant action has been clearly discerned.</p> + +<p>When all this is considered, the ostensible interaction between mind and +body puts on a new aspect. There are no <i>purely mental</i> ideas or +intentions <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>followed by material effects: there are no material events +followed by a <i>purely mental</i> sensation or idea. Mental events are always +elements in total natural events containing material elements also: +material elements form the organ, the stimulus, and probably also the +object for those mental sensations or ideas. Moreover, the physical strand +alone is found to be continuous and traceable; the conscious strand, the +sequence of mental events, flares up and dies down daily, if not hourly; +and the medley of its immediate features—images, words, moods—juxtaposes +China and Peru, past and future, in the most irresponsible confusion. On +the other hand, in human life it is a part of the conscious +element—intentions, affections, plans, and reasonings—that <i>explains</i> +the course of action: dispersed temporally, our dominant thoughts contain +the reason for our continuous behaviour, and seem to guide it. They are +not so much links in a chain of minute consecutive causes—an idea or an +act of will often takes time to work and works, as it were, only +posthumously—as they are general overarching moral inspirations and +resolves, which the machinery of our bodies executes in its own way, often +rendering our thoughts more precise in the process, or totally +transforming them. We do roughly what we meant to do, barring accidents. +The reasons lie deep in our compound nature, being probably inarticulate; +and our action in a fragmentary way betrays our moral disposition: betrays +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span>it in both senses of the word betray, now revealing it unawares, and now +sadly disappointing it.</p> + +<p>I leave it for the reader's reflection to decide whether we should call +such cohabitation of mind with body interaction, or not rather sympathetic +concomitance, self-annotation, and a partial prophetic awakening to a life +which we are leading automatically.</p> + + +<h3>VII</h3> + +<h4> + <a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a> + <a href="#FNanchor_8_8">Page 21.</a> + <i> + To the confusion of common sense. + </i> +</h4> + +<p>Berkeley and his followers sometimes maintain that common sense is on +their side, that they have simply analysed the fact of our experience of +the material world, and if there is any paradox in their idealism, it is +merely verbal and disappears with familiarity. All the "reality", they +say, all the force, obduracy, and fertility of nature subsist undiminished +after we discover that this reality resides, and can only reside, in the +fixed order of our experience.</p> + +<p>But no: analysis of immediate experience will never disclose any fixed +order in it; the surface of experience, when not interpreted +materialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers, +when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of +experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and +relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so +that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>actions (not our +experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further +biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future +not so much similar to the past, as better. When developed, this +propensity turns into trust in natural or divine laws; but it is contrary +to common sense to expect such laws to operate apart from matter and from +the material continuity of external occasions. This appears clearly in our +trust in persons—a radical animal propensity—which is consonant with +common sense when these persons are living bodies, but becomes +superstitious, or at least highly speculative, when these persons are +disembodied spirits.</p> + +<p>It is a pity that the beautiful system of Berkeley should have appeared in +an unspiritual age, when religion was mundane and perfunctory, and the +free spirit, where it stirred, was romantic and wilful. For that system +was essentially religious: it put the spirit face to face with God, +everywhere, always, and in everything it turned experience into a divine +language for the monition and expression of the inner man. Such an +instrument, in spiritual hands, might have served to dispel all natural +illusions and affections, and to disinfect the spirit of worldliness and +egotism. But Berkeley and his followers had no such thought. All they +wished was to substitute a social for a material world, precisely because +a merely social world might make worldly interests loom <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span>larger and might +induce mankind, against the evidence of their senses and the still small +voice in their hearts, to live as if their worldly interests were absolute +and must needs dominate the spirit.</p> + +<p>Morally this system thus came to sanction a human servitude to material +things such as ancient materialists' would have scorned; and theoretically +the system did not escape the dogmatic commitments of common sense against +which it protested. For far from withdrawing into the depths of the +private spirit, it professed to describe universal experience and the +evolution of all human ideas. This notion of "experience" originally +presupposed a natural agent or subject to endure that experience, and to +profit by it, by learning to live in better harmony with external +circumstances. Each agent or subject of experience might, at other times, +become an object of experience also: for they all formed part of a +material world, which they might envisage in common in their perceptions. +Now the criticism which repudiates this common material medium, like all +criticism or doubt, is secondary and partial: it continues to operate with +all the assumptions of common sense, save the one which it is expressly +criticising. So, in repudiating the material world, this philosophy +retains the notion of various agents or subjects gathering experience; and +we are not expected to doubt that there are just as many streams of +experience without a world, as there were people <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span>in the world when the +world existed. But the number and nature of these experiences have now +become undiscoverable, the material persons having been removed who +formerly were so placed as to gather easily imagined experiences, and to +be able to communicate them; and the very notion of experience has been +emptied of its meaning, when no external common world subsists to impose +that same experience on everybody. It was not knowledge of existing +experiences <i>in vacuo</i> that led common sense to assume a material world, +but knowledge of an existing material world led it to assume existing, and +regularly reproducible, experiences.</p> + +<p>Thus the whole social convention posited by empirical idealism is borrowed +without leave, and rests on the belief in nature for which it is +substituted.</p> + + +<h3>VIII</h3> + +<h4> + <a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a> + <a href="#FNanchor_9_9">Page 21.</a> + <i> + The literary psychologist may come very near to the truth of experience. + </i> +</h4> + + +<p>Experience cannot be in itself an object of science, because it is +essentially invisible, immeasurable, fugitive, and private; and although +it may be shared or repeated, the evidence for that repetition or that +unanimity cannot be found by comparing a present experience with another +experience by hypothesis absent. Both the absent experience and its +agreement with the present experience must be imagined freely and credited +instinctively, in view of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>known circumstances in which the absent +experience is conceived to have occurred. The only instrument for +conceiving experience at large is accordingly private imagination; and +such imagination cannot be tested, although it may be guided and perhaps +recast by fresh observations or reports concerning the action and language +of other people. For action and language, being contagious, and being the +material counterpart of experience in each of us, may voluntarily or +involuntarily suggest our respective experience to one another, by causing +each to re-enact more or less accurately within himself the experience of +the rest. Thus alien thoughts and feelings are revealed or suggested to us +in common life, not without a subjective transformation increasing, so to +speak, as the square of the distance: and even the record of experience in +people's own words, when these are not names for recognisable external +things, awakens in the reader, in another age or country, quite +incommensurable ideas. Yet, under favourable circumstances, such +suggestion or revelation of experience, without ever becoming science, may +become public unanimity in sentiment, and may produce a truthful and +lively dramatic literature.</p> + +<p>All modern philosophy, in so far as it is a description of experience and +not of nature, therefore seems to belong to the sphere of literature, and +to be without scientific value.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span></p> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2> + +<h2>FIFTY YEARS OF BRITISH IDEALISM<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></h2> + + +<p>After fifty years, an old milestone in the path of philosophy, Bradley's +<i>Ethical Studies</i>, has been set up again, as if to mark the distance which +English opinion has traversed in the interval. It has passed from insular +dogmatism to universal bewilderment; and a chief agent in the change has +been Bradley himself, with his scornful and delicate intellect, his wit, +his candour, his persistence, and the baffling futility of his +conclusions. In this early book we see him coming forth like a young David +against every clumsy champion of utilitarianism, hedonism, positivism, or +empiricism. And how smooth and polished were the little stones in his +sling! How fatally they would have lodged in the forehead of that +composite monster, if only it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>had had a forehead! Some of them might even +have done murderous execution in Bradley's own camp: for instance, this +pebble cast playfully at the metaphysical idol called "Law": "It is +<i>always</i> wet on half-holidays because of the Law of Raininess, but +<i>sometimes</i> it is <i>not</i> wet, because of the Supplementary Law of +Sunshine".</p> + +<p>Bradley and his friends achieved a notable victory in the academic field: +philosophic authority and influence passed largely into their hands in all +English-speaking universities. But it was not exactly from these seats of +learning that naturalism and utilitarianism needed to be dislodged; like +the corresponding radicalisms of our day, these doctrines prevailed rather +in certain political and intellectual circles outside, consciously +revolutionary and often half-educated; and I am afraid that the braggart +Goliaths of today need chastening at least as much as those of fifty years +ago. In a country officially Christian, and especially in Oxford, it is +natural and fitting that academic authority should belong to orthodox +tradition—theological, Platonic, and Aristotelian. Bradley, save for a +few learned quotations, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span>strangely ignored this orthodoxy entrenched +behind his back. In contrast with it he was himself a heretic, with first +principles devastating every settled belief: and it was really this +venerable silent partner at home that his victory superseded, at least in +appearance and for a season. David did not slay Goliath, but he dethroned +Saul. Saul was indeed already under a cloud, and all in David's heart was +not unkindness in that direction. Bradley might almost be called an +unbelieving Newman; time, especially, seems to have brought his suffering +and refined spirit into greater sympathy with ancient sanctities. +Originally, for instance, venting the hearty Protestant sentiment that +only the Christianity of laymen is sound, he had written: "I am happy to +say that 'religieux' has no English equivalent". But a later note says: +"This is not true except of Modern English only. And, in any case, it +won't do, and was wrong and due to ignorance. However secluded the +religious life, it may be practical indirectly <i>if</i> through the unity of +the spiritual body it can be taken as vicarious". The "<i>if</i>" here saves +the principle that all values must be social, and that the social organism +is the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span>sole moral reality: yet how near this bubble comes to being +pricked! We seem clearly to feel that the question is not whether +spiritual life subserves animal society, but whether animal society ever +is stirred and hallowed into spiritual life.</p> + +<p>All this, however, in that age of progress, was regarded as obsolete: +there was no longer to be any spirit except the spirit of the times. True, +the ritualists might be striving to revive the latent energies of +religious devotion, with some dubious help from aestheticism: but against +the rising tide of mechanical progress and romantic anarchy, and against +the mania for rewriting history, traditional philosophy then seemed +helpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover +its intellectual courage. For the moment, speculative radicals saw light +in a different quarter. German idealism was nothing if not self-confident; +it was relatively new; it was encyclopaedic in its display of knowledge, +which it could manipulate dialectically with dazzling, if not stable, +results; it was Protestant in temper and autonomous in principle; and +altogether it seemed a sovereign and providential means of suddenly +turning the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>tables on the threatened naturalism. By developing romantic +intuition from within and packing all knowledge into one picture, the +universe might be shown to be, like intuition itself, thoroughly +spiritual, personal, and subjective.</p> + +<p>The fundamental axiom of the new logic was that the only possible reality +was consciousness.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"People find", writes Bradley, "a subject and an object correlated +in consciousness.... To go out of that unity is for us literally to +go out of our minds.... When mind is made only a part of the whole, +there is a question which <i>must</i> be answered.... If about any +matter we know nothing whatsoever, can we say anything about it? +Can we even say that it is? And if it is not in consciousness, how +can we know it?... And conversely, if we know it, it cannot be not +mind."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Bradley challenged his contemporaries to refute this argument; and not +being able to do so, many of them felt constrained to accept it, perhaps +not without grave misgivings. For was it not always a rooted conviction of +the British mind that knowledge brings material power, and that any +figments of consciousness (in religion, for instance) not bringing +material power are dangerous <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>bewitchments, and not properly knowledge? +Yet it is no less characteristic of the British mind to yield +occasionally, up to a certain point, to some such enthusiastic fancy, +provided that its incompatibility with honest action may be denied or +ignored. So in this case British idealists, in the act of defining +knowledge idealistically, as the presence to consciousness of its own +phenomena, never really ceased to assume transcendent knowledge of a +self-existing world, social and psychological, if not material: and they +continued scrupulously to readjust their ideas to those dark facts, often +more faithfully than the avowed positivists or scientific psychologists.</p> + +<p>What could ethics properly be to a philosopher who on principle might not +trespass beyond the limits of consciousness? Only ethical sentiment. +Bradley was satisfied to appeal to the moral consciousness of his day, +without seeking to transform it. The most intentionally eloquent passage +in his book describes war-fever unifying and carrying away a whole people: +that was the summit of moral consciousness and of mystic virtue. His aim, +even in ethics, was avowedly to describe <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>that which exists, to describe +moral experience, without proposing a different form for it. A man must be +a man of his own time, or nothing; to set up to be better than the world +was the beginning of immorality; and virtue lay in accepting one's station +and its duties. The moralist should fill his mind with a concrete picture +of the task and standards of his age and nation, and should graft his own +ideals upon that tree; this need not prevent moral consciousness from +including a decided esteem for non-political excellences like health, +beauty, or intelligence, which are not ordinarily called virtues by modern +moralists. Yet they were undeniably good; better, perhaps, than any +painful and laborious dutifulness; so that the strictly moral +consciousness might run over, and presently lose itself in "something +higher". Indeed, even health, beauty, and intelligence, which seemed at +first so clearly good, might lose their sharpness on a wider view. In the +panorama that would ultimately fill the mind these so-called goods and +virtues could not be conceived without their complementary vices and +evils. Thus all moral consciousness, and even all vital preference <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>might +ultimately be superseded: they might appear to have belonged to a partial +and rather low stage in the self-development of consciousness.</p> + +<p>With this dissolution of his moral judgments always in prospect, why +should Bradley, or any idealist, have pursued ethical studies at all? +Since all phases of life were equally necessary to enrich an infinite +consciousness, which must know both good and evil in order to merge and to +transcend them, he could hardly nurse any intense enthusiasm for a +different complexion to be given to the lives of men. His moral +passion—for he had it, caustic and burning clear—was purely +intellectual: it was shame that in England the moral consciousness should +have been expressed in systems dialectically so primitive as those of the +positivists and utilitarians. He acknowledged, somewhat superciliously, +that their hearts were in the right place; yet, if we are to have ethics +at all, were not their thoughts in the right place also? They were +concerned not with analysis of the moral consciousness but with the +conduct of affairs and the reform of institutions. The spectacle <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>of human +wretchedness profoundly moved them; their minds were bent on transforming +society, so that a man's station and its duties might cease to be what a +decayed feudal organisation and an inhuman industrialism had made of them. +They revolted against the miserable condition of the masses of mankind, +and against the miserable consolations which official religion, or a +philosophy like Bradley's, offered them in their misery. The utilitarians +were at least intent on existence and on the course of events; they wished +to transform institutions to fit human nature better, and to educate human +nature by those new institutions so that it might better realise its +latent capacities. These are matters which a man may modify by his acts +and they are therefore the proper concern of the moralist. Were they much +to blame if they neglected to define pleasure or happiness and used +catch-words, dialectically vague, to indicate a direction of effort +politically quite unmistakable? Doubtless their political action, like +their philosophical nomenclature, was revolutionary and relied too much on +wayward feelings ignorant of their own causes. Revolution, no less than +tradi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>tion, is but a casual and clumsy expression of human nature in +contact with circumstances; yet pain and pleasure and spontaneous hopes, +however foolish, are direct expressions of that contact, and speak for the +soul; whereas a man's station and its duties are purely conventional, and +may altogether misrepresent his native capacities. The protest of human +nature against the world and its oppressions is the strong side of every +rebellion; it was the <i>moral</i> side of utilitarianism, of the rebellion +against irrational morality.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately the English reformers were themselves idealists of a sort, +entangled in the vehicles of perception, and talking about sensations and +ideas, pleasures and pains, as if these had been the elements of human +nature, or even of nature at large: and only the most meagre of verbal +systems, and the most artificial, can be constructed out of such +materials. Moreover, they spoke much of pleasure and happiness, and hardly +at all of misery and pain: whereas it would have been wiser, and truer to +their real inspiration, to have laid all the emphasis on evils to be +abated, leaving the good to shape itself in freedom. Suffer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span>ing is the +instant and obvious sign of some outrage done to human nature; without +this natural recoil, actual or imminent, no morality would have any +sanction, and no precept could be imperative. What silliness to command me +to pursue pleasure or to avoid it, if in any case everything would be +well! Save for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, I +am deeply free to walk as I will. The choice of pleasure for a principle +of morals was particularly unfortunate in the British utilitarians; it +lent them an air of frivolity absurdly contrary to their true character. +Pleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of Aristippus, a +semi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on +the lips of humanists in the eighteenth century, who, however sordid their +lives may sometimes have been, could still move in imagination to the +music of Mozart, in the landscape of Watteau or of Fragonard. But in the +land and age of Dickens the moral ideal was not so much pleasure as +kindness: this tenderer word not only expresses better the motive at work, +but it points to the distressing presence of misery in the world, to make +natural <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span>kindness laborious and earnest, and turn it into a legislative +system.</p> + +<p>Bradley's hostility to pleasure was not fanatical: one's station and its +duties might have their agreeable side. "It is probably good for you", he +tells us, "to have, say, not less than two glasses of wine after dinner. +Six on ordinary occasions is perhaps too many; but as to three or four, +they are neither one way nor the other." If the voluptuary was condemned, +it was for the commonplace reason which a hedonist, too, might invoke, +that a life of pleasure soon palls and becomes unpleasant. Bradley's +objection to pleasure was merely speculative: he found it too "abstract". +To call a pleasure when actually felt an abstraction is an exquisite +absurdity: but pleasure, in its absolute essence, is certainly simple and +indefinable. If instead of enjoying it on the wing, and as an earnest of +the soul's momentary harmony, we attempt to arrest and observe it, we find +it strangely dumb; we are not informed by it concerning its occasion, nor +carried from it by any logical implication to the natural object in which +it might be found. A pure hedonist ought therefore to be rather <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span>relieved +if all images lapsed from his consciousness and he could luxuriate in +sheer pleasure, dark and overwhelming. True, such bliss would be rather +inhuman, and of the sort which we rashly assign to the oyster: but why +should a radical and intrepid philosopher be ashamed of that? The +condition of Bradley's Absolute—feeling in which all distinctions are +transcended and merged—seems to be something of that kind; but there +would be a strange irony in attributing this mystical and rapturous ideal +to such ponderous worthies as Mill and Spencer, whose minds were nothing +if not anxious, perturbed, instrumental, and full of respect for +variegated facts, and who were probably incapable of tasting pure pleasure +at all.</p> + +<p>But if pleasure, in its pure essence, might really be the highest good for +a mystic who should be lost in it, it would be no guide to a moralist +wishing to control events, and to distribute particular pleasures or +series of pleasures as richly as possible in the world. For this purpose +he would need to understand human nature and its variable functions, in +which different persons and peoples may <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span>find their sincere pleasures; and +this knowledge would first lend to his general love of pleasure any point +of application in the governance of life or in benevolent legislation. +Some concrete image of a happy human world would take the place of the +futile truism that pleasure is good and pain evil. This is, of course, +what utilitarian moralists meant to do, and actually did, in so far as +their human sympathies extended, which was not to the highest things; but +it was not what they said, and Bradley had a clear advantage over them in +the war of words. A pleasure is not a programme: it exists here and not +there, for me and for no one else, once and never again. When past, it +leaves the will as empty and as devoid of allegiance as if it had never +existed; pleasure is sand, though it have the colour of gold. But this is +evidently true of all existence. Each living moment, each dead man, each +cycle of the universe leaves nothing behind it but a void which perhaps +something kindred may refill. A Hegel, after identifying himself for a +moment with the Absolute Idea, is in his existence no less subject to +sleepiness, irritation, and death than if he had been modestly <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span>satisfied +with the joys of an oyster. It is only their common form, or their common +worship, that can give to the quick moments of life any mutual relevance +or sympathy; and existence would not come at all within sight of a good, +either momentary or final, if it were not inwardly directed upon realising +some definite essence. For the rest this essence may be as simple as you +will, if the nature directed upon it is unified and simple; and it would +be mere intellectual snobbery to condemn pleasure because it has not so +many subdivisions in it as an encyclopaedia of the sciences. For the +moralist pleasure and pain may even be the better guides, because they +express more directly and boldly the instinctive direction of animal life, +and thereby mark more clearly the genuine difference between good and +evil.</p> + +<p>We may well say with Bradley that the good is self-realisation; but what +is the self? Certainly not the feeling or consciousness of the moment, nor +the life of the world, nor pure spirit. The self that can systematically +distinguish good from evil is an animal soul. It grows from a seed; its +potentiality is definite and its fate precarious; and in man <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span>it requires +society to rear it and tradition to educate it. The good is accordingly +social, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the +individual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good +for him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society +that is a nuisance. To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or +the individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the Greeks, sometimes +invoked to support this form of idolatry, were never guilty of it; on the +contrary, their lawgivers were always reforming and planning the state so +that the soul might be perfect in it. Discipline is a help to the spirit: +but even social relations, when like love, friendship, or sport they are +spontaneous and good in themselves, retire as far as possible from the +pressure of the world, and build their paradise apart, simple, and hidden +in the wilderness; while all the ultimate hopes and assurances of the +spirit escape altogether into the silent society of nature, of truth, of +essence, far from those fatuous worldly conventions which hardly make up +for their tyranny by their instability: for the prevalent moral fashion is +always growing old, and human <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span>nature is always becoming young again. +World-worship is the expedient of those who, having lost the soul that is +in them, look for it in things external, where there is no soul: and by a +curious recoil, it is also the expedient of those who seek their lost soul +in actual consciousness, where it also is not: for sensations and ideas +are not the soul but only passing and partial products of its profound +animal life. Moral consciousness in particular would never have arisen and +would be gratuitous, save for the ferocious bias of a natural living +creature, defending itself against its thousand enemies.</p> + +<p>Nor would knowledge in its turn be knowledge if it were merely intuition +of essence, such as the sensualist, the poet, or the dialectician may rest +in. If the imagery of logic or passion ever comes to convey <i>knowledge</i>, +it does so by virtue of a concomitant physical adjustment to external +things; for the nerve of real or transcendent knowledge is the notice +which one part of the world may take of another part; and it is this +momentous cognisance, no matter what intangible feelings may supply terms +for its prosody, that enlarges the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>mind to some practical purpose and +informs it about the world. Consciousness then ceases to be passive sense +or idle ideation and becomes belief and intelligence. Then the essences +which form the "content of consciousness" may be vivified and trippingly +run over, like the syllables of a familiar word, in the active recognition +of things and people and of all the ominous or pliable forces of nature. +For essences, being eternal and non-existent in themselves, cannot come to +consciousness by their own initiative, but only as occasion and the subtle +movements of the soul may evoke their forms; so that the fact that they +are given to consciousness has a natural status and setting in the +material world, and is part of the same natural event as the movement of +the soul and body which supports that consciousness.</p> + +<p>There is therefore no need of refuting idealism, which is an honest +examination of conscience in a reflective mind. Refutations and proofs +depend on pregnant meanings assigned to terms, meanings first rendered +explicit and unambiguous by those very proofs or refutations. On any +different acceptation of those terms, these proofs and re<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>futations fall +to the ground; and it remains a question for good sense, not for logic at +all, how far the terms in either case describe anything existent. If by +"knowledge" we understand intuition of essences, idealism follows; but it +follows only in respect to essences given in intuition: nothing follows +concerning the seat, origin, conditions, or symptomatic value of such +intuition, nor even that such intuition ever actually occurs. Idealism, +therefore, without being refuted, may be hemmed in and humanised by +natural knowledge about it and about its place in human speculation; the +most recalcitrant materialist (like myself) might see its plausibility +during a somewhat adolescent phase of self-consciousness. Consciousness +itself he might accept and relish as the natural spiritual resonance of +action and passion, recognising it in its proud isolation and specious +autonomy, like the mountain republics of Andorra and San Marino.</p> + +<p>German idealism is a mighty pose, an attitude always possible to a +self-conscious and reflective being: but it is hardly a system, since it +contradicts beliefs which in action are inevitable; it may there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>fore be +readily swallowed, but it can never be digested. Neither of its two +ingredients—romantic scepticism and romantic superstition—agrees +particularly with the British stomach. Not romantic scepticism: for in +England an instinctive distrust of too much clearness and logic, a +difficulty in drawing all the consequences of any principle, soon gave to +this most radical of philosophies a prim and religious air: its purity was +alloyed with all sorts of conventions: so much so that we find British +Hegelians often deeply engaged in psychology, cosmology, or religion, as +if they took their idealism for a kind of physics, and wished merely to +reinterpret the facts of nature in an edifying way, without uprooting them +from their natural places. This has been made easier by giving idealism an +objective, non-psychological turn: events, and especially feelings and +ideas, will then be swallowed up in the essences which they display. Thus +Bradley maintained that two thoughts, no matter how remote from each other +in time or space, were identically the same, and not merely similar, if +only they contemplated the same idea. Mind itself ceased in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span>this way to +mean a series of existing feelings and was identified with intelligence; +and intelligence in its turn was identified with the Idea or Logos which +might be the ultimate theme of intelligence. There could be only one mind, +so conceived, since there could be only one total system in the universe +visible to omniscience.</p> + +<p>As to romantic scepticism, we may see by contrast what it would be, when +left to itself, if we consider those lucid Italians who have taken up +their idealism late and with open eyes. In Croce and Gentile the +transcendental attitude is kept pure: for them there is really no universe +save spirit creating its experience; and if we ask whence or on what +principle occasions arise for all this compulsory fiction, we are reminded +that this question, with any answer which spirit might invent for it, +belongs not to philosophy but to some special science like physiology, +itself, of course, only a particular product of creative thought. Thus the +more impetuously the inquisitive squirrel would rush from his cage, the +faster and faster he causes the cage to whirl about his ears. He has not +the remotest chance of reaching his imaginary <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>bait—God, nature, or +truth; for to seek such things is to presuppose them, and to presuppose +anything, if spirit be absolute, is to invent it. Even those philosophies +of history which the idealist may for some secret reason be impelled to +construct would be superstitious, according to his own principles, if he +took them for more than poetic fictions of the historian; so that in the +study of history, as in every other study, all the diligence and sober +learning which the philosopher may possess are non-philosophical, since +they presuppose independent events and material documents. Thus perfect +idealism turns out to be pure literary sport, like lyric poetry, in which +no truth is conveyed save the miscellaneous truths taken over from common +sense or the special sciences; and the gay spirit, supposed to be living +and shining of its own sweet will, can find nothing to live or shine upon +save the common natural world.</p> + +<p>Such at least would be the case if romantic superstition did not +supervene, demanding that the spirit should impose some arbitrary rhythm +or destiny on the world which it creates: but this side of idealism has +been cultivated chiefly by the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>intrepid Germans: some of them, like +Spengler and Keyserling, still thrive and grow famous on it without a +blush. The modest English in these matters take shelter under the wing of +science speculatively extended, or traditional religion prudently +rationalised: the scope of the spirit, like its psychological +distribution, is conceived realistically. It might almost prove an +euthanasia for British idealism to lose itself in the new metaphysics of +nature which the mathematicians are evolving; and since this metaphysics, +though materialistic in effect, is more subtle and abstruse than popular +materialism, British idealism might perhaps be said to survive in it, +having now passed victoriously into its opposite, and being merged in +something higher.</p> + + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Ethical Studies</i>, by F.H. Bradley, O.M., LL.D. (Glasgow), +late Fellow of Merton College, Oxford; second edition revised, with +additional notes by the Author. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1927.</p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span></p> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2> + +<h2>REVOLUTIONS IN SCIENCE</h2> + + +<p>Since the beginning of the twentieth century, science has gained notably +in expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with +inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the +depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing +success, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may +tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home +before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, +to hold hands, and to commune with the dear departed.</p> + +<p>Practically there may be no harm in such a division of labour, the +inventors doing the work and the professors the talking. The experts may +themselves be inexpert in verbal expression, or content with stock +phrases, or profoundly sceptical, or too busy to think. Nevertheless, +skill and understanding are at their best when they go to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>gether and adorn +the same mind. Modern science until lately had realised this ideal: it was +an extension of common perception and common sense. We could trust it +implicitly, as we do a map or a calendar; it was not true for us merely in +an argumentative or visionary sense, as are religion and philosophy. +Geography went hand in hand with travel, Copernican astronomy with +circumnavigation of the globe: and even the theory of evolution and the +historical sciences in the nineteenth century were continuous with liberal +reform: people saw in the past, as they then learned to conceive it, +simply an extension of those transformations which they were witnessing in +the present. They could think they knew the world as a man knows his +native town, or the contents of his chest of drawers: nature was our home, +and science was our home knowledge. For it is not intrinsic clearness or +coherence that make ideas persuasive, but connection with action, or with +some voluminous inner response, which is readiness to act. It is a sense +of on-coming fate, a compulsion to do or to suffer, that produces the +illusion of perfect knowledge.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>I call it illusion, although our contact with things may be real, and our +sensations and thoughts may be inevitable and honest; because nevertheless +it is always an illusion to suppose that our images are the intrinsic +qualities of things, or reproduce them exactly. The Ptolemaic system, for +instance, was perfectly scientific; it was based on careful and prolonged +observation and on just reasoning; but it was modelled on an image—the +spherical blue dome of the heavens—proper only to an observer on the +earth, and not transferable to a universe which is diffuse, centreless, +fluid, and perhaps infinite. When the imagination, for any reason, comes +to be peopled with images of the latter sort, the modern, and especially +the latest, astronomy becomes more persuasive. For although I suspect that +even Einstein is an imperfect relativist, and retains Euclidean space and +absolute time at the bottom of his calculation, and recovers them at the +end, yet the effort to express the system of nature as it would appear +from <i>any</i> station and to <i>any</i> sensorium seems to be eminently +enlightening.</p> + +<p>Theory and practice in the latest science are still <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span>allied, otherwise +neither of them would prosper as it does; but each has taken a leap in its +own direction. The distance between them has become greater than the naked +eye can measure, and each of them in itself has become unintelligible. We +roll and fly at dizzy speeds, and hear at incredible distances; at the +same time we imagine and calculate to incredible depths. The technique of +science, like that of industry, has become a thing in itself; the one +veils its object, which is nature, as the other defeats its purpose, which +is happiness. Science often seems to be less the study of things than the +study of science. It is now more scholastic than philosophy ever was. We +are invited to conceive organisms within organisms, so minute, so free, +and so dynamic, that the heart of matter seems to explode into an endless +discharge of fireworks, or a mathematical nightmare realised in a thousand +places at once, and become the substance of the world. What is even more +remarkable—for the notion of infinite organisation has been familiar to +the learned at least since the time of Leibniz—the theatre of science is +transformed no less than the actors and the play. The upright walls <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>of +space, the steady tread of time, begin to fail us; they bend now so +obligingly to our perspectives that we no longer seem to travel through +them, but to carry them with us, shooting them out or weaving them about +us according to some native fatality, which is left unexplained. We seem +to have reverted in some sense from Copernicus to Ptolemy: except that the +centre is now occupied, not by the solid earth, but by <i>any</i> geometrical +point chosen for the origin of calculation. Time, too, is not measured by +the sun or stars, but by <i>any</i> "clock"—that is, by any recurrent rhythm +taken as a standard of comparison. It would seem that the existence and +energy of each chosen centre, as well as its career and encounters, hang +on the collateral existence of other centres of force, among which it must +wend its way: yet the only witness to their presence, and the only known +property of their substance, is their "radio-activity", or the physical +light which they shed. Light, in its physical being, is accordingly the +measure of all things in this new philosophy: and if we ask ourselves why +this element should have been preferred, the answer is not far to seek. +Light <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span>is the only medium through which very remote or very minute +particles of matter can be revealed to science. Whatever the nature of +things may be intrinsically, science must accordingly express the universe +in terms of light.</p> + +<p>These reforms have come from within: they are triumphs of method. We make +an evident advance in logic, and in that parsimony which is dear to +philosophers (though not to nature), if we refuse to assign given terms +and relations to any prior medium, such as absolute time or space, which +cannot be given with them. Observable spaces and times, like the facts +observed in them, are given separately and in a desultory fashion. +Initially, then, there are as many spaces and times as there are +observers, or rather observations; these are the specious times and spaces +of dreams, of sensuous life, and of romantic biography. Each is centred +here and now, and stretched outwards, forward, and back, as far as +imagination has the strength to project it. Then, when objects and events +have been posited as self-existent, and when a "clock" and a system of +co-ordinates have been established for measuring them, a single +mathe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span>matical space and time may be deployed about them, conceived to +contain all things, and to supply them with their respective places and +dates. This gives us the cosmos of classical physics. But this system +involves the uncritical notion of light and matter travelling through +media previously existing, and being carried down, like a boat drifting +down stream, by a flowing time which has a pace of its own, and imposes it +on all existence. In reality, each "clock" and each landscape is +self-centred and initially absolute: its time and space are irrelevant to +those of any other landscape or "clock", unless the objects or events +revealed there, being posited as self-existent, actually coincide with +those revealed also in another landscape, or dated by another "clock". It +is only by travelling along its own path at its own rate that experience +or light can ever reach a point lying on another path also, so that two +observations, and two measures, may coincide at their ultimate terms, +their starting-points or their ends. Positions are therefore not +independent of the journey which terminates in them, and thereby +individuates them; and dates are not independent of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>events which +distinguish them. The flux of existence comes first: matter and light +distend time by their pulses, they distend space by their deployments.</p> + +<p>This, if I understand it, is one half the new theory; the other half is +not less acceptable. Newton had described motion as a result of two +principles: the first, inertia, was supposed to be inherent in bodies; the +second, gravity, was incidental to their co-existence. Yet inherent +inertia can only be observed relatively: it makes no difference to me +whether I am said to be moving at a great speed or absolutely at rest, if +I am not jolted or breathless, and if my felt environment does not change. +Inertia, or weight, in so far as it denotes something intrinsic, seems to +be but another name for substance or the principle of existence: in so far +as it denotes the first law of motion, it seems to be relative to an +environment. It would therefore be preferable to combine inertia and +attraction in a single formula, expressing the behaviour of bodies towards +one another in all their conjunctions, without introducing any inherent +forces or absolute measures. This seems <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>to have been done by Einstein, or +at least impressively suggested: and it has been found that the new +calculations correspond to certain delicate observations more accurately +than the old.</p> + +<p>This revolution in science seems, then, to be perfectly legal, and ought +to be welcomed; yet only under one important moral condition, and with a +paradoxical result. The moral condition is that the pride of science +should turn into humility, that it should no longer imagine that it is +laying bare the intrinsic nature of things. And the paradoxical result is +this: that the forms of science are optional, like various languages or +methods of notation. One may be more convenient or subtle than another, +according to the place, senses, interests, and scope of the explorer; a +reform in science may render the old theories antiquated, like the habit +of wearing togas, or of going naked; but it cannot render them false, or +itself true. Science, when it is more than the gossip of adventure or of +experiment, yields practical assurances couched in symbolic terms, but no +ultimate insight: so that the intellectual vacancy of the expert, which I +was deriding, is a sort of warrant of his solidity. It is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>rather when the +expert prophesies, when he propounds a new philosophy founded on his +latest experiments, that we may justly smile at his system, and wait for +the next.</p> + +<p>Self-knowledge—and the new science is full of self-knowledge—is a great +liberator: if perhaps it imposes some retrenchment, essentially it revives +courage. Then at last we see what we are and what we can do. The spirit +can abandon its vain commitments and false pretensions, like a young man +free at last to throw off his clothes and run naked along the sands. +Intelligence is never gayer, never surer, than when it is strictly formal, +satisfied with the evidence of its materials, as with the lights of +jewels, and filled with mounting speculations, as with a sort of laughter. +If all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire +to the condition of mathematics. Their logic is their spontaneous and +intelligible side: and while they differ from mathematics and from one +another in being directed in the first instance upon various +unintelligible existing objects, yet as they advance, they unite: because +they are everywhere striving to discover in those <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span>miscellaneous objects +some intelligible order and method. And as the emotion of the pure artist, +whatever may be his materials, lies in finding in them some formal harmony +or imposing it upon them, so the interest of the scientific mind, in so +far as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal +pattern. The mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the +engineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for +himself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations: +and it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds +that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify +them; much as if a composer found that the sailors could heave better when +singing his songs.</p> + +<p>Yet such independence, however glorious inwardly, cannot help diminishing +the prestige of the arts in the world. If science misled us before, when +it was full of clearness and confidence, how shall we trust it now that it +is all mystery and paradox? If classical physics needed this fundamental +revision, near to experience and fruitful as it was, what revision will +not romantic physics require? <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span>Nor is the future alone insecure: even now +the prophets hardly understand one another, or perhaps themselves; and +some of them interlard their science with the most dubious metaphysics. +Naturally the enemies of science have not been slow to seize this +opportunity: the soft-hearted, the muddle-headed, the superstitious are +all raising their voices, no longer in desperate resistance to science, +but hopefully, and in its name. Science, they tell us, is no longer +hostile to religion, or to divination of any sort. Indeed, divination is a +science too. Physics is no longer materialistic since space is now curved, +and filled with an ether through which light travels at 300,000 kilometres +per second—an immaterial rate: because if anything material ventured to +move at that forbidden speed, it would be so flattened that it would cease +to exist. Indeed, matter is now hardly needed at all; its place has been +taken by radio-activity, and by electrons which dart and whirl with such +miraculous swiftness, that occasionally, for no known reason, they can +skip from orbit to orbit without traversing the intervening positions—an +evident proof of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>free-will in them. Or if solids should still seem to be +material, there are astral bodies as well which are immaterial although +physical; and as to ether and electricity, they are the very substance of +spirit. All this I find announced in newspapers and even in books as the +breakdown of scientific materialism: and yet, when was materialism more +arrant and barbarous than in these announcements? Something no doubt has +broken down: but I am afraid it is rather the habit of thinking clearly +and the power to discern the difference between material and spiritual +things.</p> + +<p>The latest revolution in science will probably not be the last. I do not +know what internal difficulties, contradictions, or ominous obscurities +may exist in the new theories, or what logical seeds of change, perhaps of +radical change, might be discovered there by a competent critic. I base my +expectation on two circumstances somewhat more external and visible to the +lay mind. One circumstance is that the new theories seem to be affected, +and partly inspired, by a particular philosophy, itself utterly insecure. +This philosophy regards the point of view as controlling or <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>even creating +the object seen; in other words, it identifies the object with the +experience or the knowledge of it: it is essentially a subjective, +psychological, Protestant philosophy. The study of perspectives, which a +severer critic might call illusions, is one of the most interesting and +enlightening of studies, and for my own part I should be content to dwell +almost exclusively in that poetic and moral atmosphere, in the realm of +literature and of humanism. Yet I cannot help seeing that neither in logic +nor in natural genesis can perspectives be the ultimate object of science, +since a plurality of points of view, somehow comparable, must be assumed +in the beginning, as well as common principles of projection, and ulterior +points of contact or coincidence. Such assumptions, which must persist +throughout, seem to presuppose an absolute system of nature behind all the +relative systems of science.</p> + +<p>The other circumstance which points to further revolutions is social. The +new science is unintelligible to almost all of us; it can be tested only +by very delicate observations and very difficult reasoning. We accept it +on the authority of a few <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>professors who themselves have accepted it with +a contagious alacrity, as if caught in a whirlwind. It has sprung up +mysteriously and mightily, like mysticism in a cloister or theology in a +council: a Soviet of learned men has proclaimed it. Moreover, it is not +merely a system among systems, but a movement among movements. A system, +even when it has serious rivals, may be maintained for centuries as +religions are maintained, institutionally; but a movement comes to an end; +it is followed presently by a period of assimilation which transforms it, +or by a movement in some other direction. I ask myself accordingly whether +the condition of the world in the coming years will be favourable to +refined and paradoxical science. The extension of education will have +enabled the uneducated to pronounce upon everything. Will the patronage of +capital and enterprise subsist, to encourage discovery and reward +invention? Will a jealous and dogmatic democracy respect the +unintelligible insight of the few? Will a perhaps starving democracy +support materially its Soviet of seers? But let us suppose that no +utilitarian fanaticism supervenes, and no in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>tellectual surfeit or +discouragement. May not the very profundity of the new science and its +metaphysical affinities lead it to bolder developments, inscrutable to the +public and incompatible with one another, like the gnostic sects of +declining antiquity? Then perhaps that luminous modern thing which until +recently was called science, in contrast to all personal philosophies, may +cease to exist altogether, being petrified into routine in the +practitioners, and fading in the professors into abstruse speculations.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span></p> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2> + +<h2>A LONG WAY ROUND TO NIRVANA</h2> + + +<p>That the end of life is death may be called a truism, since the various +kinds of immortality that might perhaps supervene would none of them +abolish death, but at best would weave life and death together into the +texture of a more comprehensive destiny. The end of one life might be the +beginning of another, if the Creator had composed his great work like a +dramatic poet, assigning successive lines to different characters. Death +would then be merely the cue at the end of each speech, summoning the next +personage to break in and keep the ball rolling. Or perhaps, as some +suppose, all the characters are assumed in turn by a single supernatural +Spirit, who amid his endless improvisations is imagining himself living +for the moment in this particular solar and social system. Death in such a +universal monologue would be but a change of scene or of metre, while in +the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>scramble of a real comedy it would be a change of actors. In either +case every voice would be silenced sooner or later, and death would end +each particular life, in spite of all possible sequels.</p> + +<p>The relapse of created things into nothing is no violent fatality, but +something naturally quite smooth and proper. This has been set forth +recently, in a novel way, by a philosopher from whom we hardly expected +such a lesson, namely Professor Sigmund Freud. He has now broadened his +conception of sexual craving or <i>libido</i> into a general principle of +attraction or concretion in matter, like the Eros of the ancient poets +Hesiod and Empedocles. The windows of that stuffy clinic have been thrown +open; that smell of acrid disinfectants, those hysterical shrieks, have +escaped into the cold night. The troubles of the sick soul, we are given +to understand, as well as their cure, after all flow from the stars.</p> + +<p>I am glad that Freud has resisted the tendency to represent this principle +of Love as the only principle in nature. Unity somehow exercises an evil +spell over metaphysicians. It is admitted that in real life it is not well +for One to be alone, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span>I think pure unity is no less barren and +graceless in metaphysics. You must have plurality to start with, or +trinity, or at least duality, if you wish to get anywhere, even if you +wish to get effectively into the bosom of the One, abandoning your +separate existence. Freud, like Empedocles, has prudently introduced a +prior principle for Love to play with; not Strife, however (which is only +an incident in Love), but Inertia, or the tendency towards peace and +death. Let us suppose that matter was originally dead, and perfectly +content to be so, and that it still relapses, when it can, into its old +equilibrium. But the homogeneous (as Spencer would say) when it is finite +is unstable: and matter, presumably not being co-extensive with space, +necessarily forms aggregates which have an inside and an outside. The +parts of such bodies are accordingly differently exposed to external +influences and differently related to one another. This inequality, even +in what seems most quiescent, is big with changes, destined to produce in +time a wonderful complexity. It is the source of all uneasiness, of life, +and of love.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span></p> +<blockquote><p>"Let us imagine [writes Freud]<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> an undifferentiated vesicle of +sensitive substance: then its surface, exposed as it is to the +outer world, is by its very position differentiated, and serves as +an organ for receiving stimuli.... This morsel of living substance +floats about in an outer world which is charged with the most +potent energies, and it would be destroyed ... if it were not +furnished with protection against stimulation. [On the other hand] +the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier against +excitations emanating from within.... The most prolific sources of +such excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism.... +The child never gets tired of demanding the repetition of a game +... he wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, +insists inexorably on exact repetition, and corrects each deviation +which the narrator lets slip by mistake.... According to this, <i>an +instinct would be a tendency in living organic matter impelling it +towards reinstatement of an earlier condition</i>, one which it had +abandoned under the influence of external disturbing forces—a kind +of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation +of inertia in organic life.</p> + +<p>"If, then, all organic instincts are conservative, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>historically +acquired, and directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of +something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of +organic development to the credit of external, disturbing, and +distracting influences. The rudimentary creature would from its +very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances +had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course +of existence.... It would be counter to the conservative nature of +instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. +It must be rather an ancient starting point, which the living being +left long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the +circuitous paths of development.... <i>The goal of all life is +death....</i></p> + +<p>"Through a long period of time the living substance may have ... +had death within easy reach ... until decisive external influences +altered in such a way as to compel [it] to ever greater deviations +from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and +circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These +circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative +instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of +life as we know it."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Freud puts forth these interesting suggestions with much modesty, +admitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span>important to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that, +for all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies. +When we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an <i>Élan vital</i>, +or general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used +are no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion conveyed is +false—false, I mean, to the organic source of life and aspiration, to the +simple naturalness of nature: whereas the suggestion conveyed by Freud's +speculations is true. In what sense can myths and metaphors be true or +false? In the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from +literary psychology, they may report the general movement and the +pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise +sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek +mythology was true and Calvinist theology was false. The chief terms +employed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: "unconscious +wishes", "the pleasure-principle", "the Oedipus complex", "Narcissism", +"the censor"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened +up, in such terms, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh +start may be made with fewer encumbrances and less morbid inhibition. "The +shortcomings of our description", Freud says, "would probably disappear if +for psychological terms we could substitute physiological or chemical +ones. These too only constitute a metaphorical language, but one familiar +to us for a much longer time, and perhaps also simpler." All human +discourse is metaphorical, in that our perceptions and thoughts are +adventitious signs for their objects, as names are, and by no means copies +of what is going on materially in the depths of nature; but just as the +sportsman's eye, which yields but a summary graphic image, can trace the +flight of a bird through the air quite well enough to shoot it and bring +it down, so the myths of a wise philosopher about the origin of life or of +dreams, though expressed symbolically, may reveal the pertinent movement +of nature to us, and may kindle in us just sentiments and true +expectations in respect to our fate—for his own soul is the bird this +sportsman is shooting.</p> + +<p>Now I think these new myths of Freud's about <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span>life, like his old ones +about dreams, are calculated to enlighten and to chasten us enormously +about ourselves. The human spirit, when it awakes, finds itself in +trouble; it is burdened, for no reason it can assign, with all sorts of +anxieties about food, pressures, pricks, noises, and pains. It is born, as +another wise myth has it, in original sin. And the passions and ambitions +of life, as they come on, only complicate this burden and make it heavier, +without rendering it less incessant or gratuitous. Whence this fatality, +and whither does it lead? It comes from heredity, and it leads to +propagation. When we ask how heredity could be started or transmitted, our +ignorance of nature and of past time reduces us to silence or to wild +conjectures. Something—let us call it matter—must always have existed, +and some of its parts, under pressure of the others, must have got tied up +into knots, like the mainspring of a watch, in such a violent and unhappy +manner that when the pressure is relaxed they fly open as fast as they +can, and unravel themselves with a vast sense of relief. Hence the longing +to satisfy latent passions, with the fugitive pleasure in doing so. But +the ex<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>ternal agencies that originally wound up that mainspring never +cease to operate; every fresh stimulus gives it another turn, until it +snaps, or grows flaccid, or is unhinged. Moreover, from time to time, when +circumstances change, these external agencies may encrust that primary +organ with minor organs attached to it. Every impression, every adventure, +leaves a trace or rather a seed behind it. It produces a further +complication in the structure of the body, a fresh charge, which tends to +repeat the impressed motion in season and out of season. Hence that +perpetual docility or ductility in living substance which enables it to +learn tricks, to remember facts, and (when the seeds of past experiences +marry and cross in the brain) to imagine new experiences, pleasing or +horrible. Every act initiates a new habit and may implant a new instinct. +We see people even late in life carried away by political or religious +contagions or developing strange vices; there would be no peace in old +age, but rather a greater and greater obsession by all sorts of cares, +were it not that time, in exposing us to many adventitious influences, +weakens or dis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span>charges our primitive passions; we are less greedy, less +lusty, less hopeful, less generous. But these weakened primitive impulses +are naturally by far the strongest and most deeply rooted in the organism: +so that although an old man may be converted or may take up some hobby, +there is usually something thin in his elderly zeal, compared with the +heartiness of youth; nor is it edifying to see a soul in which the plainer +human passions are extinct becoming a hotbed of chance delusions.</p> + +<p>In any case each fresh habit taking root in the organism forms a little +mainspring or instinct of its own, like a parasite; so that an elaborate +mechanism is gradually developed, where each lever and spring holds the +other down, and all hold the mainspring down together, allowing it to +unwind itself only very gradually, and meantime keeping the whole clock +ticking and revolving, and causing the smooth outer face which it turns to +the world, so clean and innocent, to mark the time of day amiably for the +passer-by. But there is a terribly complicated labour going on beneath, +propelled with difficulty, and balanced <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>precariously, with much secret +friction and failure. No wonder that the engine often gets visibly out of +order, or stops short: the marvel is that it ever manages to go at all. +Nor is it satisfied with simply revolving and, when at last dismounted, +starting afresh in the person of some seed it has dropped, a portion of +its substance with all its concentrated instincts wound up tightly within +it, and eager to repeat the ancestral experiment; all this growth is not +merely material and vain. Each clock in revolving strikes the hour, even +the quarters, and often with lovely chimes. These chimes we call +perceptions, feelings, purposes, and dreams; and it is because we are +taken up entirely with this mental music, and perhaps think that it sounds +of itself and needs no music-box to make it, that we find such difficulty +in conceiving the nature of our own clocks and are compelled to describe +them only musically, that is, in myths. But the ineptitude of our +aesthetic minds to unravel the nature of mechanism does not deprive these +minds of their own clearness and euphony. Besides sounding their various +musical notes, they have the cognitive function of indicating the hour and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>catching the echoes of distant events or of maturing inward dispositions. +This information and emotion, added to incidental pleasures in satisfying +our various passions, make up the life of an incarnate spirit. They +reconcile it to the external fatality that has wound up the organism, and +is breaking it down; and they rescue this organism and all its works from +the indignity of being a vain complication and a waste of motion.</p> + +<p>That the end of life should be death may sound sad: yet what other end can +anything have? The end of an evening party is to go to bed; but its use is +to gather congenial people together, that they may pass the time +pleasantly. An invitation to the dance is not rendered ironical because +the dance cannot last for ever; the youngest of us and the most vigorously +wound up, after a few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and +prancing. The transitoriness of things is essential to their physical +being, and not at all sad in itself; it becomes sad by virtue of a +sentimental illusion, which makes us imagine that they wish to endure, and +that their end is always untimely; but in a healthy nature it is not so. +What is truly sad is to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>have some impulse frustrated in the midst of its +career, and robbed of its chosen object; and what is painful is to have an +organ lacerated or destroyed when it is still vigorous, and not ready for +its natural sleep and dissolution. We must not confuse the itch which our +unsatisfied instincts continue to cause with the pleasure of satisfying +and dismissing each of them in turn. Could they all be satisfied +harmoniously we should be satisfied once for all and completely. Then +doing and dying would coincide throughout and be a perfect pleasure.</p> + +<p>This same insight is contained in another wise myth which has inspired +morality and religion in India from time immemorial: I mean the doctrine +of Karma. We are born, it says, with a heritage, a character imposed, and +a long task assigned, all due to the ignorance which in our past lives has +led us into all sorts of commitments. These obligations we must pay off, +relieving the pure spirit within us from its accumulated burdens, from +debts and assets both equally oppressive. We cannot disentangle ourselves +by mere frivolity, nor by suicide: frivolity would <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span>only involve us more +deeply in the toils of fate, and suicide would but truncate our misery and +leave us for ever a confessed failure. When life is understood to be a +process of redemption, its various phases are taken up in turn without +haste and without undue attachment; their coming and going have all the +keenness of pleasure, the holiness of sacrifice, and the beauty of art. +The point is to have expressed and discharged all that was latent in us; +and to this perfect relief various temperaments and various traditions +assign different names, calling it having one's day, or doing one's duty, +or realising one's ideal, or saving one's soul. The task in any case is +definite and imposed on us by nature, whether we recognise it or not; +therefore we can make true moral progress or fall into real errors. Wisdom +and genius lie in discerning this prescribed task and in doing it readily, +cleanly, and without distraction. Folly on the contrary imagines that any +scent is worth following, that we have an infinite nature, or no nature in +particular, that life begins without obligations and can do business +without capital, and that the will is vacuously free, instead of being a +specific <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>burden and a tight hereditary knot to be unravelled. Some +philosophers without self-knowledge think that the variations and further +entanglements which the future may bring are the manifestation of spirit; +but they are, as Freud has indicated, imposed on living beings by external +pressure, and take shape in the realm of matter. It is only after the +organs of spirit are formed mechanically that spirit can exist, and can +distinguish the better from the worse in the fate of those organs, and +therefore in its own fate. Spirit has nothing to do with infinite +existence. Infinite existence is something physical and ambiguous; there +is no scale in it and no centre. The depths of the human heart are finite, +and they are dark only to ignorance. Deep and dark as a soul may be when +you look down into it from outside, it is something perfectly natural; and +the same understanding that can unearth our suppressed young passions, and +dispel our stubborn bad habits, can show us where our true good lies. +Nature has marked out the path for us beforehand; there are snares in it, +but also primroses, and it leads to peace.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span></p> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2> + +<h2>THE PRESTIGE OF THE INFINITE</h2> + + +<p>"The more complex the world becomes and the more it rises above the +indeterminate, so much the farther removed it is from God; that is to say, +so much the more impious it is." M. Julien Benda<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> is not led to this +startling utterance by any political or sentimental grudge. It is not the +late war, nor the peace of Versailles, nor the parlous state of the arts, +nor the decay of morality and prosperity that disgusts him with our +confused world. It is simply overmastering respect for the infinite. <i>La +Trahison des Clercs</i>, or Treason of the Levites, with which he had +previously upbraided the intellectuals of his time, now appears to consist +precisely in coveting a part in this world's inheritance, and forgetting +that the inheritance of the Levites is the Lord: which, being interpreted +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>philosophically, means that a philosopher is bound to measure all things +by the infinite.</p> + +<p>This infinite is not rhetorical, as if we spoke of infinite thought or +infinite love: it is physico-mathematical. Nothing but number, M. Benda +tells us, seems to him intelligible. Time, space, volume, and complexity +(which appears to the senses as quality) stretch in a series of units, +positions, or degrees, to infinity, as number does: and in such +homogeneous series, infinite in both directions, there will be no fixed +point of origin for counting or surveying the whole and no particular +predominant scale. Every position will be essentially identical with every +other; every suggested structure will be collapsible and reversible; and +the position and relations of every unit will be indistinguishable from +those of every other. In the infinite, M. Benda says, the parts have no +identity: each number in the scale, as we begin counting from different +points of origin, bears also every other number.</p> + +<p>This is no mere mathematical puzzle; the thought has a strange moral +eloquence. Seen in their infinite setting, which we may presume to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>be +their ultimate environment, all things lose their central position and +their dominant emphasis. The contrary of what we first think of them or of +ourselves—for instance that we are alive, while they are dead or +unborn—is also true. Egotism becomes absurd; pride and shame become the +vainest of illusions. If then it be repugnant to reason that the series of +numbers, moments, positions, and volumes should be limited—and the human +spirit has a great affinity to the infinite—all specific quality and +variety in things must be superficial and deeply unreal. They are masks in +the carnival of phenomena, to be observed without conviction, and secretly +dismissed as ironical by those who have laid up their treasure in the +infinite.</p> + +<p>This mathematical dissolution of particulars is reinforced by moral +considerations which are more familiar. Existence—any specific fact +asserting itself in any particular place or moment—is inevitably +contingent, arbitrary, gratuitous, and insecure. A sense of insecurity is +likely to be the first wedge by which repentance penetrates into the +animal heart. If a man did not foresee death <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span>and fear it, he might never +come at all to the unnatural thought of renouncing life. In fact, he does +not often remember death: yet his whole gay world is secretly afraid of +being found out, of being foiled in the systematic bluff by which it lives +as if its life were immortal; and far more than the brave young man fears +death in his own person, the whole life of the world fears to be exorcised +by self-knowledge, and lost in air. And with good reason: because, whether +we stop to notice this circumstance or not, every fact, every laborious +beloved achievement of man or of nature, has come to exist against +infinite odds. In the dark grab-bag of Being, this chosen fact was +surrounded by innumerable possible variations or contradictions of it; and +each of those possibilities, happening not to be realised here and now, +yet possesses intrinsically exactly the same aptitude or claim to +existence. Nor are these claims and aptitudes merely imaginary and +practically contemptible. The flux of existence is continually repenting +of its choices, and giving everything actual the lie, by continually +substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span><i>This</i> world, <i>any</i> world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its +glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some +obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. +"The world", M. Benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel +it to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting itself +and coming to exist; and I feel it to be pitiful, when I consider how it +hung on a mere nothing that this particular world should never have +existed." And though this so accidental world, by its manifold beauties +and excitements, may arouse our romantic enthusiasm, it is fundamentally +an <i>unholy</i> world. Its creation, he adds in italics, "<i>is something which +reason would wish had never taken place</i>".</p> + +<p>For we must not suppose that God, when God is defined as infinite Being, +can be the creator of the world. Such a notion would hopelessly destroy +that coherence in thought to which M. Benda aspires. The infinite cannot +be selective; it cannot possess a particular structure (such, for +instance, as the Trinity) nor a particular quality (such as goodness). It +cannot exert power or give <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>direction. Nothing can be responsible for the +world except the world itself. It has created, or is creating, itself +perpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which +may be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the +original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from +God. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly +free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a +terrible nightmare to itself by its automatic monotony, that still is only +its own work and, figuratively speaking, its own fault. Nothing save its +own arbitrary and needless pressure keeps it going in that round. This +fatality is impressive, and popular religion has symbolised it in the +person of a deity far more often recognised and worshipped than infinite +Being. This popular deity, a symbol for the forces of nature and history, +the patron of human welfare and morality, M. Benda calls the imperial God.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"It is clear that these two Gods ... have nothing to do with one +another. The God whom Marshal de Villars, rising in his stirrups +and pointing his drawn <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>sword heavenwards, thanks on the evening of +Denain, is one God: quite another is the God within whose bosom the +author of the <i>Imitation</i>, in a corner of his cell, feels the +nothingness of all human victories."</p></blockquote> + +<p>It follows from this, if we are coherent, that any "return to God" which +ascetic philosophy may bring about cannot be a social reform, a transition +to some better form of natural existence in a promised land, a renovated +earth, or a material or temporal heaven. Nor can the error of creation be +corrected violently by a second arbitrary act, such as suicide, or the +annihilation of the universe by some ultimate general collapse. If such +events happen, they still leave the door open to new creations and fresh +errors. But the marvel is (I will return to this point presently) that the +world, in the person of a human individual endowed with reason, may +perceive the error of its ways and correct it ideally, in the sphere of +estimation and worship. Such is the only possible salvation. Reason, in +order to save us, and we, in order to be saved, must both subsist: we must +both be incidents in the existing world. We may then, by the operation of +reason in us, recover our <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span>allegiance to the infinite, for we are bone of +its bone and flesh of its flesh: and by our secret sympathy with it we may +rescind every particular claim and dismiss silently every particular form +of being, as something unreal and unholy.</p> + +<p>An even more cogent reason why M. Benda's God cannot have been the creator +of the world is that avowedly this God has never existed. We are expressly +warned that "if God is infinite Being he excludes existence, in so far as +to exist means to be distinct. In the sense which everybody attaches to +the word existence, God, as I conceive him, <i>does not exist</i>". Of course, +in the mind of a lover of the infinite, this fact is not derogatory to +God, but derogatory to existence. The infinite remains the first and the +ultimate term in thought, the fundamental dimension common to all things, +however otherwise they may be qualified; it remains the eternal background +against which they all are defined and into which they soon disappear. +Evidently, in this divine—because indestructible and +necessary—dimension, Being is incapable of making choices, adopting paths +of evolution, or exercising power; it knows nothing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span>of phenomena; it is +not their cause nor their sanction. It is incapable of love, wrath, or any +other passion. "I will add", writes M. Benda, "something else which +theories of an impersonal deity have less often pointed out. Since +infinity is incompatible with personal being, God is incapable of +morality." Thus mere intuition and analysis of the infinite, since this +infinite is itself passive and indifferent, may prove a subtle antidote to +passion, to folly, and even to life.</p> + +<p>I think M. Benda succeeds admirably in the purpose announced in his title +of rendering his discourse coherent. If once we accept his definitions, +his corollaries follow. Clearly and bravely he disengages his idea of +infinity from other properties usually assigned to the deity, such as +power, omniscience, goodness, and tutelary functions in respect to life, +or to some special human society. But coherence is not completeness, nor +even a reasonable measure of descriptive truth; and certain considerations +are omitted from M. Benda's view which are of such moment that, if they +were included, they might transform the whole issue. Perhaps the chief of +these omissions <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>is that of an organ for thought. M. Benda throughout is +engaged simply in clarifying his own ideas, and repeatedly disclaims any +ulterior pretensions. He finds in the panorama of his thoughts an idea of +infinite Being, or God, and proceeds to study the relation of that +conception to all others. It is a task of critical analysis and religious +confession: and nothing could be more legitimate and, to some of us, more +interesting. But whence these various ideas, and whence the spell which +the idea of infinite Being in particular casts over the meditative mind? +Unless we can view these movements of thought in their natural setting and +order of genesis, we shall be in danger of turning autobiography into +cosmology and inwardness into folly.</p> + +<p>One of the most notable points in M. Benda's analysis is his insistence on +the leap involved in passing from infinite Being to any particular fact or +system of facts; and again the leap involved in passing, when the +converted spirit "returns to God", from specific animal interests—no +matter how generous, social, or altruistic these interests may be—to +absolute renunciation and sympathy <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span>with the absolute. "That a will to +return to God should arise in the phenomenal world seems to be a miracle +no less wonderful (though it be less wondered at) than that the world +should arise in the bosom of God." "Love of man, charity, humanitarianism +are nothing but the selfishness of the race, by which each animal species +assures its specific existence." "To surrender one's individuality for the +benefit of a larger self is something quite different from +disinterestedness; it is the exact opposite." And certainly, if we +regarded infinite Being as a cosmological medium—say, empty space and +time—there would be a miraculous break, an unaccountable new beginning, +if that glassy expanse was suddenly wrinkled by something called energy. +But in fact there need never have been such a leap, or such a miracle, +because there could never have been such a transition. Infinite Being is +not a material vacuum "in the bosom" of which a world might arise. It is a +Platonic idea—though Plato never entertained it—an essence, non-existent +and immutable, not in the same field of reality at all as a world of +moving and colliding things. Such an <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>essence is not conceivably the seat +of the variations that enliven the world. It is only in thought that we +may pass from infinite Being to an existing universe; and when we turn +from one to the other, and say that now energy has emerged from the bosom +of God, we are turning over a new leaf, or rather picking up an entirely +different volume. The natural world is composed of objects and events +which theory may regard as transformations of a hypothetical energy; an +energy which M. Benda—who when he comes down to the physical world is a +good materialist—conceives to have condensed and distributed itself into +matter, which in turn composed organisms and ultimately generated +consciousness and reason. But in whatever manner the natural world may +have evolved, it is found and posited by us in perception and action, not, +like infinite Being, defined in thought. This contrast is ontological, and +excludes any derivation of the one object from the other. M. Benda himself +tells us so; and we may wonder why he introduced infinite Being at all +into his description of the world. The reason doubtless is that he was not +engaged in describing <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>the world, except by the way, but rather in +classifying and clarifying his ideas in view of determining his moral +allegiance. And he arranged his terms, whether ideal or materials, in a +single series, because they were alike present to his intuition, and he +was concerned to arrange them in a hierarchy, according to their moral +dignity.</p> + +<p>Not only is infinite Being an incongruous and obstructive term to describe +the substance of the world (which, if it subtends the changes in the world +and causes them, must evidently change with them), but even mathematical +space and time, in their ideal infinity, may be very far from describing +truly the medium and groundwork of the universe. That is a question for +investigation and hypothesis, not for intuition. But in the life of +intuition, when that life takes a mathematical turn, empty space and time +and their definable structure may be important themes; while, when the +same life becomes a discipline of the affections, we see by this latest +example, as well as by many a renowned predecessor of M. Benda, that +infinite Being may dominate the scene.</p> + +<p>Nor is this eventual dominance so foreign to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>the natural mind, or such a +miraculous conversion, as it might seem. Here, too, there is no derivation +of object from object, but an alternative for the mind. As M. Benda points +out, natural interests and sympathies may expand indefinitely, so as to +embrace a family, a nation, or the whole animate universe; we might even +be chiefly occupied with liberal pursuits, such as science or music; the +more we laboured at these things and delighted in them, the less ready +should we be for renunciation and detachment. Must conversion then descend +upon us from heaven like a thunderbolt? Far from it. We need not look for +the principle of spiritual life in the distance: we have it at home from +the beginning. Even the idea of infinite Being, though unnamed, is +probably familiar. Perhaps in the biography of the human race, or of each +budding mind, the infinite or indeterminate may have been the primary +datum. On that homogeneous sensuous background, blank at first but +secretly plastic, a spot here and a movement there may gradually have +become discernible, until the whole picture of nature and history had +shaped itself as we see it. A certain sense of that primitive <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>datum, the +infinite or indeterminate, may always remain as it were the outstretched +canvas on which every picture is painted. And when the pictures vanish, as +in deep sleep, the ancient simplicity and quietness may be actually +recovered, in a conscious union with Brahma. So sensuous, so intimate, so +unsophisticated the "return to God" may be for the spirit, without +excluding the other avenues, intellectual and ascetic, by which this +return may be effected in waking life, though then not so much in act as +in intent only and allegiance.</p> + +<p>I confess that formerly I had some difficulty in sharing the supreme +respect for infinite Being which animates so many saints: it seemed to me +the dazed, the empty, the deluded side of spirituality. Why rest in an +object which can be redeemed from blank negation only by a blank +intensity? But time has taught me not to despise any form of vital +imagination, any discipline which may achieve perfection after any kind. +Intuition is a broadly based activity; it engages elaborate organs and +sums up and synthesises accumulated impressions. It may therefore easily +pour the riches of its ancestry into the image or the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span>sentiment which it +evokes, poor as this sentiment or image might seem if expressed in words. +In rapt or ecstatic moments, the vital momentum, often the moral escape, +is everything, and the achievement, apart from that blessed relief, little +or nothing. Infinite Being may profit in this way by offering a contrast +to infinite annoyance. Moreover, in my own way, I have discerned in pure +Being the involution of all forms. As felt, pure Being may be +indeterminate, but as conceived reflectively it includes all +determinations: so that when deployed into the realm of essence, infinite +or indeterminate Being truly contains entertainment for all eternity.</p> + +<p>M. Benda feels this pregnancy of the infinite on the mathematical side; +but he hardly notices the fact, proclaimed so gloriously by Spinoza, that +the infinity of extension is only one of an infinity of infinites. There +is an aesthetic infinite, or many aesthetic infinites, composed of all the +forms which nature or imagination might exhibit; and where imagination +fails, there are infinite remainders of the unimagined. The version which +M. Benda gives us of infinite Being, limited to the mathe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>matical +dimension, is therefore unnecessarily cold and stark. His one infinity is +monochrome, whereas the total infinity of essence, in which an infinity of +outlines is only one item, is infinitely many-coloured. Phenomena +therefore fall, in their essential variety, within and not without +infinite Being: so that in "returning to God" we might take the whole +world with us, not indeed in its blind movement and piecemeal +illumination, as events occur, but in an after-image and panoramic +portrait, as events are gathered together in the realm of truth.</p> + +<p>On the whole I think M. Benda's two Gods are less unfriendly to one +another than his aggrieved tone might suggest. This pregnant little book +ends on a tragic note.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Hitherto human self-assertion in the state or the family, while +serving the imperial God, has paid some grudging honours, at least +verbally, to the infinite God as well, under the guise of +liberalism, love of mankind, or the negation of classes. But today +this imperfect homage is retracted, and nothing is reverenced +except that which gives strength. If anyone preaches human +kindness, it is in order to establish a "strong" community +martially trained, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span>like a super-state, to oppose everything not +included within it, and to become omnipotent in the art of +utilising the non-human forces of nature.... The will to return to +God may prove to have been, in the history of the phenomenal world, +a sublime accident."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Certainly the will to "return to God", if not an accident, is an incident +in the life of the world; and the whole world itself is a sublime +accident, in the sense that its existence is contingent, groundless, and +precarious. Yet so long as the imperial God continues successfully to keep +our world going, it will be no accident, but a natural necessity, that +many a mind should turn to the thought of the infinite with awe, with a +sense of liberation, and even with joy. The infinite God owes all his +worshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the +imperial God in creating reflective and speculative minds. Or (to drop +these mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe +to nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look +beyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may <i>look</i> beyond, and +take comfort in the vision, they cannot <i>pass</i> beyond. As M. Benda says, +the most faithful Levite can return to the infinite only in his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span>thought; +in his life he must remain a lay creature. Yet nature, in forming the +human soul, unintentionally unlocked for the mind the doors to truth and +to essence, partly by obliging the soul to attend to things which are +outside, and partly by endowing the soul with far greater potentialities +of sensation and invention than daily life is likely to call forth. Our +minds are therefore naturally dissatisfied with their lot and +speculatively directed upon an outspread universe in which our persons +count for almost nothing. These insights are calculated to give our brutal +wills some pause. Intuition of the infinite and recourse to the infinite +for religious inspiration follow of themselves, and can never be +suppressed altogether, so long as life is conscious and experience +provokes reflection.</p> + +<p>Spirit is certainly not one of the forces producing spirit, but neither is +it a contrary force. It is the actuality of feeling, of observation, of +meaning. Spirit has no unmannerly quarrel with its parents, its hosts, or +even its gaolers: they know not what they do. Yet spirit belongs +intrinsically to another sphere, and cannot help wondering at the world, +and suffering in it. The man in whom <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span>spirit is awake will continue to +live and act, but with a difference. In so far as he has become pure +spirit he will have transcended the fear of death or defeat; for now his +instinctive fear, which will subsist, will be neutralised by an equally +sincere consent to die and to fail. He will live henceforth in a truer and +more serene sympathy with nature than is possible to rival natural beings. +Natural beings are perpetually struggling to live only, and not to die; so +that their will is in hopeless rebellion against the divine decrees which +they must obey notwithstanding. The spiritual man, on the contrary, in so +far as he has already passed intellectually into the eternal world, no +longer endures unwillingly the continual death involved in living, or the +final death involved in having been born. He renounces everything +religiously in the very act of attaining it, resigning existence itself as +gladly as he accepts it, or even more gladly; because the emphasis which +action and passion lend to the passing moment seems to him arbitrary and +violent; and as each task or experience is dismissed in turn, he accounts +the end of it more blessed than the beginning.</p> + + + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> The following quotations are drawn from <i>Beyond the Pleasure +Principle</i>, by Sigmund Freud; authorised translation by C.J.M. Hubback. +The International Psycho-Analytic Press, 1922, pp. 29-48. The italics are +in the original.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Essai d'un Discours cohérent sur les Rapports de Dieu et du +Monde.</i> Par Julien Benda. Librairie Gallimard, Paris, 1931.</p></div> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<p class="ctr"><small>[<i>Transcriber's note: Footnotes 2-9 in Essay 1: <span class="u">Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense</span> link directly to the pertinent Supplemental Note</i>.]</small></p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Turns of Thought in Modern +Philosophy, by George Santayana + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN *** + +***** This file should be named 16712-h.htm or 16712-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/7/1/16712/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Michael Ciesielski and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +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: Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy + Five Essays + +Author: George Santayana + +Release Date: September 17, 2005 [EBook #16712] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Michael Ciesielski and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN +MODERN PHILOSOPHY + +_Five Essays_ + + +BY + + +GEORGE SANTAYANA + + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1933 + + + + +Published under the auspices of +THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + +CONTENTS + +I. Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense page 1 + +Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the +occasion of the Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke. +With some Supplementary Notes + + +II. Fifty Years of British Idealism 48 + +Reflections on the republication of Bradley's _Ethical Studies_ + + +III. Revolutions in Science 71 + +Some Comments on the Theory of Relativity and the new Physics + + +IV. A Long Way Round to Nirvana 87 + +Development of a suggestion found in Freud's _Beyond the +Pleasure Principle_ + + +V. The Prestige of the Infinite 102 + +A review of Julien Benda's _Sketch of a consistent theory of +the relations between God and the World_ + + +The Author's acknowledgments are due to the Editors of _The New Adelphi_, +_The Dial_, and the _Journal of Philosophy_, in which one or more of these +Essays originally appeared. + + + + +I + +LOCKE AND THE FRONTIERS OF COMMON SENSE[1] + + +A good portrait of Locke would require an elaborate background. His is not +a figure to stand statuesquely in a void: the pose might not seem grand +enough for bronze or marble. Rather he should be painted in the manner of +the Dutch masters, in a sunny interior, scrupulously furnished with all +the implements of domestic comfort and philosophic enquiry: the Holy Bible +open majestically before him, and beside it that other revelation--the +terrestrial globe. His hand might be pointing to a microscope set for +examining the internal constitution of a beetle: but for the moment his +eye should be seen wandering through the open window, to admire the +blessings of thrift and liberty manifest in the people so worthily busy in +the market-place, wrong as many a monkish notion might be that still +troubled their poor heads. From them his enlarged thoughts would easily +pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting +sail for the Indies, or for savage America. Yes, he too had travelled, and +not only in thought. He knew how many strange nations and false religions +lodged in this round earth, itself but a speck in the universe. There were +few ingenious authors that he had not perused, or philosophical +instruments that he had not, as far as possible, examined and tested; and +no man better than he could understand and prize the recent discoveries of +"the incomparable Mr Newton". Nevertheless, a certain uneasiness in that +spare frame, a certain knitting of the brows in that aquiline countenance, +would suggest that in the midst of their earnest eloquence the +philosopher's thoughts might sometimes come to a stand. Indeed, the +visible scene did not exhaust the complexity of his problem; for there was +also what he called "the scene of ideas", immaterial and private, but +often more crowded and pressing than the public scene. Locke was the +father of modern psychology, and the birth of this airy monster, this +half-natural changeling, was not altogether easy or fortunate.[2] + +I wish my erudition allowed me to fill in this picture as the subject +deserves, and to trace home the sources of Locke's opinions, and their +immense influence. Unfortunately, I can consider him--what is hardly +fair--only as a pure philosopher: for had Locke's mind been more profound, +it might have been less influential. He was in sympathy with the coming +age, and was able to guide it: an age that confided in easy, eloquent +reasoning, and proposed to be saved, in this world and the next, with as +little philosophy and as little religion as possible. Locke played in the +eighteenth century very much the part that fell to Kant in the nineteenth. +When quarrelled with, no less than when embraced, his opinions became a +point of departure for universal developments. The more we look into the +matter, the more we are impressed by the patriarchal dignity of Locke's +mind. Father of psychology, father of the criticism of knowledge, father +of theoretical liberalism, god-father at least of the American political +system, of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedia, at home he was the ancestor of +that whole school of polite moderate opinion which can unite liberal +Christianity with mechanical science and with psychological idealism. He +was invincibly rooted in a prudential morality, in a rationalised +Protestantism, in respect for liberty and law: above all he was deeply +convinced, as he puts it, "that the handsome conveniences of life are +better than nasty penury". Locke still speaks, or spoke until lately, +through many a modern mind, when this mind was most sincere; and two +hundred years before Queen Victoria he was a Victorian in essence. + +A chief element in this modernness of Locke was something that had hardly +appeared before in pure philosophy, although common in religion: I mean, +the tendency to deny one's own presuppositions--not by accident or +inadvertently, but proudly and with an air of triumph. Presuppositions are +imposed on all of us by life itself: for instance the presupposition that +life is to continue, and that it is worth living. Belief is born on the +wing and awakes to many tacit commitments. Afterwards, in reflection, we +may wonder at finding these presuppositions on our hands and, being +ignorant of the natural causes which have imposed them on the animal mind, +we may be offended at them. Their arbitrary and dogmatic character will +tempt us to condemn them, and to take for granted that the analysis which +undermines them is justified, and will prove fruitful. But this critical +assurance in its turn seems to rely on a dubious presupposition, namely, +that human opinion must always evolve in a single line, dialectically, +providentially, and irresistibly. It is at least conceivable that the +opposite should sometimes be the case. Some of the primitive +presuppositions of human reason might have been correct and inevitable, +whilst the tendency to deny them might have sprung from a plausible +misunderstanding, or the exaggeration of a half-truth: so that the +critical opinion itself, after destroying the spontaneous assumptions on +which it rested, might be incapable of subsisting. + +In Locke the central presuppositions, which he embraced heartily and +without question, were those of common sense. He adopted what he calls a +"plain, historical method", fit, in his own words, "to be brought into +well-bred company and polite conversation". Men, "barely by the use of +their natural faculties", might attain to all the knowledge possible or +worth having. All children, he writes, "that are born into this world, +being surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them" +have "a variety of ideas imprinted" on their minds. "External material +things as objects of Sensation, and the operations of our own minds as +objects of Reflection, are to me", he continues, "the only originals from +which all our ideas take their beginnings." "Every act of sensation", he +writes elsewhere, "when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both +parts of nature, the corporeal and the spiritual. For whilst I know, by +seeing or hearing,... that there is some corporeal being without me, the +object of that sensation, I do more certainly know that there is some +spiritual being within me that sees and hears." + +Resting on these clear perceptions, the natural philosophy of Locke falls +into two parts, one strictly physical and scientific, the other critical +and psychological. In respect to the composition of matter, Locke accepted +the most advanced theory of his day, which happened to be a very old one: +the theory of Democritus that the material universe contains nothing but a +multitude of solid atoms coursing through infinite space: but Locke added +a religious note to this materialism by suggesting that infinite space, in +its sublimity, must be an attribute of God. He also believed what few +materialists would venture to assert, that if we could thoroughly examine +the cosmic mechanism we should see the demonstrable necessity of every +complication that ensues, even of the existence and character of mind: for +it was no harder for God to endow matter with the power of thinking than +to endow it with the power of moving. + +In the atomic theory we have a graphic image asserted to describe +accurately, or even exhaustively, the intrinsic constitution of things, or +their primary qualities. Perhaps, in so far as physical hypotheses must +remain graphic at all, it is an inevitable theory. It was first suggested +by the wearing out and dissolution of all material objects, and by the +specks of dust floating in a sunbeam; and it is confirmed, on an enlarged +scale, by the stellar universe as conceived by modern astronomy. When +today we talk of nuclei and electrons, if we imagine them at all, we +imagine them as atoms. But it is all a picture, prophesying what we might +see through a sufficiently powerful microscope; the important +philosophical question is the one raised by the other half of Locke's +natural philosophy, by optics and the general criticism of perception. How +far, if at all, may we trust the images in our minds to reveal the nature +of external things? + +On this point the doctrine of Locke, through Descartes,[3] was also +derived from Democritus. It was that all the sensible qualities of things, +except position, shape, solidity, number and motion, were only ideas in +us, projected and falsely regarded as lodged in things. In the things, +these imputed or secondary qualities were simply powers, inherent in their +atomic constitution, and calculated to excite sensations of that character +in our bodies. This doctrine is readily established by Locke's plain +historical method, when applied to the study of rainbows, mirrors, effects +of perspective, dreams, jaundice, madness, and the will to believe: all of +which go to convince us that the ideas which we impulsively assume to be +qualities of objects are always, in their seat and origin, evolved in our +own heads. + +These two parts of Locke's natural philosophy, however, are not in perfect +equilibrium. _All_ the feelings and ideas of an animal must be equally +conditioned by his organs and passions,[4] and he cannot be aware of what +goes on beyond him, except as it affects his own life.[5] How then could +Locke, or could Democritus, suppose that his ideas of space and atoms were +less human, less graphic, summary, and symbolic, than his sensations of +sound or colour? The language of science, no less than that of sense, +should have been recognised to be a human language; and the nature of +anything existent collateral with ourselves, be that collateral existence +material or mental, should have been confessed to be a subject for faith +and for hypothesis, never, by any possibility, for absolute or direct +intuition. + +There is no occasion to take alarm at this doctrine as if it condemned us +to solitary confinement, and to ignorance of the world in which we live. +We see and know the world through our eyes and our intelligence, in visual +and in intellectual terms: how else should a world be seen or known which +is not the figment of a dream, but a collateral power, pressing and alien? +In the cognisance which an animal may take of his surroundings--and surely +all animals take such cognisance--the subjective and moral character of +his feelings, on finding himself so surrounded, does not destroy their +cognitive value. These feelings, as Locke says, are signs: to take them +for signs is the essence of intelligence. Animals that are sensitive +physically are also sensitive morally, and feel the friendliness or +hostility which surrounds them. Even pain and pleasure are no idle +sensations, satisfied with their own presence: they violently summon +attention to the objects that are their source. Can love or hate be felt +without being felt towards something--something near and potent, yet +external, uncontrolled, and mysterious? When I dodge a missile or pick a +berry, is it likely that my mind should stop to dwell on its pure +sensations or ideas without recognising or pursuing something material? +Analytic reflection often ignores the essential energy of mind, which is +originally more intelligent than sensuous, more appetitive and dogmatic +than aesthetic. But the feelings and ideas of an active animal cannot help +uniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the +natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe +their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, +and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects +which entice that organism or threaten it. + +All ambitions must be defeated when they ask for the impossible. The +ambition to know is not an exception; and certainly our perceptions cannot +tell us how the world would look if nobody saw it, or how valuable it +would be if nobody cared for it. But our perceptions, as Locke again said, +are sufficient for our welfare and appropriate to our condition. They are +not only a wonderful entertainment in themselves, but apart from their +sensuous and grammatical quality, by their distribution and method of +variation, they may inform us most exactly about the order and mechanism +of nature. We see in the science of today how completely the most accurate +knowledge--proved to be accurate by its application in the arts--may shed +every pictorial element, and the whole language of experience, to become a +pure method of calculation and control. And by a pleasant compensation, +our aesthetic life may become freer, more self-sufficing, more humbly +happy in itself: and without trespassing in any way beyond the modesty of +nature, we may consent to be like little children, chirping our human +note; since the life of reason in us may well become science in its +validity, whilst remaining poetry in its texture. + +I think, then, that by a slight re-arrangement of Locke's pronouncements +in natural philosophy, they could be made inwardly consistent, and still +faithful to the first presuppositions of common sense, although certainly +far more chastened and sceptical than impulsive opinion is likely to be +in the first instance. + +There were other presuppositions in the philosophy of Locke besides his +fundamental naturalism; and in his private mind probably the most +important was his Christian faith, which was not only confident and +sincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation. He had friends +among the Cambridge Platonists, and he found in Newton a brilliant example +of scientific rigour capped with mystical insights. Yet if we consider +Locke's philosophical position in the abstract, his Christianity almost +disappears. In form his theology and ethics were strictly rationalistic; +yet one who was a Deist in philosophy might remain a Christian in +religion. There was no great harm in a special revelation, provided it +were simple and short, and left the broad field of truth open in almost +every direction to free and personal investigation. A free man and a good +man would certainly never admit, as coming from God, any doctrine contrary +to his private reason or political interest; and the moral precepts +actually vouchsafed to us in the Gospels were most acceptable, seeing +that they added a sublime eloquence to maxims which sound reason would +have arrived at in any case. + +Evidently common sense had nothing to fear from religious faith of this +character; but the matter could not end there. Common sense is not more +convinced of anything than of the difference between good and evil, +advantage and disaster; and it cannot dispense with a moral interpretation +of the universe. Socrates, who spoke initially for common sense, even +thought the moral interpretation of existence the whole of philosophy. He +would not have seen anything comic in the satire of Moliere making his +chorus of young doctors chant in unison that opium causes sleep because it +has a dormitive virtue. The virtues or moral uses of things, according to +Socrates, were the reason why the things had been created and were what +they were; the admirable virtues of opium defined its perfection, and the +perfection of a thing was the full manifestation of its deepest nature. +Doubtless this moral interpretation of the universe had been overdone, and +it had been a capital error in Socrates to make that interpretation +exclusive and to substitute it for natural philosophy. Locke, who was +himself a medical man, knew what a black cloak for ignorance and villainy +Scholastic verbiage might be in that profession. He also knew, being an +enthusiast for experimental science, that in order to control the movement +of matter--which is to realise those virtues and perfections--it is better +to trace the movement of matter materialistically; for it is in the act of +manifesting its own powers, and not, as Socrates and the Scholastics +fancied, by obeying a foreign magic, that matter sometimes assumes or +restores the forms so precious in the healer's or the moralist's eyes. At +the same time, the manner in which the moral world rests upon the natural, +though divined, perhaps, by a few philosophers, has not been generally +understood; and Locke, whose broad humanity could not exclude the moral +interpretation of nature, was driven in the end to the view of Socrates. +He seriously invoked the Scholastic maxim that nothing can produce that +which it does not contain. For this reason the unconscious, after all, +could never have given rise to consciousness. Observation and experiment +could not be allowed to decide this point: the moral interpretation of +things, because more deeply rooted in human experience, must envelop the +physical interpretation, and must have the last word. + +It was characteristic of Locke's simplicity and intensity that he retained +these insulated sympathies in various quarters. A further instance of his +many-sidedness was his fidelity to pure intuition, his respect for the +infallible revelation of ideal being, such as we have of sensible +qualities or of mathematical relations. In dreams and in hallucinations +appearances may deceive us, and the objects we think we see may not exist +at all. Yet in suffering an illusion we must entertain an idea; and the +manifest character of these ideas is that of which alone, Locke thinks, we +can have certain "knowledge". + + "These", he writes, "are two very different things and carefully to + be distinguished: it being one thing to perceive and know the idea + of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind of + particles they must be, and how arranged ... to make any object + appear white or black." "A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he + has them in his mind, that the ideas he calls white and round are + the very ideas they are, and that they are not other ideas which he + calls red or square.... This ... the mind ... always perceives at + first sight; and if ever there happen any doubt about it, it will + always be found to be about the names and not the ideas + themselves." + +This sounds like high Platonic doctrine for a philosopher of the Left; but +Locke's utilitarian temper very soon reasserted itself in this subject. +Mathematical ideas were not only lucid but true: and he demanded this +truth, which he called "reality", of all ideas worthy of consideration: +mere ideas would be worthless. Very likely he forgot, in his philosophic +puritanism, that fiction and music might have an intrinsic charm. Where +the frontier of human wisdom should be drawn in this direction was clearly +indicated, in Locke's day, by Spinoza, who says: + + "If, in keeping non-existent things present to the imagination, the + mind were at the same time aware that those things did not exist, + surely it would regard this gift of imagination as a virtue in its + own constitution, not as a vice: especially if such an imaginative + faculty depended on nothing except the mind's own nature: that is + to say, if this mental faculty of imagination were free". + +But Locke had not so firm a hold on truth that he could afford to play +with fancy; and as he pushed forward the claims of human jurisdiction +rather too far in physics, by assuming the current science to be literally +true, so, in the realm of imagination, he retrenched somewhat illiberally +our legitimate possessions. Strange that as modern philosophy transfers +the visible wealth of nature more and more to the mind, the mind should +seem to lose courage and to become ashamed of its own fertility. The +hard-pressed natural man will not indulge his imagination unless it poses +for truth; and being half aware of this imposition, he is more troubled at +the thought of being deceived than at the fact of being mechanised or +being bored: and he would wish to escape imagination altogether. A good +God, he murmurs, could not have made us poets against our will. + +Against his will, however, Locke was drawn to enlarge the subjective +sphere. The actual existence of mind was evident: you had only to notice +the fact that you were thinking. Conscious mind, being thus known to +exist directly and independently of the body, was a primary constituent of +reality: it was a fact on its own account.[6] Common sense seemed to +testify to this, not only when confronted with the "I think, therefore I +am" of Descartes, but whenever a thought produced an action. Since mind +and body interacted,[7] each must be as real as the other and, as it were, +on the same plane of being. Locke, like a good Protestant, felt the right +of the conscious inner man to assert himself: and when he looked into his +own mind, he found nothing to define this mind except the ideas which +occupied it. The existence which he was so sure of in himself was +therefore the existence of his ideas. + +Here, by an insensible shift in the meaning of the word "idea", a +momentous revolution had taken place in psychology. Ideas had originally +meant objective terms distinguished in thought-images, qualities, +concepts, propositions. But now ideas began to mean living thoughts, +moments or states of consciousness. They became atoms of mind, +constituents of experience, very much as material atoms were conceived to +be constituents of natural objects. Sensations became the only objects of +sensation, and ideas the only objects of ideas; so that the material world +was rendered superfluous, and the only scientific problem was now to +construct a universe in terms of analytic psychology. Locke himself did +not go so far, and continued to assign physical causes and physical +objects to some, at least, of his mental units; and indeed sensations and +ideas could not very well have other than physical causes, the existence +of which this new psychology was soon to deny: so that about the origin of +its data it was afterwards compelled to preserve a discreet silence. But +as to their combinations and reappearances, it was able to invoke the +principle of association: a thread on which many shrewd observations may +be strung, but which also, when pressed, appears to be nothing but a +verbal mask for organic habits in matter. + +The fact is that there are two sorts of unobjectionable psychology, +neither of which describes a mechanism of disembodied mental states, such +as the followers of Locke developed into modern idealism, to the +confusion of common sense.[8] One unobjectionable sort of psychology is +biological, and studies life from the outside. The other sort, relying on +memory and dramatic imagination, reproduces life from the inside, and is +literary. If the literary psychologist is a man of genius, by the +clearness and range of his memory, by quickness of sympathy and power of +suggestion, he may come very near to the truth of experience, as it has +been or might be unrolled in a human being.[9] The ideas with which Locke +operates are simply high lights picked out by attention in this nebulous +continuum, and identified by names. Ideas, in the original ideal sense of +the word, are indeed the only definite terms which attention can +discriminate and rest upon; but the unity of these units is specious, not +existential. If ideas were not logical or aesthetic essences but +self-subsisting feelings, each knowing itself, they would be insulated for +ever; no spirit could ever survey, recognise, or compare them; and mind +would have disappeared in the analysis of mind. + +These considerations might enable us, I think, to mark the just frontier +of common sense even in this debatable land of psychology. All that is +biological, observable, and documentary in psychology falls within the +lines of physical science and offers no difficulty in principle. Nor need +literary psychology form a dangerous salient in the circuit of nature. The +dramatic poet or dramatic historian necessarily retains the presupposition +of a material world, since beyond his personal memory (and even within it) +he has nothing to stimulate and control his dramatic imagination save +knowledge of the material circumstances in which people live, and of the +material expression in action or words which they give to their feelings. +His moral insight simply vivifies the scene that nature and the sciences +of nature spread out before him: they tell him what has happened, and his +heart tells him what has been felt. Only literature can describe +experience for the excellent reason that the terms of experience are moral +and literary from the beginning. Mind is incorrigibly poetical: not +because it is not attentive to material facts and practical exigencies, +but because, being intensely attentive to them, it turns them into +pleasures and pains, and into many-coloured ideas. Yet at every turn there +is a possibility and an occasion for transmuting this poetry into science, +because ideas and emotions, being caused by material events, refer to +these events, and record their order. + +All philosophies are frail, in that they are products of the human mind, +in which everything is essentially reactive, spontaneous, and volatile: +but as in passion and in language, so in philosophy, there are certain +comparatively steady and hereditary principles, forming a sort of orthodox +reason, which is or which may become the current grammar of mankind. Of +philosophers who are orthodox in this sense, only the earliest or the most +powerful, an Aristotle or a Spinoza, need to be remembered, in that they +stamp their language and temper upon human reason itself. The rest of the +orthodox are justly lost in the crowd and relegated to the chorus. The +frailty of heretical philosophers is more conspicuous and interesting: it +makes up the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the mind, or the history of +philosophy. Locke belongs to both camps: he was restive in his orthodoxy +and timid in his heresies; and like so many other initiators of +revolutions, he would be dismayed at the result of his work. In intention +Locke occupied an almost normal philosophic position, rendered precarious +not by what was traditional in it, like the categories of substance and +power, but rather by certain incidental errors--notably by admitting an +experience independent of bodily life, yet compounded and evolving in a +mechanical fashion. But I do not find in him a prickly nest of obsolete +notions and contradictions from which, fledged at last, we have flown to +our present enlightenment. In his person, in his temper, in his +allegiances and hopes, he was the prototype of a race of philosophers +native and dominant among people of English speech, if not in academic +circles, at least in the national mind. If we make allowance for a greater +personal subtlety, and for the diffidence and perplexity inevitable in the +present moral anarchy of the world, we may find this same Lockian +eclecticism and prudence in the late Lord Balfour: and I have myself had +the advantage of being the pupil of a gifted successor and, in many ways, +emulator, of Locke, I mean William James. So great, at bottom, does their +spiritual kinship seem to me to be, that I can hardly conceive Locke +vividly without seeing him as a sort of William James of the seventeenth +century. And who of you has not known some other spontaneous, inquisitive, +unsettled genius, no less preoccupied with the marvellous intelligence of +some Brazilian parrot, than with the sad obstinacy of some Bishop of +Worcester? Here is eternal freshness of conviction and ardour for reform; +great keenness of perception in spots, and in other spots lacunae and +impulsive judgments; distrust of tradition, of words, of constructive +argument; horror of vested interests and of their smooth defenders; a love +of navigating alone and exploring for oneself even the coasts already well +charted by others. Here is romanticism united with a scientific conscience +and power of destructive analysis balanced by moral enthusiasm. Doubtless +Locke might have dug his foundations deeper and integrated his faith +better. His system was no metaphysical castle, no theological acropolis: +rather a homely ancestral manor house built in several styles of +architecture: a Tudor chapel, a Palladian front toward the new +geometrical garden, a Jacobean parlour for political consultation and +learned disputes, and even--since we are almost in the eighteenth +century--a Chinese cabinet full of curios. It was a habitable philosophy, +and not too inharmonious. There was no greater incongruity in its parts +than in the gentle variations of English weather or in the qualified moods +and insights of a civilised mind. Impoverished as we are, morally and +humanly, we can no longer live in such a rambling mansion. It has become a +national monument. On the days when it is open we revisit it with +admiration; and those chambers and garden walks re-echo to us the clear +dogmas and savoury diction of the sage--omnivorous, artless, +loquacious--whose dwelling it was. + + +[1] Paper read before the Royal Society of Literature on the occasion of +the Tercentenary of the birth of John Locke. + +[2] See note I, p. 26. + +[3] See note II, p. 29. + +[4] See note III, p. 35. + +[5] See note IV, p. 36. + +[6] See note V, p. 37. + +[7] See note VI, p. 39. + +[8] See note VII, p. 43. + +[9] See note VIII, p. 46. + + + + +SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES + + +I + +Page 3. _This airy monster, this half-natural changeling._ + +Monsters and changelings were pointed to by Locke with a certain +controversial relish: they proved that nature was not compressed or +compressible within Aristotelian genera and species, but was a free +mechanism subject to indefinite change. Mechanism in physics is favourable +to liberty in politics and morals: each creature has a right to be what it +spontaneously is, and not what some previous classification alleges that +it ought to have been. The Protestant and revolutionary independence of +Locke's mind here gives us a foretaste of Darwin and even of Nietzsche. +But Locke was moderate even in his radicalisms. A human nature totally +fluid would of itself have proved anarchical; but in order to stem that +natural anarchy it was fortunately possible to invoke the conditions of +prosperity and happiness strictly laid down by the Creator. The +improvidence and naughtiness of nature was called to book at every turn by +the pleasures and pains divinely appended to things enjoined and to things +forbidden, and ultimately by hell and by heaven. Yet if rewards and +punishments were attached to human action and feeling in this perfectly +external and arbitrary fashion, whilst the feelings and actions +spontaneous in mankind counted for nothing in the rule of morals and of +wisdom, we should be living under the most cruel and artificial of +tyrannies; and it would not be long before the authority of such a code +would be called in question and the reality of those arbitrary rewards and +punishments would be denied, both for this world and for any other. In a +truly rational morality moral sanctions would have to vary with the +variation of species, each new race or individual or mode of feeling +finding its natural joy in a new way of life. The monsters would not be +monsters except to rustic prejudice, and the changelings would be simply +experiments in creation. The glee of Locke in seeing nature elude +scholastic conventions would then lose its savour, since those staid +conventions themselves would have become obsolete. Nature would henceforth +present nothing but pervasive metamorphosis, irresponsible and endless. To +correct the weariness of such pure flux we might indeed invoke the idea of +a progress or evolution towards something always higher and better; but +this idea simply reinstates, under a temporal form, the dominance of a +specific standard, to which nature is asked to conform. Genera and species +might shift and glide into one another at will, but always in the +authorised direction. If, on the contrary, transformation had no +predetermined direction, we should be driven back, for a moral principle, +to each of the particular types of life generated on the way: as in +estimating the correctness or beauty of language we appeal to the speech +and genius of each nation at each epoch, without imposing the grammar of +one language or age upon another. It is only in so far as, in the midst of +the flux, certain tropes become organised and recurrent, that any +interests or beauties can be transmitted from moment to moment or from +generation to generation. Physical integration is a prerequisite to moral +integrity; and unless an individual or a species is sufficiently organised +and determinate to aspire to a distinguishable form of life, eschewing all +others, that individual or species can bear no significant name, can +achieve no progress, and can approach no beauty or perfection. + +Thus, so long as in a fluid world there is some measure of life and +organisation, monsters and changelings will always remain possible +physically and regrettable morally. Small deviations from the chosen type +or the chosen direction of progress will continue to be called morbid and +ugly, and great deviations or reversals will continue to be called +monstrous. This is but the seamy side of that spontaneous predilection, +grounded in our deepest nature, by which we recognise beauty and nobleness +at first sight, with immense refreshment and perfect certitude. + + +II + +Page 8. _Through Descartes._ + +Very characteristic was the tireless polemic which Locke carried on +against Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against +sweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims: +children were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were +equal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain was caused by the +paternal slipper before he reflected philosophically that everything must +have a cause. Again, extension was not the essence of matter, which must +be solid as well, to be distinguishable from empty space. Finally, +thinking was not the essence of the soul: a man, without dying, might lose +consciousness: this often happened, or at least could not be prevented +from happening by a definition framed by a French philosopher. These +protests were evidently justified by common sense: yet they missed the +speculative radicalism and depth of the Cartesian doctrines, which had +struck the keynotes of all modern philosophy and science: for they +assumed, for the first time in history, the transcendental point of view. +No wonder that Locke could not do justice to this great novelty: Descartes +himself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the +development of his system; and it was not until adopted by Kant, or rather +by Fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. Even +today philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and +physics with soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes +were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and +authority. A man who has a clear head, and like Descartes is rendered by +his aristocratic pride both courteous and disdainful, may readily conform +to usage in his language, and even in his personal sentiments, without +taking either too seriously: he is not struggling to free his own mind, +which is free already, nor very hopeful of freeing that of most people. +The innate ideas were not explicit thoughts but categories employed +unwittingly, as people in speaking conform to the grammar of the +vernacular without being aware that they do so. As for extension being the +essence of matter, since matter existed and was a substance, it would +always have been more than its essence: a sort of ether the parts of which +might move and might have different and calculable dynamic values. The +gist of this definition of matter was to clear the decks for scientific +calculation, by removing from nature the moral density and moral magic +with which the Socratic philosophy had encumbered it. Science would be +employed in describing the movements of bodies, leaving it for the senses +and feelings to appreciate the cross-lights that might be generated in the +process. Though not following the technique of Descartes, the physics of +our own day realises his ideal, and traces in nature a mathematical +dynamism, perfectly sufficient for exact prevision and mechanical art. + +Similarly, in saying that the essence of the soul was to think, Descartes +detached consciousness, or actual spirit, from the meshes of all unknown +organic or invented mental mechanisms. It was an immense clarification and +liberation in its proper dimension: but this pure consciousness was not a +soul; it was not the animal psyche, or principle of organisation, life, +and passion--a principle which, according to Descartes, was material. To +have called such a material principle the soul would have shocked all +Christian conceptions; but if Descartes had abstained from giving that +consecrated name to mere consciousness, he need not have been wary of +making the latter intermittent and evanescent, as it naturally is. He was +driven to the conclusion that the soul can never stop thinking, by the +desire to placate orthodox opinion, and his own Christian sentiments, at +the expense of attributing to actual consciousness a substantial +independence and a directive physical force which were incongruous with +it: a force and independence perfectly congruous with the Platonic soul, +which had been a mythological being, a supernatural spirit or daemon or +incubus, incarnate in the natural world, and partly dominating it. The +relations of such a soul to the particular body or bodies which it might +weave for itself on earth, to the actions which it performed through such +bodies, and to the current of its own thoughts, then became questions for +theology, or for a moralistic theory of the universe. They were questions +remote from the preoccupations of the modern mind; yet it was not possible +either for Locke or for Descartes to clear their fresh conceptions +altogether from those ancient dreams. + +What views precisely did Locke oppose to these radical tendencies of +Descartes? + +In respect to the nature of matter, I have indicated above the position +of Locke: pictorially he accepted an ordinary atomism; scientifically, the +physics of Newton. + +On the other two points Locke's convictions were implicit rather than +speculative: he resisted the Cartesian theories without much developing +his own, as after all was natural in a critic engaged in proving that our +natural faculties were not intended for speculation. All knowledge came +from experience, and no man could know the savour of a pineapple without +having tasted it. Yet this savour, according to Locke, did not reside at +first in the pineapple, to be conveyed on contact to the palate and to the +mind; but it was generated in the process of gustation; or perhaps we +should rather say that it was generated in the mind on occasion of that +process. At least, then, in respect to secondary qualities, and to all +moral values, the terms of human knowledge were not drawn from the objects +encountered in the world, but from an innate sensibility proper to the +human body or mind. Experience--if this word meant the lifelong train of +ideas which made a man's moral being--was not a source of knowledge but +was knowledge (or illusion) itself, produced by organs endowed with a +special native sensibility in contact with varying external stimuli. This +conclusion would then not have contradicted, but exactly expressed, the +doctrine of innate categories. + +As to the soul, which might exist without thinking, Locke still called it +an immaterial substance: not so immaterial, however, as not to be conveyed +bodily with him in his coach from London to Oxford. Although, like Hobbes, +Locke believed in the power of the English language to clarify the human +intellect, he here ignored the advice of Hobbes to turn that befuddling +Latin phrase into plain English. Substance meant body: immaterial meant +bodiless: therefore immaterial substance meant bodiless body. True, +substance had not really meant body for Aristotle or the Schoolmen; but +who now knew or cared what anything had meant for them? Locke scornfully +refused to consider what a substantial form may have signified; and in +still maintaining that he had a soul, and calling it a spiritual +substance, he was probably simply protesting that there was something +living and watchful within his breast, the invisible moral agent in all +his thoughts and actions. It was _he_ that had them and did them; and this +self of his was far from being reducible to a merely logical impersonal +subject, an "I think" presupposed in all thought: for what would this "I +think" have become when it was not thinking? On the other hand it mattered +very little what the _substance_ of a thinking being might be: God might +even have endowed the body with the faculty of thinking, and of generating +ideas on occasion of certain impacts. Yet a man was a man for all that: +and Locke was satisfied that he knew, at least well enough for an honest +Englishman, what he was. He was what he felt himself to be: and this inner +man of his was not merely the living self, throbbing now in his heart; it +was all his moral past, all that he remembered to have been. If, from +moment to moment, the self was a spiritual energy astir within, in +retrospect the living present seemed, as it were, to extend its tentacles +and to communicate its subjectivity to his whole personal past. The limits +of his personality were those of his memory, and his experience included +everything that his living mind could appropriate and re-live. In a word, +_he was his idea of himself_: and this insight opens a new chapter not +only in his philosophy but in the history of human self-estimation. +Mankind was henceforth invited not to think of itself as a tribe of +natural beings, nor of souls, with a specific nature and fixed +possibilities. Each man was a romantic personage or literary character: he +was simply what he was thought to be, and might become anything that he +could will to become. The way was opened for Napoleon on the one hand and +for Fichte on the other. + + +III + +Page 9. __All_ ideas must be equally conditioned._ + +Even the mathematical ideas which seem so exactly to describe the dynamic +order of nature are not repetitions of their natural counterpart: for +mathematical form in nature is a web of diffuse relations enacted; in the +mind it is a thought possessed, the logical synthesis of those deployed +relations. To run in a circle is one thing; to conceive a circle is +another. Our mind by its animal roots (which render it relevant to the +realm of matter and cognitive) and by its spiritual actuality (which +renders it original, synthetic, and emotional) is a language, from its +beginnings; almost, we might say, a biological poetry; and the greater the +intellectuality and poetic abstraction the greater the possible range. Yet +we must not expect this scope of speculation in us to go with adequacy or +exhaustiveness: on the contrary, mathematics and religion, each in its way +so sure, leave most of the truth out. + + +IV + +Page 9. _He cannot be aware of what goes on beyond him, except as it +affects his own life._ + +Even that spark of divine intelligence which comes into the animal soul, +as Aristotle says, from beyond the gates, comes and is called down by the +exigencies of physical life. An animal endowed with locomotion cannot +merely feast sensuously on things as they appear, but must react upon them +at the first signal, and in so doing must virtually and in intent envisage +them as they are in themselves. For it is by virtue of their real +constitution and intrinsic energy that they act upon us and suffer change +in turn at our hands; so that whatsoever form things may take to our +senses and intellect, they take that form by exerting their material +powers upon us, and intertwining them in action with our own organisms. + +Thus the appearance of things is always, in some measure, a true index to +their reality. Animals are inevitably engaged in self-transcending action, +and the consciousness of self-transcending action is self-transcendent +knowledge. The very nature of animal life makes it possible, within animal +consciousness, to discount appearance and to correct illusion--things +which in a vegetative or aesthetic sensibility would not be +distinguishable from pure experience itself. But when aroused to +self-transcendent attention, feeling must needs rise to intelligence, so +that external fact and impartial truth come within the range of +consciousness, not indeed by being contained there, but by being aimed at. + + +V + +Page 19. _Conscious mind was a fact on its own account._ + +This conscious mind was a man's moral being, and personal identity could +not extend further than possible memory. This doctrine of Locke's had some +comic applications. The Bishop of Worcester was alarmed. If actions which +a hardened sinner had forgotten were no longer his, a short memory would +be a great blessing in the Day of Judgment. On the other hand, a theology +more plastic than Stillingfleet's would one day find in this same doctrine +a new means of edification. For if I may disown all actions I have +forgotten, may not things not done or witnessed by me in the body be now +appropriated and incorporated in my consciousness, if only I conceive them +vividly? The door is then open to all the noble ambiguities of idealism. +As my consciousness expands, or thinks it expands, into dramatic sympathy +with universal experience, that experience becomes my own. I may say I +have been the agent in all past achievements. Emerson could know that he +was Shakespeare and Caesar and Christ. Futurity is mine also, in every +possible direction at once; and I am one with the spirit of the universe +and with God. + +Locke reassured the Bishop of Worcester, and was humbly confident that +Divine Justice would find a way of vindicating Itself in spite of human +wit. He might have added that if the sin of Adam could not only be imputed +to us juridically but could actually taint our consciousness--as it +certainly does if by Adam we understand our whole material heritage--so +surely the sins done or the habits acquired by the body beyond the scope +of consciousness may taint or clarify this consciousness now. Indeed, the +idea we form of ourselves and of our respective experiences is a figment +of vanity, a product of dramatic imagination, without cognitive import +save as a reading of the hidden forces, physical or divine, which have +formed us and actually govern us. + + +VI + +Page 19. _Mind and body interacted._ + +The self which acts in a man is itself moved by forces which have long +been familiar to common sense, without being understood except +dramatically. These forces are called the passions; or when the dramatic +units distinguished are longish strands rather than striking episodes, +they are called temperament, character, or will; or perhaps, weaving all +these strands and episodes together again into one moral fabric, we call +them simply human nature. But in what does this vague human nature reside, +and how does it operate on the non-human world? Certainly not within the +conscious sphere, or in the superficial miscellany of experience. +Immediate experience is the intermittent chaos which human nature, in +combination with external circumstances, is invoked to support and to +rationalise. Is human nature, then, resident in each individual soul? +Certainly: but the soul is merely another name for that active principle +which we are looking for, to be the seat of our sensibility and the source +of our actions. Is this psychic power, then, resident in the body? +Undoubtedly; since it is hereditary and transmitted by a seed, and +continually aroused and modified by material agencies. + +Since this soul or self in the body is so obscure, the temptation is great +to dramatise its energies and to describe them in myths. Myth is the +normal means of describing those forces of nature which we cannot measure +or understand; if we could understand or measure them we should describe +them prosaically and analytically, in what is called science. But nothing +is less measurable, or less intelligible to us, in spite of being so near +us and familiar, as the life of this carnal instrument, so soft and so +violent, which breeds our sensations and precipitates our actions. We see +today how the Freudian psychology, just because it is not satisfied with +registering the routine of consciousness but endeavours to trace its +hidden mechanism and to unravel its physical causes, is driven to use the +most frankly mythological language. The physiological processes concerned, +though presupposed, are not on the scale of human perception and not +traceable in detail; and the moral action, though familiar in snatches, +has to be patched by invented episodes, and largely attributed to daemonic +personages that never come on the stage. + +Locke, in his psychology of morals, had at first followed the verbal +rationalism by which people attribute motives to themselves and to one +another. Human actions were explained by the alleged pursuit of the +greater prospective pleasure, and avoidance of the greater prospective +pain. But this way of talking, though not so poetical as Freud's, is no +less mythical. Eventual goods and evils have no present existence and no +power: they cannot even be discerned prophetically, save by the vaguest +fancy, entirely based on the present impulses and obsessions of the soul. +No future good, no future evil avails to move us, except--as Locke said +after examining the facts more closely--when a _certain uneasiness_ in the +soul (or in the body) causes us to turn to those untried goods and evils +with a present and living interest. This actual uneasiness, with the dream +pictures which it evokes, is a mere symptom of the direction in which +human nature in us is already moving, or already disposed to move. Without +this prior physical impulse, heaven may beckon and hell may yawn without +causing the least variation in conduct. As in religious conversion all is +due to the call of grace, so in ordinary action all is due to the ripening +of natural impulses and powers within the psyche. The _uneasiness_ +observed by Locke is merely the consciousness of this ripening, before the +field of relevant action has been clearly discerned. + +When all this is considered, the ostensible interaction between mind and +body puts on a new aspect. There are no _purely mental_ ideas or +intentions followed by material effects: there are no material events +followed by a _purely mental_ sensation or idea. Mental events are always +elements in total natural events containing material elements also: +material elements form the organ, the stimulus, and probably also the +object for those mental sensations or ideas. Moreover, the physical strand +alone is found to be continuous and traceable; the conscious strand, the +sequence of mental events, flares up and dies down daily, if not hourly; +and the medley of its immediate features--images, words, moods--juxtaposes +China and Peru, past and future, in the most irresponsible confusion. On +the other hand, in human life it is a part of the conscious +element--intentions, affections, plans, and reasonings--that _explains_ +the course of action: dispersed temporally, our dominant thoughts contain +the reason for our continuous behaviour, and seem to guide it. They are +not so much links in a chain of minute consecutive causes--an idea or an +act of will often takes time to work and works, as it were, only +posthumously--as they are general overarching moral inspirations and +resolves, which the machinery of our bodies executes in its own way, often +rendering our thoughts more precise in the process, or totally +transforming them. We do roughly what we meant to do, barring accidents. +The reasons lie deep in our compound nature, being probably inarticulate; +and our action in a fragmentary way betrays our moral disposition: betrays +it in both senses of the word betray, now revealing it unawares, and now +sadly disappointing it. + +I leave it for the reader's reflection to decide whether we should call +such cohabitation of mind with body interaction, or not rather sympathetic +concomitance, self-annotation, and a partial prophetic awakening to a life +which we are leading automatically. + + +VII + +Page 21. _To the confusion of common sense._ + +Berkeley and his followers sometimes maintain that common sense is on +their side, that they have simply analysed the fact of our experience of +the material world, and if there is any paradox in their idealism, it is +merely verbal and disappears with familiarity. All the "reality", they +say, all the force, obduracy, and fertility of nature subsist undiminished +after we discover that this reality resides, and can only reside, in the +fixed order of our experience. + +But no: analysis of immediate experience will never disclose any fixed +order in it; the surface of experience, when not interpreted +materialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers, +when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of +experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and +relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so +that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our +experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further +biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that we assume a future +not so much similar to the past, as better. When developed, this +propensity turns into trust in natural or divine laws; but it is contrary +to common sense to expect such laws to operate apart from matter and from +the material continuity of external occasions. This appears clearly in our +trust in persons--a radical animal propensity--which is consonant with +common sense when these persons are living bodies, but becomes +superstitious, or at least highly speculative, when these persons are +disembodied spirits. + +It is a pity that the beautiful system of Berkeley should have appeared in +an unspiritual age, when religion was mundane and perfunctory, and the +free spirit, where it stirred, was romantic and wilful. For that system +was essentially religious: it put the spirit face to face with God, +everywhere, always, and in everything it turned experience into a divine +language for the monition and expression of the inner man. Such an +instrument, in spiritual hands, might have served to dispel all natural +illusions and affections, and to disinfect the spirit of worldliness and +egotism. But Berkeley and his followers had no such thought. All they +wished was to substitute a social for a material world, precisely because +a merely social world might make worldly interests loom larger and might +induce mankind, against the evidence of their senses and the still small +voice in their hearts, to live as if their worldly interests were absolute +and must needs dominate the spirit. + +Morally this system thus came to sanction a human servitude to material +things such as ancient materialists would have scorned; and theoretically +the system did not escape the dogmatic commitments of common sense against +which it protested. For far from withdrawing into the depths of the +private spirit, it professed to describe universal experience and the +evolution of all human ideas. This notion of "experience" originally +presupposed a natural agent or subject to endure that experience, and to +profit by it, by learning to live in better harmony with external +circumstances. Each agent or subject of experience might, at other times, +become an object of experience also: for they all formed part of a +material world, which they might envisage in common in their perceptions. +Now the criticism which repudiates this common material medium, like all +criticism or doubt, is secondary and partial: it continues to operate with +all the assumptions of common sense, save the one which it is expressly +criticising. So, in repudiating the material world, this philosophy +retains the notion of various agents or subjects gathering experience; and +we are not expected to doubt that there are just as many streams of +experience without a world, as there were people in the world when the +world existed. But the number and nature of these experiences have now +become undiscoverable, the material persons having been removed who +formerly were so placed as to gather easily imagined experiences, and to +be able to communicate them; and the very notion of experience has been +emptied of its meaning, when no external common world subsists to impose +that same experience on everybody. It was not knowledge of existing +experiences _in vacuo_ that led common sense to assume a material world, +but knowledge of an existing material world led it to assume existing, and +regularly reproducible, experiences. + +Thus the whole social convention posited by empirical idealism is borrowed +without leave, and rests on the belief in nature for which it is +substituted. + + +VIII + +Page 21. _The literary psychologist may come very near to the truth of +experience._ + +Experience cannot be in itself an object of science, because it is +essentially invisible, immeasurable, fugitive, and private; and although +it may be shared or repeated, the evidence for that repetition or that +unanimity cannot be found by comparing a present experience with another +experience by hypothesis absent. Both the absent experience and its +agreement with the present experience must be imagined freely and credited +instinctively, in view of the known circumstances in which the absent +experience is conceived to have occurred. The only instrument for +conceiving experience at large is accordingly private imagination; and +such imagination cannot be tested, although it may be guided and perhaps +recast by fresh observations or reports concerning the action and language +of other people. For action and language, being contagious, and being the +material counterpart of experience in each of us, may voluntarily or +involuntarily suggest our respective experience to one another, by causing +each to re-enact more or less accurately within himself the experience of +the rest. Thus alien thoughts and feelings are revealed or suggested to us +in common life, not without a subjective transformation increasing, so to +speak, as the square of the distance: and even the record of experience in +people's own words, when these are not names for recognisable external +things, awakens in the reader, in another age or country, quite +incommensurable ideas. Yet, under favourable circumstances, such +suggestion or revelation of experience, without ever becoming science, may +become public unanimity in sentiment, and may produce a truthful and +lively dramatic literature. + +All modern philosophy, in so far as it is a description of experience and +not of nature, therefore seems to belong to the sphere of literature, and +to be without scientific value. + + + + +II + +FIFTY YEARS OF BRITISH IDEALISM[10] + + +After fifty years, an old milestone in the path of philosophy, Bradley's +_Ethical Studies_, has been set up again, as if to mark the distance which +English opinion has traversed in the interval. It has passed from insular +dogmatism to universal bewilderment; and a chief agent in the change has +been Bradley himself, with his scornful and delicate intellect, his wit, +his candour, his persistence, and the baffling futility of his +conclusions. In this early book we see him coming forth like a young David +against every clumsy champion of utilitarianism, hedonism, positivism, or +empiricism. And how smooth and polished were the little stones in his +sling! How fatally they would have lodged in the forehead of that +composite monster, if only it had had a forehead! Some of them might even +have done murderous execution in Bradley's own camp: for instance, this +pebble cast playfully at the metaphysical idol called "Law": "It is +_always_ wet on half-holidays because of the Law of Raininess, but +_sometimes_ it is _not_ wet, because of the Supplementary Law of +Sunshine". + +Bradley and his friends achieved a notable victory in the academic field: +philosophic authority and influence passed largely into their hands in all +English-speaking universities. But it was not exactly from these seats of +learning that naturalism and utilitarianism needed to be dislodged; like +the corresponding radicalisms of our day, these doctrines prevailed rather +in certain political and intellectual circles outside, consciously +revolutionary and often half-educated; and I am afraid that the braggart +Goliaths of today need chastening at least as much as those of fifty years +ago. In a country officially Christian, and especially in Oxford, it is +natural and fitting that academic authority should belong to orthodox +tradition--theological, Platonic, and Aristotelian. Bradley, save for a +few learned quotations, strangely ignored this orthodoxy entrenched +behind his back. In contrast with it he was himself a heretic, with first +principles devastating every settled belief: and it was really this +venerable silent partner at home that his victory superseded, at least in +appearance and for a season. David did not slay Goliath, but he dethroned +Saul. Saul was indeed already under a cloud, and all in David's heart was +not unkindness in that direction. Bradley might almost be called an +unbelieving Newman; time, especially, seems to have brought his suffering +and refined spirit into greater sympathy with ancient sanctities. +Originally, for instance, venting the hearty Protestant sentiment that +only the Christianity of laymen is sound, he had written: "I am happy to +say that 'religieux' has no English equivalent". But a later note says: +"This is not true except of Modern English only. And, in any case, it +won't do, and was wrong and due to ignorance. However secluded the +religious life, it may be practical indirectly _if_ through the unity of +the spiritual body it can be taken as vicarious". The "_if_" here saves +the principle that all values must be social, and that the social organism +is the sole moral reality: yet how near this bubble comes to being +pricked! We seem clearly to feel that the question is not whether +spiritual life subserves animal society, but whether animal society ever +is stirred and hallowed into spiritual life. + +All this, however, in that age of progress, was regarded as obsolete: +there was no longer to be any spirit except the spirit of the times. True, +the ritualists might be striving to revive the latent energies of +religious devotion, with some dubious help from aestheticism: but against +the rising tide of mechanical progress and romantic anarchy, and against +the mania for rewriting history, traditional philosophy then seemed +helpless and afraid to defend itself: it is only now beginning to recover +its intellectual courage. For the moment, speculative radicals saw light +in a different quarter. German idealism was nothing if not self-confident; +it was relatively new; it was encyclopaedic in its display of knowledge, +which it could manipulate dialectically with dazzling, if not stable, +results; it was Protestant in temper and autonomous in principle; and +altogether it seemed a sovereign and providential means of suddenly +turning the tables on the threatened naturalism. By developing romantic +intuition from within and packing all knowledge into one picture, the +universe might be shown to be, like intuition itself, thoroughly +spiritual, personal, and subjective. + +The fundamental axiom of the new logic was that the only possible reality +was consciousness. + + "People find", writes Bradley, "a subject and an object correlated + in consciousness.... To go out of that unity is for us literally to + go out of our minds.... When mind is made only a part of the whole, + there is a question which _must_ be answered.... If about any + matter we know nothing whatsoever, can we say anything about it? + Can we even say that it is? And if it is not in consciousness, how + can we know it?... And conversely, if we know it, it cannot be not + mind." + +Bradley challenged his contemporaries to refute this argument; and not +being able to do so, many of them felt constrained to accept it, perhaps +not without grave misgivings. For was it not always a rooted conviction of +the British mind that knowledge brings material power, and that any +figments of consciousness (in religion, for instance) not bringing +material power are dangerous bewitchments, and not properly knowledge? +Yet it is no less characteristic of the British mind to yield +occasionally, up to a certain point, to some such enthusiastic fancy, +provided that its incompatibility with honest action may be denied or +ignored. So in this case British idealists, in the act of defining +knowledge idealistically, as the presence to consciousness of its own +phenomena, never really ceased to assume transcendent knowledge of a +self-existing world, social and psychological, if not material: and they +continued scrupulously to readjust their ideas to those dark facts, often +more faithfully than the avowed positivists or scientific psychologists. + +What could ethics properly be to a philosopher who on principle might not +trespass beyond the limits of consciousness? Only ethical sentiment. +Bradley was satisfied to appeal to the moral consciousness of his day, +without seeking to transform it. The most intentionally eloquent passage +in his book describes war-fever unifying and carrying away a whole people: +that was the summit of moral consciousness and of mystic virtue. His aim, +even in ethics, was avowedly to describe that which exists, to describe +moral experience, without proposing a different form for it. A man must be +a man of his own time, or nothing; to set up to be better than the world +was the beginning of immorality; and virtue lay in accepting one's station +and its duties. The moralist should fill his mind with a concrete picture +of the task and standards of his age and nation, and should graft his own +ideals upon that tree; this need not prevent moral consciousness from +including a decided esteem for non-political excellences like health, +beauty, or intelligence, which are not ordinarily called virtues by modern +moralists. Yet they were undeniably good; better, perhaps, than any +painful and laborious dutifulness; so that the strictly moral +consciousness might run over, and presently lose itself in "something +higher". Indeed, even health, beauty, and intelligence, which seemed at +first so clearly good, might lose their sharpness on a wider view. In the +panorama that would ultimately fill the mind these so-called goods and +virtues could not be conceived without their complementary vices and +evils. Thus all moral consciousness, and even all vital preference might +ultimately be superseded: they might appear to have belonged to a partial +and rather low stage in the self-development of consciousness. + +With this dissolution of his moral judgments always in prospect, why +should Bradley, or any idealist, have pursued ethical studies at all? +Since all phases of life were equally necessary to enrich an infinite +consciousness, which must know both good and evil in order to merge and to +transcend them, he could hardly nurse any intense enthusiasm for a +different complexion to be given to the lives of men. His moral +passion--for he had it, caustic and burning clear--was purely +intellectual: it was shame that in England the moral consciousness should +have been expressed in systems dialectically so primitive as those of the +positivists and utilitarians. He acknowledged, somewhat superciliously, +that their hearts were in the right place; yet, if we are to have ethics +at all, were not their thoughts in the right place also? They were +concerned not with analysis of the moral consciousness but with the +conduct of affairs and the reform of institutions. The spectacle of human +wretchedness profoundly moved them; their minds were bent on transforming +society, so that a man's station and its duties might cease to be what a +decayed feudal organisation and an inhuman industrialism had made of them. +They revolted against the miserable condition of the masses of mankind, +and against the miserable consolations which official religion, or a +philosophy like Bradley's, offered them in their misery. The utilitarians +were at least intent on existence and on the course of events; they wished +to transform institutions to fit human nature better, and to educate human +nature by those new institutions so that it might better realise its +latent capacities. These are matters which a man may modify by his acts +and they are therefore the proper concern of the moralist. Were they much +to blame if they neglected to define pleasure or happiness and used +catch-words, dialectically vague, to indicate a direction of effort +politically quite unmistakable? Doubtless their political action, like +their philosophical nomenclature, was revolutionary and relied too much on +wayward feelings ignorant of their own causes. Revolution, no less than +tradition, is but a casual and clumsy expression of human nature in +contact with circumstances; yet pain and pleasure and spontaneous hopes, +however foolish, are direct expressions of that contact, and speak for the +soul; whereas a man's station and its duties are purely conventional, and +may altogether misrepresent his native capacities. The protest of human +nature against the world and its oppressions is the strong side of every +rebellion; it was the _moral_ side of utilitarianism, of the rebellion +against irrational morality. + +Unfortunately the English reformers were themselves idealists of a sort, +entangled in the vehicles of perception, and talking about sensations and +ideas, pleasures and pains, as if these had been the elements of human +nature, or even of nature at large: and only the most meagre of verbal +systems, and the most artificial, can be constructed out of such +materials. Moreover, they spoke much of pleasure and happiness, and hardly +at all of misery and pain: whereas it would have been wiser, and truer to +their real inspiration, to have laid all the emphasis on evils to be +abated, leaving the good to shape itself in freedom. Suffering is the +instant and obvious sign of some outrage done to human nature; without +this natural recoil, actual or imminent, no morality would have any +sanction, and no precept could be imperative. What silliness to command me +to pursue pleasure or to avoid it, if in any case everything would be +well! Save for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, I +am deeply free to walk as I will. The choice of pleasure for a principle +of morals was particularly unfortunate in the British utilitarians; it +lent them an air of frivolity absurdly contrary to their true character. +Pleasure might have been a fit enough word in the mouth of Aristippus, a +semi-oriental untouched by the least sense of responsibility, or even on +the lips of humanists in the eighteenth century, who, however sordid their +lives may sometimes have been, could still move in imagination to the +music of Mozart, in the landscape of Watteau or of Fragonard. But in the +land and age of Dickens the moral ideal was not so much pleasure as +kindness: this tenderer word not only expresses better the motive at work, +but it points to the distressing presence of misery in the world, to make +natural kindness laborious and earnest, and turn it into a legislative +system. + +Bradley's hostility to pleasure was not fanatical: one's station and its +duties might have their agreeable side. "It is probably good for you", he +tells us, "to have, say, not less than two glasses of wine after dinner. +Six on ordinary occasions is perhaps too many; but as to three or four, +they are neither one way nor the other." If the voluptuary was condemned, +it was for the commonplace reason which a hedonist, too, might invoke, +that a life of pleasure soon palls and becomes unpleasant. Bradley's +objection to pleasure was merely speculative: he found it too "abstract". +To call a pleasure when actually felt an abstraction is an exquisite +absurdity: but pleasure, in its absolute essence, is certainly simple and +indefinable. If instead of enjoying it on the wing, and as an earnest of +the soul's momentary harmony, we attempt to arrest and observe it, we find +it strangely dumb; we are not informed by it concerning its occasion, nor +carried from it by any logical implication to the natural object in which +it might be found. A pure hedonist ought therefore to be rather relieved +if all images lapsed from his consciousness and he could luxuriate in +sheer pleasure, dark and overwhelming. True, such bliss would be rather +inhuman, and of the sort which we rashly assign to the oyster: but why +should a radical and intrepid philosopher be ashamed of that? The +condition of Bradley's Absolute--feeling in which all distinctions are +transcended and merged--seems to be something of that kind; but there +would be a strange irony in attributing this mystical and rapturous ideal +to such ponderous worthies as Mill and Spencer, whose minds were nothing +if not anxious, perturbed, instrumental, and full of respect for +variegated facts, and who were probably incapable of tasting pure pleasure +at all. + +But if pleasure, in its pure essence, might really be the highest good for +a mystic who should be lost in it, it would be no guide to a moralist +wishing to control events, and to distribute particular pleasures or +series of pleasures as richly as possible in the world. For this purpose +he would need to understand human nature and its variable functions, in +which different persons and peoples may find their sincere pleasures; and +this knowledge would first lend to his general love of pleasure any point +of application in the governance of life or in benevolent legislation. +Some concrete image of a happy human world would take the place of the +futile truism that pleasure is good and pain evil. This is, of course, +what utilitarian moralists meant to do, and actually did, in so far as +their human sympathies extended, which was not to the highest things; but +it was not what they said, and Bradley had a clear advantage over them in +the war of words. A pleasure is not a programme: it exists here and not +there, for me and for no one else, once and never again. When past, it +leaves the will as empty and as devoid of allegiance as if it had never +existed; pleasure is sand, though it have the colour of gold. But this is +evidently true of all existence. Each living moment, each dead man, each +cycle of the universe leaves nothing behind it but a void which perhaps +something kindred may refill. A Hegel, after identifying himself for a +moment with the Absolute Idea, is in his existence no less subject to +sleepiness, irritation, and death than if he had been modestly satisfied +with the joys of an oyster. It is only their common form, or their common +worship, that can give to the quick moments of life any mutual relevance +or sympathy; and existence would not come at all within sight of a good, +either momentary or final, if it were not inwardly directed upon realising +some definite essence. For the rest this essence may be as simple as you +will, if the nature directed upon it is unified and simple; and it would +be mere intellectual snobbery to condemn pleasure because it has not so +many subdivisions in it as an encyclopaedia of the sciences. For the +moralist pleasure and pain may even be the better guides, because they +express more directly and boldly the instinctive direction of animal life, +and thereby mark more clearly the genuine difference between good and +evil. + +We may well say with Bradley that the good is self-realisation; but what +is the self? Certainly not the feeling or consciousness of the moment, nor +the life of the world, nor pure spirit. The self that can systematically +distinguish good from evil is an animal soul. It grows from a seed; its +potentiality is definite and its fate precarious; and in man it requires +society to rear it and tradition to educate it. The good is accordingly +social, in so far as the soul demands society; but it is the nature of the +individual that determines the kind and degree of sociability that is good +for him, and draws the line between society that is a benefit and society +that is a nuisance. To subordinate the soul fundamentally to society or +the individual to the state is sheer barbarism: the Greeks, sometimes +invoked to support this form of idolatry, were never guilty of it; on the +contrary, their lawgivers were always reforming and planning the state so +that the soul might be perfect in it. Discipline is a help to the spirit: +but even social relations, when like love, friendship, or sport they are +spontaneous and good in themselves, retire as far as possible from the +pressure of the world, and build their paradise apart, simple, and hidden +in the wilderness; while all the ultimate hopes and assurances of the +spirit escape altogether into the silent society of nature, of truth, of +essence, far from those fatuous worldly conventions which hardly make up +for their tyranny by their instability: for the prevalent moral fashion is +always growing old, and human nature is always becoming young again. +World-worship is the expedient of those who, having lost the soul that is +in them, look for it in things external, where there is no soul: and by a +curious recoil, it is also the expedient of those who seek their lost soul +in actual consciousness, where it also is not: for sensations and ideas +are not the soul but only passing and partial products of its profound +animal life. Moral consciousness in particular would never have arisen and +would be gratuitous, save for the ferocious bias of a natural living +creature, defending itself against its thousand enemies. + +Nor would knowledge in its turn be knowledge if it were merely intuition +of essence, such as the sensualist, the poet, or the dialectician may rest +in. If the imagery of logic or passion ever comes to convey _knowledge_, +it does so by virtue of a concomitant physical adjustment to external +things; for the nerve of real or transcendent knowledge is the notice +which one part of the world may take of another part; and it is this +momentous cognisance, no matter what intangible feelings may supply terms +for its prosody, that enlarges the mind to some practical purpose and +informs it about the world. Consciousness then ceases to be passive sense +or idle ideation and becomes belief and intelligence. Then the essences +which form the "content of consciousness" may be vivified and trippingly +run over, like the syllables of a familiar word, in the active recognition +of things and people and of all the ominous or pliable forces of nature. +For essences, being eternal and non-existent in themselves, cannot come to +consciousness by their own initiative, but only as occasion and the subtle +movements of the soul may evoke their forms; so that the fact that they +are given to consciousness has a natural status and setting in the +material world, and is part of the same natural event as the movement of +the soul and body which supports that consciousness. + +There is therefore no need of refuting idealism, which is an honest +examination of conscience in a reflective mind. Refutations and proofs +depend on pregnant meanings assigned to terms, meanings first rendered +explicit and unambiguous by those very proofs or refutations. On any +different acceptation of those terms, these proofs and refutations fall +to the ground; and it remains a question for good sense, not for logic at +all, how far the terms in either case describe anything existent. If by +"knowledge" we understand intuition of essences, idealism follows; but it +follows only in respect to essences given in intuition: nothing follows +concerning the seat, origin, conditions, or symptomatic value of such +intuition, nor even that such intuition ever actually occurs. Idealism, +therefore, without being refuted, may be hemmed in and humanised by +natural knowledge about it and about its place in human speculation; the +most recalcitrant materialist (like myself) might see its plausibility +during a somewhat adolescent phase of self-consciousness. Consciousness +itself he might accept and relish as the natural spiritual resonance of +action and passion, recognising it in its proud isolation and specious +autonomy, like the mountain republics of Andorra and San Marino. + +German idealism is a mighty pose, an attitude always possible to a +self-conscious and reflective being: but it is hardly a system, since it +contradicts beliefs which in action are inevitable; it may therefore be +readily swallowed, but it can never be digested. Neither of its two +ingredients--romantic scepticism and romantic superstition--agrees +particularly with the British stomach. Not romantic scepticism: for in +England an instinctive distrust of too much clearness and logic, a +difficulty in drawing all the consequences of any principle, soon gave to +this most radical of philosophies a prim and religious air: its purity was +alloyed with all sorts of conventions: so much so that we find British +Hegelians often deeply engaged in psychology, cosmology, or religion, as +if they took their idealism for a kind of physics, and wished merely to +reinterpret the facts of nature in an edifying way, without uprooting them +from their natural places. This has been made easier by giving idealism an +objective, non-psychological turn: events, and especially feelings and +ideas, will then be swallowed up in the essences which they display. Thus +Bradley maintained that two thoughts, no matter how remote from each other +in time or space, were identically the same, and not merely similar, if +only they contemplated the same idea. Mind itself ceased in this way to +mean a series of existing feelings and was identified with intelligence; +and intelligence in its turn was identified with the Idea or Logos which +might be the ultimate theme of intelligence. There could be only one mind, +so conceived, since there could be only one total system in the universe +visible to omniscience. + +As to romantic scepticism, we may see by contrast what it would be, when +left to itself, if we consider those lucid Italians who have taken up +their idealism late and with open eyes. In Croce and Gentile the +transcendental attitude is kept pure: for them there is really no universe +save spirit creating its experience; and if we ask whence or on what +principle occasions arise for all this compulsory fiction, we are reminded +that this question, with any answer which spirit might invent for it, +belongs not to philosophy but to some special science like physiology, +itself, of course, only a particular product of creative thought. Thus the +more impetuously the inquisitive squirrel would rush from his cage, the +faster and faster he causes the cage to whirl about his ears. He has not +the remotest chance of reaching his imaginary bait--God, nature, or +truth; for to seek such things is to presuppose them, and to presuppose +anything, if spirit be absolute, is to invent it. Even those philosophies +of history which the idealist may for some secret reason be impelled to +construct would be superstitious, according to his own principles, if he +took them for more than poetic fictions of the historian; so that in the +study of history, as in every other study, all the diligence and sober +learning which the philosopher may possess are non-philosophical, since +they presuppose independent events and material documents. Thus perfect +idealism turns out to be pure literary sport, like lyric poetry, in which +no truth is conveyed save the miscellaneous truths taken over from common +sense or the special sciences; and the gay spirit, supposed to be living +and shining of its own sweet will, can find nothing to live or shine upon +save the common natural world. + +Such at least would be the case if romantic superstition did not +supervene, demanding that the spirit should impose some arbitrary rhythm +or destiny on the world which it creates: but this side of idealism has +been cultivated chiefly by the intrepid Germans: some of them, like +Spengler and Keyserling, still thrive and grow famous on it without a +blush. The modest English in these matters take shelter under the wing of +science speculatively extended, or traditional religion prudently +rationalised: the scope of the spirit, like its psychological +distribution, is conceived realistically. It might almost prove an +euthanasia for British idealism to lose itself in the new metaphysics of +nature which the mathematicians are evolving; and since this metaphysics, +though materialistic in effect, is more subtle and abstruse than popular +materialism, British idealism might perhaps be said to survive in it, +having now passed victoriously into its opposite, and being merged in +something higher. + + +[10] _Ethical Studies_, by F.H. Bradley, O.M., LL.D. (Glasgow), late +Fellow of Merton College, Oxford; second edition revised, with +additional notes by the Author. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1927. + + + + +III + +REVOLUTIONS IN SCIENCE + + +Since the beginning of the twentieth century, science has gained notably +in expertness, and lost notably in authority. We are bombarded with +inventions; but if we ask the inventors what they have learned of the +depths of nature, which somehow they have probed with such astonishing +success, their faces remain blank. They may be chewing gum; or they may +tell us that if an aeroplane could only fly fast enough, it would get home +before it starts; or they may urge us to come with them into a dark room, +to hold hands, and to commune with the dear departed. + +Practically there may be no harm in such a division of labour, the +inventors doing the work and the professors the talking. The experts may +themselves be inexpert in verbal expression, or content with stock +phrases, or profoundly sceptical, or too busy to think. Nevertheless, +skill and understanding are at their best when they go together and adorn +the same mind. Modern science until lately had realised this ideal: it was +an extension of common perception and common sense. We could trust it +implicitly, as we do a map or a calendar; it was not true for us merely in +an argumentative or visionary sense, as are religion and philosophy. +Geography went hand in hand with travel, Copernican astronomy with +circumnavigation of the globe: and even the theory of evolution and the +historical sciences in the nineteenth century were continuous with liberal +reform: people saw in the past, as they then learned to conceive it, +simply an extension of those transformations which they were witnessing in +the present. They could think they knew the world as a man knows his +native town, or the contents of his chest of drawers: nature was our home, +and science was our home knowledge. For it is not intrinsic clearness or +coherence that make ideas persuasive, but connection with action, or with +some voluminous inner response, which is readiness to act. It is a sense +of on-coming fate, a compulsion to do or to suffer, that produces the +illusion of perfect knowledge. + +I call it illusion, although our contact with things may be real, and our +sensations and thoughts may be inevitable and honest; because nevertheless +it is always an illusion to suppose that our images are the intrinsic +qualities of things, or reproduce them exactly. The Ptolemaic system, for +instance, was perfectly scientific; it was based on careful and prolonged +observation and on just reasoning; but it was modelled on an image--the +spherical blue dome of the heavens--proper only to an observer on the +earth, and not transferable to a universe which is diffuse, centreless, +fluid, and perhaps infinite. When the imagination, for any reason, comes +to be peopled with images of the latter sort, the modern, and especially +the latest, astronomy becomes more persuasive. For although I suspect that +even Einstein is an imperfect relativist, and retains Euclidean space and +absolute time at the bottom of his calculation, and recovers them at the +end, yet the effort to express the system of nature as it would appear +from _any_ station and to _any_ sensorium seems to be eminently +enlightening. + +Theory and practice in the latest science are still allied, otherwise +neither of them would prosper as it does; but each has taken a leap in its +own direction. The distance between them has become greater than the naked +eye can measure, and each of them in itself has become unintelligible. We +roll and fly at dizzy speeds, and hear at incredible distances; at the +same time we imagine and calculate to incredible depths. The technique of +science, like that of industry, has become a thing in itself; the one +veils its object, which is nature, as the other defeats its purpose, which +is happiness. Science often seems to be less the study of things than the +study of science. It is now more scholastic than philosophy ever was. We +are invited to conceive organisms within organisms, so minute, so free, +and so dynamic, that the heart of matter seems to explode into an endless +discharge of fireworks, or a mathematical nightmare realised in a thousand +places at once, and become the substance of the world. What is even more +remarkable--for the notion of infinite organisation has been familiar to +the learned at least since the time of Leibniz--the theatre of science is +transformed no less than the actors and the play. The upright walls of +space, the steady tread of time, begin to fail us; they bend now so +obligingly to our perspectives that we no longer seem to travel through +them, but to carry them with us, shooting them out or weaving them about +us according to some native fatality, which is left unexplained. We seem +to have reverted in some sense from Copernicus to Ptolemy: except that the +centre is now occupied, not by the solid earth, but by _any_ geometrical +point chosen for the origin of calculation. Time, too, is not measured by +the sun or stars, but by _any_ "clock"--that is, by any recurrent rhythm +taken as a standard of comparison. It would seem that the existence and +energy of each chosen centre, as well as its career and encounters, hang +on the collateral existence of other centres of force, among which it must +wend its way: yet the only witness to their presence, and the only known +property of their substance, is their "radio-activity", or the physical +light which they shed. Light, in its physical being, is accordingly the +measure of all things in this new philosophy: and if we ask ourselves why +this element should have been preferred, the answer is not far to seek. +Light is the only medium through which very remote or very minute +particles of matter can be revealed to science. Whatever the nature of +things may be intrinsically, science must accordingly express the universe +in terms of light. + +These reforms have come from within: they are triumphs of method. We make +an evident advance in logic, and in that parsimony which is dear to +philosophers (though not to nature), if we refuse to assign given terms +and relations to any prior medium, such as absolute time or space, which +cannot be given with them. Observable spaces and times, like the facts +observed in them, are given separately and in a desultory fashion. +Initially, then, there are as many spaces and times as there are +observers, or rather observations; these are the specious times and spaces +of dreams, of sensuous life, and of romantic biography. Each is centred +here and now, and stretched outwards, forward, and back, as far as +imagination has the strength to project it. Then, when objects and events +have been posited as self-existent, and when a "clock" and a system of +co-ordinates have been established for measuring them, a single +mathematical space and time may be deployed about them, conceived to +contain all things, and to supply them with their respective places and +dates. This gives us the cosmos of classical physics. But this system +involves the uncritical notion of light and matter travelling through +media previously existing, and being carried down, like a boat drifting +down stream, by a flowing time which has a pace of its own, and imposes it +on all existence. In reality, each "clock" and each landscape is +self-centred and initially absolute: its time and space are irrelevant to +those of any other landscape or "clock", unless the objects or events +revealed there, being posited as self-existent, actually coincide with +those revealed also in another landscape, or dated by another "clock". It +is only by travelling along its own path at its own rate that experience +or light can ever reach a point lying on another path also, so that two +observations, and two measures, may coincide at their ultimate terms, +their starting-points or their ends. Positions are therefore not +independent of the journey which terminates in them, and thereby +individuates them; and dates are not independent of the events which +distinguish them. The flux of existence comes first: matter and light +distend time by their pulses, they distend space by their deployments. + +This, if I understand it, is one half the new theory; the other half is +not less acceptable. Newton had described motion as a result of two +principles: the first, inertia, was supposed to be inherent in bodies; the +second, gravity, was incidental to their co-existence. Yet inherent +inertia can only be observed relatively: it makes no difference to me +whether I am said to be moving at a great speed or absolutely at rest, if +I am not jolted or breathless, and if my felt environment does not change. +Inertia, or weight, in so far as it denotes something intrinsic, seems to +be but another name for substance or the principle of existence: in so far +as it denotes the first law of motion, it seems to be relative to an +environment. It would therefore be preferable to combine inertia and +attraction in a single formula, expressing the behaviour of bodies towards +one another in all their conjunctions, without introducing any inherent +forces or absolute measures. This seems to have been done by Einstein, or +at least impressively suggested: and it has been found that the new +calculations correspond to certain delicate observations more accurately +than the old. + +This revolution in science seems, then, to be perfectly legal, and ought +to be welcomed; yet only under one important moral condition, and with a +paradoxical result. The moral condition is that the pride of science +should turn into humility, that it should no longer imagine that it is +laying bare the intrinsic nature of things. And the paradoxical result is +this: that the forms of science are optional, like various languages or +methods of notation. One may be more convenient or subtle than another, +according to the place, senses, interests, and scope of the explorer; a +reform in science may render the old theories antiquated, like the habit +of wearing togas, or of going naked; but it cannot render them false, or +itself true. Science, when it is more than the gossip of adventure or of +experiment, yields practical assurances couched in symbolic terms, but no +ultimate insight: so that the intellectual vacancy of the expert, which I +was deriding, is a sort of warrant of his solidity. It is rather when the +expert prophesies, when he propounds a new philosophy founded on his +latest experiments, that we may justly smile at his system, and wait for +the next. + +Self-knowledge--and the new science is full of self-knowledge--is a great +liberator: if perhaps it imposes some retrenchment, essentially it revives +courage. Then at last we see what we are and what we can do. The spirit +can abandon its vain commitments and false pretensions, like a young man +free at last to throw off his clothes and run naked along the sands. +Intelligence is never gayer, never surer, than when it is strictly formal, +satisfied with the evidence of its materials, as with the lights of +jewels, and filled with mounting speculations, as with a sort of laughter. +If all the arts aspire to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire +to the condition of mathematics. Their logic is their spontaneous and +intelligible side: and while they differ from mathematics and from one +another in being directed in the first instance upon various +unintelligible existing objects, yet as they advance, they unite: because +they are everywhere striving to discover in those miscellaneous objects +some intelligible order and method. And as the emotion of the pure artist, +whatever may be his materials, lies in finding in them some formal harmony +or imposing it upon them, so the interest of the scientific mind, in so +far as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal +pattern. The mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the +engineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for +himself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations: +and it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds +that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify +them; much as if a composer found that the sailors could heave better when +singing his songs. + +Yet such independence, however glorious inwardly, cannot help diminishing +the prestige of the arts in the world. If science misled us before, when +it was full of clearness and confidence, how shall we trust it now that it +is all mystery and paradox? If classical physics needed this fundamental +revision, near to experience and fruitful as it was, what revision will +not romantic physics require? Nor is the future alone insecure: even now +the prophets hardly understand one another, or perhaps themselves; and +some of them interlard their science with the most dubious metaphysics. +Naturally the enemies of science have not been slow to seize this +opportunity: the soft-hearted, the muddle-headed, the superstitious are +all raising their voices, no longer in desperate resistance to science, +but hopefully, and in its name. Science, they tell us, is no longer +hostile to religion, or to divination of any sort. Indeed, divination is a +science too. Physics is no longer materialistic since space is now curved, +and filled with an ether through which light travels at 300,000 kilometres +per second--an immaterial rate: because if anything material ventured to +move at that forbidden speed, it would be so flattened that it would cease +to exist. Indeed, matter is now hardly needed at all; its place has been +taken by radio-activity, and by electrons which dart and whirl with such +miraculous swiftness, that occasionally, for no known reason, they can +skip from orbit to orbit without traversing the intervening positions--an +evident proof of free-will in them. Or if solids should still seem to be +material, there are astral bodies as well which are immaterial although +physical; and as to ether and electricity, they are the very substance of +spirit. All this I find announced in newspapers and even in books as the +breakdown of scientific materialism: and yet, when was materialism more +arrant and barbarous than in these announcements? Something no doubt has +broken down: but I am afraid it is rather the habit of thinking clearly +and the power to discern the difference between material and spiritual +things. + +The latest revolution in science will probably not be the last. I do not +know what internal difficulties, contradictions, or ominous obscurities +may exist in the new theories, or what logical seeds of change, perhaps of +radical change, might be discovered there by a competent critic. I base my +expectation on two circumstances somewhat more external and visible to the +lay mind. One circumstance is that the new theories seem to be affected, +and partly inspired, by a particular philosophy, itself utterly insecure. +This philosophy regards the point of view as controlling or even creating +the object seen; in other words, it identifies the object with the +experience or the knowledge of it: it is essentially a subjective, +psychological, Protestant philosophy. The study of perspectives, which a +severer critic might call illusions, is one of the most interesting and +enlightening of studies, and for my own part I should be content to dwell +almost exclusively in that poetic and moral atmosphere, in the realm of +literature and of humanism. Yet I cannot help seeing that neither in logic +nor in natural genesis can perspectives be the ultimate object of science, +since a plurality of points of view, somehow comparable, must be assumed +in the beginning, as well as common principles of projection, and ulterior +points of contact or coincidence. Such assumptions, which must persist +throughout, seem to presuppose an absolute system of nature behind all the +relative systems of science. + +The other circumstance which points to further revolutions is social. The +new science is unintelligible to almost all of us; it can be tested only +by very delicate observations and very difficult reasoning. We accept it +on the authority of a few professors who themselves have accepted it with +a contagious alacrity, as if caught in a whirlwind. It has sprung up +mysteriously and mightily, like mysticism in a cloister or theology in a +council: a Soviet of learned men has proclaimed it. Moreover, it is not +merely a system among systems, but a movement among movements. A system, +even when it has serious rivals, may be maintained for centuries as +religions are maintained, institutionally; but a movement comes to an end; +it is followed presently by a period of assimilation which transforms it, +or by a movement in some other direction. I ask myself accordingly whether +the condition of the world in the coming years will be favourable to +refined and paradoxical science. The extension of education will have +enabled the uneducated to pronounce upon everything. Will the patronage of +capital and enterprise subsist, to encourage discovery and reward +invention? Will a jealous and dogmatic democracy respect the +unintelligible insight of the few? Will a perhaps starving democracy +support materially its Soviet of seers? But let us suppose that no +utilitarian fanaticism supervenes, and no intellectual surfeit or +discouragement. May not the very profundity of the new science and its +metaphysical affinities lead it to bolder developments, inscrutable to the +public and incompatible with one another, like the gnostic sects of +declining antiquity? Then perhaps that luminous modern thing which until +recently was called science, in contrast to all personal philosophies, may +cease to exist altogether, being petrified into routine in the +practitioners, and fading in the professors into abstruse speculations. + + + + +IV + +A LONG WAY ROUND TO NIRVANA + + +That the end of life is death may be called a truism, since the various +kinds of immortality that might perhaps supervene would none of them +abolish death, but at best would weave life and death together into the +texture of a more comprehensive destiny. The end of one life might be the +beginning of another, if the Creator had composed his great work like a +dramatic poet, assigning successive lines to different characters. Death +would then be merely the cue at the end of each speech, summoning the next +personage to break in and keep the ball rolling. Or perhaps, as some +suppose, all the characters are assumed in turn by a single supernatural +Spirit, who amid his endless improvisations is imagining himself living +for the moment in this particular solar and social system. Death in such a +universal monologue would be but a change of scene or of metre, while in +the scramble of a real comedy it would be a change of actors. In either +case every voice would be silenced sooner or later, and death would end +each particular life, in spite of all possible sequels. + +The relapse of created things into nothing is no violent fatality, but +something naturally quite smooth and proper. This has been set forth +recently, in a novel way, by a philosopher from whom we hardly expected +such a lesson, namely Professor Sigmund Freud. He has now broadened his +conception of sexual craving or _libido_ into a general principle of +attraction or concretion in matter, like the Eros of the ancient poets +Hesiod and Empedocles. The windows of that stuffy clinic have been thrown +open; that smell of acrid disinfectants, those hysterical shrieks, have +escaped into the cold night. The troubles of the sick soul, we are given +to understand, as well as their cure, after all flow from the stars. + +I am glad that Freud has resisted the tendency to represent this principle +of Love as the only principle in nature. Unity somehow exercises an evil +spell over metaphysicians. It is admitted that in real life it is not well +for One to be alone, and I think pure unity is no less barren and +graceless in metaphysics. You must have plurality to start with, or +trinity, or at least duality, if you wish to get anywhere, even if you +wish to get effectively into the bosom of the One, abandoning your +separate existence. Freud, like Empedocles, has prudently introduced a +prior principle for Love to play with; not Strife, however (which is only +an incident in Love), but Inertia, or the tendency towards peace and +death. Let us suppose that matter was originally dead, and perfectly +content to be so, and that it still relapses, when it can, into its old +equilibrium. But the homogeneous (as Spencer would say) when it is finite +is unstable: and matter, presumably not being co-extensive with space, +necessarily forms aggregates which have an inside and an outside. The +parts of such bodies are accordingly differently exposed to external +influences and differently related to one another. This inequality, even +in what seems most quiescent, is big with changes, destined to produce in +time a wonderful complexity. It is the source of all uneasiness, of life, +and of love. + + "Let us imagine [writes Freud][11] an undifferentiated vesicle of + sensitive substance: then its surface, exposed as it is to the + outer world, is by its very position differentiated, and serves as + an organ for receiving stimuli.... This morsel of living substance + floats about in an outer world which is charged with the most + potent energies, and it would be destroyed ... if it were not + furnished with protection against stimulation. [On the other hand] + the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier against + excitations emanating from within.... The most prolific sources of + such excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism.... + The child never gets tired of demanding the repetition of a game + ... he wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, + insists inexorably on exact repetition, and corrects each deviation + which the narrator lets slip by mistake.... According to this, _an + instinct would be a tendency in living organic matter impelling it + towards reinstatement of an earlier condition_, one which it had + abandoned under the influence of external disturbing forces--a kind + of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation + of inertia in organic life. + + "If, then, all organic instincts are conservative, historically + acquired, and directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of + something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of + organic development to the credit of external, disturbing, and + distracting influences. The rudimentary creature would from its + very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances + had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course + of existence.... It would be counter to the conservative nature of + instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. + It must be rather an ancient starting point, which the living being + left long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the + circuitous paths of development.... _The goal of all life is + death...._ + + "Through a long period of time the living substance may have ... + had death within easy reach ... until decisive external influences + altered in such a way as to compel [it] to ever greater deviations + from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and + circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These + circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative + instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of + life as we know it." + +Freud puts forth these interesting suggestions with much modesty, +admitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more +important to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that, +for all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies. +When we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an _Elan vital_, +or general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used +are no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion conveyed is +false--false, I mean, to the organic source of life and aspiration, to the +simple naturalness of nature: whereas the suggestion conveyed by Freud's +speculations is true. In what sense can myths and metaphors be true or +false? In the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from +literary psychology, they may report the general movement and the +pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise +sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek +mythology was true and Calvinist theology was false. The chief terms +employed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: "unconscious +wishes", "the pleasure-principle", "the Oedipus complex", "Narcissism", +"the censor"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened +up, in such terms, into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh +start may be made with fewer encumbrances and less morbid inhibition. "The +shortcomings of our description", Freud says, "would probably disappear if +for psychological terms we could substitute physiological or chemical +ones. These too only constitute a metaphorical language, but one familiar +to us for a much longer time, and perhaps also simpler." All human +discourse is metaphorical, in that our perceptions and thoughts are +adventitious signs for their objects, as names are, and by no means copies +of what is going on materially in the depths of nature; but just as the +sportsman's eye, which yields but a summary graphic image, can trace the +flight of a bird through the air quite well enough to shoot it and bring +it down, so the myths of a wise philosopher about the origin of life or of +dreams, though expressed symbolically, may reveal the pertinent movement +of nature to us, and may kindle in us just sentiments and true +expectations in respect to our fate--for his own soul is the bird this +sportsman is shooting. + +Now I think these new myths of Freud's about life, like his old ones +about dreams, are calculated to enlighten and to chasten us enormously +about ourselves. The human spirit, when it awakes, finds itself in +trouble; it is burdened, for no reason it can assign, with all sorts of +anxieties about food, pressures, pricks, noises, and pains. It is born, as +another wise myth has it, in original sin. And the passions and ambitions +of life, as they come on, only complicate this burden and make it heavier, +without rendering it less incessant or gratuitous. Whence this fatality, +and whither does it lead? It comes from heredity, and it leads to +propagation. When we ask how heredity could be started or transmitted, our +ignorance of nature and of past time reduces us to silence or to wild +conjectures. Something--let us call it matter--must always have existed, +and some of its parts, under pressure of the others, must have got tied up +into knots, like the mainspring of a watch, in such a violent and unhappy +manner that when the pressure is relaxed they fly open as fast as they +can, and unravel themselves with a vast sense of relief. Hence the longing +to satisfy latent passions, with the fugitive pleasure in doing so. But +the external agencies that originally wound up that mainspring never +cease to operate; every fresh stimulus gives it another turn, until it +snaps, or grows flaccid, or is unhinged. Moreover, from time to time, when +circumstances change, these external agencies may encrust that primary +organ with minor organs attached to it. Every impression, every adventure, +leaves a trace or rather a seed behind it. It produces a further +complication in the structure of the body, a fresh charge, which tends to +repeat the impressed motion in season and out of season. Hence that +perpetual docility or ductility in living substance which enables it to +learn tricks, to remember facts, and (when the seeds of past experiences +marry and cross in the brain) to imagine new experiences, pleasing or +horrible. Every act initiates a new habit and may implant a new instinct. +We see people even late in life carried away by political or religious +contagions or developing strange vices; there would be no peace in old +age, but rather a greater and greater obsession by all sorts of cares, +were it not that time, in exposing us to many adventitious influences, +weakens or discharges our primitive passions; we are less greedy, less +lusty, less hopeful, less generous. But these weakened primitive impulses +are naturally by far the strongest and most deeply rooted in the organism: +so that although an old man may be converted or may take up some hobby, +there is usually something thin in his elderly zeal, compared with the +heartiness of youth; nor is it edifying to see a soul in which the plainer +human passions are extinct becoming a hotbed of chance delusions. + +In any case each fresh habit taking root in the organism forms a little +mainspring or instinct of its own, like a parasite; so that an elaborate +mechanism is gradually developed, where each lever and spring holds the +other down, and all hold the mainspring down together, allowing it to +unwind itself only very gradually, and meantime keeping the whole clock +ticking and revolving, and causing the smooth outer face which it turns to +the world, so clean and innocent, to mark the time of day amiably for the +passer-by. But there is a terribly complicated labour going on beneath, +propelled with difficulty, and balanced precariously, with much secret +friction and failure. No wonder that the engine often gets visibly out of +order, or stops short: the marvel is that it ever manages to go at all. +Nor is it satisfied with simply revolving and, when at last dismounted, +starting afresh in the person of some seed it has dropped, a portion of +its substance with all its concentrated instincts wound up tightly within +it, and eager to repeat the ancestral experiment; all this growth is not +merely material and vain. Each clock in revolving strikes the hour, even +the quarters, and often with lovely chimes. These chimes we call +perceptions, feelings, purposes, and dreams; and it is because we are +taken up entirely with this mental music, and perhaps think that it sounds +of itself and needs no music-box to make it, that we find such difficulty +in conceiving the nature of our own clocks and are compelled to describe +them only musically, that is, in myths. But the ineptitude of our +aesthetic minds to unravel the nature of mechanism does not deprive these +minds of their own clearness and euphony. Besides sounding their various +musical notes, they have the cognitive function of indicating the hour and +catching the echoes of distant events or of maturing inward dispositions. +This information and emotion, added to incidental pleasures in satisfying +our various passions, make up the life of an incarnate spirit. They +reconcile it to the external fatality that has wound up the organism, and +is breaking it down; and they rescue this organism and all its works from +the indignity of being a vain complication and a waste of motion. + +That the end of life should be death may sound sad: yet what other end can +anything have? The end of an evening party is to go to bed; but its use is +to gather congenial people together, that they may pass the time +pleasantly. An invitation to the dance is not rendered ironical because +the dance cannot last for ever; the youngest of us and the most vigorously +wound up, after a few hours, has had enough of sinuous stepping and +prancing. The transitoriness of things is essential to their physical +being, and not at all sad in itself; it becomes sad by virtue of a +sentimental illusion, which makes us imagine that they wish to endure, and +that their end is always untimely; but in a healthy nature it is not so. +What is truly sad is to have some impulse frustrated in the midst of its +career, and robbed of its chosen object; and what is painful is to have an +organ lacerated or destroyed when it is still vigorous, and not ready for +its natural sleep and dissolution. We must not confuse the itch which our +unsatisfied instincts continue to cause with the pleasure of satisfying +and dismissing each of them in turn. Could they all be satisfied +harmoniously we should be satisfied once for all and completely. Then +doing and dying would coincide throughout and be a perfect pleasure. + +This same insight is contained in another wise myth which has inspired +morality and religion in India from time immemorial: I mean the doctrine +of Karma. We are born, it says, with a heritage, a character imposed, and +a long task assigned, all due to the ignorance which in our past lives has +led us into all sorts of commitments. These obligations we must pay off, +relieving the pure spirit within us from its accumulated burdens, from +debts and assets both equally oppressive. We cannot disentangle ourselves +by mere frivolity, nor by suicide: frivolity would only involve us more +deeply in the toils of fate, and suicide would but truncate our misery and +leave us for ever a confessed failure. When life is understood to be a +process of redemption, its various phases are taken up in turn without +haste and without undue attachment; their coming and going have all the +keenness of pleasure, the holiness of sacrifice, and the beauty of art. +The point is to have expressed and discharged all that was latent in us; +and to this perfect relief various temperaments and various traditions +assign different names, calling it having one's day, or doing one's duty, +or realising one's ideal, or saving one's soul. The task in any case is +definite and imposed on us by nature, whether we recognise it or not; +therefore we can make true moral progress or fall into real errors. Wisdom +and genius lie in discerning this prescribed task and in doing it readily, +cleanly, and without distraction. Folly on the contrary imagines that any +scent is worth following, that we have an infinite nature, or no nature in +particular, that life begins without obligations and can do business +without capital, and that the will is vacuously free, instead of being a +specific burden and a tight hereditary knot to be unravelled. Some +philosophers without self-knowledge think that the variations and further +entanglements which the future may bring are the manifestation of spirit; +but they are, as Freud has indicated, imposed on living beings by external +pressure, and take shape in the realm of matter. It is only after the +organs of spirit are formed mechanically that spirit can exist, and can +distinguish the better from the worse in the fate of those organs, and +therefore in its own fate. Spirit has nothing to do with infinite +existence. Infinite existence is something physical and ambiguous; there +is no scale in it and no centre. The depths of the human heart are finite, +and they are dark only to ignorance. Deep and dark as a soul may be when +you look down into it from outside, it is something perfectly natural; and +the same understanding that can unearth our suppressed young passions, and +dispel our stubborn bad habits, can show us where our true good lies. +Nature has marked out the path for us beforehand; there are snares in it, +but also primroses, and it leads to peace. + + + + +V + +THE PRESTIGE OF THE INFINITE + + +"The more complex the world becomes and the more it rises above the +indeterminate, so much the farther removed it is from God; that is to say, +so much the more impious it is." M. Julien Benda[12] is not led to this +startling utterance by any political or sentimental grudge. It is not the +late war, nor the peace of Versailles, nor the parlous state of the arts, +nor the decay of morality and prosperity that disgusts him with our +confused world. It is simply overmastering respect for the infinite. _La +Trahison des Clercs_, or Treason of the Levites, with which he had +previously upbraided the intellectuals of his time, now appears to consist +precisely in coveting a part in this world's inheritance, and forgetting +that the inheritance of the Levites is the Lord: which, being interpreted +philosophically, means that a philosopher is bound to measure all things +by the infinite. + +This infinite is not rhetorical, as if we spoke of infinite thought or +infinite love: it is physico-mathematical. Nothing but number, M. Benda +tells us, seems to him intelligible. Time, space, volume, and complexity +(which appears to the senses as quality) stretch in a series of units, +positions, or degrees, to infinity, as number does: and in such +homogeneous series, infinite in both directions, there will be no fixed +point of origin for counting or surveying the whole and no particular +predominant scale. Every position will be essentially identical with every +other; every suggested structure will be collapsible and reversible; and +the position and relations of every unit will be indistinguishable from +those of every other. In the infinite, M. Benda says, the parts have no +identity: each number in the scale, as we begin counting from different +points of origin, bears also every other number. + +This is no mere mathematical puzzle; the thought has a strange moral +eloquence. Seen in their infinite setting, which we may presume to be +their ultimate environment, all things lose their central position and +their dominant emphasis. The contrary of what we first think of them or of +ourselves--for instance that we are alive, while they are dead or +unborn--is also true. Egotism becomes absurd; pride and shame become the +vainest of illusions. If then it be repugnant to reason that the series of +numbers, moments, positions, and volumes should be limited--and the human +spirit has a great affinity to the infinite--all specific quality and +variety in things must be superficial and deeply unreal. They are masks in +the carnival of phenomena, to be observed without conviction, and secretly +dismissed as ironical by those who have laid up their treasure in the +infinite. + +This mathematical dissolution of particulars is reinforced by moral +considerations which are more familiar. Existence--any specific fact +asserting itself in any particular place or moment--is inevitably +contingent, arbitrary, gratuitous, and insecure. A sense of insecurity is +likely to be the first wedge by which repentance penetrates into the +animal heart. If a man did not foresee death and fear it, he might never +come at all to the unnatural thought of renouncing life. In fact, he does +not often remember death: yet his whole gay world is secretly afraid of +being found out, of being foiled in the systematic bluff by which it lives +as if its life were immortal; and far more than the brave young man fears +death in his own person, the whole life of the world fears to be exorcised +by self-knowledge, and lost in air. And with good reason: because, whether +we stop to notice this circumstance or not, every fact, every laborious +beloved achievement of man or of nature, has come to exist against +infinite odds. In the dark grab-bag of Being, this chosen fact was +surrounded by innumerable possible variations or contradictions of it; and +each of those possibilities, happening not to be realised here and now, +yet possesses intrinsically exactly the same aptitude or claim to +existence. Nor are these claims and aptitudes merely imaginary and +practically contemptible. The flux of existence is continually repenting +of its choices, and giving everything actual the lie, by continually +substituting something else, no less specific and no less nugatory. +_This_ world, _any_ world, exists only by an unmerited privilege. Its +glory is offensive to the spirit, like the self-sufficiency of some +obstreperous nobody, who happens to have drawn the big prize in a lottery. +"The world", M. Benda writes, "inspires me with a double sentiment. I feel +it to be full of grandeur, because it has succeeded in asserting itself +and coming to exist; and I feel it to be pitiful, when I consider how it +hung on a mere nothing that this particular world should never have +existed." And though this so accidental world, by its manifold beauties +and excitements, may arouse our romantic enthusiasm, it is fundamentally +an _unholy_ world. Its creation, he adds in italics, "_is something which +reason would wish had never taken place_". + +For we must not suppose that God, when God is defined as infinite Being, +can be the creator of the world. Such a notion would hopelessly destroy +that coherence in thought to which M. Benda aspires. The infinite cannot +be selective; it cannot possess a particular structure (such, for +instance, as the Trinity) nor a particular quality (such as goodness). It +cannot exert power or give direction. Nothing can be responsible for the +world except the world itself. It has created, or is creating, itself +perpetually by its own arbitrary act, by a groundless self-assertion which +may be called (somewhat metaphorically) will, or even original sin: the +original sin of existence, particularity, selfishness, or separation from +God. Existence, being absolutely contingent and ungrounded, is perfectly +free: and if it ties itself up in its own habits or laws, and becomes a +terrible nightmare to itself by its automatic monotony, that still is only +its own work and, figuratively speaking, its own fault. Nothing save its +own arbitrary and needless pressure keeps it going in that round. This +fatality is impressive, and popular religion has symbolised it in the +person of a deity far more often recognised and worshipped than infinite +Being. This popular deity, a symbol for the forces of nature and history, +the patron of human welfare and morality, M. Benda calls the imperial God. + + "It is clear that these two Gods ... have nothing to do with one + another. The God whom Marshal de Villars, rising in his stirrups + and pointing his drawn sword heavenwards, thanks on the evening of + Denain, is one God: quite another is the God within whose bosom the + author of the _Imitation_, in a corner of his cell, feels the + nothingness of all human victories." + +It follows from this, if we are coherent, that any "return to God" which +ascetic philosophy may bring about cannot be a social reform, a transition +to some better form of natural existence in a promised land, a renovated +earth, or a material or temporal heaven. Nor can the error of creation be +corrected violently by a second arbitrary act, such as suicide, or the +annihilation of the universe by some ultimate general collapse. If such +events happen, they still leave the door open to new creations and fresh +errors. But the marvel is (I will return to this point presently) that the +world, in the person of a human individual endowed with reason, may +perceive the error of its ways and correct it ideally, in the sphere of +estimation and worship. Such is the only possible salvation. Reason, in +order to save us, and we, in order to be saved, must both subsist: we must +both be incidents in the existing world. We may then, by the operation of +reason in us, recover our allegiance to the infinite, for we are bone of +its bone and flesh of its flesh: and by our secret sympathy with it we may +rescind every particular claim and dismiss silently every particular form +of being, as something unreal and unholy. + +An even more cogent reason why M. Benda's God cannot have been the creator +of the world is that avowedly this God has never existed. We are expressly +warned that "if God is infinite Being he excludes existence, in so far as +to exist means to be distinct. In the sense which everybody attaches to +the word existence, God, as I conceive him, _does not exist_". Of course, +in the mind of a lover of the infinite, this fact is not derogatory to +God, but derogatory to existence. The infinite remains the first and the +ultimate term in thought, the fundamental dimension common to all things, +however otherwise they may be qualified; it remains the eternal background +against which they all are defined and into which they soon disappear. +Evidently, in this divine--because indestructible and necessary--dimension, +Being is incapable of making choices, adopting paths of evolution, or +exercising power; it knows nothing of phenomena; it is not their cause +nor their sanction. It is incapable of love, wrath, or any other passion. +"I will add", writes M. Benda, "something else which theories of an +impersonal deity have less often pointed out. Since infinity is +incompatible with personal being, God is incapable of morality." Thus mere +intuition and analysis of the infinite, since this infinite is itself +passive and indifferent, may prove a subtle antidote to passion, to folly, +and even to life. + +I think M. Benda succeeds admirably in the purpose announced in his title +of rendering his discourse coherent. If once we accept his definitions, +his corollaries follow. Clearly and bravely he disengages his idea of +infinity from other properties usually assigned to the deity, such as +power, omniscience, goodness, and tutelary functions in respect to life, +or to some special human society. But coherence is not completeness, nor +even a reasonable measure of descriptive truth; and certain considerations +are omitted from M. Benda's view which are of such moment that, if they +were included, they might transform the whole issue. Perhaps the chief of +these omissions is that of an organ for thought. M. Benda throughout is +engaged simply in clarifying his own ideas, and repeatedly disclaims any +ulterior pretensions. He finds in the panorama of his thoughts an idea of +infinite Being, or God, and proceeds to study the relation of that +conception to all others. It is a task of critical analysis and religious +confession: and nothing could be more legitimate and, to some of us, more +interesting. But whence these various ideas, and whence the spell which +the idea of infinite Being in particular casts over the meditative mind? +Unless we can view these movements of thought in their natural setting and +order of genesis, we shall be in danger of turning autobiography into +cosmology and inwardness into folly. + +One of the most notable points in M. Benda's analysis is his insistence on +the leap involved in passing from infinite Being to any particular fact or +system of facts; and again the leap involved in passing, when the +converted spirit "returns to God", from specific animal interests--no +matter how generous, social, or altruistic these interests may be--to +absolute renunciation and sympathy with the absolute. "That a will to +return to God should arise in the phenomenal world seems to be a miracle +no less wonderful (though it be less wondered at) than that the world +should arise in the bosom of God." "Love of man, charity, humanitarianism +are nothing but the selfishness of the race, by which each animal species +assures its specific existence." "To surrender one's individuality for the +benefit of a larger self is something quite different from +disinterestedness; it is the exact opposite." And certainly, if we +regarded infinite Being as a cosmological medium--say, empty space and +time--there would be a miraculous break, an unaccountable new beginning, +if that glassy expanse was suddenly wrinkled by something called energy. +But in fact there need never have been such a leap, or such a miracle, +because there could never have been such a transition. Infinite Being is +not a material vacuum "in the bosom" of which a world might arise. It is a +Platonic idea--though Plato never entertained it--an essence, non-existent +and immutable, not in the same field of reality at all as a world of +moving and colliding things. Such an essence is not conceivably the seat +of the variations that enliven the world. It is only in thought that we +may pass from infinite Being to an existing universe; and when we turn +from one to the other, and say that now energy has emerged from the bosom +of God, we are turning over a new leaf, or rather picking up an entirely +different volume. The natural world is composed of objects and events +which theory may regard as transformations of a hypothetical energy; an +energy which M. Benda--who when he comes down to the physical world is a +good materialist--conceives to have condensed and distributed itself into +matter, which in turn composed organisms and ultimately generated +consciousness and reason. But in whatever manner the natural world may +have evolved, it is found and posited by us in perception and action, not, +like infinite Being, defined in thought. This contrast is ontological, and +excludes any derivation of the one object from the other. M. Benda himself +tells us so; and we may wonder why he introduced infinite Being at all +into his description of the world. The reason doubtless is that he was not +engaged in describing the world, except by the way, but rather in +classifying and clarifying his ideas in view of determining his moral +allegiance. And he arranged his terms, whether ideal or materials, in a +single series, because they were alike present to his intuition, and he +was concerned to arrange them in a hierarchy, according to their moral +dignity. + +Not only is infinite Being an incongruous and obstructive term to describe +the substance of the world (which, if it subtends the changes in the world +and causes them, must evidently change with them), but even mathematical +space and time, in their ideal infinity, may be very far from describing +truly the medium and groundwork of the universe. That is a question for +investigation and hypothesis, not for intuition. But in the life of +intuition, when that life takes a mathematical turn, empty space and time +and their definable structure may be important themes; while, when the +same life becomes a discipline of the affections, we see by this latest +example, as well as by many a renowned predecessor of M. Benda, that +infinite Being may dominate the scene. + +Nor is this eventual dominance so foreign to the natural mind, or such a +miraculous conversion, as it might seem. Here, too, there is no derivation +of object from object, but an alternative for the mind. As M. Benda points +out, natural interests and sympathies may expand indefinitely, so as to +embrace a family, a nation, or the whole animate universe; we might even +be chiefly occupied with liberal pursuits, such as science or music; the +more we laboured at these things and delighted in them, the less ready +should we be for renunciation and detachment. Must conversion then descend +upon us from heaven like a thunderbolt? Far from it. We need not look for +the principle of spiritual life in the distance: we have it at home from +the beginning. Even the idea of infinite Being, though unnamed, is +probably familiar. Perhaps in the biography of the human race, or of each +budding mind, the infinite or indeterminate may have been the primary +datum. On that homogeneous sensuous background, blank at first but +secretly plastic, a spot here and a movement there may gradually have +become discernible, until the whole picture of nature and history had +shaped itself as we see it. A certain sense of that primitive datum, the +infinite or indeterminate, may always remain as it were the outstretched +canvas on which every picture is painted. And when the pictures vanish, as +in deep sleep, the ancient simplicity and quietness may be actually +recovered, in a conscious union with Brahma. So sensuous, so intimate, so +unsophisticated the "return to God" may be for the spirit, without +excluding the other avenues, intellectual and ascetic, by which this +return may be effected in waking life, though then not so much in act as +in intent only and allegiance. + +I confess that formerly I had some difficulty in sharing the supreme +respect for infinite Being which animates so many saints: it seemed to me +the dazed, the empty, the deluded side of spirituality. Why rest in an +object which can be redeemed from blank negation only by a blank +intensity? But time has taught me not to despise any form of vital +imagination, any discipline which may achieve perfection after any kind. +Intuition is a broadly based activity; it engages elaborate organs and +sums up and synthesises accumulated impressions. It may therefore easily +pour the riches of its ancestry into the image or the sentiment which it +evokes, poor as this sentiment or image might seem if expressed in words. +In rapt or ecstatic moments, the vital momentum, often the moral escape, +is everything, and the achievement, apart from that blessed relief, little +or nothing. Infinite Being may profit in this way by offering a contrast +to infinite annoyance. Moreover, in my own way, I have discerned in pure +Being the involution of all forms. As felt, pure Being may be +indeterminate, but as conceived reflectively it includes all +determinations: so that when deployed into the realm of essence, infinite +or indeterminate Being truly contains entertainment for all eternity. + +M. Benda feels this pregnancy of the infinite on the mathematical side; +but he hardly notices the fact, proclaimed so gloriously by Spinoza, that +the infinity of extension is only one of an infinity of infinites. There +is an aesthetic infinite, or many aesthetic infinites, composed of all the +forms which nature or imagination might exhibit; and where imagination +fails, there are infinite remainders of the unimagined. The version which +M. Benda gives us of infinite Being, limited to the mathematical +dimension, is therefore unnecessarily cold and stark. His one infinity is +monochrome, whereas the total infinity of essence, in which an infinity of +outlines is only one item, is infinitely many-coloured. Phenomena +therefore fall, in their essential variety, within and not without +infinite Being: so that in "returning to God" we might take the whole +world with us, not indeed in its blind movement and piecemeal +illumination, as events occur, but in an after-image and panoramic +portrait, as events are gathered together in the realm of truth. + +On the whole I think M. Benda's two Gods are less unfriendly to one +another than his aggrieved tone might suggest. This pregnant little book +ends on a tragic note. + + "Hitherto human self-assertion in the state or the family, while + serving the imperial God, has paid some grudging honours, at least + verbally, to the infinite God as well, under the guise of + liberalism, love of mankind, or the negation of classes. But today + this imperfect homage is retracted, and nothing is reverenced + except that which gives strength. If anyone preaches human + kindness, it is in order to establish a "strong" community + martially trained, like a super-state, to oppose everything not + included within it, and to become omnipotent in the art of + utilising the non-human forces of nature.... The will to return to + God may prove to have been, in the history of the phenomenal world, + a sublime accident." + +Certainly the will to "return to God", if not an accident, is an incident +in the life of the world; and the whole world itself is a sublime +accident, in the sense that its existence is contingent, groundless, and +precarious. Yet so long as the imperial God continues successfully to keep +our world going, it will be no accident, but a natural necessity, that +many a mind should turn to the thought of the infinite with awe, with a +sense of liberation, and even with joy. The infinite God owes all his +worshippers, little as he may care for them, to the success of the +imperial God in creating reflective and speculative minds. Or (to drop +these mythological expressions which may become tiresome) philosophers owe +to nature and to the discipline of moral life their capacity to look +beyond nature and beyond morality. And while they may _look_ beyond, and +take comfort in the vision, they cannot _pass_ beyond. As M. Benda says, +the most faithful Levite can return to the infinite only in his thought; +in his life he must remain a lay creature. Yet nature, in forming the +human soul, unintentionally unlocked for the mind the doors to truth and +to essence, partly by obliging the soul to attend to things which are +outside, and partly by endowing the soul with far greater potentialities +of sensation and invention than daily life is likely to call forth. Our +minds are therefore naturally dissatisfied with their lot and +speculatively directed upon an outspread universe in which our persons +count for almost nothing. These insights are calculated to give our brutal +wills some pause. Intuition of the infinite and recourse to the infinite +for religious inspiration follow of themselves, and can never be +suppressed altogether, so long as life is conscious and experience +provokes reflection. + +Spirit is certainly not one of the forces producing spirit, but neither is +it a contrary force. It is the actuality of feeling, of observation, of +meaning. Spirit has no unmannerly quarrel with its parents, its hosts, or +even its gaolers: they know not what they do. Yet spirit belongs +intrinsically to another sphere, and cannot help wondering at the world, +and suffering in it. The man in whom spirit is awake will continue to +live and act, but with a difference. In so far as he has become pure +spirit he will have transcended the fear of death or defeat; for now his +instinctive fear, which will subsist, will be neutralised by an equally +sincere consent to die and to fail. He will live henceforth in a truer and +more serene sympathy with nature than is possible to rival natural beings. +Natural beings are perpetually struggling to live only, and not to die; so +that their will is in hopeless rebellion against the divine decrees which +they must obey notwithstanding. The spiritual man, on the contrary, in so +far as he has already passed intellectually into the eternal world, no +longer endures unwillingly the continual death involved in living, or the +final death involved in having been born. He renounces everything +religiously in the very act of attaining it, resigning existence itself as +gladly as he accepts it, or even more gladly; because the emphasis which +action and passion lend to the passing moment seems to him arbitrary and +violent; and as each task or experience is dismissed in turn, he accounts +the end of it more blessed than the beginning. + + +[11] The following quotations are drawn from _Beyond the Pleasure +Principle_, by Sigmund Freud; authorised translation by C.J.M. Hubback. +The International Psycho-Analytic Press, 1922, pp. 29-48. The italics +are in the original. + +[12] _Essai d'un Discours coherent sur les Rapports de Dieu et du +Monde._ Par Julien Benda. Librairie Gallimard, Paris, 1931. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Turns of Thought in Modern +Philosophy, by George Santayana + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN *** + +***** This file should be named 16712.txt or 16712.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/7/1/16712/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Michael Ciesielski and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +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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