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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Intelligence, by
+John Dewey, Addison W. Moore, Harold Chapman Brown, George H. Mead, Boyd H. Bode, Henry Waldgrave, Stuart James, Hayden Tufts, Horace M. Kallen
+
+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: Creative Intelligence
+       Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude
+
+Author: John Dewey, Addison W. Moore, Harold Chapman Brown, George H. Mead, Boyd H. Bode, Henry Waldgrave, Stuart James, Hayden Tufts, Horace M. Kallen
+
+Release Date: September 14, 2010 [EBook #33727]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Turgut Dincer and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE
+
+  ESSAYS IN THE PRAGMATIC ATTITUDE
+
+  BY
+
+  JOHN DEWEY
+  ADDISON W. MOORE
+  HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN
+  GEORGE H. MEAD
+  BOYD H. BODE
+  HENRY WALDGRAVE STUART
+  JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS
+  HORACE M. KALLEN
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  NEW YORK
+  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1917,
+
+  BY
+
+  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
+
+  Published January, 1917
+
+
+  THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
+
+  RAHWAY, N. J.
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+The Essays which follow represent an attempt at intellectual
+cooeperation. No effort has been made, however, to attain unanimity of
+belief nor to proffer a platform of "planks" on which there is
+agreement. The consensus represented lies primarily in outlook, in
+conviction of what is most likely to be fruitful in method of approach.
+As the title page suggests, the volume presents a unity in attitude
+rather than a uniformity in results. Consequently each writer is
+definitively responsible only for his own essay. The reader will note
+that the Essays endeavor to embody the common attitude in application to
+specific fields of inquiry which have been historically associated with
+philosophy rather than as a thing by itself. Beginning with philosophy
+itself, subsequent contributions discuss its application to logic, to
+mathematics, to physical science, to psychology, to ethics, to
+economics, and then again to philosophy itself in conjunction with
+esthetics and religion. The reader will probably find that the
+significant points of agreement have to do with the ideas of the
+genuineness of the future, of intelligence as the organ for determining
+the quality of that future so far as it can come within human control,
+and of a courageously inventive individual as the bearer of a creatively
+employed mind. While all the essays are new in the form in which they
+are now published, various contributors make their acknowledgments to
+the editors of the _Philosophical Review_, the _Psychological Review_,
+and the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_ for
+use of material which first made its appearance in the pages of these
+journals.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+  THE NEED FOR A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY                              3
+    John Dewey, Columbia University.
+
+  REFORMATION OF LOGIC                                              70
+    Addison W. Moore, University of Chicago.
+
+  INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS                                     118
+    Harold Chapman Brown, Leland Stanford, Jr., University.
+
+  SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND INDIVIDUAL THINKER                         176
+    George H. Mead, University of Chicago.
+
+  CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY                                     228
+    Boyd H. Bode, University of Illinois.
+
+  THE PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST                              282
+    Henry Waldgrave Stuart, Leland Stanford, Jr., University.
+
+  THE MORAL LIFE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF VALUES AND STANDARDS      354
+    James Hayden Tufts, University of Chicago.
+
+  VALUE AND EXISTENCE IN PHILOSOPHY, ART, AND RELIGION             409
+    Horace M. Kallen, University of Wisconsin.
+
+
+
+
+CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE
+
+
+
+
+THE NEED FOR A RECOVERY OF PHILOSOPHY
+
+JOHN DEWEY
+
+
+Intellectual advance occurs in two ways. At times increase of knowledge
+is organized about old conceptions, while these are expanded, elaborated
+and refined, but not seriously revised, much less abandoned. At other
+times, the increase of knowledge demands qualitative rather than
+quantitative change; alteration, not addition. Men's minds grow cold to
+their former intellectual concerns; ideas that were burning fade;
+interests that were urgent seem remote. Men face in another direction;
+their older perplexities are unreal; considerations passed over as
+negligible loom up. Former problems may not have been solved, but they
+no longer press for solutions.
+
+Philosophy is no exception to the rule. But it is unusually
+conservative--not, necessarily, in proffering solutions, but in clinging
+to problems. It has been so allied with theology and theological morals
+as representatives of men's chief interests, that radical alteration has
+been shocking. Men's activities took a decidedly new turn, for example,
+in the seventeenth century, and it seems as if philosophy, under the
+lead of thinkers like Bacon and Descartes, was to execute an about-face.
+But, in spite of the ferment, it turned out that many of the older
+problems were but translated from Latin into the vernacular or into the
+new terminology furnished by science.
+
+The association of philosophy with academic teaching has reinforced this
+intrinsic conservatism. Scholastic philosophy persisted in universities
+after men's thoughts outside of the walls of colleges had moved in other
+directions. In the last hundred years intellectual advances of science
+and politics have in like fashion been crystallized into material of
+instruction and now resist further change. I would not say that the
+spirit of teaching is hostile to that of liberal inquiry, but a
+philosophy which exists largely as something to be taught rather than
+wholly as something to be reflected upon is conducive to discussion of
+views held by others rather than to immediate response. Philosophy when
+taught inevitably magnifies the history of past thought, and leads
+professional philosophers to approach their subject-matter through its
+formulation in received systems. It tends, also, to emphasize points
+upon which men have divided into schools, for these lend themselves to
+retrospective definition and elaboration. Consequently, philosophical
+discussion is likely to be a dressing out of antithetical traditions,
+where criticism of one view is thought to afford proof of the truth of
+its opposite (as if formulation of views guaranteed logical exclusives).
+Direct preoccupation with contemporary difficulties is left to
+literature and politics.
+
+If changing conduct and expanding knowledge ever required a willingness
+to surrender not merely old solutions but old problems it is now. I do
+not mean that we can turn abruptly away from all traditional issues.
+This is impossible; it would be the undoing of the one who attempted it.
+Irrespective of the professionalizing of philosophy, the ideas
+philosophers discuss are still those in which Western civilization has
+been bred. They are in the backs of the heads of educated people. But
+what serious-minded men not engaged in the professional business of
+philosophy most want to know is what modifications and abandonments of
+intellectual inheritance are required by the newer industrial,
+political, and scientific movements. They want to know what these newer
+movements mean when translated into general ideas. Unless professional
+philosophy can mobilize itself sufficiently to assist in this
+clarification and redirection of men's thoughts, it is likely to get
+more and more sidetracked from the main currents of contemporary life.
+
+This essay may, then, be looked upon as an attempt to forward the
+emancipation of philosophy from too intimate and exclusive attachment to
+traditional problems. It is not in intent a criticism of various
+solutions that have been offered, but raises a question _as to the
+genuineness, under the present conditions of science and social life, of
+the problems_.
+
+The limited object of my discussion will, doubtless, give an exaggerated
+impression of my conviction as to the artificiality of much recent
+philosophizing. Not that I have wilfully exaggerated in what I have
+said, but that the limitations of my purpose have led me not to say many
+things pertinent to a broader purpose. A discussion less restricted
+would strive to enforce the genuineness, in their own context, of
+questions now discussed mainly because they have been discussed rather
+than because contemporary conditions of life suggest them. It would also
+be a grateful task to dwell upon the precious contributions made by
+philosophic systems which as a whole are impossible. In the course of
+the development of unreal premises and the discussion of artificial
+problems, points of view have emerged which are indispensable
+possessions of culture. The horizon has been widened; ideas of great
+fecundity struck out; imagination quickened; a sense of the meaning of
+things created. It may even be asked whether these accompaniments of
+classic systems have not often been treated as a kind of guarantee of
+the systems themselves. But while it is a sign of an illiberal mind to
+throw away the fertile and ample ideas of a Spinoza, a Kant, or a Hegel,
+because their setting is not logically adequate, is surely a sign of an
+undisciplined one to treat their contributions to culture as
+confirmations of premises with which they have no necessary connection.
+
+
+I
+
+A criticism of current philosophizing from the standpoint of the
+traditional quality of its problems must begin somewhere, and the choice
+of a beginning is arbitrary. It has appeared to me that the notion of
+experience implied in the questions most actively discussed gives a
+natural point of departure. For, if I mistake not, it is just the
+inherited view of experience common to the empirical school and its
+opponents which keeps alive many discussions even of matters that on
+their face are quite remote from it, while it is also this view which is
+most untenable in the light of existing science and social practice.
+Accordingly I set out with a brief statement of some of the chief
+contrasts between the orthodox description of experience and that
+congenial to present conditions.
+
+(i) In the orthodox view, experience is regarded primarily as a
+knowledge-affair. But to eyes not looking through ancient spectacles, it
+assuredly appears as an affair of the intercourse of a living being with
+its physical and social environment. (ii) According to tradition
+experience is (at least primarily) a psychical thing, infected
+throughout by "subjectivity." What experience suggests about itself is a
+genuinely objective world which enters into the actions and sufferings
+of men and undergoes modifications through their responses. (iii) So far
+as anything beyond a bare present is recognized by the established
+doctrine, the past exclusively counts. Registration of what has taken
+place, reference to precedent, is believed to be the essence of
+experience. Empiricism is conceived of as tied up to what has been, or
+is, "given." But experience in its vital form is experimental, an effort
+to change the given; it is characterized by projection, by reaching
+forward into the unknown; connexion with a future is its salient trait.
+(iv) The empirical tradition is committed to particularism. Connexions
+and continuities are supposed to be foreign to experience, to be
+by-products of dubious validity. An experience that is an undergoing of
+an environment and a striving for its control in new directions is
+pregnant with connexions. (v) In the traditional notion experience and
+thought are antithetical terms. Inference, so far as it is other than a
+revival of what has been given in the past, goes beyond experience;
+hence it is either invalid, or else a measure of desperation by which,
+using experience as a springboard, we jump out to a world of stable
+things and other selves. But experience, taken free of the restrictions
+imposed by the older concept, is full of inference. There is,
+apparently, no conscious experience without inference; reflection is
+native and constant.
+
+These contrasts, with a consideration of the effect of substituting the
+account of experience relevant to modern life for the inherited account,
+afford the subject-matter of the following discussion.
+
+Suppose we take seriously the contribution made to our idea of
+experience by biology,--not that recent biological science discovered
+the facts, but that it has so emphasized them that there is no longer an
+excuse for ignoring them or treating them as negligible. Any account of
+experience must now fit into the consideration that experiencing means
+living; and that living goes on in and because of an environing medium,
+not in a vacuum. Where there is experience, there is a living being.
+Where there is life, there is a double connexion maintained with the
+environment. In part, environmental energies constitute organic
+functions; they enter into them. Life is not possible without such
+direct support by the environment. But while all organic changes depend
+upon the natural energies of the environment for their origination and
+occurrence, the natural energies sometimes carry the organic functions
+prosperously forward, and sometimes act counter to their continuance.
+Growth and decay, health and disease, are alike continuous with
+activities of the natural surroundings. The difference lies in the
+bearing of what happens upon future life-activity. From the standpoint
+of this future reference environmental incidents fall into groups: those
+favorable to life-activities, and those hostile.
+
+The successful activities of the organism, those within which
+environmental assistance is incorporated, react upon the environment to
+bring about modifications favorable to their own future. The human being
+has upon his hands the problem of responding to what is going on around
+him so that these changes will take one turn rather than another,
+namely, that required by its own further functioning. While backed in
+part by the environment, its life is anything but a peaceful exhalation
+of environment. It is obliged to struggle--that is to say, to employ the
+direct support given by the environment in order indirectly to effect
+changes that would not otherwise occur. In this sense, life goes on by
+means of controlling the environment. Its activities must change the
+changes going on around it; they must neutralize hostile occurrences;
+they must transform neutral events into cooeperative factors or into an
+efflorescence of new features.
+
+Dialectic developments of the notion of self-preservation, of the
+_conatus essendi_, often ignore all the important facts of the actual
+process. They argue as if self-control, self-development, went on
+directly as a sort of unrolling push from within. But life endures only
+in virtue of the support of the environment. And since the environment
+is only incompletely enlisted in our behalf, self-preservation--or
+self-realization or whatever--is always indirect--always an affair of
+the way in which our present activities affect the direction taken by
+independent changes in the surroundings. Hindrances must be turned into
+means.
+
+We are also given to playing loose with the conception of adjustment, as
+if that meant something fixed--a kind of accommodation once for all
+(ideally at least) of the organism _to_ an environment. But as life
+requires the fitness of the environment to the organic functions,
+adjustment to the environment means not passive acceptance of the
+latter, but acting so that the environing changes take a certain turn.
+The "higher" the type of life, the more adjustment takes the form of an
+adjusting of the factors of the environment to one another in the
+interest of life; the less the significance of living, the more it
+becomes an adjustment to a given environment till at the lower end of
+the scale the differences between living and the non-living disappear.
+
+These statements are of an external kind. They are about the conditions
+of experience, rather than about experiencing itself. But assuredly
+experience as it concretely takes place bears out the statements.
+Experience is primarily a process of undergoing: a process of standing
+something; of suffering and passion, of affection, in the literal sense
+of these words. The organism has to endure, to undergo, the
+consequences of its own actions. Experience is no slipping along in a
+path fixed by inner consciousness. Private consciousness is an
+incidental outcome of experience of a vital objective sort; it is not
+its source. Undergoing, however, is never mere passivity. The most
+patient patient is more than a receptor. He is also an agent--a reactor,
+one trying experiments, one concerned with undergoing in a way which may
+influence what is still to happen. Sheer endurance, side-stepping
+evasions, are, after all, ways of treating the environment with a view
+to what such treatment will accomplish. Even if we shut ourselves up in
+the most clam-like fashion, we are doing something; our passivity is an
+active attitude, not an extinction of response. Just as there is no
+assertive action, no aggressive attack upon things as they are, which is
+all action, so there is no undergoing which is not on our part also a
+going on and a going through.
+
+Experience, in other words, is a matter of _simultaneous_ doings and
+sufferings. Our undergoings are experiments in varying the course of
+events; our active tryings are trials and tests of ourselves. This
+duplicity of experience shows itself in our happiness and misery, our
+successes and failures. Triumphs are dangerous when dwelt upon or lived
+off from; successes use themselves up. Any achieved equilibrium of
+adjustment with the environment is precarious because we cannot evenly
+keep pace with changes in the environment. These are so opposed in
+direction that we must choose. We must take the risk of casting in our
+lot with one movement or the other. Nothing can eliminate all risk, all
+adventure; the one thing doomed to failure is to try to keep even with
+the whole environment at once--that is to say, to maintain the happy
+moment when all things go our way.
+
+The obstacles which confront us are stimuli to variation, to novel
+response, and hence are occasions of progress. If a favor done us by the
+environment conceals a threat, so its disfavor is a potential means of
+hitherto unexperienced modes of success. To treat misery as anything but
+misery, as for example a blessing in disguise or a necessary factor in
+good, is disingenuous apologetics. But to say that the progress of the
+race has been stimulated by ills undergone, and that men have been moved
+by what they suffer to search out new and better courses of action is to
+speak veraciously.
+
+The preoccupation of experience with things which are coming (are now
+coming, not just to come) is obvious to any one whose interest in
+experience is empirical. Since we live forward; since we live in a world
+where changes are going on whose issue means our weal or woe; since
+every act of ours modifies these changes and hence is fraught with
+promise, or charged with hostile energies--what should experience be but
+a future implicated in a present! Adjustment is no timeless state; it is
+a continuing process. To say that a change takes time may be to say
+something about the event which is external and uninstructive. But
+adjustment of organism to environment takes time in the pregnant sense;
+every step in the process is conditioned by reference to further
+changes which it effects. What is going on in the environment is the
+concern of the organism; not what is already "there" in accomplished and
+finished form. In so far as the issue of what is going on may be
+affected by intervention of the organism, the moving event is a
+challenge which stretches the agent-patient to meet what is coming.
+Experiencing exhibits things in their unterminated aspect moving toward
+determinate conclusions. The finished and done with is of import as
+affecting the future, not on its own account: in short, because it is
+not, really, done with.
+
+Anticipation is therefore more primary than recollection; projection
+than summoning of the past; the prospective than the retrospective.
+Given a world like that in which we live, a world in which environing
+changes are partly favorable and partly callously indifferent, and
+experience is bound to be prospective in import; for any control
+attainable by the living creature depends upon what is done to alter the
+state of things. Success and failure are the primary "categories" of
+life; achieving of good and averting of ill are its supreme interests;
+hope and anxiety (which are not self-enclosed states of feeling, but
+active attitudes of welcome and wariness) are dominant qualities of
+experience. Imaginative forecast of the future is this forerunning
+quality of behavior rendered available for guidance in the present.
+Day-dreaming and castle-building and esthetic realization of what is not
+practically achieved are offshoots of this practical trait, or else
+practical intelligence is a chastened fantasy. It makes little
+difference. Imaginative recovery of the bygone is indispensable to
+successful invasion of the future, but its status is that of an
+instrument. To ignore its import is the sign of an undisciplined agent;
+but to isolate the past, dwelling upon it for its own sake and giving it
+the eulogistic name of knowledge, is to substitute the reminiscence of
+old-age for effective intelligence. The movement of the agent-patient to
+meet the future is partial and passionate; yet detached and impartial
+study of the past is the only alternative to luck in assuring success to
+passion.
+
+
+II
+
+This description of experience would be but a rhapsodic celebration of
+the commonplace were it not in marked contrast to orthodox philosophical
+accounts. The contrast indicates that traditional accounts have not been
+empirical, but have been deductions, from unnamed premises, of what
+experience _must_ be. Historic empiricism has been empirical in a
+technical and controversial sense. It has said, Lord, Lord, Experience,
+Experience; but in practice it has served ideas _forced into_
+experience, not _gathered from_ it.
+
+The confusion and artificiality thereby introduced into philosophical
+thought is nowhere more evident than in the empirical treatment of
+relations or dynamic continuities. The experience of a living being
+struggling to hold its own and make its way in an environment, physical
+and social, partly facilitating and partly obstructing its actions, is
+of necessity a matter of ties and connexions, of bearings and uses. The
+very point of experience, so to say, is that it doesn't occur in a
+vacuum; its agent-patient instead of being insulated and disconnected is
+bound up with the movement of things by most intimate and pervasive
+bonds. Only because the organism is in and of the world, and its
+activities correlated with those of other things in multiple ways, is it
+susceptible to undergoing things and capable of trying to reduce objects
+to means of securing its good fortune. That these connexions are of
+diverse kinds is irresistibly proved by the fluctuations which occur in
+its career. Help and hindrance, stimulation and inhibition, success and
+failure mean specifically different modes of correlation. Although the
+actions of things in the world are taking place in one continuous
+stretch of existence, there are all kinds of specific affinities,
+repulsions, and relative indifferencies.
+
+Dynamic connexions are qualitatively diverse, just as are the centers of
+action. _In this sense_, pluralism, not monism, is an established
+empirical fact. The attempt to establish monism from consideration of
+the very nature of a relation is a mere piece of dialectics. Equally
+dialectical is the effort to establish by a consideration of the nature
+of relations an ontological Pluralism of Ultimates: _simple and
+independent beings._ To attempt to get results from a consideration of
+the "external" nature of relations is of a piece with the attempt to
+deduce results from their "internal" character. Some things are
+relatively insulated from the influence of other things; some things are
+easily invaded by others; some things are fiercely attracted to conjoin
+their activities with those of others. Experience exhibits every kind
+of connexion[1] from the most intimate to mere external juxtaposition.
+
+Empirically, then, active bonds or continuities of all kinds, together
+with static discontinuities, characterize existence. To deny this
+qualitative heterogeneity is to reduce the struggles and difficulties of
+life, its comedies and tragedies to illusion: to the non-being of the
+Greeks or to its modern counterpart, the "subjective." Experience is an
+affair of facilitations and checks, of being sustained and disrupted,
+being let alone, being helped and troubled, of good fortune and defeat
+in all the countless qualitative modes which these words pallidly
+suggest. The existence of genuine connexions of all manner of
+heterogeneity cannot be doubted. Such words as conjoining, disjoining,
+resisting, modifying, saltatory, and ambulatory (to use James'
+picturesque term) only hint at their actual heterogeneity.
+
+Among the revisions and surrenders of historic problems demanded by this
+feature of empirical situations, those centering in the
+rationalistic-empirical controversy may be selected for attention. The
+implications of this controversy are twofold: First, that connexions are
+as homogeneous in fact as in name; and, secondly, if genuine, are all
+due to thought, or, if empirical, are arbitrary by-products of past
+particulars. The stubborn particularism of orthodox empiricism is its
+outstanding trait; consequently the opposed rationalism found no
+justification of bearings, continuities, and ties save to refer them in
+gross to the work of a hyper-empirical Reason.
+
+Of course, not all empiricism prior to Hume and Kant was
+sensationalistic, pulverizing "experience" into isolated sensory
+qualities or simple ideas. It did not all follow Locke's lead in
+regarding the entire content of generalization as the "workmanship of
+the understanding." On the Continent, prior to Kant, philosophers were
+content to draw a line between empirical generalizations regarding
+matters of fact and necessary universals applying to truths of reason.
+But logical atomism was implicit even in this theory. Statements
+referring to empirical fact were mere quantitative summaries of
+particular instances. In the sensationalism which sprang from Hume (and
+which was left unquestioned by Kant as far as any strictly empirical
+element was concerned) the implicit particularism was made explicit. But
+the doctrine that sensations and ideas are so many separate existences
+was not derived from observation nor from experiment. It was a logical
+deduction from a prior unexamined concept of the nature of experience.
+From the same concept it followed that the appearance of stable objects
+and of general principles of connexion was but an appearance.[2]
+
+Kantianism, then, naturally invoked universal bonds to restore
+objectivity. But, in so doing, it accepted the particularism of
+experience and proceeded to supplement it from non-empirical sources. A
+sensory manifold being all which is really empirical in experience, a
+reason which transcends experience must provide synthesis. The net
+outcome might have suggested a correct account of experience. For we
+have only to forget the apparatus by which the net outcome is arrived
+at, to have before us the experience of the plain man--a diversity of
+ceaseless changes connected in all kinds of ways, static and dynamic.
+This conclusion would deal a deathblow to both empiricism and
+rationalism. For, making clear the non-empirical character of the
+alleged manifold of unconnected particulars, it would render unnecessary
+the appeal to functions of the understanding in order to connect them.
+With the downfall of the traditional notion of experience, the appeal to
+reason to supplement its defects becomes superfluous.
+
+The tradition was, however, too strongly entrenched; especially as it
+furnished the subject-matter of an alleged science of states of mind
+which were directly known in their very presence. The historic outcome
+was a new crop of artificial puzzles about relations; it fastened upon
+philosophy for a long time the quarrel about the _a priori_ and the _a
+posteriori_ as its chief issue. The controversy is to-day quiescent. Yet
+it is not at all uncommon to find thinkers modern in tone and intent
+who regard any philosophy of experience as necessarily committed to
+denial of the existence of genuinely general propositions, and who take
+empiricism to be inherently averse to the recognition of the importance
+of an organizing and constructive intelligence.
+
+The quiescence alluded to is in part due, I think, to sheer weariness.
+But it is also due to a change of standpoint introduced by biological
+conceptions; and particularly the discovery of biological continuity
+from the lower organisms to man. For a short period, Spencerians might
+connect the doctrine of evolution with the old problem, and use the long
+temporal accumulation of "experiences" to generate something which, for
+human experience, is _a priori_. But the tendency of the biological way
+of thinking is neither to confirm or negate the Spencerian doctrine, but
+to shift the issue. In the orthodox position _a posteriori_ and _a
+priori_ were affairs of knowledge. But it soon becomes obvious that
+while there is assuredly something _a priori_--that is to say, native,
+unlearned, original--in human experience, that something is _not_
+knowledge, but is activities made possible by means of established
+connexions of neurones. This empirical fact does not solve the orthodox
+problem; it dissolves it. It shows that the problem was misconceived,
+and solution sought by both parties in the wrong direction.
+
+Organic instincts and organic retention, or habit-forming, are
+undeniable factors in actual experience. They are factors which effect
+organization and secure continuity. They are among the specific facts
+which a description of experience cognizant of the correlation of
+organic action with the action of other natural objects will include.
+But while fortunately the contribution of biological science to a truly
+empirical description of experiencing has outlawed the discussion of the
+_a priori_ and _a posteriori_, the transforming effect of the same
+contributions upon other issues has gone unnoticed, save as pragmatism
+has made an effort to bring them to recognition.
+
+
+III
+
+The point seriously at issue in the notion of experience common to both
+sides in the older controversy thus turns out to be the place of thought
+or intelligence in experience. Does reason have a distinctive office? Is
+there a characteristic order of relations contributed by it?
+
+Experience, to return to our positive conception, is primarily what is
+undergone in connexion with activities whose import lies in their
+objective consequences--their bearing upon future experiences. Organic
+functions deal with things as things in course, in operation, in a state
+of affairs not yet given or completed. What is done with, what is just
+"there," is of concern only in the potentialities which it may indicate.
+As ended, as wholly given, it is of no account. But as a sign of what
+may come, it becomes an indispensable factor in behavior dealing with
+changes, the outcome of which is not yet determined.
+
+The only power the organism possesses to control its own future depends
+upon the way its present responses modify changes which are taking place
+in its medium. A living being may be comparatively impotent, or
+comparatively free. It is all a matter of the way in which its present
+reactions to things influence the future reactions of things upon it.
+Without regard to its wish or intent every act it performs makes some
+difference in the environment. The change may be trivial as respects its
+own career and fortune. But it may also be of incalculable importance;
+it may import harm, destruction, or it may procure well-being.
+
+Is it possible for a living being to increase its control of welfare and
+success? Can it manage, in any degree, to assure its future? Or does the
+amount of security depend wholly upon the accidents of the situation?
+Can it learn? Can it gain ability to assure its future in the present?
+These questions center attention upon the significance of reflective
+intelligence in the process of experience. The extent of an agent's
+capacity for inference, its power to use a given fact as a sign of
+something not yet given, measures the extent of its ability
+systematically to enlarge its control of the future.
+
+A being which can use given and finished facts as signs of things to
+come; which can take given things as evidences of absent things, can, in
+that degree, forecast the future; it can form reasonable expectations.
+It is capable of achieving ideas; it is possessed of intelligence. For
+use of the given or finished to anticipate the consequence of processes
+going on is precisely what is meant by "ideas," by "intelligence."
+
+As we have already noted, the environment is rarely all of a kind in its
+bearing upon organic welfare; its most whole-hearted support of
+life-activities is precarious and temporary. Some environmental changes
+are auspicious; others are menacing. The secret of success--that is, of
+the greatest attainable success--is for the organic response to cast in
+its lot with present auspicious changes to strengthen them and thus to
+avert the consequences flowing from occurrences of ill-omen. Any
+reaction is a venture; it involves risk. We always build better or worse
+than we can foretell. But the organism's fateful intervention in the
+course of events is blind, its choice is random, except as it can employ
+what happens to it as a basis of inferring what is likely to happen
+later. In the degree in which it can read future results in present
+on-goings, its responsive choice, its partiality to this condition or
+that, become intelligent. Its bias grows reasonable. It can
+deliberately, intentionally, participate in the direction of the course
+of affairs. Its foresight of different futures which result according as
+this or that present factor predominates in the shaping of affairs
+permits it to partake intelligently instead of blindly and fatally in
+the consequences its reactions give rise to. Participate it must, and to
+its own weal or woe. Inference, the use of what happens, to anticipate
+what will--or at least may--happen, makes the difference between
+directed and undirected participation. And this capacity for inferring
+is precisely the same as that use of natural occurrences for the
+discovery and determination of consequences--the formation of new
+dynamic connexions--which constitutes knowledge.
+
+The fact that thought is an intrinsic feature of experience is fatal to
+the traditional empiricism which makes it an artificial by-product. But
+for that same reason it is fatal to the historic rationalisms whose
+justification was the secondary and retrospective position assigned to
+thought by empirical philosophy. According to the particularism of the
+latter, thought was inevitably only a bunching together of hard-and-fast
+separate items; thinking was but the gathering together and tying of
+items already completely given, or else an equally artificial untying--a
+mechanical adding and subtracting of the given. It was but a cumulative
+registration, a consolidated merger; generality was a matter of bulk,
+not of quality. Thinking was therefore treated as lacking constructive
+power; even its organizing capacity was but simulated, being in truth
+but arbitrary pigeon-holing. Genuine projection of the novel,
+deliberate variation and invention, are idle fictions in such a version
+of experience. If there ever was creation, it all took place at a remote
+period. Since then the world has only recited lessons.
+
+The value of inventive construction is too precious to be disposed of in
+this cavalier way. Its unceremonious denial afforded an opportunity to
+assert that in addition to experience the subject has a ready-made
+faculty of thought or reason which transcends experience. Rationalism
+thus accepted the account of experience given by traditional empiricism,
+and introduced reason as extra-empirical. There are still thinkers who
+regard any empiricism as necessarily committed to a belief in a
+cut-and-dried reliance upon disconnected precedents, and who hold that
+all systematic organization of past experiences for new and constructive
+purposes is alien to strict empiricism.
+
+Rationalism never explained, however, how a reason extraneous to
+experience could enter into helpful relation with concrete experiences.
+By definition, reason and experience were antithetical, so that the
+concern of reason was not the fruitful expansion and guidance of the
+course of experience, but a realm of considerations too sublime to
+touch, or be touched by, experience. Discreet rationalists confined
+themselves to theology and allied branches of abtruse science, and to
+mathematics. Rationalism would have been a doctrine reserved for
+academic specialists and abstract formalists had it not assumed the task
+of providing an apologetics for traditional morals and theology, thereby
+getting into touch with actual human beliefs and concerns. It is
+notorious that historic empiricism was strong in criticism and in
+demolition of outworn beliefs, but weak for purposes of constructive
+social direction. But we frequently overlook the fact that whenever
+rationalism cut free from conservative apologetics, it was also simply
+an instrumentality for pointing out inconsistencies and absurdities in
+existing beliefs--a sphere in which it was immensely useful, as the
+Enlightenment shows. Leibniz and Voltaire were contemporary rationalists
+in more senses than one.[3]
+
+The recognition that reflection is a genuine factor within experience
+and an indispensable factor in that control of the world which secures a
+prosperous and significant expansion of experience undermines historic
+rationalism as assuredly as it abolishes the foundations of historic
+empiricism. The bearing of a correct idea of the place and office of
+reflection upon modern idealisms is less obvious, but no less certain.
+
+One of the curiosities of orthodox empiricism is that its outstanding
+speculative problem is the existence of an "external world." For in
+accordance with the notion that experience is attached to a private
+subject as its exclusive possession, a world like the one in which we
+appear to live must be "external" to experience instead of being its
+subject-matter. I call it a curiosity, for if anything seems adequately
+grounded empirically it is the existence of a world which resists the
+characteristic functions of the subject of experience; which goes its
+way, in some respects, independently of these functions, and which
+frustrates our hopes and intentions. Ignorance which is fatal;
+disappointment; the need of adjusting means and ends to the course of
+nature, would seem to be facts sufficiently characterizing empirical
+situations as to render the existence of an external world indubitable.
+
+That the description of experience was arrived at by forcing actual
+empirical facts into conformity with dialectic developments from a
+concept of a knower outside of the real world of nature is testified to
+by the historic alliance of empiricism and idealism.[4] According to the
+most logically consistent editions of orthodox empiricism, all that can
+be experienced is the fleeting, the momentary, mental state. That alone
+is absolutely and indubitably present; therefore, it alone is
+cognitively certain. It alone is _knowledge_. The existence of the past
+(and of the future), of a decently stable world and of other
+selves--indeed, of one's own self--falls outside this datum of
+experience. These can be arrived at only by inference which is
+"ejective"--a name given to an alleged type of inference that jumps from
+experience, as from a springboard, to something beyond experience.
+
+I should not anticipate difficulty in showing that this doctrine is,
+dialectically, a mass of inconsistencies. Avowedly it is a doctrine of
+desperation, and as such it is cited here to show the desperate straits
+to which ignoring empirical facts has reduced a doctrine of experience.
+More positively instructive are the objective idealisms which have been
+the offspring of the marriage between the "reason" of historic
+rationalism and the alleged immediate psychical stuff of historic
+empiricism. These idealisms have recognized the genuineness of
+connexions and the impotency of "feeling." They have then identified
+connexions with logical or rational connexions, and thus treated "the
+real World" as a synthesis of sentient consciousness by means of a
+rational self-consciousness introducing objectivity: stability and
+universality of reference.
+
+Here again, for present purposes, criticism is unnecessary. It suffices
+to point out that the value of this theory is bound up with the
+genuineness of the problem of which it purports to be a solution. If the
+basic concept is a fiction, there is no call for the solution. The more
+important point is to perceive how far the "thought" which figures in
+objective idealism comes from meeting the empirical demands made upon
+actual thought. Idealism is much less formal than historic rationalism.
+It treats thought, or reason, as constitutive of experience by means of
+uniting and constructive functions, not as just concerned with a realm
+of eternal truths apart from experience. On such a view thought
+certainly loses its abstractness and remoteness. But, unfortunately, in
+thus gaining the whole world it loses its own self. A world already, in
+its intrinsic structure, dominated by thought is not a world in which,
+save by contradiction of premises, thinking has anything to do.
+
+That the doctrine logically results in making change unreal and error
+unaccountable are consequences of importance in the technique of
+professional philosophy; in the denial of empirical fact which they
+imply they seem to many a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the premises from
+which they proceed. But, after all, such consequences are of only
+professional import. What is serious, even sinister, is the implied
+sophistication regarding the place and office of reflection in the
+scheme of things. A doctrine which exalts thought in name while
+ignoring its efficacy in fact (that is, its use in bettering life) is a
+doctrine which cannot be entertained and taught without serious peril.
+Those who are not concerned with professional philosophy but who are
+solicitous for intelligence as a factor in the amelioration of actual
+conditions can but look askance at any doctrine which holds that the
+entire scheme of things is already, if we but acquire the knack of
+looking at it aright, fixedly and completely rational. It is a striking
+manifestation of the extent in which philosophies have been compensatory
+in quality.[5] But the matter cannot be passed over as if it were simply
+a question of not grudging a certain amount of consolation to one amid
+the irretrievable evils of life. For as to these evils no one knows how
+many are retrievable; and a philosophy which proclaims the ability of a
+dialectic theory of knowledge to reveal the world as already and
+eternally a self-luminous rational whole, contaminates the scope and use
+of thought at its very spring. To substitute the otiose insight gained
+by manipulation of a formula for the slow cooeperative work of a humanity
+guided by reflective intelligence is more than a technical blunder of
+speculative philosophers.
+
+A practical crisis may throw the relationship of ideas to life into an
+exaggerated Brocken-like spectral relief, where exaggeration renders
+perceptible features not ordinarily noted. The use of force to secure
+narrow because exclusive aims is no novelty in human affairs. The
+deploying of all the intelligence at command in order to increase the
+effectiveness of the force used is not so common, yet presents nothing
+intrinsically remarkable. The identification of force--military,
+economic, and administrative--with moral necessity and moral culture is,
+however, a phenomenon not likely to exhibit itself on a wide scale
+except where intelligence has already been suborned by an idealism which
+identifies "the actual with the rational," and thus finds the measure of
+reason in the brute event determined by superior force. If we are to
+have a philosophy which will intervene between attachment to rule of
+thumb muddling and devotion to a systematized subordination of
+intelligence to preexistent ends, it can be found only in a philosophy
+which finds the ultimate measure of intelligence in consideration of a
+desirable future and in search for the means of bringing it
+progressively into existence. When professed idealism turns out to be a
+narrow pragmatism--narrow because taking for granted the finality of
+ends determined by historic conditions--the time has arrived for a
+pragmatism which shall be empirically idealistic, proclaiming the
+essential connexion of intelligence with the unachieved future--with
+possibilities involving a transfiguration.
+
+
+IV
+
+Why has the description of experience been so remote from the facts of
+empirical situations? To answer this question throws light upon the
+submergence of recent philosophizing in epistemology--that is, in
+discussions of the nature, possibility, and limits of knowledge in
+general, and in the attempt to reach conclusions regarding the ultimate
+nature of reality from the answers given to such questions.
+
+The reply to the query regarding the currency of a non-empirical
+doctrine of experience (even among professed empiricists) is that the
+traditional account is derived from a conception once universally
+entertained regarding the subject or bearer or center of experience. The
+description of experience has been forced into conformity with this
+prior conception; it has been primarily a deduction from it, actual
+empirical facts being poured into the moulds of the deductions. The
+characteristic feature of this prior notion is the assumption that
+experience centers in, or gathers about, or proceeds from a center or
+subject which is outside the course of natural existence, and set over
+against it:--it being of no importance, for present purposes, whether
+this antithetical subject is termed soul, or spirit, or mind, or ego, or
+consciousness, or just knower or knowing subject.
+
+There are plausible grounds for thinking that the currency of the idea
+in question lies in the form which men's religious preoccupations took
+for many centuries. These were deliberately and systematically
+other-worldly. They centered about a Fall which was not an event in
+nature, but an aboriginal catastrophe that corrupted Nature; about a
+redemption made possible by supernatural means; about a life in another
+world--essentially, not merely spatially, Other. The supreme drama of
+destiny took place in a soul or spirit which, under the circumstances,
+could not be conceived other than as non-natural--extra-natural, if not,
+strictly speaking, supernatural. When Descartes and others broke away
+from medieval interests, they retained as commonplaces its intellectual
+apparatus: Such as, knowledge is exercised by a power that is
+extra-natural and set over against the world to be known. Even if they
+had wished to make a complete break, they had nothing to put as knower
+in the place of the soul. It may be doubted whether there was any
+available empirical substitute until science worked out the fact that
+physical changes are functional correlations of energies, and that man
+is continuous with other forms of life, and until social life had
+developed an intellectually free and responsible individual as its
+agent.
+
+But my main point is not dependent upon any particular theory as to the
+historic origin of the notion about the bearer of experience. The point
+is there on its own account. The essential thing is that the bearer was
+conceived as outside of the world; so that experience consisted in the
+bearer's being affected through a type of operations not found anywhere
+in the world, while knowledge consists in surveying the world, looking
+at it, getting the view of a spectator.
+
+The theological problem of attaining knowledge of God as ultimate
+reality was transformed in effect into the philosophical problem of the
+possibility of attaining knowledge of reality. For how is one to get
+beyond the limits of the subject and subjective occurrences? Familiarity
+breeds credulity oftener than contempt. How can a problem be artificial
+when men have been busy discussing it almost for three hundred years?
+But if the assumption that experience is something set over against the
+world is contrary to fact, then the problem of how self or mind or
+subjective experience or consciousness can reach knowledge of an
+external world is assuredly a meaningless problem. Whatever questions
+there may be about knowledge, they will not be the kind of problems
+which have formed epistemology.
+
+The problem of knowledge as conceived in the industry of epistemology is
+the problem of knowledge _in general_--of the possibility, extent, and
+validity of knowledge in general. What does this "in general" mean? In
+ordinary life there are problems a-plenty of knowledge in particular;
+every conclusion we try to reach, theoretical or practical, affords such
+a problem. But there is no problem of knowledge in general. I do not
+mean, of course, that general statements cannot be made about knowledge,
+or that the problem of attaining these general statements is not a
+genuine one. On the contrary, specific instances of success and failure
+in inquiry exist, and are of such a character that one can discover the
+conditions conducing to success and failure. Statement of these
+conditions constitutes logic, and is capable of being an important aid
+in proper guidance of further attempts at knowing. But this logical
+problem of knowledge is at the opposite pole from the epistemological.
+Specific problems are about right conclusions to be reached--which
+means, in effect, right ways of going about the business of inquiry.
+They imply a difference between knowledge and error consequent upon
+right and wrong methods of inquiry and testing; not a difference
+between experience and the world. The problem of knowledge _ueberhaupt_
+exists because it is assumed that there is a knower in general, who is
+outside of the world to be known, and who is defined in terms
+antithetical to the traits of the world. With analogous assumptions, we
+could invent and discuss a problem of digestion in general. All that
+would be required would be to conceive the stomach and food-material as
+inhabiting different worlds. Such an assumption would leave on our hands
+the question of the possibility, extent, nature, and genuineness of any
+transaction between stomach and food.
+
+But because the stomach and food inhabit a continuous stretch of
+existence, because digestion is but a correlation of diverse activities
+in one world, the problems of digestion are specific and plural: What
+are the particular correlations which constitute it? How does it proceed
+in different situations? What is favorable and what unfavorable to its
+best performance?--and so on. Can one deny that if we were to take our
+clue from the present empirical situation, including the scientific
+notion of evolution (biological continuity) and the existing arts of
+control of nature, subject and object would be treated as occupying the
+same natural world as unhesitatingly as we assume the natural
+conjunction of an animal and its food? Would it not follow that
+knowledge is one way in which natural energies cooeperate? Would there be
+any problem save discovery of the peculiar structure of this
+cooeperation, the conditions under which it occurs to best effect, and
+the consequences which issue from its occurrence?
+
+It is a commonplace that the chief divisions of modern philosophy,
+idealism in its different kinds, realisms of various brands, so-called
+common-sense dualism, agnosticism, relativism, phenomenalism, have grown
+up around the epistemological problem of the general relation of subject
+and object. Problems not openly epistemological, such as whether the
+relation of changes in consciousness to physical changes is one of
+interaction, parallelism, or automatism have the same origin. What
+becomes of philosophy, consisting largely as it does of different
+answers to these questions, in case the assumptions which generate the
+questions have no empirical standing? Is it not time that philosophers
+turned from the attempt to determine the comparative merits of various
+replies to the questions to a consideration of the claims of the
+questions?
+
+When dominating religious ideas were built up about the idea that the
+self is a stranger and pilgrim in this world; when morals, falling in
+line, found true good only in inner states of a self inaccessible to
+anything but its own private introspection; when political theory
+assumed the finality of disconnected and mutually exclusive
+personalities, the notion that the bearer of experience is antithetical
+to the world instead of being in and of it was congenial. It at least
+had the warrant of other beliefs and aspirations. But the doctrine of
+biological continuity or organic evolution has destroyed the scientific
+basis of the conception. Morally, men are now concerned with the
+amelioration of the conditions of the common lot in this world. Social
+sciences recognize that associated life is not a matter of physical
+juxtaposition, but of genuine intercourse--of community of experience in
+a non-metaphorical sense of community. Why should we longer try to patch
+up and refine and stretch the old solutions till they seem to cover the
+change of thought and practice? Why not recognize that the trouble is
+with the problem?
+
+A belief in organic evolution which does not extend unreservedly to the
+way in which the subject of experience is thought of, and which does not
+strive to bring the entire theory of experience and knowing into line
+with biological and social facts, is hardly more than Pickwickian. There
+are many, for example, who hold that dreams, hallucinations, and errors
+cannot be accounted for at all except on the theory that a self (or
+"consciousness") exercises a modifying influence upon the "real object."
+The logical assumption is that consciousness is outside of the real
+object; that it is something different in kind, and therefore has the
+power of changing "reality" into appearance, of introducing
+"relativities" into things as they are in themselves--in short, of
+infecting real things with subjectivity. Such writers seem unaware of
+the fact that this assumption makes consciousness supernatural in the
+literal sense of the word; and that, to say the least, the conception
+can be accepted by one who accepts the doctrine of biological continuity
+only after every other way of dealing with the facts has been exhausted.
+
+Realists, of course (at least some of the Neo-realists), deny any such
+miraculous intervention of consciousness. But they[6] admit the reality
+of the problem; denying only this particular solution, they try to find
+some other way out, which will still preserve intact the notion of
+knowledge as a relationship of a general sort between subject and
+object.
+
+Now dreams and hallucinations, errors, pleasures, and pains, possibly
+"secondary" qualities, do not occur save where there are organic centers
+of experience. They cluster about a subject. But to treat them as things
+which inhere exclusively in the subject; or as posing the problem of a
+distortion of _the_ real object by a knower set over against the world,
+or as presenting facts to be explained primarily as cases of
+contemplative knowledge, is to testify that one has still to learn the
+lesson of evolution in its application to the affairs in hand.
+
+If biological development be accepted, the subject of experience is at
+least an animal, continuous with other organic forms in a process of
+more complex organization. An animal in turn is at least continuous with
+chemico-physical processes which, in living things, are so organized as
+really to constitute the activities of life with all their defining
+traits. And experience is not identical with brain action; it is the
+entire organic agent-patient in all its interaction with the
+environment, natural and social. The brain is primarily an organ of a
+certain kind of behavior, not of knowing the world. And to repeat what
+has already been said, experiencing is just certain modes of
+interaction, of correlation, of natural objects among which the organism
+happens, so to say, to be one. It follows with equal force that
+experience means primarily not knowledge, but ways of doing and
+suffering. Knowing must be described by discovering what particular
+mode--qualitatively unique--of doing and suffering it is. As it is, we
+find experience assimilated to a non-empirical concept of knowledge,
+derived from an antecedent notion of a spectator outside of the
+world.[7]
+
+In short, the epistemological fashion of conceiving dreams, errors,
+"relativities," etc., depends upon the isolation of mind from intimate
+participation with other changes in the same continuous nexus. Thus it
+is like contending that when a bottle bursts, the bottle is, in some
+self-contained miraculous way, exclusively responsible. Since it is the
+nature of a bottle to be whole so as to retain fluids, bursting is an
+abnormal event--comparable to an hallucination. Hence it cannot belong
+to the "real" bottle; the "subjectivity" of glass is the cause. It is
+obvious that since the breaking of glass is a case of specific
+correlation of natural energies, its accidental and abnormal character
+has to do with _consequences_, not with causation. Accident is
+interference with the consequences for which the bottle is intended. The
+bursting considered apart from its bearing on these consequences is on a
+plane with any other occurrence in the wide world. But from the
+standpoint of a desired future, bursting is an anomaly, an interruption
+of the course of events.
+
+The analogy with the occurrence of dreams, hallucinations, etc., seems
+to me exact. Dreams are not something outside of the regular course of
+events; they are in and of it. They are not cognitive distortions of
+real things; they are _more_ real things. There is nothing abnormal in
+their existence, any more than there is in the bursting of a bottle.[8]
+But they may be abnormal, from the standpoint of their influence, of
+their operation as stimuli in calling out responses to modify the
+future. Dreams have often been taken as prognostics of what is to
+happen; they have modified conduct. A hallucination may lead a man to
+consult a doctor; such a consequence is right and proper. But the
+consultation indicates that the subject regarded it as an indication of
+consequences which he feared: as a symptom of a disturbed life. Or the
+hallucination may lead him to anticipate consequences which in fact flow
+only from the possession of great wealth. Then the hallucination is a
+disturbance of the normal course of events; the occurrence is wrongly
+_used_ with reference to eventualities.
+
+To regard reference to use and to desired and intended consequences as
+involving a "subjective" factor is to miss the point, for this has
+regard to the future. The uses to which a bottle are put are not mental;
+they do not consist of physical states; they are further correlations of
+natural existences. Consequences in use are genuine natural events; but
+they do not occur without the intervention of behavior involving
+anticipation of a future. The case is not otherwise with an
+hallucination. The differences it makes are in any case differences in
+the course of the one continuous world. The important point is whether
+they are good or bad differences. To use the hallucination as a sign of
+organic lesions that menace health means the beneficial result of seeing
+a physician; to respond to it as a sign of consequences such as actually
+follow only from being persecuted is to fall into error--to be abnormal.
+The persecutors are "unreal"; that is, there are no things which act as
+persecutors act; but the hallucination exists. Given its conditions it
+is as natural as any other event, and poses only the same kind of
+problem as is put by the occurrence of, say, a thunderstorm. The
+"unreality" of persecution is not, however, a subjective matter; it
+means that conditions do not exist for producing the _future_
+consequences which are now anticipated and reacted to. Ability to
+anticipate future consequences and to respond to them as stimuli to
+present behavior may well _define_ what is meant by a mind or by
+"consciousness."[9] But this is only a way of saying just what kind of a
+real or natural existence the subject is; it is not to fall back on a
+preconception about an unnatural subject in order to characterize the
+occurrence of error.
+
+Although the discussion may be already labored, let us take another
+example--the occurrence of disease. By definition it is pathological,
+abnormal. At one time in human history this abnormality was taken to be
+something dwelling in the intrinsic nature of the event--in its
+existence irrespective of future consequences. Disease was literally
+extra-natural and to be referred to demons, or to magic. No one to-day
+questions its naturalness--its place in the order of natural events. Yet
+it is abnormal--for it operates to effect results different from those
+which follow from health. The difference is a genuine empirical
+difference, not a mere mental distinction. From the standpoint of
+bearing on a subsequent course of events disease is unnatural, in spite
+of the naturalness of its occurrence and origin.
+
+The habit of ignoring reference to the future is responsible for the
+assumption that to admit human participation in any form is to admit the
+"subjective" in a sense which alters the objective into the phenomenal.
+There have been those who, like Spinoza, regarded health and disease,
+good and ill, as equally real and equally unreal. However, only a few
+consistent materialists have included truth along with error as merely
+phenomenal and subjective. But if one does not regard movement toward
+possible consequences as genuine, wholesale denial of existential
+validity to all these distinctions is the only logical course. To select
+truth as objective and error as "subjective" is, on this basis, an
+unjustifiably partial procedure. Take everything as fixedly given, and
+both truth and error are arbitrary insertions into fact. Admit the
+genuineness of changes going on, and capacity for its direction through
+organic action based on foresight, and both truth and falsity are alike
+existential. It is human to regard the course of events which is in line
+with our own efforts as the _regular_ course of events, and
+interruptions as abnormal, but this partiality of human desire is itself
+a part of what actually takes place.
+
+It is now proposed to take a particular case of the alleged
+epistemological predicament for discussion, since the entire ground
+cannot be covered. I think, however, the instance chosen is typical, so
+that the conclusion reached may be generalized.
+
+The instance is that of so-called relativity in perception. There are
+almost endless instances; the stick bent in water; the whistle changing
+pitch with change of distance from the ear; objects doubled when the eye
+is pushed; the destroyed star still visible, etc., etc. For our
+consideration we may take the case of a spherical object that presents
+itself to one observer as a flat circle, to another as a somewhat
+distorted elliptical surface. This situation gives empirical proof, so
+it is argued, of the difference between a real object and mere
+appearance. Since there is but one object, the existence of two
+_subjects_ is the sole differentiating factor. Hence the two
+appearances of the one real object is proof of the intervening
+distorting action of the subject. And many of the Neo-realists who deny
+the difference in question, admit the case to be one of knowledge and
+accordingly to constitute an epistemological problem. They have in
+consequence developed wonderfully elaborate schemes of sundry kinds to
+maintain "epistemological monism" intact.
+
+Let us try to keep close to empirical facts. In the first place the two
+unlike appearances of the one sphere are physically necessary because of
+the laws of reaction of light. If the one sphere did _not_ assume these
+two appearances under given conditions, we should be confronted with a
+hopelessly irreconcilable discrepancy in the behavior of natural energy.
+That the result is natural is evidenced by the fact that two cameras--or
+other arrangements of apparatus for reflecting light--yield precisely
+the same results. Photographs are as genuinely physical existences as
+the original sphere; and they exhibit the two geometrical forms.
+
+The statement of these facts makes no impression upon the confirmed
+epistemologist; he merely retorts that as long as it is admitted that
+the organism is the cause of a sphere being seen, from different points,
+as a circular and as an elliptical surface, the essence of his
+contention--the modification of the real object by the subject--is
+admitted. To the question why the same logic does not apply to
+photographic records he makes, as far as I know, no reply at all.
+
+The source of the difficulty is not hard to see. The objection assumes
+that the alleged modifications of _the_ real object are cases of
+_knowing_ and hence attributable to the influence of a _knower_.
+Statements which set forth the doctrine will always be found to refer to
+the organic factor, to the eye, as an observer or a percipient. Even
+when reference is made to a lens or a mirror, language is sometimes used
+which suggests that the writer's naivete is sufficiently gross to treat
+these physical factors as if they were engaged in perceiving the sphere.
+But as it is evident that the lens operates as a physical factor in
+correlation with other physical factors--notably light--so it ought to
+be evident that the intervention of the optical apparatus of the eye is
+a purely non-cognitive matter. The relation in question is not one
+between a sphere and a would-be knower of it, unfortunately condemned by
+the nature of the knowing apparatus to alter the thing he would know; it
+is an affair of the dynamic interaction of two physical agents in
+producing a third thing, an effect;--an affair of precisely the same
+kind as in any physical conjoint action, say the operation of hydrogen
+and oxygen in producing water. To regard the eye as primarily a knower,
+an observer, of things, is as crass as to assign that function to a
+camera. But unless the eye (or optical apparatus, or brain, or organism)
+be so regarded, there is absolutely no problem of observation or of
+knowledge in the case of the occurrence of elliptical and circular
+surfaces. Knowledge does not enter into the affair at all till _after_
+these forms of refracted light have been produced. About them there is
+nothing unreal. Light is really, physically, existentially, refracted
+into these forms. If the same spherical form upon refracting light to
+physical objects in two quite different positions produced the same
+geometric forms, there would, indeed, be something to marvel at--as
+there would be if wax produced the same results in contact
+simultaneously with a cold body and with a warm one. Why talk about _the
+real_ object in relation to _a knower_ when what is given is one real
+thing in dynamic connection with another real thing?
+
+The way of dealing with the case will probably meet with a retort; at
+least, it has done so before. It has been said that the account given
+above and the account of traditional subjectivism differ only verbally.
+The essential thing in both, so it is said, is the admission that an
+activity of a self or subject or organism makes a difference in the real
+object. Whether the subject makes this difference in the very process of
+knowing or makes it prior to the act of knowing is a minor matter; what
+is important is that the known thing has, by the time it is known, been
+"subjectified."
+
+The objection gives a convenient occasion for summarizing the main
+points of the argument. On the one hand, the retort of the objector
+depends upon talking about _the_ real object. Employ the term "_a_ real
+object," and the change produced by the activity characteristic of the
+optical apparatus is of just the same kind as that of the camera lens or
+that of any other physical agency. Every event in the world marks a
+difference made to one existence in active conjunction with some other
+existence. And, as for the alleged subjectivity, if subjective is used
+merely as an adjective to designate the specific activity of a
+particular existence, comparable, say, to the term feral, applied to
+tiger, or metallic, applied to iron, then of course reference to
+subjective is legitimate. But it is also tautological. It is like saying
+that flesh eaters are carnivorous. But the term "subjective" is so
+consecrated to other uses, usually implying invidious contrast with
+objectivity (while subjective in the sense just suggested means specific
+mode _of_ objectivity), that it is difficult to maintain this innocent
+sense. Its use in any disparaging way in the situation before us--any
+sense implicating contrast with a real object--assumes that the organism
+_ought_ not to make any difference when it operates in conjunction with
+other things. Thus we run to earth that assumption that the subject is
+heterogeneous from every other natural existence; it is to be the one
+otiose, inoperative thing in a moving world--our old assumption of the
+self as outside of things.[10]
+
+What and where is knowledge in the case we have been considering? Not,
+as we have already seen, in the production of forms of light having a
+circular and elliptical surface. These forms are natural happenings.
+They may enter into knowledge or they may not, according to
+circumstances. Countless such refractive changes take place without
+being noted.[11] When they become subject-matter for knowledge, the
+inquiry they set on foot may take on an indefinite variety of forms. One
+may be interested in ascertaining more about the structural
+peculiarities of the forms themselves; one may be interested in the
+mechanism of their production; one may find problems in projective
+geometry, or in drawing and painting--all depending upon the specific
+matter-of-fact context. The forms may be _objectives_ of knowledge--of
+reflective examination--or they may be means of knowing something else.
+It may happen--under some circumstances it does happen--that the
+objective of inquiry is the nature of the geometric form which, when
+refracting light, gives rise to these other forms. In this case the
+sphere is the thing known, and in this case, the forms of light are
+signs or evidence of the conclusion to be drawn. There is no more reason
+for supposing that they _are_ (mis)knowledges of the sphere--that the
+sphere is necessarily and from the start what one is trying to
+know--than for supposing that the position of the mercury in the
+thermometer tube is a cognitive distortion of atmospheric pressure. In
+each case (that of the mercury and that of, say, a circular surface) the
+primary datum is a physical happening. In each case it may be used, upon
+occasion, as a sign or evidence of the nature of the causes which
+brought it about. Given the position in question, the circular form
+would be an intrinsically _unreliable_ evidence of the nature and
+position of the spherical body only in case it, as the direct datum of
+perception, were _not_ what it is--a circular form.
+
+I confess that all this seems so obvious that the reader is entitled to
+inquire into the motive for reciting such plain facts. Were it not for
+the persistence of the epistemological problem it would be an affront to
+the reader's intelligence to dwell upon them. But as long as such facts
+as we have been discussing furnish the subject-matter with which
+philosophizing is peculiarly concerned, these commonplaces must be urged
+and reiterated. They bear out two contentions which are important at the
+juncture, although they will lose special significance as soon as these
+are habitually recognized: Negatively, a prior and non-empirical notion
+of the self is the source of the prevailing belief that experience as
+such is primarily cognitional--a knowledge affair; positively,
+_knowledge is always a matter of the use that is made of experienced
+natural events_, a use in which given things are treated as indications
+of what will be experienced under different conditions.
+
+Let us make one effort more to clear up these points. Suppose it is a
+question of knowledge of water. The thing to be known does not present
+itself primarily as a matter of knowledge-and-ignorance at all. It
+occurs as a stimulus to action and as the source of certain undergoings.
+It is something to react to:--to drink, to wash with, to put out fire
+with, and also something that reacts unexpectedly to our reactions,
+that makes us undergo disease, suffocation, drowning. In this twofold
+way, water or anything else enters into experience. Such presence in
+experience has of itself nothing to do with knowledge or consciousness;
+nothing that is in the sense of depending upon them, though it has
+everything to do with knowledge and consciousness in the sense that the
+latter depends upon prior experience of this non-cognitive sort. Man's
+experience is what it is because his response to things (even successful
+response) and the reactions of things to his life, are so radically
+different from knowledge. The difficulties and tragedies of life, the
+stimuli to acquiring knowledge, lie in the radical disparity of
+presence-in-experience and presence-in-knowing. Yet the immense
+importance of knowledge experience, the fact that turning
+presence-in-experience over into presence-in-a-knowledge-experience is
+the sole mode of control of nature, has systematically hypnotized
+European philosophy since the time of Socrates into thinking that all
+experiencing is a mode of knowing, if not good knowledge, then a
+low-grade or confused or implicit knowledge.
+
+When water is an adequate stimulus to action or when its reactions
+oppress and overwhelm us, it remains outside the scope of knowledge.
+When, however, the bare presence of the thing (say, as optical stimulus)
+ceases to operate directly as stimulus to response and begins to operate
+in connection with a forecast of the consequences it will effect when
+responded to, it begins to acquire meaning--to be known, to be an
+object. It is noted as something which is wet, fluid, satisfies thirst,
+allays uneasiness, etc. The conception that we begin with a known visual
+quality which is thereafter enlarged by adding on qualities apprehended
+by the other senses does not rest upon experience; it rests upon making
+experience conform to the notion that every experience _must_ be a
+cognitive noting. As long as the visual stimulus operates as a stimulus
+on its own account, there is no apprehension, no noting, of color or
+light at all. To much the greater portion of sensory stimuli we react in
+precisely this wholly non-cognitive way. In the attitude of suspended
+response in which consequences are anticipated, the direct stimulus
+becomes a sign or index of something else--and thus matter of noting or
+apprehension or acquaintance, or whatever term may be employed. This
+difference (together, of course, with the consequences which go with it)
+is the difference which the natural event of knowing makes to the
+natural event of direct organic stimulation. It is no change of a
+reality into an unreality, of an object into something subjective; it is
+no secret, illicit, or epistemological transformation; it is a genuine
+acquisition of new and distinctive features through entering into
+relations with things with which it was not formerly connected--namely,
+possible and future things.
+
+But, replies some one so obsessed with the epistemological point of view
+that he assumes that the prior account is a rival epistemology in
+disguise, all this involves no change in Reality, no difference made to
+Reality. Water was all the time all the things it is ever found out to
+be. Its real nature has not been altered by knowing it; any such
+alteration means a mis-knowing.
+
+In reply let it be said,--once more and finally,--there is no assertion
+or implication about _the_ real object or _the_ real world or _the_
+reality. Such an assumption goes with that epistemological universe of
+discourse which has to be abandoned in an empirical universe of
+discourse. The change is of _a_ real object. An incident of the world
+operating as a physiologically direct stimulus is assuredly a reality.
+Responded to, it produces specific consequences in virtue of the
+response. Water is not drunk unless somebody drinks it; it does not
+quench thirst unless a thirsty person drinks it--and so on. Consequences
+occur whether one is aware of them or not; they are integral facts in
+experience. But let one of these consequences be anticipated and let it,
+as anticipated, become an indispensable element in the stimulus, and
+then there is a known object. It is not that knowing _produces_ a
+change, but that it _is_ a change of the specific kind described. A
+serial process, the successive portions of which are as such incapable
+of simultaneous occurrence, is telescoped and condensed into an object,
+a unified inter-reference of contemporaneous properties, most of which
+express potentialities rather than completed data.
+
+Because of this change, an _object_ possesses truth or error (which the
+physical occurrence as such never has); it is classifiable as fact or
+fantasy; it is of a sort or kind, expresses an essence or nature,
+possesses implications, etc., etc. That is to say, it is marked by
+specifiable _logical_ traits not found in physical occurrences as such.
+Because objective idealisms have seized upon these traits as
+constituting the very essence of Reality is no reason for proclaiming
+that they are ready-made features of physical happenings, and hence for
+maintaining that knowing is nothing but an appearance of things on a
+stage for which "consciousness" supplies the footlights. For only the
+epistemological predicament leads to "presentations" being regarded as
+cognitions of things which were previously unpresented. In any empirical
+situation of everyday life or of science, knowledge signifies something
+stated or inferred of another thing. Visible water is not a more less
+erroneous presentation of H_{2}O, but H_{2}O is a knowledge about the
+thing we see, drink, wash with, sail on, and use for power.
+
+A further point and the present phase of discussion terminates. Treating
+knowledge as a presentative relation between the knower and object makes
+it necessary to regard the mechanism of _presentation_ as constituting
+the act of knowing. Since things may be presented in sense-perception,
+in recollection, in imagination and in conception, and since the
+mechanism in every one of these four styles of presentation is
+sensory-cerebral the problem of knowing becomes a mind-body problem.[12]
+The psychological, or physiological, mechanism of presentation involved
+in seeing a chair, remembering what I ate yesterday for luncheon,
+imagining the moon the size of a cart wheel, conceiving a mathematical
+continuum is identified with the operation of knowing. The evil
+consequences are twofold. The problem of the relation of mind and body
+has become a part of the problem of the possibility of knowledge in
+general, to the further complication of a matter already hopelessly
+constrained. Meantime the actual process of knowing, namely, operations
+of controlled observation, inference, reasoning, and testing, the only
+process with _intellectual_ import, is dismissed as irrelevant to the
+theory of knowing. The methods of knowing practised in daily life and
+science are excluded from consideration in the philosophical theory of
+knowing. Hence the constructions of the latter become more and more
+elaborately artificial because there is no definite check upon them. It
+would be easy to quote from epistemological writers statements to the
+effect that these processes (which supply the only empirically
+verifiable facts of knowing) are _merely_ inductive in character, or
+even that they are of purely psychological significance. It would be
+difficult to find a more complete inversion of the facts than in the
+latter statement, since presentation constitutes in fact the
+psychological affair. A confusion of logic with physiological physiology
+has bred hybrid epistemology, with the amazing result that the technique
+of effective inquiry is rendered irrelevant to the theory of knowing,
+and those physical events involved in the occurrence of data for knowing
+are treated as if they constituted the act of knowing.
+
+
+V
+
+What are the bearings of our discussion upon the conception of the
+present scope and office of philosophy? What do our conclusions indicate
+and demand with reference to philosophy itself? For the philosophy which
+reaches such conclusions regarding knowledge and mind must apply them,
+sincerely and whole-heartedly, to its idea of its own nature. For
+philosophy claims to be one form or mode of knowing. If, then, the
+conclusion is reached that knowing is a way of employing empirical
+occurrences with respect to increasing power to direct the consequences
+which flow from things, the application of the conclusion must be made
+to philosophy itself. It, too, becomes not a contemplative survey of
+existence nor an analysis of what is past and done with, but an outlook
+upon future possibilities with reference to attaining the better and
+averting the worse. Philosophy must take, with good grace, its own
+medicine.
+
+It is easier to state the negative results of the changed idea of
+philosophy than the positive ones. The point that occurs to mind most
+readily is that philosophy will have to surrender all pretension to be
+peculiarly concerned with ultimate reality, or with reality as a
+complete (i.e., completed) whole: with _the_ real object. The surrender
+is not easy of achievement. The philosophic tradition that comes to us
+from classic Greek thought and that was reinforced by Christian
+philosophy in the Middle Ages discriminates philosophical knowing from
+other modes of knowing by means of an alleged peculiarly intimate
+concern with supreme, ultimate, true reality. To deny this trait to
+philosophy seems to many to be the suicide of philosophy; to be a
+systematic adoption of skepticism or agnostic positivism.
+
+The pervasiveness of the tradition is shown in the fact that so vitally
+a contemporary thinker as Bergson, who finds a philosophic revolution
+involved in abandonment of the traditional identification of the truly
+real with the fixed (an identification inherited from Greek thought),
+does not find it in his heart to abandon the counterpart identification
+of philosophy with search for the truly Real; and hence finds it
+necessary to substitute an ultimate and absolute flux for an ultimate
+and absolute permanence. Thus his great empirical services in calling
+attention to the fundamental importance of considerations of time for
+problems of life and mind get compromised with a mystic, non-empirical
+"Intuition"; and we find him preoccupied with solving, by means of his
+new idea of ultimate reality, the traditional problems of
+realities-in-themselves and phenomena, matter and mind, free-will and
+determinism, God and the world. Is not that another evidence of the
+influence of the classic idea about philosophy?
+
+Even the new realists are not content to take their realism as a plea
+for approaching subject-matter directly instead of through the
+intervention of epistemological apparatus; they find it necessary first
+to determine the status of _the_ real object. Thus they too become
+entangled in the problem of the possibility of error, dreams,
+hallucinations, etc., in short, the problem of evil. For I take it that
+an uncorrupted realism would accept such things as real events, and find
+in them no other problems than those attending the consideration of any
+real occurrence--namely, problems of structure, origin, and operation.
+
+It is often said that pragmatism, unless it is content to be a
+contribution to mere methodology, must develop a theory of Reality. But
+the chief characteristic trait of the pragmatic notion of reality is
+precisely that no theory of Reality in general, _ueberhaupt_, is possible
+or needed. It occupies the position of an emancipated empiricism or a
+thoroughgoing naive realism. It finds that "reality" is a _denotative_
+term, a word used to designate indifferently everything that happens.
+Lies, dreams, insanities, deceptions, myths, theories are all of them
+just the events which they specifically are. Pragmatism is content to
+take its stand with science; for science finds all such events to be
+subject-matter of description and inquiry--just like stars and fossils,
+mosquitoes and malaria, circulation and vision. It also takes its stand
+with daily life, which finds that such things really have to be reckoned
+with as they occur interwoven in the texture of events.
+
+The only way in which the term reality can ever become more than a
+blanket denotative term is through recourse to specific events in all
+their diversity and thatness. Speaking summarily, I find that the
+retention by philosophy of the notion of a Reality feudally superior to
+the events of everyday occurrence is the chief source of the increasing
+isolation of philosophy from common sense and science. For the latter
+do not operate in any such region. As with them of old, philosophy in
+dealing with real difficulties finds itself still hampered by reference
+to realities more real, more ultimate, than those which directly happen.
+
+I have said that identifying the cause of philosophy with the notion of
+superior reality is the cause of an _increasing_ isolation from science
+and practical life. The phrase reminds us that there was a time when the
+enterprise of science and the moral interests of men both moved in a
+universe invidiously distinguished from that of ordinary occurrence.
+While all that happens is equally real--since it really
+happens--happenings are not of equal worth. Their respective
+consequences, their import, varies tremendously. Counterfeit money,
+although real (or rather _because_ real), is really different from valid
+circulatory medium, just as disease is really different from health;
+different in specific structure and so different in consequences. In
+occidental thought, the Greeks were the first to draw the distinction
+between the genuine and the spurious in a generalized fashion and to
+formulate and enforce its tremendous significance for the conduct of
+life. But since they had at command no technique of experimental
+analysis and no adequate technique of mathematical analysis, they were
+compelled to treat the difference of the true and the false, the
+dependable and the deceptive, as signifying two kinds of existence, the
+truly real and the apparently real.
+
+Two points can hardly be asserted with too much emphasis. The Greeks
+were wholly right in the feeling that questions of good and ill, as far
+as they fall within human control, are bound up with discrimination of
+the genuine from the spurious, of "being" from what only pretends to be.
+But because they lacked adequate instrumentalities for coping with this
+difference in specific situations, they were forced to treat the
+difference as a wholesale and rigid one. Science was concerned with
+vision of ultimate and true reality; opinion was concerned with getting
+along with apparent realities. Each had its appropriate region
+permanently marked off. Matters of opinion could never become matters of
+science; their intrinsic nature forbade. When the practice of science
+went on under such conditions, science and philosophy were one and the
+same thing. Both had to do with ultimate reality in its rigid and
+insuperable difference from ordinary occurrences.
+
+We have only to refer to the way in which medieval life wrought the
+philosophy of an ultimate and supreme reality into the context of
+practical life to realize that for centuries political and moral
+interests were bound up with the distinction between the absolutely real
+and the relatively real. The difference was no matter of a remote
+technical philosophy, but one which controlled life from the cradle to
+the grave, from the grave to the endless life after death. By means of a
+vast institution, which in effect was state as well as church, the
+claims of ultimate reality were enforced; means of access to it were
+provided. Acknowledgment of The Reality brought security in this world
+and salvation in the next. It is not necessary to report the story of
+the change which has since taken place. It is enough for our purposes
+to note that none of the modern philosophies of a superior reality, or
+_the_ real object, idealistic or realistic, holds that its insight makes
+a difference like that between sin and holiness, eternal condemnation
+and eternal bliss. While in its own context the philosophy of ultimate
+reality entered into the vital concerns of men, it now tends to be an
+ingenious dialectic exercised in professorial corners by a few who have
+retained ancient premises while rejecting their application to the
+conduct of life.
+
+The increased isolation from science of any philosophy identified with
+the problem of _the_ real is equally marked. For the growth of science
+has consisted precisely in the invention of an equipment, a technique of
+appliances and procedures, which, accepting all occurrences as
+homogeneously real, proceeds to distinguish the authenticated from the
+spurious, the true from the false, by specific modes of treatment in
+specific situations. The procedures of the trained engineer, of the
+competent physician, of the laboratory expert, have turned out to be the
+only ways of discriminating the counterfeit from the valid. And they
+have revealed that the difference is not one of antecedent fixity of
+existence, but one of mode of treatment and of the consequences thereon
+attendant. After mankind has learned to put its trust in specific
+procedures in order to make its discriminations between the false and
+the true, philosophy arrogates to itself the enforcement of the
+distinction at its own cost.
+
+More than once, this essay has intimated that the counterpart of the
+idea of invidiously real reality is the spectator notion of knowledge.
+If the knower, however defined, is set over against the world to be
+known, knowing consists in possessing a transcript, more or less
+accurate but otiose, of real things. Whether this transcript is
+presentative in character (as realists say) or whether it is by means of
+states of consciousness which represent things (as subjectivists say),
+is a matter of great importance in its own context. But, in another
+regard, this difference is negligible in comparison with the point in
+which both agree. Knowing is viewing from outside. But if it be true
+that the self or subject of experience is part and parcel of the course
+of events, it follows that the self _becomes_ a knower. It becomes a
+mind in virtue of a distinctive way of partaking in the course of
+events. The significant distinction is no longer between the knower
+_and_ the world; it is between different ways of being in and of the
+movement of things; between a brute physical way and a purposive,
+intelligent way.
+
+There is no call to repeat in detail the statements which have been
+advanced. Their net purport is that the directive presence of future
+possibilities in dealing with existent conditions is what is meant by
+knowing; that the self becomes a knower or mind when anticipation of
+future consequences operates as its stimulus. What we are now concerned
+with is the effect of this conception upon the nature of philosophic
+knowing.
+
+As far as I can judge, popular response to pragmatic philosophy was
+moved by two quite different considerations. By some it was thought to
+provide a new species of sanctions, a new mode of apologetics, for
+certain religious ideas whose standing had been threatened. By others,
+it was welcomed because it was taken as a sign that philosophy was about
+to surrender its otiose and speculative remoteness; that philosophers
+were beginning to recognize that philosophy is of account only if, like
+everyday knowing and like science, it affords guidance to action and
+thereby makes a difference in the event. It was welcomed as a sign that
+philosophers were willing to have the worth of their philosophizing
+measured by responsible tests.
+
+I have not seen this point of view emphasized, or hardly recognized, by
+professional critics. The difference of attitude can probably be easily
+explained. The epistemological universe of discourse is so highly
+technical that only those who have been trained in the history of
+thought think in terms of it. It did not occur, accordingly, to
+non-technical readers to interpret the doctrine that the meaning and
+validity of thought are fixed by differences made in consequences and in
+satisfactoriness, to mean consequences in personal feelings. Those who
+were professionally trained, however, took the statement to mean that
+consciousness or mind in the mere act of looking at things modifies
+them. It understood the doctrine of test of validity by consequences to
+mean that apprehensions and conceptions are true if the modifications
+affected by them were of an emotionally desirable tone.
+
+Prior discussion should have made it reasonably clear that the source of
+this misunderstanding lies in the neglect of temporal considerations.
+The change made in things by the self in knowing is not immediate and,
+so to say, cross-sectional. It is longitudinal--in the redirection given
+to changes already going on. Its analogue is found in the changes which
+take place in the development of, say, iron ore into a watch-spring, not
+in those of the miracle of transubstantiation. For the static,
+cross-sectional, non-temporal relation of subject and object, the
+pragmatic hypothesis substitutes apprehension of a thing in terms of the
+results in other things which it is tending to effect. For the unique
+epistemological relation, it substitutes a practical relation of a
+familiar type:--responsive behavior which changes in time the
+subject-matter to which it applies. The unique thing about the
+responsive behavior which constitutes knowing is the specific difference
+which marks it off from other modes of response, namely, the part played
+in it by anticipation and prediction. Knowing is the act, stimulated by
+this foresight, of securing and averting consequences. The success of
+the achievement measures the standing of the foresight by which response
+is directed. The popular impression that pragmatic philosophy means that
+philosophy shall develop ideas relevant to the actual crises of life,
+ideas influential in dealing with them and tested by the assistance they
+afford, is correct.
+
+Reference to practical response suggests, however, another
+misapprehension. Many critics have jumped at the obvious association of
+the word pragmatic with practical. They have assumed that the intent is
+to limit all knowledge, philosophic included, to promoting "action,"
+understanding by action either just any bodily movement, or those bodily
+movements which conduce to the preservation and grosser well-being of
+the body. James' statement, that general conceptions must "cash in" has
+been taken (especially by European critics) to mean that the end and
+measure of intelligence lies in the narrow and coarse utilities which it
+produces. Even an acute American thinker, after first criticizing
+pragmatism as a kind of idealistic epistemology, goes on to treat it as
+a doctrine which regards intelligence as a lubricating oil facilitating
+the workings of the body.
+
+One source of the misunderstanding is suggested by the fact that
+"cashing in" to James meant that a general idea must always be capable
+of verification in specific existential cases. The notion of "cashing
+in" says nothing about the breadth or depth of the specific
+consequences. As an empirical doctrine, it could not say anything about
+them in general; the specific cases must speak for themselves. If one
+conception is verified in terms of eating beefsteak, and another in
+terms of a favorable credit balance in the bank, that is not because of
+anything in the theory, but because of the specific nature of the
+conceptions in question, and because there exist particular events like
+hunger and trade. If there are also existences in which the most liberal
+esthetic ideas and the most generous moral conceptions can be verified
+by specific embodiment, assuredly so much the better. The fact that a
+strictly empirical philosophy was taken by so many critics to imply an
+_a priori_ dogma about the kind of consequences capable of existence is
+evidence, I think, of the inability of many philosophers to think in
+concretely empirical terms. Since the critics were themselves accustomed
+to get results by manipulating the concepts of "consequences" and of
+"practice," they assumed that even a would-be empiricist must be doing
+the same sort of thing. It will, I suppose, remain for a long time
+incredible to some that a philosopher should really intend to go to
+specific experiences to determine of what scope and depth practice
+admits, and what sort of consequences the world permits to come into
+being. Concepts are so clear; it takes so little time to develop their
+implications; experiences are so confused, and it requires so much time
+and energy to lay hold of them. And yet these same critics charge
+pragmatism with adopting subjective and emotional standards!
+
+As a matter of fact, the pragmatic theory of intelligence means that the
+function of mind is to project new and more complex ends--to free
+experience from routine and from caprice. Not the use of thought to
+accomplish purposes already given either in the mechanism of the body or
+in that of the existent state of society, but the use of intelligence to
+liberate and liberalize action, is the pragmatic lesson. Action
+restricted to given and fixed ends may attain great technical
+efficiency; but efficiency is the only quality to which it can lay
+claim. Such action is mechanical (or becomes so), no matter what the
+scope of the preformed end, be it the Will of God or _Kultur_. But the
+doctrine that intelligence develops within the sphere of action for the
+sake of possibilities not yet given is the opposite of a doctrine of
+mechanical efficiency. Intelligence _as_ intelligence is inherently
+forward-looking; only by ignoring its primary function does it become a
+mere means for an end already given. The latter _is_ servile, even when
+the end is labeled moral, religious, or esthetic. But action directed to
+ends to which the agent has not previously been attached inevitably
+carries with it a quickened and enlarged spirit. A pragmatic
+intelligence is a creative intelligence, not a routine mechanic.
+
+All this may read like a defense of pragmatism by one concerned to make
+out for it the best case possible. Such is not, however, the intention.
+The purpose is to indicate the extent to which intelligence frees action
+from a mechanically instrumental character. Intelligence is, indeed,
+instrumental _through_ action to the determination of the qualities of
+future experience. But the very fact that the concern of intelligence is
+with the future, with the as-yet-unrealized (and with the given and the
+established only as conditions of the realization of possibilities),
+makes the action in which it takes effect generous and liberal; free of
+spirit. Just that action which extends and approves intelligence has an
+intrinsic value of its own in being instrumental:--the intrinsic value
+of being informed with intelligence in behalf of the enrichment of life.
+By the same stroke, intelligence becomes truly liberal: knowing is a
+human undertaking, not an esthetic appreciation carried on by a refined
+class or a capitalistic possession of a few learned specialists, whether
+men of science or of philosophy.
+
+More emphasis has been put upon what philosophy is not than upon what
+it may become. But it is not necessary, it is not even desirable, to set
+forth philosophy as a scheduled program. There are human difficulties of
+an urgent, deep-seated kind which may be clarified by trained
+reflection, and whose solution may be forwarded by the careful
+development of hypotheses. When it is understood that philosophic
+thinking is caught up in the actual course of events, having the office
+of guiding them towards a prosperous issue, problems will abundantly
+present themselves. Philosophy will not solve these problems; philosophy
+is vision, imagination, reflection--and these functions, apart from
+action, modify nothing and hence resolve nothing. But in a complicated
+and perverse world, action which is not informed with vision,
+imagination, and reflection, is more likely to increase confusion and
+conflict than to straighten things out. It is not easy for generous and
+sustained reflection to become a guiding and illuminating method in
+action. Until it frees itself from identification with problems which
+are supposed to depend upon Reality as such, or its distinction from a
+world of Appearance, or its relation to a Knower as such, the hands of
+philosophy are tied. Having no chance to link its fortunes with a
+responsible career by suggesting things to be tried, it cannot identify
+itself with questions which actually arise in the vicissitudes of life.
+Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing
+with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by
+philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.
+
+Emphasis must vary with the stress and special impact of the troubles
+which perplex men. Each age knows its own ills, and seeks its own
+remedies. One does not have to forecast a particular program to note
+that the central need of any program at the present day is an adequate
+conception of the nature of intelligence and its place in action.
+Philosophy cannot disavow responsibility for many misconceptions of the
+nature of intelligence which now hamper its efficacious operation. It
+has at least a negative task imposed upon it. It must take away the
+burdens which it has laid upon the intelligence of the common man in
+struggling with his difficulties. It must deny and eject that
+intelligence which is naught but a distant eye, registering in a remote
+and alien medium the spectacle of nature and life. To enforce the fact
+that the emergence of imagination and thought is relative to the
+connexion of the sufferings of men with their doings is of itself to
+illuminate those sufferings and to instruct those doings. To catch mind
+in its connexion with the entrance of the novel into the course of the
+world is to be on the road to see that intelligence is itself the most
+promising of all novelties, the revelation of the meaning of that
+transformation of past into future which is the reality of every
+present. To reveal intelligence as the organ for the guidance of this
+transformation, the sole director of its quality, is to make a
+declaration of present untold significance for action. To elaborate
+these convictions of the connexion of intelligence with what men undergo
+because of their doings and with the emergence and direction of the
+creative, the novel, in the world is of itself a program which will keep
+philosophers busy until something more worth while is forced upon them.
+For the elaboration has to be made through application to all the
+disciplines which have an intimate connexion with human conduct:--to
+logic, ethics, esthetics, economics, and the procedure of the sciences
+formal and natural.
+
+I also believe that there is a genuine sense in which the enforcement of
+the pivotal position of intelligence in the world and thereby in control
+of human fortunes (so far as they are manageable) is the peculiar
+problem in the problems of life which come home most closely to
+ourselves--to ourselves living not merely in the early twentieth century
+but in the United States. It is easy to be foolish about the connexion
+of thought with national life. But I do not see how any one can question
+the distinctively national color of English, or French, or German
+philosophies. And if of late the history of thought has come under the
+domination of the German dogma of an inner evolution of ideas, it
+requires but a little inquiry to convince oneself that that dogma itself
+testifies to a particularly nationalistic need and origin. I believe
+that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historic cud
+long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes
+(lost to natural science), or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless
+it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own
+implicit principle of successful action.
+
+This need and principle, I am convinced, is the necessity of a
+deliberate control of policies by the method of intelligence, an
+intelligence which is not the faculty of intellect honored in
+text-books and neglected elsewhere, but which is the sum-total of
+impulses, habits, emotions, records, and discoveries which forecast what
+is desirable and undesirable in future possibilities, and which contrive
+ingeniously in behalf of imagined good. Our life has no background of
+sanctified categories upon which we may fall back; we rely upon
+precedent as authority only to our own undoing--for with us there is
+such a continuously novel situation that final reliance upon precedent
+entails some class interest guiding us by the nose whither it will.
+British empiricism, with its appeal to what has been in the past, is,
+after all, only a kind of _a priorism_. For it lays down a fixed rule
+for future intelligence to follow; and only the immersion of philosophy
+in technical learning prevents our seeing that this is the essence of _a
+priorism_.
+
+We pride ourselves upon being realistic, desiring a hardheaded
+cognizance of facts, and devoted to mastering the means of life. We
+pride ourselves upon a practical idealism, a lively and easily moved
+faith in possibilities as yet unrealized, in willingness to make
+sacrifice for their realization. Idealism easily becomes a sanction of
+waste and carefulness, and realism a sanction of legal formalism in
+behalf of things as they are--the rights of the possessor. We thus tend
+to combine a loose and ineffective optimism with assent to the doctrine
+of take who take can: a deification of power. All peoples at all times
+have been narrowly realistic in practice and have then employed
+idealization to cover up in sentiment and theory their brutalities. But
+never, perhaps, has the tendency been so dangerous and so tempting as
+with ourselves. Faith in the power of intelligence to imagine a future
+which is the projection of the desirable in the present, and to invent
+the instrumentalities of its realization, is our salvation. And it is a
+faith which must be nurtured and made articulate: surely a sufficiently
+large task for our philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+REFORMATION OF LOGIC
+
+ADDISON W. MOORE
+
+
+I
+
+In a general survey of the development of logical theory one is struck
+by the similarity, not to say identity, of the indictments which
+reformers, since the days of Aristotle, have brought against it. The
+most fundamental of these charges are: first, that the theory of logic
+has left it formal and with little significance for the advancement of
+science and the conduct of society; second, that it has great difficulty
+in avoiding the predicament of logical operations that are merely
+labored reproductions of non-logical activities and therefore
+tautologous and trifling, or of logical operations that are so far
+removed from immediate, non-logical experience that they are irrelevant;
+third, that logical theory has had trouble in finding room in its own
+household for both truth and error; each crowds out the other.
+
+The identity of these indictments regardless of the general
+philosophical faith, empiricism, or rationalism, realism, or idealism to
+which the reformer or the logic to be reformed has belonged, suggests
+that whatever the differences in the doctrines of these various
+philosophic traditions, they possess a common ground from which these
+common difficulties spring.
+
+It is the conviction of a number who are at present attempting to rid
+logic of these ancient disabilities that their common source is to be
+found in a lack of continuity between the acts of intelligence (or to
+avoid the dangers of hypostasis, intelligent acts) and other acts;
+between logical conduct and other conduct. So wide, indeed, is this
+breach, that often little remains of the act of knowing but the name. It
+may still be called an act, but it has no describable instruments nor
+technique of operation. It is an indefinable and often mystical
+performance of which only the results can be stated. In recent logical
+discussion this techniqueless act of knowing has been properly enough
+transformed into an indefinable "external relation" in which an entity
+called a knower stands to another entity called the known.
+
+For many centuries this breach between the operations of intelligence
+and other operations has been closed by various metaphysical devices
+with the result that logic has been a hybrid science,--half logic, half
+metaphysics and epistemology. So great has been the momentum of the
+metaphysical tradition that long after we have begun to discover the
+connection between logical and non-logical operations its methods remain
+to plague us. Efforts to heal the breach without a direct appeal to
+metaphysical agencies have been made by attempting a complete logicizing
+of all operations. But besides requiring additional metaphysics to
+effect it, the procedure is as fatal to continuity as is an impassable
+disjunction. Continuity demands distinction as well as connection. It
+requires the development, the _growth_ of old material and functions
+into new forms.
+
+Driven by the difficulties of this complete logicization, which are as
+serious as those of isolation, logical theory was obliged to reinstate
+some sort of distinction. This it did by resorting to the categories of
+"explicit" and "implicit." All so-called non-logical operations were
+regarded as "implicitly" logical. And, paradoxically, logical operations
+had for their task the transformation of the implicit into the explicit.
+
+An adequate account of the origin and continuance of this isolation of
+the conduct of intelligence from other conduct is too long a story to be
+told here. Suffice it to recall that in the society in which the
+distinction between immediate and reflective experience, between opinion
+and science, between percepts and universals was first made,
+intelligence was largely the possession of a special and privileged
+class removed in great measure from hand-to-hand contact with nature and
+with much of society. Because it did not fully participate in the
+operations of nature and society intelligence could not become fully
+domesticated, i.e., fully naturalized and socialized in its world. It
+was a charmed spectator of the cosmic and social drama. Doubtless when
+Greek intelligence discovered the distinction between immediate and
+reflective experience--possibly the most momentous discovery in
+history--"the world," as Kant says of the speculations of Thales, "must
+suddenly have appeared in a new light." But not recognizing the full
+significance of this discovery, ideas, universals, became but a wondrous
+spectacle for the eye of reason. They brought, to be sure, blessed
+relief from the bewildering and baffling flux of perception. But it was
+the relief of sanctuary, not of victory.
+
+That the brilliant speculations of Greek intelligence were barren
+because there was no technique for testing and applying them in detail
+is an old story. But it is merely a restatement, not a solution, of the
+pertinent question. This is: why did not Greek intelligence develop such
+a technique? The answer lies in the fact that the technique of
+intelligence is to be found precisely in the details of the operations
+of nature and of human conduct from which an aristocratic intelligence
+is always in large measure shut off. Intelligence cannot operate
+fruitfully in a vacuum. It must be incarnate. It must, as Hegel said,
+have "hands and feet." When we turn to the history of modern science the
+one thing that stands out is that it was not until the point was reached
+where intelligence was ready (continuing the Hegelian figure) to thrust
+its hands into the vitals of nature and society that it began to acquire
+a real control over its operations.
+
+In default of such controlling technique there was nothing to be done
+with this newly found instrument of intelligence--the universal--but to
+retain it as an object of contemplation and of worshipful adoration.
+This involved, of course, its hypostasis as the metaphysical reality of
+supreme importance. With this, the only difference between "opinion" and
+"science" became one of the kind of objects known. That universals were
+known by reason and particulars by sense was of little more logical
+significance than that sounds are known by the ear and smells by the
+nose. Particulars and universals were equally given. If the latter
+required some abstraction this was regarded as merely auxiliary to the
+immediate vision, as sniffing is to the perception of odor. That
+universals should or could be conceived as experimental, as hypotheses,
+was, when translated into later theology, the sin against the Holy
+Ghost.
+
+However, the fact that the particulars in the world of opinion were the
+stimuli to the "recollection" of universals and that the latter in turn
+were the patterns, the forms, for the particulars, opened the way in
+actual practice for the exercise of a great deal of the controlling
+function of the universals. But the failure to recognize this control
+value of the universal as fundamental, made it necessary for the
+universal to exercise its function surreptitiously, in the disguise of a
+pattern and in the clumsy garb of imitation and participation.
+
+With perceptions, desires, and impulses relegated to the world of
+opinion and shadows, and with the newly discovered instrument of
+knowledge turned into an object, the knower was stripped of all his
+knowing apparatus and was left an empty, scuttled entity definable and
+describable only as "a knower." The knower must know, even if he had
+nothing to know with. Hence the mystical almost indefinable character of
+the knowing act or relation. I say "almost indefinable"; for as an act
+it had, of course, to have some sort of conceptualized form. And this
+form vision naturally furnished. "Naturally," because intelligence was
+so largely contemplative, and vision so largely immediate, unanalyzed,
+and diaphanous. There was, to be sure, the concept of effluxes. But
+this was a statement of the fact of vision in terms of its results, not
+of the process itself. Thus it was that the whole terminology of knowing
+which we still use was moulded and fixed upon a very crude conception of
+one of the constituents of its process. There can be no doubt that this
+terminology has added much to the inertia against which the advance of
+logical theory has worked. It would be interesting to see what would be
+the effect upon logical theory of the substitution of an auditory or
+olfactory terminology for visual; or of a visual terminology revised to
+agree with modern scientific analysis of the _act_ of vision as
+determined by its connections with other functions.
+
+With the act of knowing stripped of its technique and left a bare,
+unique, indescribable act or relation, the foundations for
+epistemological and metaphysical logic were laid. That Greek logic
+escaped the ravages of epistemology was due to the saving materialism in
+its metaphysical conception of mind and to the steadfastness of the
+aristocratic regime. But when medieval theology and Cartesian
+metaphysics had destroyed the last remnant of metaphysical connection
+between the knowing mind and nature, and when revolutions had torn the
+individual from his social moorings, the stage for epistemological logic
+was fully set. I do not mean to identify the epistemological situation
+with the Cartesian disjunction. That disjunction was but the
+metaphysical expression of the one which constitutes the real foundation
+of epistemology--the disjunction, namely, between the act of knowing and
+other acts.
+
+From this point logic has followed one of two general courses. It has
+sought continuity by attempting to reduce non-logical things and
+operations to terms of logical operations, i.e., to sensations or
+universals or both; or it has attempted to exclude entirely the act of
+knowing from logic and to transfer logical distinctions and operations,
+and even the attributes of truth and error to objects which,
+significantly enough, are still composed of these same hypostatized
+logical processes. The first course results in an epistemological logic
+of some form of the idealistic tradition, rationalism, sensationalism,
+or transcendentalism, depending upon whether universals, or sensations,
+or a combination of both, is made fundamental in the constitution of the
+object. The second course yields an epistemological logic of the
+realistic type,--again, sensational or rationalistic (mathematical), or
+a combination of the two--a sort of realistic transcendentalism. Each
+type has essentially the same difficulties with the processes of
+inference, with the problem of change, with truth and error, and, on the
+ethical side, with good and evil.
+
+With the processes of knowing converted into objects, and with the act
+of knowing reduced to a unique and external relation between the
+despoiled knower and the objects made from its own hypostatized
+processes, all knowing becomes in the end immediate. All attempts at an
+inference that is anything more than an elaborated and often confused
+restatement of non-logical operations break down. The associational
+inference of empiricism, the subsumptive inference of rationalism, the
+transcendental inference of objective idealism, the analytical
+inference of neo-realism--all alike face the dilemma of an inference
+that is trifling or miraculous, tautologous or false. Where the knower
+and its object are so constituted that the only relation in which the
+latter can stand to the former is that of presence or absence, and if to
+be present is to be known, how, as Plato asked, can there be any false
+knowing?
+
+For those who accept the foregoing general diagnosis the prescription is
+obvious. The present task of logical theory is the restoration of the
+continuity of the act and agent of knowing with other acts and agents.
+But this is not to be done by merely furnishing the act of knowing with
+a body and a nervous system. If the nervous system be regarded as only
+an onlooking, beholding nervous system, if no connection be made between
+the logical operations of a nervous system and its other operations a
+nervous system has no logical advantage over a purely psychical mind.
+
+It was to be expected that this movement toward restoration of
+continuity made in the name of "instrumental" or "experimental" logic
+would be regarded, alike, by the logics of rationalism and empiricism,
+of idealism and of realism, as an attempt to rob intelligence of its own
+unique and proper character; to reduce it to a merely "psychological"
+and "existential" affair; to leave no place for genuine intellectual
+interest and activity; and to make science a series of more or less
+respectable adventures. The counter thesis is, that this restoration is
+truly a restoration--not a despoliation of the character and rights of
+intelligence; that only such a restoration can preserve the unique
+function of intelligence, can prevent it from becoming merely
+"existential," and can provide a distinct place for intellectual and
+scientific interest and activity. It does not, however, promise to
+remove the stigma of "adventure" from science. Every experiment is an
+adventure; and it is precisely the experimental character of scientific
+logic that distinguishes it from scholasticism, medieval or modern.
+
+
+II
+
+First it is clear that a reform of logic based upon the restoration of
+knowing to its connections with other acts will begin with a chapter
+containing an account of these other operations and the general
+character of this connection.[13] Logical theory has been truncated. It
+has tried to begin and end in the middle, with the result that it has
+ended in the air. Logic presents the curious anachronism of a science
+which attempts to deal with its subject-matter apart from what it comes
+from and what comes from it.
+
+The objection that such a chapter on the conditions and genesis of the
+operations of knowing belongs to psychology, only shows how firmly fixed
+is the discontinuity we are trying to escape. As we have seen, the
+original motive for leaving this account of genesis to psychology was
+that the act of knowing was supposed to originate in a purely psychical
+mind. Such an origin was of course embarrassing to logic, which aimed
+to be scientific. The old opposition between origin and validity was due
+to the kind of origin assumed and the kind of validity necessitated by
+the origin. One may well be excused for evading the question of how
+ideas, originated in a purely psychical mind, can, in Kant's phrase,
+"have objective validity," by throwing out the question of origin
+altogether. Whatever difficulties remain for validity after this
+expulsion could not be greater than those of the task of combining the
+objective validity of ideas with their subjective origin.
+
+The whole of this chapter on the connection between logical and
+non-logical operations cannot be written here. But its central point
+would be that these other acts with which the act of knowing must have
+continuity are just the operations of our unreflective conduct. Note
+that it is "unreflective," not "unconscious," nor yet merely
+"instinctive" conduct. It is our perceptive, remembering, imagining,
+desiring, loving, hating conduct. Note also that we do not say
+"psychical" or "physical," nor "psycho-physical" conduct. These terms
+stand for certain distinctions in logical conduct,[14] and we are here
+concerned with the character of non-logical conduct which is to be
+distinguished from, and yet kept in closest continuity with, logical
+conduct.
+
+If, here, the metaphysical logician should ask: "Are you not in this
+assumption of a world of reflective and unreflective conduct and
+affection, and of a world of beings in interaction, begging a whole
+system of metaphysics?" the reply is that if it is a metaphysics bad
+for logic, it will keep turning up in the course of logical theory as a
+constant source of trouble. On the other hand, if logic encounters grave
+difficulties when it attempts to get on without it, its assumption, for
+the purposes of logic, has all the justification possible.
+
+Again it will be urged that this alleged non-logical conduct, in so far
+as it involves perception, memory, and anticipation, is already
+cognitive and logical; or if the act of knowing is to be entirely
+excluded from logic, then, in so far as what is left involves objective
+"terms and relations," it, also, is already logical. And it may be
+thought strange that a logic based upon the restoration of continuity
+between the act of knowing and other acts should here be insisting on
+distinction and separation. The point is fundamental; and must be
+disposed of before we go on. First, we must observe that the unity
+secured by making all conscious conduct logical turns out, on
+examination, to be more nominal than real. As we have already seen, this
+attempt at a complete logicizing of all conduct is forced at once to
+introduce the distinction of "explicit" and "implicit," of "conscious
+and unconscious" or "subconscious" logic. Some cynics have found that
+this suggests dividing triangles into explicit and implicit triangles,
+or into triangles and sub-triangles.
+
+Doubtless the attempt to make all perceptions, memories, and
+anticipations, and even instincts and habits, into implicit or
+subconscious inference is an awkward effort to restore the continuity of
+logical and non-logical conduct. Its awkwardness consists in attempting
+to secure this continuity by the method of subsumptive identity, instead
+of finding it in a transitive continuity of function;--instead of seeing
+that perception, memory, and anticipation _become_ logical processes
+when they are employed in a process of inquiry, whose purpose is to
+relieve the difficulties into which these operations in their function
+as direct stimuli have fallen. Logical conduct is constituted by the
+cooeperation of these processes for the improvement of their further
+operation. To regard perception, memory, and imagination as implicit
+forms or as sub-species of logical operation is much like conceiving the
+movements of our fingers and arms as implicit or imperfect species of
+painting, or swimming.
+
+Moreover, this doctrine of universal logicism teaches that when that
+which is perfect is come, imperfection shall be done away. This should
+mean that when painting becomes completely "explicit" and perfect,
+fingers and hands shall disappear. Perfect painting will be the pure
+essence of painting. And this interpretation is not strained; for this
+logic expressly teaches that in the perfected real system all temporal
+elements are unessential to logical operations. They are, of course,
+_psychologically_ necessary for finite beings, who can never have
+perfectly logical experiences. But, from the standpoint of a completely
+logicized experience, all finite, temporal processes are accidents, not
+essentials, of logical operations.
+
+The fact that the processes of perception, memory, and anticipation are
+transformed in their logical operation into sensations and universals,
+terms, and relations, and, as such, become the subject-matter of logical
+theory, does not mean that they have lost their mediating character, and
+have become merely objects of logical contemplation at large. Sensations
+or sense-data, and ideas, terms and relations, are the subject-matter of
+logical theory for the reason that they sometimes succeed and sometimes
+fail in their logical operations. And it is the business of logical
+theory to diagnose the conditions of this success and failure. If, in
+writing, my pen becomes defective and is made an object of inquiry, it
+does not therefore lose all its character as a pen and become merely an
+object at large. It is _as_ an instrument of writing that it is
+investigated. So, sense-data, universals, terms, and relations as
+subject-matter of logic are investigated in their character _as_
+mediators of the ambiguities and conflicts, of non-logical experience.
+
+If the operations of habit, instinct, perceptions, memory, and
+anticipation _become_ logical, when, instead of operating as direct
+stimuli, they are employed in a process of inquiry, we must next ask:
+(1) under what conditions do they pass over into this process of
+inquiry? (2) what modifications of operation do they undergo, what new
+forms do they take, and what new results do they produce in their
+logical operations?
+
+If the act of inquiry be not superimposed, it must arise out of some
+specific condition in the course of non-logical conduct. Once more, if
+the alarm be sounded at this proposal to find the origin of logical in
+non-logical operations it must be summarily answered by asking if the
+one who raises the cry finds it impossible to imagine that one who is
+not hungry, or angry, or patriotic, or wise may become so. Non-logical
+conduct is not the abstract formal contradictory of logical conduct any
+more than present satiety or foolishness is the contradictory of later
+hunger or wisdom, or than anger at one person contradicts cordiality to
+another, or to the same person, later. The old bogie of the logical
+irrelevance of origin was due to the inability to conceive continuity
+except in the form of identity in which there was no place for the
+notion of _growth_.
+
+The conditions under which non-logical conduct _becomes_ logical are
+familiar to those who have followed the doctrines of experimental logic
+as expounded in the discussions of the past few years. The
+transformation begins at the point where non-logical processes instead
+of operating as direct unambiguous stimuli and response become ambiguous
+with consequent inhibition of conduct. But again this does not mean that
+at this juncture the non-logical processes quit the field and give place
+to a totally new faculty and process called reason. They stay on the
+job. But there is a change in the job, which now is to get rid of this
+ambiguity. This modification of the task requires, of course,
+corresponding modification and adaptation of these operations. They take
+on the form of sensations and universals, terms and relations, data and
+hypotheses. This modification of function and form constitutes "reason"
+or, better, reasoning.
+
+Here some one will ask, "Whence comes this ambiguity? How can a mere
+perception or memory as such be ambiguous? Must it not be ambiguous to,
+or for, something, or some one?" The point is well taken. But it should
+not be taken to imply that the ambiguity is for a merely onlooking,
+beholding psychical mind--especially when the perception is itself
+regarded as an act of beholding. Nor are we any better off if we suppose
+the beholding mind to be equipped with a faculty of reason in the form
+of the principle of "contradiction." For this throws no light on the
+origin and meaning of ambiguity. And if we seek to make all perceptions
+as such ambiguous and contradictory, in order to make room for, and
+justify, the operations of reason, other difficulties at once beset us.
+When we attempt to remove this specific ambiguity of perceptive conduct
+we shall be forced, before we are through, to appeal back to perception,
+which we have condemned as inherently contradictory, both for data and
+for verification.
+
+However, the insistence that perception must be ambiguous to, or for,
+something beyond itself is well grounded. And this was recognized in the
+statement that it is equivocal as a stimulus in conduct. There need be
+no mystery as to how such equivocation arises. That there is such a
+thing as a conduct at all means that there are certain beings who have
+acquired definite ways of responding to one another. It is important to
+observe that these forms of interaction--instinct and habit, perception,
+memory, etc.--are not to be located in either of the interacting beings
+but are functions of both. The conception of these operations as the
+private functions of an organism is the forerunner of the
+epistemological predicament. It results in a conception of knowing as
+wholly the act of a knower apart from the known. This is the beginning
+of epistemology.
+
+But to whatever extent interacting beings have acquired definite and
+specific ways of behavior toward one another it is equally plain--the
+theory of external relations notwithstanding--that in this process of
+interaction these ways of behavior, of stimulus and response, undergo
+modification. If the world consisted of two interacting beings, it is
+conceivable that the modifications of behavior might occur in such close
+continuity of relation to each of the interacting beings that the
+adjustment would be very continuous, and there might be little or no
+ambiguity and conflict. But in a world where any two interacting beings
+have innumerable interactions with innumerable other beings and in all
+these interactions modifications are effected, it is to be expected that
+changes in the behavior of each or both will occur, so marked that they
+are bound to result in breaks in the continuity of stimulus and
+response--even to the point of tragedy. However, the tragedy is seldom
+so great that the ambiguity extends to the whole field of conduct.
+Except in extreme pathological cases (and in epistemology), complete
+skepticism and aboulia do not occur. Ambiguity always falls within a
+field or direction of conduct, and though it may extend much further,
+and must extend some further than the point at which equivocation
+occurs, yet it is never ubiquitous. An ambiguity concerning the action
+of gravitation is no less specific than one regarding color or sound;
+indeed, the one may be found to involve the other.
+
+Logical conduct is, then, conduct which aims to remove ambiguity and
+inhibition in unreflective conduct. The instruments of its operation are
+forged from the processes of unreflective conduct by such modification
+and adaptation as is required to enable them to accomplish this end.
+Since these logical operations sometimes fail and sometimes succeed they
+become the subject-matter of logical theory. But the technique of this
+second involution of reflection is not supplied by some new and unique
+entity. It also is derived from modifications of previous operations of
+both reflective and non-reflective conduct.
+
+While emphasizing the continuity between non-logical and logical
+operations, we must keep in mind that their distinction is of equal
+importance. Confusion at this point is fatal. A case in point is the
+confusion between non-logical and logical observation. The results of
+non-logical observation, e.g., looking and listening, are direct stimuli
+to further conduct. But the purpose and result of _logical_ observation
+are to secure data, not as direct stimuli to immediate conduct but as
+stimuli to the construction or verification of hypotheses which are the
+responses of the _logical_ operation of imagination to the data.
+Hypotheses are anticipatory. But they differ from non-logical
+anticipation in that they are tentatively, experimentally, i.e.,
+logically anticipatory. The non-logical operations of memory and
+anticipation lack just this tentative, experimental character. When we
+confuse the logical and non-logical operations of these processes the
+result is either that logical processes will merely repeat non-logical
+operations in which case we have inference that is tautologous and
+trifling; or the non-logical will attempt to perform logical operations,
+and our inference is miraculous. If we seek to escape by an appeal to
+habit, as in empiricism, or to an objective universal, as in idealism
+and neo-realism, we are merely disguising, not removing the miracle.
+
+It may be thought that this confusion would be most likely to occur in a
+theory which teaches that non-logical processes are carried over into
+logical operations. But this overlooks the fact that the theory
+recognizes at the same time that these non-logical operations undergo
+modification and adaptation to the demands of the logical enterprise. On
+the other hand, those who make all perceptions, memory, and
+anticipation, not to speak of habit and instinct, logical, have no basis
+for the distinction between logical and non-logical results; while those
+who refuse to give the operations of perception, memory, etc., any place
+in logic can make no connections between logical and non-logical
+conduct. Nor are they able to distinguish in a specific case truth from
+error.
+
+In all logics that fail to make this connection and distinction between
+logical and non-logical operations there is no criterion for data. If
+ultimate simplicity is demanded of the data, there is no standard for
+simplicity except the _minimum sensibile_ or the _minimum intelligibile_
+which have recently been resurrected. On the other hand, where
+simplicity is waived, as in the logic of objective idealism, there is
+still no criterion of logical adequacy. But if we understand by
+_logical_ data not anything that happens to be given, but something
+_sought_ as material for an hypothesis, i.e., a proposed solution
+(proposition) of an ambiguous object of conduct and affection, then
+whatever results of observation meet this requirement are logical data.
+And whenever data are found from which an hypothesis is constructed that
+succeeds in abolishing the ambiguity, they are simple, adequate, and
+true data.
+
+No scientist, not even the mathematician, in the specific investigations
+of his field, seeks for ultimate and irreducible data at large. And if
+he found them he could not use them. It is only in his metaphysical
+personality that he longs for such data. The data which the scientist in
+any specific inquiry seeks are the data which suggest a solution of the
+question in which the investigation starts. When these data are found
+they are the "irreducibles" of that problem. But they are relative to
+the question and answer of the investigation. Their simplicity consists
+in the fact that they are the data from which a conclusion can be made.
+The term "simple data" is tautologous. That one is in need of data more
+"simple" means that one is in need of new data from which an hypothesis
+can be formed.
+
+It is true that the actual working elements with which the scientist
+operates are always complex in the sense that they are always something
+more than elements in any specific investigation. They have other
+connections and alliances. And this complexity is at once the despair
+and the hope of the scientist; his despair, because he cannot be sure
+when these other connections will interfere with the allegiance of his
+elements to his particular undertaking; his hope, because when these
+alliances are revealed they often make the elements more efficient or
+exhibit capacities which will make them elements in some other
+undertaking for which elements have not been found. A general resolves
+his army into so many marching, eating, shooting units; but these
+elements are something more than marching, shooting units. They are
+husbands and fathers, brothers and lovers, protestants and catholics,
+artists and artisans, etc. And the militarist can never be sure at what
+point these other activities--I do not say merely external
+relationships--may upset his calculations. If he could find units whose
+whole and sole nature is to march and shoot, his problem would be, in
+some respects, simpler, though in others more complex. As it is, he is
+constantly required to ask how far these other functions will support
+and at what point they will rebel at the marching and shooting.
+
+Such, in principle, is the situation in every scientific inquiry. When
+the failure of the old elements occurs it is common to say that
+"simpler" elements are needed. And doubtless in his perplexity the
+scientist may long for elements which have no entangling alliances,
+whose sole nature and character is to be elements. But what in fact he
+actually seeks in every specific investigation are elements whose nature
+and functions _will not interfere_ with their serving as units in the
+enterprise in hand. But from some other standpoint these new elements
+may be vastly more complex than the old, as is the case with the modern
+as compared with the ancient atom. When the elements are secured which
+operate successfully, the non-interfering connections can be ignored and
+the elements can be treated as if they did not have them,--as if they
+were metaphysically simple. But there is no criterion for metaphysical
+simplicity except operative simplicity. To be simple is to serve as an
+element, and to serve as an element is to be simple.
+
+It is scarcely necessary in view of the foregoing to add that the data
+of science are not "sense-data," if by sense-data be meant data which
+are the result of the operations of sense organs alone. Data are as much
+or more the result of operations, first, of the motor system of the
+scientist's own organism, and second, of all of the machinery of his
+laboratory which he calls to his aid. Whether named after the way they
+are obtained, or after the way they are used, data are quite as much
+"motor" as "sense." Nor, on the other hand, are there any purely
+intellectual data--not even for the mathematician. Some mathematicians
+may insist that their symbols and diagrams are merely stimuli to the
+platonic operation of pure and given universals. But until mathematics
+can get on without these symbols or any substitutes the intuitionist in
+mathematics will continue to have his say.
+
+Wherever the discontinuity between logical operations and their acts
+persists, all the difficulties with data have their correlative
+difficulties with hypotheses. In Mill's logic the account of the origin
+of hypotheses oscillates between the view that they are happy guesses
+of a mind composed of states of consciousness, and the view that they
+are "found in the facts" or are "impressed on the mind by the facts."
+The miracle of relevancy required in the first position drives the
+theory to the second. And the tautologous, useless nature of the
+hypothesis in the second forces the theory back to the first view. In
+this predicament, little wonder Mill finds that the easiest way out is
+to make hypotheses "auxiliary" and not indigenous to inference. But this
+exclusion of hypotheses as essential leaves his account of inference to
+oscillate between the association of particulars of nominalism and
+scholastic formalism, from both of which Mill, with the dignified zeal
+of a prophet, set out to rescue logic.
+
+Mill's rejection of hypotheses formed by a mind whose operations have no
+discoverable continuity with the operations of things, or by things
+whose actions are independent of the operations of ideas, is forever
+sound. But his acceptance of the discontinuity between the acts of
+knowing and the operation of things, and the conclusion that these two
+conceptions of the origin and nature of hypotheses are the only
+alternatives, were the source of most of his difficulties.
+
+
+III
+
+The efforts of classic empiricism at the reform of logic have long been
+an easy mark for idealistic reformers. But it is interesting to observe
+that the idealistic logic from the beginning finds itself in precisely
+the same predicament regarding hypotheses;--they are trifling or false.
+And in the end they are made, as in Mill, "accidents" of inference.
+
+The part played by Kant's sense-material and the categories is almost
+the reverse of those of data and hypothesis in science. Sense material
+and the categories are the given elements from which objects are somehow
+made; in scientific procedure data and hypothesis are derived through
+logical observation and imagination from the content and operations of
+immediate experience. In Kant's account of the process by which objects
+are constructed we are nowhere in sight of any experimental procedure.
+Indeed, the real act of knowing, the selection and application of the
+category to the sense matter, is, as Kant in the end had to confess,
+"hidden away in the depths of the soul." Made in the presence of the
+elaborate machinery of knowing which Kant had constructed, this
+confession is almost tragic; and the tragic aspect grows when we find
+that the result of the "hidden" operation is merely a phenomenal object.
+That this should be the case, however, is not strange. A phenomenal
+object is the inevitable correlate of the "hidden" act of knowing
+whether in a "transcendental" or in an "empirical" logic. In vain do we
+call the act of knowing "constructive" and "synthetic" if its method of
+synthesis is hidden. A transcendental unity whose method is indefinable
+has no advantage over empirical association.
+
+It was the dream of Kant as of Mill to replace the logics of
+sensationalism and rationalism with a "logic of things" and of "truth."
+But as Mill's things turned to states of consciousness, so Kant's are
+phenomenal. Their common fate proclaims their common failure--the
+failure to reestablish continuity between the conduct of intelligence
+and other conduct.
+
+One of the chief counts in Hegel's indictment of Kant's logic is that
+"it had no influence on the methods of science."[15] Hegel's explanation
+is that Kant's categories have no genesis; they are not constructed in
+and as part of logical operations. As given, ready-made, their relevance
+is a miracle. But if categories be "generated" in the process of
+knowing, says Hegel, they are indigenous, and their fitness is
+inevitable. In such statements Hegel raises expectations that we are at
+last to have a logic which squares with the procedure of science. But
+when we discover that instead of being "generated" out of all the
+material involved in the scientific problem Hegel's categories are
+derived from each other, misgivings arise. And when we further learn
+that this "genesis" is timeless, which means that, after all, the
+categories stand related to each other in a closed, eternal system of
+implication, we abandon hope of a scientific--i.e., experimental--logic.
+
+Hegel also says it is the business of philosophy "to substitute
+categories or in more precise language adequate notions for the several
+modes of feeling, perception, desire, and will." The word "substitute"
+reveals the point at issue. If "to substitute" means that philosophy is
+a complete exchange of the modes of feeling, perception, desire, and
+will for a world of categories or notions, then, saying nothing of the
+range of values in such a world, the problem of the meaning of
+"adequate" is on our hands. What is the notion to be adequate to? But if
+"to substitute" means that the modes of feeling, perception, desire, and
+will, when in a specific situation of ambiguity and inhibition, go over
+into, take on, the modes of data and hypothesis in the effort to get rid
+of inhibiting conflict that is quite another matter. Here the "notion,"
+as the scientific hypothesis, has a criterion for its adequacy. But if
+the notion usurps the place of feeling, perception, desire, and will, as
+many find, in the end, it does in Hegel's logic, it thereby loses all
+tests for the adequacy of its function and character as a notion.
+
+In the development of the logical doctrines of Kant and Hegel by Lotze,
+Green, Sigwart, Bradley, Bosanquet, Royce, and others, there are indeed
+differences. But these differences only throw their common ground into
+bolder relief. This common ground is that, procedure by hypotheses, by
+induction, is, in the language of Professor Bosanquet, "a transient and
+external characteristic of inference."[16] And the ground of this
+verdict is essentially the same as Mill's, when he rejects hypotheses
+"made by the mind," namely, that such hypotheses are too subjective in
+their origin and nature to have objective validity. "Objective" idealism
+is trying, like Mill, to escape the subjectivism of the purely
+individual and "psychical" knower. But, being unable to reconstruct the
+finite knower, and being too sophisticated to make what it regards as
+Mill's naive appeal to "hypotheses found in things," it transfers the
+real process of inference to the "objective universal," and the process
+of all thought, including inference, is now defined as "_the
+reproduction, by a universal presented in a content, of contents
+distinguished from the presented content which also are differences of
+the same universal_."[17]
+
+It need scarcely be said that in inference thus defined there is scant
+room for hypotheses. There is nothing "hypothetical," "experimental," or
+"tentative" in this process of reproduction by the objective universal
+as such. As little is there any possibility of error. If there is
+anything hypothetical, or any possibility of error, in inference, it is
+due to the temporal, finite human being in which, paradoxically enough,
+this process of "reproduction" goes on and to whom, at times, is given
+an "infinitesimal" part in the operation, while at other times he is
+said merely to "witness" it. But the real inference does not "proceed by
+hypotheses"; it is only the finite mind in witnessing the real logical
+spectacle or in its "infinitesimal" contribution to it that lamely
+proceeds in this manner.
+
+Here, again, we have the same break in continuity between the finite,
+human act of knowing and the operations that constitute the real world.
+When the logic of the objective universal rejects imputations of
+harboring a despoiled psychical knower it has in mind, of course, the
+objective universal as knower, not the finite, human act. But, if the
+participations of the latter are all accidents of inference, as they are
+said to be, its advantage over a purely psychical knower, or "states of
+consciousness," is difficult to see. The rejection of metaphysical
+dualism is of no consequence if the logical operations of the finite,
+human being are only "accidents" of the real logical process. As already
+remarked, the metaphysical disjunction is merely a schematism of the
+more fundamental, logical disjunction.
+
+As for tautology and miracle, the follower of Mill might well ask: how
+an association of particulars, whether mental states or things, could be
+more tautologous than a universal reproducing its own differences? And
+if the transition from particular to particular is a miracle in which
+the grace of God is disguised as "habit," why is not habit as good a
+disguise for Providence as universals? Moreover, by what miracle does
+the one all-inclusive universal become _a_ universal? And since
+perception always presents a number of universals, what determines which
+one shall perform the reproduction? Finally, since there are infinite
+differences of the universal that might be reproduced, what determines
+just which differences shall be reproduced? In this wise the controversy
+has gone on ever since the challenge of the old rationalistic logic by
+the nominalists launched the issue of empiricism and rationalism. All
+the charges which each makes against the other are easily retorted upon
+itself. Each side is resistless in attack, but helpless in defense.
+
+In a conception of inference in which both data and hypothesis are
+regarded as the tentative, experimental results of the processes of
+perception, memory, and constructive imagination engaged in the special
+task of removing conflict, ambiguity, and inhibition, and in which these
+processes are not conceived as the functions of a private mind nor of an
+equally private brain and nervous system, but as functions of
+interacting beings,--in such a conception there is no ground for anxiety
+concerning the simplicity of data, nor the objectivity of hypotheses.
+Simplicity and objectivity do not have to be secured through elaborate
+and labored metaphysical construction. The data are simple and the
+hypothesis objective in so far as they accomplish the work
+where unto they are called--the removal of conflict, ambiguity, and
+inhibition in conduct and affection.
+
+In the experimental conception of inference it is clear that the
+principles of formal logic must play their role wholly inside the course
+of logical operations. They do not apply to relations _between_ these
+operations and "reality"; nor to "reality" itself. Formal identity and
+non-contradiction signify, in experimental logic, the complete
+correlativity of data and hypothesis. They mean that _in_ the logical
+procedure data must not be shifted without a corresponding change in the
+hypothesis and conversely. The doctrine that "theoretically" there may
+be any number of hypotheses for "the same facts" is, when these multiple
+hypotheses are anything more than different names or symbols, nothing
+less than the very essence of formal contradiction. It doubtless makes
+little difference whether a disease be attributed to big or little,
+black or red, demons or whether the cause be represented by a, b, or c,
+etc. But where data and hypotheses are such as are capable of
+verification, i.e., of mutually checking up each other, a change in one
+without a corresponding modification of the other is the principle of
+all formal fallacies.[18]
+
+With this conception of the origin, nature, and functions of logical
+operations little remains to be said of their truth and falsity. If the
+whole enterprise of logical operation, of the construction and
+verification of hypothesis, is in the interest of the removal of
+ambiguity, and inhibition in conduct, the only relevant truth or falsity
+they can possess must be determined by their success or failure in that
+undertaking. The acceptance of this view of truth and error, be it said
+again, depends on holding steadfastly to the conception of the
+operations of knowing as _real acts_, which, though having a distinct
+character and function, are yet in closest continuity with other acts of
+which indeed they are but modifications and adaptations in order to meet
+the logical demand.
+
+Here, perhaps, is the place for a word on truth and satisfaction. The
+satisfaction which marks the truth of logical operations--"intellectual
+satisfaction"--is the satisfaction which attends the accomplishment of
+their task, viz., the removal of ambiguity in conduct, i.e., in our
+interaction with other beings. It does not mean that this satisfaction
+is bound to be followed by wholly blissful consequences. All our
+troubles are not over when the distress of ambiguity is removed. It may
+be indeed that the verdict of the logical operation is that we must face
+certain death. Very well, we must have felt it to be "good to know the
+worst," or no inquiry would have been started. We should have deemed
+ignorance bliss and sat with closed eyes waiting for fate to overtake us
+instead of going forward to meet it and in some measure determine it.
+Death anticipated and accepted is _realiter_ very different from death
+that falls upon us unawares, however we may estimate that difference. If
+this distinction in the _foci_ of satisfaction is kept clear it must do
+away with a large amount of the hedonistic interpretations of
+satisfaction in which many critics have indulged.
+
+But hereupon some one may exclaim, as did a colleague recently: "Welcome
+to the ranks of the intellectualists!" If so, the experimentalist is
+bound to reply that he is as willing, and as unwilling, to be welcomed
+to the ranks of intellectualism as to those of anti-intellectualism. He
+wonders, however, how long the welcome would last in either. Among the
+intellectualists the welcome would begin to cool as soon as it should be
+discovered that the ambiguity to which logical operations are the
+response is not regarded by the experimentalist as a purely intellectual
+affair. It is an ambiguity in conduct with all the attendant affectional
+values that may be at stake.[19] It is, to be sure, the fact of
+ambiguity, and the effort to resolve it, that adds the intellectual,
+logical character to conduct and to affectional values. But if the
+logical interest attempts entirely to detach itself it will soon be
+without either subject-matter or criterion. And if it sets itself up as
+supreme, we shall be forced to say that our quandaries of affection, our
+problems of life and death are merely to furnish occasions and material
+for logical operations.
+
+On the other hand, the welcome of the anti-intellectualists is equally
+sure to wane when the experimentalist asserts that the doctrine that
+logical operations mutilate the wholeness of immediate experience
+overlooks the palpable fact that it is precisely these immediate
+experiences--the experiences of intuition and instinct--that get into
+conflict and inhibit and mutilate one another, and as a consequence are
+obliged to go into logical session to patch up the mutilation and
+provide new and better methods of cooeperation.
+
+At this point the weakness in Bergson's view of logical operations
+appears. Bergson, too, is impressed by the break in continuity between
+logical operations and the rest of experience. But with Mr. Bradley he
+believes this breach to be essentially incurable, because the
+mutilations and disjunctions are due to and introduced by logical
+operations. Just why the latter are introduced remains in the end a
+mystery. Both, to be sure, believe that logical operations are valuable
+for "practical" purposes,--for action. But, aside from the question of
+_how_ operations essentially mutilative can be valuable for action,
+immediate intuitional experience being already in unity with Reality,
+why should there be any practical need for logical operations--least of
+all such as introduce disjunction and mutilation?
+
+The admission of a demand for logical operations, whether charged to
+matter, the devil, or any other metaphysical adversary, is, of course, a
+confession that conflict and ambiguity are as fundamental in experience
+as unity and immediacy and that logical operations are therefore no less
+indigenous. The failure to see this implication is responsible for the
+paradox that in the logic of Creative Evolution the operations of
+intelligence are neither creative nor evolutional. They not only have no
+constructive part but are positively destructive and devolutional.
+
+Since, moreover, these logical operations, like those of the objective
+universal, and like Mill's association of particulars, can only
+reproduce in fragmentary form what has already been done, it is
+difficult to see how they can meet the demands of action. For here no
+more than in Mill, or in the logic of idealism, is there any place for
+constructive hypotheses or any technique by which they can become
+effective. Whatever "Creative Evolution" may be, there is no place in
+its logic for "Creative Intelligence."
+
+
+IV
+
+The prominence in current discussion of the logical reforms proposed by
+the "analytic logic" of the neo-realistic movement and the enthusiastic
+optimism of its representatives over the prospective results of these
+reforms for logic, science, and practical life are the warrant for
+devoting a special section to their discussion.
+
+There are indeed some marked differences of opinion among the
+expounders of the "new logic" concerning the results which it is
+expected to achieve. Some find that it clears away incredible
+accumulations of metaphysical lumber; others rejoice that it is to
+restore metaphysics, "once the queen of the sciences, to her ancient
+throne."
+
+But whatever the difference among the representatives of analytical
+logic all seem agreed at the outset on two fundamental reforms which the
+"new logic" makes. These are: first, that analytic logic gets rid
+entirely of the _act_ of knowing, the retention of which has been the
+bane of all other logics; second, in its discovery of "terms and
+relations," "sense-data and universals" as the simple elements not only
+of logic but of the world, it furnishes science at last with the simple
+neutral elements at large which it is supposed science so long has
+sought, and "mourned because it found them not."
+
+Taking these in order, we are told that "realism frees logic as a study
+of objective fact from all accounts of the states and operations of
+mind." ... "Logic and mathematics are sciences which can be pursued
+quite independently of the study of knowing."[20] "The new logic
+believes that it deals with no such entities as thoughts, ideas, or
+minds, but with entities that merely are."[20]
+
+The motive for the banishment of the act of knowing from logic is that
+as an _act_ knowing is "mental," "psychological," and "subjective."[21]
+All other logics have indeed realized this subjective character of the
+_act_ of knowing, but have neither dared completely to discard it nor
+been able sufficiently to counteract its effects even with such agencies
+as the objective universal to prevent it from infecting logic with its
+subjectivity. Because logic has tolerated and attempted to compromise
+with this subjective act of knowing, say these reformers, it has been
+forced constantly into epistemology and has become a hybrid science. Had
+logic possessed the courage long ago to throw overboard this subjective
+Jonah it would have been spared the storms of epistemology and the reefs
+of metaphysics.
+
+Analytic logic is the first attempt in the history of modern logical
+theory at a deliberate, sophisticated exclusion of the act of knowing
+from logic. Other logics, to be sure, have tried to neutralize the
+effects of its presence, but none has had the temerity to cast it bodily
+overboard. The experiment, therefore, is highly interesting.
+
+We should note at the outset that in regarding the act of knowing as
+incurably "psychical" and "subjective" analytic logic accepts a
+fundamental premise of the logics of rationalism, empiricism, and
+idealism which it seeks to reform. It is true that it is the bold
+proposal of analytic logic to keep logic out of the pit of epistemology
+by excluding the act of knowing from logic. Nevertheless analytic logic
+still accepts the subjective character of this act; and if it excludes
+it from its logic it welcomes it in its psychology. This is a dangerous
+situation. Can the analytic logician prevent all osmosis between his
+logic and his psychology?[22] If not, and if the psychological act is
+subjective, woe then to his logic. Had the new logic begun with a bold
+challenge of the psychical character of the act of knowing, the prospect
+of a logic free from epistemology would have been much brighter.
+
+With the desire to rid logic of the epistemological taint the
+"experimental logic" of the pragmatic movement has the strongest
+sympathy. But the proposal to effect this by the excision of the act of
+knowing appears to experimental logic to be a case of heroic but fatal
+surgery. _Prima facie_ a logic with no act of knowing presents an
+uncanny appearance. What sort of logical operations are possible in such
+a logic and of what kind of truth and falsity are they capable?
+
+Before taking up these questions in detail it is worth while to note the
+character of the entities that "merely are" with which analytic logic
+proposes exclusively to deal. In their general form they are "terms" and
+"propositions," "sense-data" and universals. We are struck at once by
+the fact that these entities bear the names of logical operations. They
+are, to be sure, disguised as entities and have been baptised in a
+highly dilute solution of objectivity called "subsistence." But this
+does not conceal their origin, nor does it obscure the fact that if it
+is possible for any entities that "merely are" to have logical character
+those made from hypostatized processes of logical operations should be
+the most promising. They might be expected to retain some vestiges of
+logical character even after they have been torn from the process of
+inquiry and converted into "entities that merely are." Also it is not
+surprising that having stripped the act of knowing of its constituent
+operations analytic logic should feel that it can well dispense with the
+empty shell called "mind" and, as Professor Dewey says, "wish it on
+psychology." But if the analytic logician be also a philosopher and
+perchance a lover of his fellow-man, it is hard to see how he can have a
+good conscience over this disposition of the case.
+
+Turning now to the character of inference and of truth and falsity which
+are possible in a logic which excludes the operation of knowing and
+deals only with "entities that are," all the expounders seem to agree
+that in such a logic inference must be purely deductive. All alleged
+induction is either disguised deduction or a lucky guess. This raises
+apprehension at the start concerning the value of analytic logic for
+other sciences. But let us observe what deduction in analytic logic is.
+
+We begin at once with a distinction which involves the whole issue.[23]
+We are asked to carefully distinguish "logical" deduction from
+"psychological" deduction. The latter is the vulgar meaning of the term,
+and is "the thinker's name for his own act of conforming his thought" to
+the objective and independent processes that constitute the real logical
+process. This act of conforming the mind is a purely "psychological"
+affair. It has no logical function whatever. In what the "conforming"
+consists is not clear. It seems to be merely the act of turning the
+"psychological" eye on the objective logical process. "One beholds it
+(the logical process) as one beholds a star, a river, a character in a
+play.... The novelist and the dramatist, like the mathematician and
+logician, are onlookers at the logical spectacle."[24] On the other
+hand, the term "conforming" suggests a task, with the possibilities of
+success and failure. Have we, then, two wholly independent possibilities
+of error--one merely "psychological," the other "logical"? The same
+point may be made even more obviously with reference to the term
+"beholding." The term is used as if beholding were a perfectly simple
+act, having no problems and no possibilities of mistakes--as if there
+could be no mis-beholding.[25]
+
+But fixing our psychological eye on the "logical spectacle," what does
+it behold? A universal generating an infinite series of identical
+instances of itself--i.e., instances which differ only in "logical
+position." If in a world of entities that "merely are" the term
+"generation" causes perplexity, the tension is soon relieved; for this
+turns out to be a merely subsistential non-temporal generation which,
+like Hegel's generation of the categories, in no way compromises a world
+of entities that "merely are."
+
+Steering clear of the thicket of metaphysical problems that we here
+encounter, let us keep to the logical trail. First it is clear that
+logical operations are of the same reproductive repetitive type that we
+have found in the associational logic of empiricism, and in the logic of
+the objective universal. Indeed, after objective idealism has conceded
+that the finite mind merely "witnesses" or at most contributes only in
+an "infinitesimal" degree to the logical activity of the objective
+universal, what remains of the supposed gulf between absolute idealism
+and analytic realism?
+
+It follows, of course, that there can be no place in analytic logic for
+"procedure by hypotheses." However, it is to the credit of some analytic
+logicians that they see this and frankly accept the situation instead of
+attempting to retain hypotheses by making them "accidents" or mere
+"auxiliaries" of inference. On the other hand, others find that the
+chief glory of analytic logic is precisely that it "gives thought
+wings"[26] for the free construction of hypotheses. In his lectures on
+"Scientific Methods in Philosophy" Mr. Russell calls some of the most
+elemental and sacred entities of analytic logic "convenient fictions."
+This retention of hypotheses at the cost of cogency is of course in
+order to avoid a break with science. Those who see that there is no
+place in analytic logic for hypotheses are equally anxious to preserve
+their connections with science. Hence they boldly challenge the
+"superstition" that science has anything to do with hypotheses. Newton's
+"_Hypotheses non fingo_" should be the motto of every conscientious
+scientist who dares "trust his own perceptions and disregard the ukase
+of idealism." "The theory of mental construction is the child of
+idealism, now put out to service for the support of its parents."
+"Theory is no longer regarded in science as an hypothesis added to the
+observed facts," but a law which is "found in the facts."[27] The
+identity of this with Mill's doctrine of hypotheses as "found in things"
+is obvious.
+
+As against the conception of hypotheses as "free," "winged,"
+constructions of a psychical, beholding, gossiping mind we may well take
+our stand with those who would exclude such hypotheses from science. And
+this doubtless was the sort of mind and sort of hypotheses Newton meant
+when he said "_Hypotheses non fingo_."[28] But had Newton's mind really
+been of the character which he, as a physicist, had learned from
+philosophers to suppose it to be, and had he really waited to find his
+hypotheses ready-made in the facts, there never would have been any
+dispute about who discovered the calculus, and we should never have been
+interested in what Newton said about hypotheses or anything else. What
+Newton did is a much better source of information on the part hypotheses
+play in scientific method than what he said about them. The former
+speaks for itself; the latter is the pious repetition of a metaphysical
+creed made necessary by the very separation of mind from things
+expressed in the statement quoted.
+
+Logically there is little to choose between hypotheses found ready-made
+in the facts and those which are the "winged" constructions of a purely
+psychical mind. Both are equally useless in logic and in science. One
+makes logic and science "trifling," the other makes them "miraculous."
+But if hypotheses be conceived not as the output of a cloistered
+psychical entity but as the joint product of all the beings and
+operations involved in the specific situation in which logical inquiry
+originates, and more particularly in all those involved in the
+operations of the inquiry itself (including all the experimental
+material and apparatus which the inquiry may require), we shall have
+sufficient continuity between hypotheses and things to do away with
+miracle, and sufficient reconstruction to avoid inference that is
+trifling.
+
+It is, however, the second contribution of analytic logic that is the
+basis of the enthusiasm over its prospective value for other sciences.
+This is the discovery that terms and propositions, sense-data, and
+universals, are not only elements of logical operation but are the
+simple, neutral elements at large which science is supposed to have been
+seeking. "As the botanist analyzes the structures of the vegetable
+organism and finds chemical compounds of which they are built so the
+ordinary chemist analyzes these compounds into their elements, but does
+not analyze these. The physical chemist analyzes these elemental atoms,
+as now appears, into minuter components _which he in turn must leave to
+the mathematicians and logicians further to analyze_."[29]
+
+Again it is worth noting that this mutation of logical into ontological
+elements seems to differ only "in position" from the universal logicism
+of absolute idealism.
+
+What are these simple elements into which the mathematician and logician
+are to analyze the crude elements of the laboratory? And how are these
+elements to be put into operation in the laboratory? Let us picture an
+analytic logician meeting a physical scientist at a moment when the
+latter is distressed over the unmanageable complexity of his elements.
+Will the logician say to the scientist: "Your difficulty is that you are
+trusting too much to your mundane apparatus. The kingdom of truth cometh
+not with such things. Forsake your microscopes, test tubes, refractors
+and resonators, and follow me, and you shall behold the truly simple
+elements of which you have dreamed."? And when the moment of revelation
+arrives and the expectant scientist is solemnly told that the "simple
+elements" which he has sought so long are "terms and propositions,"
+sense-data and universals, is it surprising that he does not seem
+impressed? Will he not ask: "What am I to do with these in the specific
+difficulties of my laboratory? Shall I say to the crude and complex
+elements of my laboratory operations: 'Be ye resolved into terms and
+propositions, sense-data and universals'; and will they forthwith obey
+this incantation and fall apart so that I may locate and remove the
+hidden source of my difficulty? Are you not mocking me and deceiving
+yourself with the old ontological argument? Your 'simple' elements--are
+they anything but the hypostatized process by which elements may be
+found?"[30]
+
+The expounders as well as the critics of analytic logic have agreed that
+it reaches its most critical junction when it faces the problem of truth
+and error. There is no doubt that the logic of objective idealism, in
+other respects so similar to analytic logic, has at this point an
+advantage; for it retains just enough of the finite operation of
+knowing--an "infinitesimal" part will answer--to furnish the culture
+germs of error. But analytic logic having completely sterilized itself
+against this source of infection is in serious difficulty.
+
+Here again it is Professor Holt who has the courage to follow--or shall
+we say "behold"?--his theory as it "generates" the doctrine that error
+is a given objective opposition of forces entirely independent of any
+such thing as a process of inquiry and all that such a process
+presupposes. "All collisions between bodies, all inference between
+energies, all process of warming and cooling, of starting and stopping,
+of combining and separating, all counterbalancings, as in cantilevers
+and gothic vaultings, are contradictory forces which can be stated only
+in propositions that manifestly contradict each other."[31] But the
+argument proves too much. For in the world of forces to which we have
+here appealed there is no force which is not opposed by others and no
+particle which is not the center of opposing forces. Hence error is
+ubiquitous. In making error objective we have made all objectivity
+erroneous. We find ourselves obliged to say that the choir of
+Westminster Abbey, the Brooklyn bridge, the heads on our shoulders are
+all supported by logical errors!
+
+Following these illustrations of ontological contradictions there is
+indeed this interesting statement: "Nature is so full of these mutually
+negative processes that we are moved to admiration when a few forces
+cooeperate long enough to form what we call an organism."[32] The
+implication is, apparently, that as an "opposition" of forces is error,
+"cooeperation" of forces is truth. But what is to distinguish
+"opposition" from "cooeperation"? In the illustration it is clear that
+opposing forces--error--do not interfere with cooeperative forces--truth.
+Where should we find more counterbalancing, more starting and stopping,
+warming and cooling, combining and separating than in an organism? And
+if these processes can be stated only in propositions that are
+"manifestly contradictory," are we to understand that truth has errors
+for its constituent elements? Such paradoxes have always delighted the
+soul of absolute idealism. But, as we have seen, only the veil of an
+infinitesimal finitude intervenes between the logic of the objective
+universal of absolute idealism and the objective logic of analytic
+realism.
+
+It is, of course, this predicament regarding objective truth and error
+that has driven most analytic logicians to recall the exiled
+psychological, "mental" act of knowing. It had to be recalled to provide
+some basis of distinction between truth and error, but, this act having
+already been conceived as incurably "subjective," the result is only an
+exchange of dilemmas. For the reinstatement of this act _ipso facto_
+reinstates the epistemological predicament to get rid of which it was
+first banished from logic.
+
+Earnest efforts to escape this outcome have been made by attaching the
+act of knowing to the nervous system, and this is a move in the right
+direction. But so far the effort has been fruitless because no
+connection has been made between the knowing function of the nervous
+system and its other functions. The result is that the cognitive
+operation of the nervous system, as of the "psychical" mind, is that of
+a mere spectator; and the epistemological problem abides. An onlooking
+nervous system has no advantage over an "onlooking" mind. Onlooking,
+beholding may indeed be a part of a genuine act of knowing. But in that
+act it is always a stimulus or response to other acts. It is one of
+them;--never a mere spectator of them. It is when the act of knowing is
+cut off from its connection with other acts and finds itself adrift that
+it seeks metaphysical lodgings. And this it may find either in an empty
+psychical mind or in an equally empty body.[33]
+
+If, in reinstating the act of knowing as a function of the nervous
+system, neo-realism had recognized the logical significance of the fact
+that the nervous system of which knowing is a function is the same
+nervous system of which loving and hating, desiring and striving are
+functions and that the transition from these to the operations of
+inquiry and knowing is not a capricious jump but a transition motived by
+the loving and hating, desiring and striving--if this had been
+recognized the logic of neo-realism would have been spared its
+embarrassments over the distinction of truth and error. It would have
+seen that the passage from loving and hating, desiring and striving to
+inquiry and knowing is made in order to renew and reform specific
+desires and strivings which, through conflict and consequent
+equivocation, have become fruitless and vain; and it must have seen that
+the results of the inquiry are true or false as they succeed or fail in
+this reformation and renewal.
+
+But once more, it must steadily be kept in view that while the loving
+and hating, desiring and striving, which the logical operations are
+reforming and renewing, are functions of the nervous system, they are
+not functions of the nervous system alone, else the door of subjectivism
+again closes upon us. Loving and hating, desiring and striving have
+their "objects." Hence any reformation of these functions involves no
+less a reformation of their objects. When therefore we say that truth
+and error are relevant to desires and strivings, this means relevant to
+them as including their objects, not as entitized processes (such are
+the pitfalls of language) inclosed in a nervous system or mind. With
+this before us the relevance of truth and error to desires and strivings
+can never be made the basis for the charge of subjectivism. The
+conception of desires as peculiarly individual and subjective is a
+survival of the very isolation which is the source of the difficulty
+with truth and error. Hence the appeal to this isolation, made alike by
+idealism and realism, in charging instrumental logic with subjectivism
+is an elementary _petitio_.
+
+Doubtless it will be urged again that the act of knowing is motived
+by an independent desire and striving of its own. This is of course
+consonant with the neo-realistic atomism, however inconsonant it may be
+with the conception of implication which it employs. If we take a small
+enough, isolated segment of experience we can find meaning for this
+notion, as we may for the idea that the earth is flat and that the sun
+moves around the earth. But as consequences accrue we find as great
+difficulties with the one as with the other. If the course of events did
+not bring us to book, if we could get off with a mere definition of
+truth and error we might go on piling up subsistential definitional
+logics world without end. But sublime adventurers, logically
+unregenerate and uninitiated, will go on sailing westward to the
+confusion and confounding of all definitional systems that leave them
+out of account.
+
+The conclusion is plain. If logic is to have room in its household for
+both truth and error, if it is to avoid the old predicament of knowledge
+that is trifling or miraculous, tautologous or false, if it is to have
+no fear of the challenge of other sciences or of practical life, it must
+be content to take for its subject-matter the operations of intelligence
+conceived as real acts on the same metaphysical plane and in strictest
+continuity with other acts. Such a logic will not fear the challenge of
+science, for it is precisely this continuity that makes possible
+experimentation, which is the fundamental characteristic of scientific
+procedure. Science without experiment is indeed a strange apparition. It
+is a [Greek: logos] with no [Greek: legein], a science with no _scire_;
+and this spells dogmatism. How necessary such continuity is to
+experimentation is apparent when we recall that there is no limit to the
+range of operations of every sort which scientific experiment calls into
+play; and that unless there be thoroughgoing continuity between the
+logical demand of the experiment and all the materials and devices
+employed in the process of the experiment, the operations of the latter
+in the experiment will be either miraculous or ruinous.
+
+Finally, if this continuity of the operations of intelligence with
+other operations be essential to science, its relation to "practical"
+life is _ipso facto_ established. For science is "practical" life
+aware of its problems and aware of the part that experimental--i.e.,
+creative--intelligence plays in the solution of those problems.
+
+
+
+
+INTELLIGENCE AND MATHEMATICS
+
+HAROLD CHAPMAN BROWN
+
+
+Herbart is said to have given the deathblow to faculty psychology. Man
+no longer appears endowed with volition, passion, desire, and reason;
+and logic, deprived of its hereditary right to elucidate the operations
+of inherent intelligence, has the new problem of investigating forms of
+intelligence in the making. This is no inconsequential task. "If man
+originally possesses only capacities which after a given amount of
+education will produce ideas and judgments" (Thorndike, _Educational
+Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 198), and if these ideas and judgments are to be
+substituted for a mythical intelligence it follows that tracing their
+development and observing their functioning renders clearer our
+conception of their nature and value and brings us nearer that exact
+knowledge of what we are talking about in which the philosopher at least
+aspires to equal the scientist, however much he may fall below his
+ideal.
+
+For contemporary thought concerning the mathematical sciences this
+altered point of view generates peculiarly pressing problems.
+Mathematicians have weighed the old logic and found it wanting. They
+have builded themselves a new logic more adequate to their ends. But
+they have not whole-heartedly recognized the change that has come about
+in psychology; hence they have retained the faculty of intelligence
+knit into certain indefinables such as implication, relation, class,
+term, and the like, and have transported the faculty from the human soul
+to a mysterious realm of subsistence whence it radiates its ghostly
+light upon the realm of existence below. But while they reproach the old
+logic, often bitterly, their new logic merely furnishes a more adequate
+show-case in which already attained knowledge may be arranged to set off
+its charms for the observer in the same way that specimens in a museum
+are displayed before an admiring world. This statement is not a sweeping
+condemnation, however, for such a setting forth is not useless. It
+resembles the classificatory stage of science which, although not itself
+in the highest sense creative, often leads to higher stages by bringing
+under observation relations and facts that might otherwise have escaped
+notice. And in the realm of pure mathematics, the new logic has
+undoubtedly contributed in this manner to such discoveries. Danger
+appears when the logician attains Cartesian intoxication with the beauty
+of logico-mathematical form and tries to infer from the form itself the
+real nature of the formed material. The realm of subsistence too often
+has armed Indefinables with metaphysical myths whose attack is valiant
+when the doors of reflection are opened. It may be possible, however, to
+arrive at an understanding of mathematics without entering the kingdom
+of these warriors.
+
+It is the essence of science to make prediction possible. The value of
+prediction lies in the fact that through this function man can control
+his environment, or, at worst, fortify himself to meet its vagaries. To
+attain such predictions, however, the world need not be grasped in its
+full concreteness. Hence arise processes of abstraction. While all other
+symptoms remain unnoticed, the temperature and pulse may mark a disease,
+or a barometer-reading the weather. The physicist may work only in terms
+of quantity in a world which is equally truly qualitative. All that is
+necessary is to select the elements which are most effective for
+prediction and control. Such selection gives the principle that
+dominates all abstractions. Progress is movement from the less abstract
+to the more abstract, but it is progress only because the more abstract
+is as genuinely an aspect of the concrete starting-point as anything is.
+Moreover, the outcome of progress of this sort cannot be definitely
+foreseen at the beginnings. The simple activities of primitive men have
+to be spontaneously performed before their value becomes evident. Only
+afterwards can they be cultivated for the sake of their value, and then
+only can the self-conscious cultivation of a science begin. The process
+remains full not only of perplexities, but of surprises; men's
+activities lead to goals far other than those which appear at the start.
+These goals, however, never deny the method by which the start is made.
+Developed intelligence is nothing but skill in using a set of concepts
+generated in this manner. In this sense the histories of all human
+endeavors run parallel.
+
+Where the empirical bases of a science are continually in the
+foreground, as in physics or chemistry, the foregoing formulation of
+procedure is intelligible and acceptable to most men. Mathematics seem,
+however, to stand peculiarly apart. Many, with Descartes, have delighted
+in them "on account of the certitude and evidence of their reasonings"
+and recognized their contribution to the advancement of mechanical arts.
+But since the days of Kant even this value has become a problem, and
+many a young philosophic student has the question laid before him as to
+why it is that mathematics, "a purely conceptual science," can tell us
+anything about the character of a world which is, apparently at least,
+free from the idiosyncrasies of individual mind. It may be that
+mathematics began in empirical practice, such philosophers admit, but
+they add that, somehow, in its later career, it has escaped its lowly
+origin. Now it moves in the higher circles of postulated relations and
+arbitrarily defined entities to which its humble progenitors and
+relatives are denied the entree. Parvenus, however, usually bear with
+them the mark of history, and in the case of this one, at least, we may
+hope that the history will be sufficient to drag it from the
+affectations of its newly acquired set and reinstate it in its proper
+place in the workaday world. For the sake of this hope, we shall take
+the risk of being tedious by citing certain striking moments of
+mathematical progress; and then we shall try to interpret its genuine
+status in the world of working truths.
+
+
+I
+
+BEGINNINGS OF ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY
+
+The most primitive mathematical activity of man is counting, but here
+his first efforts are lost in the obscurity of the past. The lower
+races, however, yield us evidence that is not without value. Although
+the savage mind is not identical with the mind of primitive man, there
+is much in the activities of undeveloped races that can throw light upon
+the behavior of peoples more advanced. We must be careful in our
+inferences, however. Among the Australians and South Americans there are
+peoples whose numerical systems go little, or not at all, beyond the
+first two or three numbers. "It has been inferred from this," writes
+Professor Boas (_Mind of Primitive Man_, pp. 152-53), "that the people
+speaking these languages are not capable of forming the concept of
+higher numbers.... People like the South American Indians, ... or like
+the Esquimo ... are presumably not in need of higher numerical
+expressions, because there are not many objects that they have to count.
+On the other hand, just as soon as these same people find themselves in
+contact with civilization, and when they acquire standards of value that
+have to be counted, they adopt with perfect ease higher numerals from
+other languages, and develop a more or less perfect system of
+counting.... It must be borne in mind that counting does not become
+necessary until objects are considered in such generalized form that
+their individualities are entirely lost sight of. For this reason it is
+possible that even a person who owns a herd of domesticated animals may
+know them by name and by their characteristics, without even desiring to
+count them."
+
+And there is one other false interpretation to be avoided. Man does not
+feel the need of counting and then develop a system of numerals to meet
+the need. Such an assumption is as ridiculous as to assume prehistoric
+man thinking to himself: "I must speak," and then inventing voice
+culture and grammar to make speaking pleasant and possible. Rather, when
+powers of communication are once attained, presumably in their
+beginnings also without forethought, man being still more animal than
+man, there were gradually dissociated communications of a kind
+approaching what numbers mean to us. But the number is not yet a symbol
+apart from that of the things numbered. Picture writing, re-representing
+the things meant, preceded developmentally any kind of symbolization
+representing the number by mere one-one correspondence with
+non-particularized symbols. It is plausible, although I have no
+anthropological authority for the statement, that the prevalence of
+finger words as number symbols (cf. infra) is originally a consequence
+of the fact that our organization makes the hand the natural instrument
+of pointing.
+
+The difficulty of passing from concrete representations to abstract
+symbols has been keenly stated by Conant (_The Number Concept_, pp.
+72-73), although his terminology is that of an old psychology and the
+limitations implied for the primitive mind are limitations of practice
+rather than of capacity as Mr. Conant seems to believe. "An abstract
+conception is something quite foreign to the essentially primitive mind,
+as missionaries and explorers have found to their chagrin. The savage
+can form no mental concept of what civilized man means by such a word as
+_soul_; nor would his idea of the abstract number 5 be much clearer.
+When he says _five_, he uses, in many cases at least, the same word that
+serves him when he wishes to say _hand_; and his mental concept when he
+says _five_ is a hand. The concrete idea of a closed fist, of an open
+hand with outstretched fingers, is what is uppermost in his mind. He
+knows no more and cares no more about the pure number 5 than he does
+about the law of conservation of energy. He sees in his mental picture
+only the real, material image, and his only comprehension of the number
+is, "these objects are as many as the fingers on my hand." Then, in the
+lapse of the long interval of centuries which intervene between lowest
+barbarism and highest civilization, the abstract and concrete become
+slowly dissociated, the one from the other. First the actual hand
+picture fades away, and the number is recognized without the original
+assistance furnished by the derivation of the word. But the number is
+still for a long time a certain number _of objects_, and not an
+independent concept."
+
+An excellent fur trader's story, reported to me by Mr. Dewey, suggests a
+further impulse to count besides that given by the need of keeping a
+tally, namely, the need of making one thing correspond to another in a
+business transaction. The Indian laid down one skin and the trader two
+dollars; if he proposed to count several skins at once and pay for all
+together, the former replied "too much cheatem." The result, however,
+demanded a tally either by the fingers, a pebble, or a mark made in the
+sand, and as the magnitude of such transactions grows the need of a
+specific number symbol becomes ever more acute.
+
+The first obstacle, then, to overcome--and it has already been
+successfully passed by many primitive peoples--is the need of fortuitous
+attainment of a numerical symbol, which is not the mere repeated symbol
+of the things numbered. Significantly, this symbol is usually derived
+from the hand, suggesting gestures of tallying, and not from the words
+of already developed language. Consequently, number words relate
+themselves for the most part to the hand, and written number symbols,
+which are among the earliest writings of most peoples, tend to depict it
+as soon as they have passed beyond the stage mentioned above of merely
+repeating the symbol of the things numbered. W. C. Eells, in writing of
+the Number Systems of the North American Indians (_Am. Math. Mo._, Nov.,
+1913; pp. 263-72), finds clear linguistic evidence for a digital origin
+in about 40% of the languages examined. Of the non-digital instances, 1
+was sometimes connected with the first personal pronoun, 2 with roots
+meaning separation, 3, rarely, meaning more, or plural as distinguished
+from the dual, just as the Greek uses a plural as well as a dual in
+nouns and verbs, 4 is often the perfect, complete right. It is often a
+sacred number and the base of a quarternary system. Conant (_loc. cit._
+p. 98) also gives a classification of the meanings of simple number
+words for more advanced languages; and even in them the hand is
+constantly in evidence, as in 5, the hand; 10, two hands, half a man,
+when fingers and toes are both considered, or a man, when the hands
+alone are considered; 20, one man, two feet. The other meanings hang
+upon the ideas of existence, piece, group, beginning, for 1; and
+repetition, division, and collection for higher numerals.
+
+A peculiar difficulty lies in the fact that when once numbering has
+become a self-conscious effort, the collection of things to be numbered
+frequently tends to exceed the number of names that have become
+available. Sometimes the difficulty is met by using a second man when
+the fingers and toes of the first are used up, sometimes by a method of
+repetition with the record of the number of the repetition itself added
+to the numerical significance of the whole process. Hence arise the
+various systems of bases that occur in developed mathematics. But the
+inertia to be overcome in the recognition of the base idea is nowhere
+more obvious than in the retention by the comparatively developed
+Babylonian system of a second base of 60 to supplement the decimal one
+for smaller numbers. Among the American Indians (Eells, _loc. cit._) the
+system of bases used varies from the cumbersome binary scale, that
+exercised such a fascination over Leibniz (_Opera_, _III_, p. 346),
+through the rare ternary, and the more common quarternary to the
+"natural" quinary, decimal, and vigesimal systems derived from the
+use of the fingers and toes in counting. The achievement of a number
+base and number words, however, does not always open the way to
+further mathematical development. Only too often a complexity of
+expression is involved that almost immediately cuts off further
+progress. Thus the Youcos of the Amazon cannot get beyond the number
+three, for the simplest expression for the idea in their language is
+"pzettarrarorincoaroac" (Conant, _loc. cit._, pp. 145, 83, 53). Such
+names as "99, tongo solo manani nun solo manani" (i.e., 10, understood,
+5 plus 4 times, and 5 plus 4) of the Soussous of Sierra Leone; "399,
+caxtolli onnauh poalli ipan caxtolli onnaui" (15 plus 4 times 20 plus 15
+plus 4) of the Aztec; "29, wick a chimen ne nompah sam pah nep e chu
+wink a" (Sioux), make it easy to understand the proverb of the Yorubas
+of Abeokuta, "You may be very clever, but you can't tell 9 times 9."
+
+Almost contemporaneously with the beginnings of counting various
+auxiliary devices were introduced to help out the difficult task. In
+place of many men, notched sticks, knotted strings, pebbles, or finger
+pantomime were used. In the best form, these devices resulted in the
+abacus; indeed, it was not until after the introduction of arabic
+numerals and well into the Renaissance period that instrumental
+arithmetic gave way to graphical in Europe (D. E. Smith, _Rara
+Arithmetica_, under "Counters"). "In eastern Europe," say Smith and
+Mikami (_Japanese Mathematics_, pp. 18-19), "it"--the abacus--"has never
+been replaced, for the tschotue is used everywhere in Russia to-day, and
+when one passes over into Persia the same type of abacus is common in
+all the bazaars. In China the swan-pan is universally used for the
+purposes of computation, and in Japan the soroban is as strongly
+entrenched as it was before the invasion of western ideas."
+
+Given, then, the idea of counting, and a mechanical device to aid
+computation, it still remains necessary to obtain some notation in which
+to record results. At the early dawn of history the Egyptians seem to
+have been already possessed of number signs (cf. Cantor, _Gesch. de.
+Math._, p. 44) and the Phoenicians either wrote out their number words
+or used a few simple signs, vertical, horizontal, and oblique lines, a
+process which the Arabians perpetuated up to the beginning of the
+eleventh century (Fink, p. 15); the Greeks, as early as 600 B. C., used
+the initial letters of words for numbers. But speaking generally,
+historical beginnings of European number signs are too obscure to
+furnish us good material.
+
+Our Indians have few number symbols other than words, but when they
+occur (cf. Eells, _loc. cit._) they usually take the form of pictorial
+presentation of some counting device such as strokes, lines dotted to
+suggest a knotted cord, etc. Indeed, the smaller Roman numerals were
+probably but a pictorial representation of finger symbols. However, a
+beautiful concrete instance is furnished us in the Japanese mathematics
+(cf. Smith and Mikami, Ch. III). The earliest instrument of reckoning in
+Japan seems to have been the rod, Ch'eou, adapted from the Chinese under
+the name of Chikusaku (bamboo rods) about 600 A. D. At first relatively
+large (measuring rods?), they became reduced to about 12 cm., but from
+their tendency to roll were quickly replaced by the sangi (square
+prisms, about 7 mm. thick and 5 cm. long) and the number symbols were
+evidently derived from the use of these rods:
+
+                           _  __  ___  ____
+  |, ||, |||, ||||, |||||, |, ||, |||, ||||.
+
+For the sake of clearness, tens, hundreds, etc., were expressed in the
+even place by horizontal instead of vertical lines and vice versa; thus
+1267 would be formed
+
+         __
+  - || | ||.
+       -
+
+The rods were arranged on a sort of chessboard called the swan-pan. Much
+later the lines were transferred to paper, and a circle used to denote
+the vacant square. The use of squares, however, rendered it unnecessary
+to arrange the even places differently from the odd, so numbers like
+38057 came to be written
+
+  +-------+-------+-------+-------+------+
+  |       |  ___  |       |       |  __  |
+  |  |||  |  |||  |       | ||||| |  ||  |
+  |       |       |       |       |      |
+  +-------+-------+-------+-------+------+
+
+instead of
+
+  +-------+-------+-------+-------+------+
+  |       |       |       |       |      |
+  |       |       |       |   -   |      |
+  |       |   |   |       |   -   |  __  |
+  |  |||  |   -   |       |   -   |  ||  |
+  |       |   -   |       |   -   |      |
+  |       |   -   |       |   -   |      |
+  |       |       |       |       |      |
+  +-------+-------+-------+-------+------+
+
+as in the earlier notation.
+
+Somewhere in the course of these early mathematical activities the
+process has changed from the more or less spontaneous operating that led
+primitive man to the first enunciation of arithmetical ideas, and has
+become a self-conscious striving for the solution of problems. This
+change had already taken place before the historical origins of
+arithmetic are met. Thus, the treatise of Ahmes (2000 B. C.) contains
+the curious problem: 7 persons each have 7 cats; each cat eats 7 mice;
+each mouse eats 7 ears of barley; from each ear 7 measures of corn may
+grow; how much grain has been saved? Such problems are, however, half
+play, as appears in a Leonardo of Pisa version some 3000 years later: 7
+old women go to Rome; each woman has 7 mules; each mule, 7 sacks; each
+sack contains 7 loaves; with each loaf are 7 knives; each knife is in 7
+sheaths. Similarly in Diophantus' epitaph (330 A. D.): "Diophantus
+passed 1/6 of his life in childhood, 1/12 in youth, and 1/7 more as a
+bachelor; 5 years after his marriage, was born a son who died 4 years
+before his father at 1/2 his age." Often among peoples such puzzles were
+a favorite social amusement. Thus Braymagupta (628 A. D.) reads, "These
+problems are proposed simply for pleasure; the wise man can invent a
+thousand others, or he can solve the problems of others by the rules
+given here. As the sun eclipses the stars by its brilliancy, so the man
+of knowledge will eclipse the fame of others in assemblies of the people
+if he proposes algebraic problems, and still more if he solves them"
+(Cajori, _Hist. of Math._, p. 92).
+
+The limitation of these early methods is that the notation merely
+records and does not aid computation. And this is true even of such a
+highly developed system as was in use among the Romans. If the reader is
+unconvinced, let him attempt some such problem as the multiplication of
+CCCXVI by CCCCLXVIII, expressing it and carrying it through in Roman
+numerals, and he will long for the abacus to assist his labors. It was
+the positional arithmetic of the Arabians, of which the origins are
+obscure, that made possible the development of modern technique. Of this
+discovery, or rediscovery from the Hindoos, together with the zero
+symbol, Cajori (_Hist. of Math._, p. 11) has said "of all mathematical
+discoveries, no one has contributed more to the general progress of
+intelligence than this." The notation no longer merely records results,
+but now assists in performing operations.
+
+The origins of geometry are even more obscure than those of arithmetic.
+Not only is geometry as highly developed as arithmetic when it first
+appears in occidental civilization, but, in addition, the problems of
+primitive peoples seem to have been such that they have developed no
+geometrical formulae striking enough to be recorded by investigators, so
+far as I have been able to discover. But just as the commercial life of
+the Phoenicians early forced them self-consciously to develop
+arithmetical calculation, so environmental conditions seem to have
+forced upon the Egyptians a need for geometrical considerations.
+
+It is almost platitudinous to quote Herodotus' remark that the invention
+of geometry was necessary because of the floods of the Nile, which
+washed away the boundaries and changed the contours of the fields. And
+as Proclus Diadochus adds (_Procli Diadochi, in primum Euclidis
+elementorum librum commentarii_--quoted Cantor, I, p. 125): "It is not
+surprising that the discovery of this as well as other sciences has
+sprung from need, because everything in the process of beginning
+proceeds from the incomplete to the complete. There takes place a
+suitable transition from sensible perception to thoughtful consideration
+and rational knowledge. Just as with the Phoenicians, for the sake of
+business and commerce, an exact knowledge of numbers had its beginning,
+so with the Egyptians, for the above-mentioned reasons, was geometry
+contrived."
+
+The earliest Egyptian mathematical writing that we know is that of Ahmes
+(2000 B. C.), but long before this the mural decorations of the temple
+wall involved many figures, the construction of which involved a certain
+amount of working knowledge of such operations as may be performed with
+the aid of a ruler and compass. The fact that these operations did not
+earlier lead to geometry, as ruler and compass work seems to have
+done in Japan in the nineteenth century (Smith and Mikami, index,
+"Geometry"), is probably due to the stage at which the development of
+Egyptian intelligence had arrived, feebly advanced on the road to higher
+abstract thinking. It is everywhere characteristic of Egyptian genius
+that little purely intellectual curiosity is shown. Even astronomical
+knowledge was limited to those determinations which had religious or
+magically practical significance, and its arithmetic and geometry never
+escaped these bounds as with the more imaginative Pythagoreans, where
+mystical interpretation seems to have been a consequence of rather than
+a stimulus to investigation. An old Egyptian treatise reads (Cantor, p.
+63): "I hold the wooden pin (Nebi) and the handle of the mallet (semes),
+I hold the line in concurrence with the Goddess S[a.]fech. My glance
+follows the course of the stars. When my eye comes to the constellation
+of the great bear and the time of the number of the hour determined by
+me is fulfilled, I place the corner of the temple." This incantation
+method could hardly advance intelligence; but the methods of practical
+measuring were more effective. Here the rather happy device of using
+knotted cords, carried about by the Harpedonapts, or cord stretchers,
+was of some moment. Especially, the fact that the lengths 3, 4, and 5,
+brought into triangular form, served for an interesting connection
+between arithmetic and the right triangle, was not a little gain, later
+making possible the discovery of the Pythagorean theorem, although in
+Egypt the theoretical properties of the triangle were never developed.
+The triangle obviously must have been practically considered by the
+decorators of the temple and its builders, but the cord stretchers
+rendered clear its arithmetical significance. However, Ahmes' "Rules for
+attaining the knowledge of all dark things ... all secrets that are
+contained in objects" (Cantor, _loc. cit._, p. 22) contains merely a
+mixture of all sorts of mathematical information of a practical
+nature,--"rules for making a round fruit house," "rules for measuring
+fields," "rules for making an ornament," etc., but hardly a word of
+arithmetical and geometrical processes in themselves, unless it be
+certain devices for writing fractions and the like.
+
+
+II
+
+THE PROGRESS OF SELF-CONSCIOUS THEORY
+
+A characteristic of Greek social life is responsible both for the next
+phase of the development of mathematical thought and for the
+misapprehension of its nature by so many moderns. "When Archytas and
+Menaechmus employed mechanical instruments for solving certain
+geometrical problems, 'Plato,' says Plutarch, 'inveighed against them
+with great indignation and persistence as destroying and perverting all
+the good that there is in geometry; for the method absconds from
+incorporeal and intellectual or sensible things, and besides employs
+again such bodies as require much vulgar handicraft: in this way
+mechanics was dissimilated and expelled from geometry, and being for a
+long time looked down upon by philosophy, became one of the arts of
+war.' In fact, manual labor was looked down upon by the Greeks, and a
+sharp distinction was drawn between the slaves who performed bodily work
+and really observed nature, and the leisured upper classes who
+speculated, and often only knew nature by hearsay. This explains much of
+the naive dreamy and hazy character of ancient natural science. Only
+seldom did the impulse to make experiments for oneself break through;
+but when it did, a great progress resulted, as was the case of Archytas
+and Archimedes. Archimedes, like Plato, held that it was undesirable for
+a philosopher to seek to apply the results of science to any practical
+use; but, whatever might have been his view of what ought to be in the
+case, he did actually introduce a large number of new inventions"
+(Jourdain, _The Nature of Mathematics_, pp. 18-19). Following the Greek
+lead, certain empirically minded modern thinkers construe geometry
+wholly from an intellectual point of view. History is read by them as
+establishing indubitably the proposition that mathematics is a matter of
+purely intellectual operations. But by so construing it, they have, in
+geometry, remembered solely the measuring and forgotten the land, and,
+in arithmetic, remembered the counting and forgotten the things
+counted.
+
+Arithmetic experienced little immediate gain from its new association
+with geometry, which was destined to be of momentous import in its
+latter history, beyond the discovery of irrationals (which, however,
+were for centuries not accepted as numbers), and the establishment of
+the problem of root-taking by its association with the square, and
+interest in negative numbers.
+
+The Greeks had only subtracted smaller numbers from larger, but the
+Arabs began to generalize the process and had some acquaintance with
+negative results, but it was difficult for them to see that these
+results might really have significance. N. Chuquet, in the fifteenth
+century, seems to have been the first to interpret the negative numbers,
+but he remained a long time without imitators. Michael Stifel, in the
+sixteenth century, still calls them "Numeri absurdi" as over against the
+"Numeri veri." However, their geometrical interpretation was not
+difficult, and they soon won their way into good standing. But the case
+of the imaginary is more striking. The need for it was first felt when
+it was seen that negative numbers have no square roots. Chuquet had
+dealt with second-degree equations involving the roots of negative
+numbers in 1484, but says these numbers are "impossible," and Descartes
+(_Geom._, 1637) first uses the word "imaginary" to denote them. Their
+introduction is due to the Italian algebrists of the sixteenth century.
+They knew that the real roots of certain algebraic equations of the
+third degree are represented as results of operations effected upon
+"impossible" numbers of the form _a_ + _b_ sqrt{-1} (where _a_ and _b_ are
+real numbers) without it being possible in general to find an algebraic
+expression for the roots containing only real numbers. Cardan calculated
+with these "impossibles," using them to get real results
+[(5 + sqrt{-15}) (5 - sqrt{-15}) = 25 - (-15) = 40], but adds that it is a
+"quantitas quae vere est sophistica" and that the calculus itself "adeo
+est subtilis ut est inutilis." In 1629, Girard announced the theorem
+that every complete algebraic equation admits of as many roots, real or
+imaginary, as there are units in its degree, but Gauss first proved this
+in 1799, and finally, in his _Theory of Complex Quantity_, in 1831.
+
+Geometry, however, among the Greeks passed into a stage of abstraction
+in which lines, planes, etc., in the sense in which they are understood
+in our elementary texts, took the place of actually measured surfaces,
+and also took on the deductive form of presentation that has served as a
+model for all mathematical presentation since Euclid. Mensuration
+smacked too much of the exchange, and before the time of Archimedes is
+practically wholly absent. Even such theorems as "that the area of a
+triangle equals half the product of its base and its altitude" is
+foreign to Euclid (cf. Cajori, p. 39). Lines were merely directions, and
+points limitations from which one worked. But there was still dependence
+upon the things that one measures. Euclid's elements, "when examined in
+the light of strict mathematical logic, ... has been pronounced by C. S.
+Peirce to be 'Riddled with fallacies'" (Cajori, p. 37). Not logic, but
+observation of the figures drawn, that is, concrete symbolization of
+the processes indicated, saves Euclid from error.
+
+Roman practical geometry seems to have come from the Etruscans, but the
+Roman here is as little inventive as in his arithmetical ventures,
+although the latter were stimulated somewhat by problems of inheritance
+and interest reckoning. Indeed, before the entrance of Arabic learning
+into Europe and the translation of Euclid from the Arabic in 1120, there
+is little or no advance over the Egyptian geometry of 600 B. C. Even the
+universities neglected mathematics. At Paris "in 1336 a rule was
+introduced that no student should take a degree without attending
+lectures on mathematics, and from a commentary on the first six books of
+Euclid, dated 1536, it appears that candidates for the degree of A. M.
+had to give an oath that they had attended lectures on these books.
+Examinations, when held at all, probably did not extend beyond the first
+book, as is shown by the nickname 'magister matheseos' applied to the
+_Theorem of Pythagoras_, the last in the first book.... At Oxford, in
+the middle of the fifteenth century, the first two books of Euclid were
+read" (Cajori, _loc. cit._, p. 136). But later geometry dropped out and
+not till 1619 was a professorship of geometry instituted at Oxford.
+Roger Bacon speaks of Euclid's fifth proposition as "elefuga," and it
+also gets the name of "pons asinorum" from its point of transition to
+higher learning. As late as the fourteenth century an English manuscript
+begins "Nowe sues here a Tretis of Geometri whereby you may knowe the
+hegte, depnes, and the brede of most what erthely thynges."
+
+The first significant turning-point lies in the geometry of Descartes.
+Viete (1540-1603) and others had already applied algebra to geometry,
+but Descartes, by means of cooerdinate representation, established the
+idea of motion in geometry in a fashion destined to react most
+fruitfully on algebra, and through this, on arithmetic, as well as
+enormously to increase the scope of geometry. These discoveries are not,
+however, of first moment for our problem, for the ideas of mathematical
+entities remain throughout them the generalized processes that had
+appeared in Greece. It is worth noting, however, that in England
+mechanics has always been taught as an experimental science, while on
+the Continent it has been expanded deductively, as a development of _a
+priori_ principles.
+
+
+III
+
+CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT IN ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY
+
+To develop the complete history of arithmetic and geometry would be a
+task quite beyond the limits of this paper, and of the writer's
+knowledge. In arithmetic we were able to observe a stage in which
+spontaneous behavior led to the invention of number names and methods of
+counting. Then, by certain speculative and "play" impulses, there arose
+elementary arithmetical problems which began to be of interest in
+themselves. Geometry here also comes into consideration, and, in
+connection with positional number symbols, begin those interactions
+between arithmetic and geometry that result in the forms of our
+contemporary mathematics. The complex quantities represented by number
+symbols are no longer merely the necessary results of analyzing
+commercial relations or practical measurements, and geometry is no
+longer directly based upon the intuitively given line, point, and plane.
+If number relations are to be expressed in terms of empirical spatial
+positions, it is necessary to construct many imaginary surfaces, as is
+done by Riemann in his theory of functions, a construction representing
+the type of imagination which Poincare has called the intuitional in
+contradistinction to the logical (_Value of Science_, Ch. I). And
+geometry has not only been led to the construction of many non-Euclidian
+spaces, but has even, with Peano and his school, been freed from the
+bonds of any necessary spatial interpretation whatsoever.
+
+To trace in concrete detail the attainment of modern refinements of
+number theory would likewise exhibit nothing new in the building up of
+mathematical intelligence. We should find, here, a process carried out
+without thought of the consequences, there, an analogy suggesting an
+operation that might lead us beyond a difficulty that had blocked
+progress; here, a play interest leading to a combination of symbols out
+of which a new idea has sprung; there, a painstaking and methodical
+effort to overcome a difficulty recognized from the start. It is rather
+for us now to ask what it is that has been attained by these means, to
+inquire finally what are those things called "number" and "line" in the
+broad sense in which the terms are now used.
+
+In so far as the cardinal number at least is concerned, the answer
+generally accepted by Dedekind, Peano, Russell, and such writers is
+this: the number is a "class of similar classes" (Whitehead and Russell,
+_Prin. Math._, Vol. II, p. 4). To the interpretation of this answer, Mr.
+Russell, the most self-consciously philosophical of these
+mathematicians, has devoted his full dialectic skill. The definition has
+at least the merit of being free from certain arbitrary psychologizing
+that has vitiated many earlier attempts at the problem. Mr. Russell
+claims for it "(1) that the formal properties which we expect cardinal
+numbers to have result from it; (2) that unless we adopt this definition
+or some more complicated and practically equivalent definition, it is
+necessary to regard the cardinal number of a class as indefinable"
+(_loc. cit._, p. 4). That the definition's terms, however, are not
+without obscurity appears in Mr. Russell's struggles with the zigzag
+theory, the no-class theory, etc., and finally in his taking refuge in
+the theory of "logical types" (_loc. cit._, Vol. III, Part V. E.),
+whereby the contradiction that subverted Frege and drove Mr. Russell
+from the standpoint of the _Principles of Mathematics_ is finally
+overcome.
+
+The second of Mr. Russell's claims for his definition adds nothing to
+the first, for it merely asserts that unless we adopt some definition of
+the cardinal number from which its formal properties result, number is
+undefined. Any such definition would be, _ipso facto_, a practical
+equivalent of the first. We need only consider whether or not the
+formal properties of numbers clearly follow from this definition.
+
+Mr. Russell's own experience makes us hesitate. When he first adopted
+this definition from Frege, he was led to make the inference that the
+class of all possible classes might furnish a type for a greatest
+cardinal number. But this led to nothing but paradox and contradiction.
+The obvious conclusion was that something was wrong with the concept of
+class, and the obvious way out was to deny the possibility of any such
+all-inclusive class. Just why there should be such limitation, except
+that it enables one to escape the contradiction, is not clear from Mr.
+Russell's analysis (cf. Brown, "The Logic of Mr. Russell," _Journ. of
+Phil., Psych., and Sci. Meth._, Vol. VIII, No. 4, pp. 85-89).
+Furthermore, to pass to the theory of types on this ground is to give up
+the value of the first claim for the definition (quoted above), since
+the formal properties of numbers now merely follow from the definition
+because the terms of the definition are reinterpreted from the
+properties of number, so that these properties will follow from it. The
+definition has become circular.
+
+The real difficulty lies in the concept of the class. Dogmatic realism
+is prone to find here an entity for which, as it is obviously not a
+physical thing, a home must be provided in some region of "being." Hence
+arises the realm of subsistence, as for Plato the world of facts
+duplicated itself in a world of ideas. But the subsistent realm of the
+mathematician is even more astounding than the ideal realm of Plato, for
+the latter world is a prototype of the world of things, while the world
+of the mathematician is peopled by all sorts of entities that never were
+on land or sea. The transfinite numbers of Cantor have, without doubt,
+a definite mathematical meaning, but they have no known representatives
+in the world of things, nor in the imagination of man, and in spite of
+the efforts of philosophers it may even be doubted whether an entity
+correlative to the mathematical infinite has ever been or can ever be
+specified.
+
+Mr. Russell now teaches that "classes are merely symbolic" (_Sci. Meth.
+in Phil._, p. 208), but this expression still needs elucidation. It
+does, to be sure, avoid the earlier difficulty of admitting "new and
+mysterious metaphysical entities" (_loc. cit._, p. 204), but the
+"feeling of oddity" that accompanies it seems not without significance.
+What can be meant by a merely symbolic class of similar classes
+themselves merely symbolical? I do not know, unless it is that we are to
+throw overboard the effort aimed at arbitrary and creative definition
+and proceed in simple inductive and interpretative fashion. With classes
+as entities abandoned, we are left, until we have passed to a new point
+of view as to arithmetical entities, in the position of the intelligent
+ignoramus who defined a stock market operation as buying what you can't
+get with money you never had, and selling what you never owned for more
+than it was ever worth.
+
+The situation seems to be that we are now face to face with new
+generalizations. Just as number symbols arose to denote operations gone
+through in counting things when attention is diverted from the
+particular characteristics of the things counted, and remained a symbol
+for those operations with things, so now we are becoming self-conscious
+of the character of the operations we have been performing and are
+developing new symbols to express possible operations with operations.
+The infinity of the number series expresses the fact that it is possible
+to continue the enumerating process indefinitely, and when we are asked
+by certain mathematicians to practise ourselves in such thoughts as that
+for infinite series a proper part can be the equal of the whole, where
+equality is defined through the establishment of one-one correspondence,
+we are really merely informed that among the group of symbols used to
+denote the concrete steps of an ever open counting process are groups of
+symbols that can be used to indicate operations that are of the same
+type as the given one in so far as the characteristic of being an open
+series is concerned. If there were anywhere an infinity of things to
+count, an unintelligible supposition, it would by no means be true that
+any selection of things from that series would be the equivalent of all
+things in the series, except in so far as equivalence meant that they
+could be arranged in the same type of series as that from which they
+were drawn.
+
+Similarly the mathematical conception of the continuum is nothing but a
+formulation of the manner in which the cuts of a line or the numbers of
+a continuous series must be chosen so that there shall remain no
+possible cut or number of which the choice is not indicated.
+Correspondence is reached between elements of such series when the
+corresponding elements can be reached by an identical process. It seems
+to me, however, a mistake to _identify_ the number continuum with the
+linear continuum, for the latter must include the irrational numbers,
+whereas the irrational number can never represent a spatial position in
+a series. For example, the sqrt{2} is by nature a decimal involving an
+infinite, i.e., an ever increasing, number of digits to express it and,
+by virtue of the infinity of these digits, they can never be looked upon
+as all given. It is then truly a number, for it expresses a genuine
+numerical operation, but it is not a position, for it cannot be a
+determinate magnitude but merely a quantity approaching a determinate
+magnitude as closely as one may please. That is, without its complete
+expression, which would be analogous to the self-contradictory task of
+finding a greatest cardinal number, there can be no cut in the line
+which is symbolized by it. But the operations of translating algebraic
+expressions into geometrical ones and vice versa (operations which are
+so important in physical investigations) are facilitated by the notion
+of a one to one correspondence between number and space.
+
+When we pass to the transfinite numbers, we have nothing in the Alephs
+but the symbols of certain groupings of operations expressible in
+ordinary number series. And the many forms of numbers are all simply the
+result of recognizing value in naming definite groups of operations of a
+lower level, which may itself be a complication of processes indicated
+by the simple numerical signs. To create such symbols is by no means
+illegitimate and no paradox results in any forms as long as we remember
+that our numbers are not things but are signs of operations that may be
+performed directly upon things or upon other operations.
+
+For example, let us consider such a symbol as sqrt{-5}. -5 signifies
+the totality of a counting process carried on in an opposite sense from
+that denoted by +5. To take the square root is to symbolize a number,
+the totality of an operation, such that when the operation denoted by
+multiplying it by itself is performed the result is 5. Consequently the
+sqrt{-5} is merely the symbol of these processes combined in such a
+way that the whole operation is to be considered as opposite in some
+sense to that denoted by sqrt{5}. Hence, an easy method for the
+representation of such imaginaries is based on the principle of analytic
+geometry and a system of co-ordinates.
+
+The nature of this last generalization of mathematics is well shown by
+Mr. Whitehead in his monumental _Universal Algebra_. The work begins
+with the definition of a calculus as "The art of manipulating
+substitutive signs according to fixed rules, and the deduction therefrom
+of true propositions" (_loc. cit._, p. 4). The deduction itself is
+really a manipulation according to rules, and the truth consists
+essentially in the results being actually derived from the premises
+according to rule. Following Stout, substitutive signs are characterized
+thus: "a word is an instrument for thinking about the meaning which it
+expresses; a substitutive sign is a means of not thinking about the
+meaning which it symbolizes." Mathematical symbols have, then, become
+substitutive signs. But this is only possible because they were at an
+early stage of their history expressive signs, and the laws which
+connected them were derived from the relations of the things for which
+they stood. First it became possible to forget the things in their
+concreteness, and now they have become mere terms for the relations that
+had been generalized between them. Consequently, the things forgotten
+and the terms treated as mere elements of a relational complex, it is
+possible to state such relational complexes with the utmost freedom. But
+this does not mean that mathematics can be created in a purely arbitrary
+fashion. The mark of its origin is upon it in the need of exhibiting
+some existing situation through which the non-contradictory character of
+its postulates can be verified. The real advantage of the generalization
+is that of all generalizations in science, namely, that by looking away
+from practical applications (as appears in a historical survey) results
+are frequently obtained that would never have been attained if our labor
+had been consciously limited merely to those problems where the
+advantages of a solution were obvious. So the most fantastic forms of
+mathematics, which themselves seem to bear no relation to actual
+phenomena, just because the relations involved in them are the relations
+that have been derived from dealing with an actual world, may contribute
+to the solutions of problems in other forms of calculus, or even to the
+creation of new forms of mathematics. And these new forms may stand in a
+more intimate connection with aspects of the real world than the
+original mathematics.
+
+In 1836-39 there appeared in the _Gelehrte Schriften der Universitaet
+Kasan_, Lobatchewsky's epoch-making "New Elements of Geometry, with a
+Complete Theory of Parallels." After proving that "if a straight line
+falling on two other straight lines make the alternate angles equal to
+one another, the two straight lines shall be parallel to one another,"
+Euclid, finding himself unable to prove that in every other case they
+were not parallel, assumed it in an axiom. But it had never seemed
+obvious. Lobatchewsky's system amounted merely to developing a geometry
+on the basis of the contradictory axiom, that through a point outside a
+line an indefinite number of lines can be drawn, no one of which shall
+cut a given line in that plane. In 1832-33, similar results were
+attained by Johann Bolyai in an appendix to his father's "_Tentamen
+juventutem studiosam in elementa matheseosos purae ... introducendi_"
+entitled "The Science of Absolute Space." In 1824 the dissertation of
+Riemann, under Gauss, introduced the idea of an _n_-ply extended
+magnitude, or a study of _n_-dimensional manifolds and a new road was
+opened for mathematical intelligence.
+
+At first this new knowledge suggested all sorts of metaphysical
+hypotheses. If it is possible to build geometries of _n_-dimensions or
+geometries in which the axiom of parallels is no longer true, why may it
+not be that the space in which we make our measurements and on which we
+base our mechanics is some one of these "non-Euclidian" spaces? And
+indeed many experiments were conducted in search of some clue that this
+might be the case. Such experiments in relation to "curved spaces"
+seemed particularly alluring, but all have turned out to be fruitless in
+results. Failure leads to investigation of the causes of failure. If our
+space had been some one of these spaces how would it have been possible
+for us to know this fact? The traditional definition of a straight line
+has never been satisfactory from a physical point of view. To define it
+as the shortest distance between two points is to introduce the idea of
+distance, and the idea of distance itself has no meaning without the
+idea of straight line, and so the definition moves in a vicious circle.
+On the metaphysical side, Lotze (_Metaphysik_, p. 249) and others (Merz,
+_History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century_, Vol. II, p.
+716) criticized these attempts, on the whole justly, but the best
+interpretation of the situation has been given by Poincare.
+
+Two lines of thought now lead to a recasting of our conceptions of the
+fundamental notions of geometry. On the one hand, that very
+investigation of postulates that had led to the discovery of the
+apparently strange non-Euclidian geometries was easily continued to an
+investigation of the simplest basis on which a geometry could be
+founded. Then by reaction it was continued with similar methods in
+dealing with algebra, and other forms of analysis, with the result that
+conceptions of mathematical entities have gradually emerged that
+represent a new stage of abstraction in the evolution of mathematics,
+soon to be discussed as the dominating conceptions in contemporary
+thought. On the other hand, there also developed the problem of the
+relations of these geometrical worlds to one another, which has been
+primarily significant in helping to clear up the relations of
+mathematics in its "pure" and "applied" forms.
+
+Geometry passed through a stage of abstraction like that examined in
+connection with arithmetic. Beginning with the discovery of
+non-Euclidian geometry, it has been becoming more and more evident that
+a line need not be a name for an aspect of a physical object such as the
+ridge-pole line of a house and the like, nor even for the more abstract
+mechanical characteristic of direction of movement;--although the
+persistency with which intuitionally minded geometers have sought to
+adapt such illustrations to their needs has somewhat obscured this fact.
+However, even a cursory examination of a modern treatise on geometry
+makes clear what has taken place. For example, Professor Hilbert begins
+his _Grundlagen der Geometrie_, not with definition of points, lines,
+and planes, but with the assumption of three different systems of things
+(Dinge) of which the first, called points, are denoted A, B, C, etc.,
+second, called straight lines (Gerade), are denoted a, b, c, etc., and
+the third, called planes, are denoted by [Greek: alpha], [Greek: beta],
+[Greek: gamma], etc. The relations between these things then receive
+"genaue und vollstaendige Beschreibung" through the axioms of the
+geometry. And the fact that these "things" are called points, lines, and
+planes is not to give to them any of the connotations ordinarily
+associated with these words further than are determined by the axiom
+groups that follow. Indeed, other geometers are even more explicit on
+this point. Thus for Peano (_I Principii di Geometria_, 1889) the line
+is a mere class of entities, the relations amongst which are no longer
+concrete relations but types of relations. The plane is a class of
+classes of entities, etc. And an almost unlimited number of examples,
+about which the theorems of the geometry will express truths, can be
+exhibited, not one of which has any close resemblance to spatial facts
+in the ordinary sense.
+
+Philosophers, it seems to me, have been slow to recognize the
+significance of the step involved in this last phase of mathematical
+thought. We have been so schooled in an arbitrary distinction between
+relations and concepts, that while long familiar with general ideas of
+concepts, we are not familiar with generalized ideas of relations. Yet
+this is exactly what mathematics is everywhere presenting. A transition
+has been made from relations to types of relations, so that instead of
+speaking in terms of quantitative, spatial and temporal relations,
+mathematicians can now talk in terms of symmetrical, asymmetrical,
+transitive, intransitive relational types and the like. These present,
+however, nothing but the empirical character that is common to such
+relations as that of father and son; debtor and creditor; master and
+servant; a is to the left of b, b of c; c of d; a is older than b, b
+than c, c than d, etc. Hence this is not abandonment of experience but a
+generalization of it, which results in a calculus potentially applicable
+not only to it but also to other subject-matter of thought. Indeed, if
+it were not for the possibility of this generalization, the almost
+unlimited applicability of diagrams, so useful in the classroom, to
+illustrate everything from the nature of reality to the categorical
+imperative, as well as to the more technical usages of the psychological
+and social sciences, would not be understandable.
+
+It would be a paradox, however, if starting out from processes of
+counting and measuring, generalizations had been attained that no longer
+had significance for counting or measuring, and the non-Euclidian
+hyper-dimensional geometries seem at first to present this paradox. But,
+as the outcome of our second line of thought proves, this is not the
+case. The investigation of the relations of different geometrical
+systems to each other has shown (cf. Brown, "The Work of H. Poincare,"
+_Journ. of Phil., Psy., and Sci. Meth._, Vol. XI, No. 9, p. 229) that
+these different systems have a correspondence with one another so that
+for any theorem stated in one of them there is a corresponding theorem
+that can be stated in another. In other words, given any factual
+situation that can be stated in Euclidian geometry, the aspect treated
+as a straight line in the Euclidian exposition will be treated as a
+curve in the non-Euclidian, and a situation treated as three-dimensional
+by Euclid's methods can be treated as of any number of dimensions when
+the proper fundamental element is chosen, and vice versa, although of
+course the element will not be the line or plane in our empirical usage
+of the term. This is what Poincare means by saying that our geometry is
+a free choice, but not arbitrary (_The Value of Science_, Pt. III, Ch.
+X, Sec. 3), for there are many limitations imposed by fact upon the
+choice, and usually there is some clear indication of convenience as to
+the system chosen, based on the fundamental ideal of simplicity.
+
+It is evident, then, that geometry and arithmetic have been drawing
+closer together, and that to-day the distinction between them is
+somewhat hard to maintain. The older arithmetic had limited itself
+largely to the study of the relations involved in serial orders as
+suggested by counting, whereas geometry had concerned itself primarily
+with the relations of groups of such series to each other when the
+series, or groups of series, are represented as lines or planes. But
+partly by interaction in analytic geometry, and partly in the
+generalization of their own methods, both have come to recognize the
+fundamental character of the relations involved in their thought, and
+arithmetic, through the complex number and the algebraic unknown
+quantities, has come to consider more complex serial types, while
+geometry has approached the analysis of its series through interaction
+with number theory. For both, the content of their entities and the
+relations involved have been brought to a minimum. And this is true even
+of such apparently essentially intuitional fields as projective
+geometry, where entities can be substituted for directional lines and
+the axioms be turned into relational postulates governing their
+configurations.
+
+Nevertheless, geometry like arithmetic, has remained true to the need
+that gave it initial impulse. As in the beginning it was only a method
+of dealing with a concrete situation, so in the end it is nothing but
+such a method, although, as in the case of arithmetic, from ever closer
+contact with the situation in question, it has been led, by refinements
+that thoughtful and continual contact bring, to dissect that situation
+and give heed to aspects of it which were undreamed of at the initial
+moment. In a sense, then, there are no such things as mathematical
+entities, as scholastic realism would conceive them. And yet,
+mathematics is not dealing with unrealities, for it is everywhere
+concerned with real rational types and systems where such types may be
+exemplified. Or we can say in a purely practical way that mathematical
+entities are constituted by their relations, but this phrase cannot here
+be interpreted in the Hegelian ontological sense in which it has played
+so great and so pernicious a part in contemporary philosophy. Such
+metaphysical interpretation and its consequences are the basis of
+paradoxical absolutisms, such as that arrived at by Professor Royce
+(_World and the Individual_, Vol. II, Supplementary Essay). The peculiar
+character of abstract or pure mathematics seems to be that its own
+operations on a lower level constitute material which serves for the
+subject-matter with which its later investigations deal. But mathematics
+is, after all, not fundamentally different from the other sciences. The
+concepts of all sciences alike constitute a special language peculiarly
+adapted for dealing with certain experience adjustments, and the
+differences in the development of the different sciences merely express
+different degrees of success with which such languages have been
+formulated with respect to making it possible to predict concerning not
+yet realized situations. Some sciences are still seeking their terms and
+fundamental concepts, others are formulating their first "grammar," and
+mathematics, still inadequate, yearly gains both in vocabulary and
+flexibility.
+
+But if we are to conceive mathematical entities as mere terminal points
+in a relational system, it is necessary that we should become clear as
+to just what is meant by relation, and what is the connection between
+relations and quantities. Modern thought has shown a strong tendency to
+insist, somewhat arbitrarily, on the "internal" or "external" character
+of relations. The former emphasis has been primarily associated with
+idealistic ontology, and has often brought with it complex dialectic
+questions as to the identity of an individual thing in passing from one
+relational situation to another. The latter insistence has meant
+primarily that things do not change with changing relations to other
+things. It has, however, often implied the independent existence, in
+some curiously metaphysical state, of relations that are not relating
+anything, and is hardly less paradoxical than the older view. In the
+field of physical phenomena, it seems to triumph, while the facts of
+social life, on the other hand, lend some countenance to the view of the
+"internalists." Like many such discussions, the best way around them is
+to forget their arguments, and turn to a fresh and independent
+investigation of the facts in question.
+
+
+IV
+
+THINGS, RELATIONS, AND QUANTITIES
+
+As I write, the way is paved for me by Professor Cohen (_Journ. of
+Phil., Psy., and Sci. Meth._, Vol. XI, No. 23, Nov. 5, 1914, pp.
+623-24), who outlines a theory of relations closely allied to that which
+I have in mind. Professor Cohen writes: "Like the distinction between
+primary and secondary qualities, the distinction between qualities and
+relations seems to me a shifting one because the 'nature' of a thing
+changes as the thing shifts from one context to another.... To
+Professors Montague and Lovejoy the 'thing' is like an old-fashioned
+landowner and the qualities are its immemorial private possessions. A
+thing may enter into commercial relations with others, but these
+relations are extrinsic. It never parts with its patrimony. To me, the
+'nature' of a thing seems not to be so private or fixed. It may consist
+entirely of bonds, stocks, franchises, and other ways in which public
+credit or the right to certain transactions is represented.... At any
+rate, relations or transactions may be regarded as wider or more primary
+than qualities or possessions. The latter may be defined as internal
+relations, that is, relations _within_ the system that constitutes the
+'thing.' The nature of a thing contains an essence, i.e., a group of
+characteristics which, in any given system or context, remain invariant,
+so that if these are changed the things drop out of our system ... but
+the same thing may present different essences in different contexts. As
+a thing shifts from one context to another, it acquires new relations
+and drops old ones, and in all transformations there is a change or
+readjustment of the line between the internal relations which constitute
+the essence and the external relations which are outside the inner
+circle...."
+
+Before continuing, however, I wish to make certain interpretations of
+these statements for which, of course, Professor Cohen is not
+responsible, and with which he would not be wholly in agreement. My
+general attitude will be shown by the first comment. Concepts are only
+means of denoting fragments of experience directly or indirectly given.
+If we then try to speak of a "nature of a thing" two interpretations of
+this expression are possible. The "thing" as such is only a bit of
+reality which some motive, that without undue extension of the term can
+be called practical, has led us to treat as more or less isolable from
+the rest of reality. Its nature, then, may consist of either its
+relations to other practically isolated realities or things, its actual
+effective value in its environment (and hence shift with the environment
+as Professor Cohen points out), or may consist of its essence, the
+"relations within the system," considered from the point of view of the
+potentialities implied by these for various environments. In the first
+sense the nature may easily change with change in environment, but if it
+changes in the second sense, as Professor Cohen remarks, it "drops out
+of our system." This I should interpret as meaning that we no longer
+have that thing, but some other thing selected from reality by a
+different purpose and point of view. I should not say with Professor
+Cohen that "the same thing may present different essences in different
+contexts." Every reality is more than one thing--man is an aggregate of
+atoms, a living being, an animal, and a thinker, and all of these are
+different things in essence, although having certain common
+characteristics. All attribution of "thingship" is abstraction, and all
+particular things may be said to participate in higher, i.e., more
+abstract, levels of thingship. Hence the effort to retain a thingship
+through a changing of essence seems to me but the echo of the motive
+that has so long deduced ontological monism from the logical fact that
+to conceive any two things is at least to throw them into a common
+universe of discourse. Consequently I should part company from Professor
+Cohen on this one point (which is perhaps largely a matter of
+definition, though here not unimportant) and distinguish merely the
+nature of a thing as _actual_ and as _potential_. Of these the former
+alone changes with the environment, while the latter changes only as the
+thing ceases to be by passing into some other thing. In other words, if
+the example does not do violence to Professor Cohen's thought, I can
+quite understand this paper as a stimulator of criticism, or as a means
+of kindling a fire. Professor Cohen would, I suspect, take this to mean
+that the same thing--this paper--must be looked upon as having two
+different essences in two different contexts, for "the same thing may
+possess two different essences in different contexts," whereas I should
+prefer to interpret the situation as meaning that there are before me
+three (and as many more as may be) different things having three
+different essences: first, the paper as a physical object having a
+considerable number of definite properties; second, written words,
+which are undoubtedly in one sense mere structural modifications of the
+physical object paper (i.e., coloring on it by ink, etc.), but whose
+reality for my purpose lies in the power of evoking ideas acquired by
+things as symbols (things, indeed, but things whose essence lies in the
+effects they produce upon a reader rather than in their physical
+character); and third, the chemical and combustion producing properties
+of the paper. Now it is simpler for me to consider the situation as one
+in which three things have a common point in thingship, i.e., an
+abstract element in common, than to think of "_a_ thing" shifting
+contexts and thereby changing its essence.
+
+But now my divergence from Professor Cohen becomes more marked. He
+continues with the following example (p. 622): "Our neighbor M. is tall,
+modest, cheerful, and we understand a banker. His tallness, modesty,
+cheerfulness, and the fact that he is a banker we usually regard as his
+qualities; the fact that he is our neighbor is a relation which he seems
+to bear to us. He may move his residence, cease to be our neighbor, and
+yet remain the same person with the same qualities. If, however, I
+become his tailor, his tallness becomes translated into certain
+relations of measurement; if I become his social companion, his modesty
+means that he will stand in certain social relations with me, etc." In
+other words, we are illustrating the doctrine that "qualities are
+reducible to relations" (cf. p. 623). This doctrine I cannot quite
+accept without modification, for I cannot tell what it means. Without
+any presuppositions as to subjectivity or consciousness (cf. p. 623,
+(a).) there are in the world as I know it certain colored objects--let
+the expression be taken naively to avoid idealistico-realistic
+discussion which is here irrelevant. Now it is as unintelligible to me
+that the red flowers and green leaves of the geraniums before my windows
+should be reducible to mere relations in any existential sense, as it
+would be to ask for the square root of their odor, though of course it
+is quite intelligible that the physical theory and predictions
+concerning green and red surfaces (or odors) should be stated in terms
+of atomic distances and ether vibrations of specific lengths. The
+scientific conception is, after all, nothing more than an indication of
+how to take hold of things and manipulate them to get foreseen results,
+and its entities are real things only in the sense that they are the
+practically effective keynotes of the complex reality. Accordingly,
+instead of reducing qualities to relations, it seems to me a much more
+intelligible view to consider relations as abstract ways of taking
+qualities in general, as qualities thought of in their function of
+bridging a gap or making a transition between two bits of reality that
+have previously been taken as separate things. Indeed, it is just
+because things are not ontologically independent beings (but rather
+selections from genuinely concatenated existence) that relations become
+important as indications of the practical significance of qualitative
+continuities which have been neglected in the prior isolation of the
+thing. Thus, instead of an existential world that is "a network of
+relations whose intersections are called terms" (p. 622), I find more
+intelligible a qualitatively heterogeneous reality that can be variously
+partitioned into things, and that can he abstractly replaced by systems
+of terms and relations that are adequate to symbolize their effective
+nature in particular respects. There is a tendency for certain
+attributes to maintain their concreteness (qualitativeness) in things,
+and for others to suggest the connection of things with other things,
+and so to emphasize a more abstract aspect of experience. Thus then
+arises a temporary and practical distinction that tends to be taken as
+opposition between qualities and relations. As spatial and temporal
+characteristics possess their chief practical value in the connection of
+things, so they, like Professor Cohen's neighbor-character, are
+ordinarily assumed abstractly as mere relations, while shapes, colors,
+etc., and Professor Cohen's "modesty, tallness, cheerfulness," may be
+thought of more easily without emphasis on other things and so tend to
+be accepted in their concreteness as qualities, but how slender is the
+dividing-line Professor Cohen's easy translation of these things into
+relations makes clear.
+
+Taken purely intellectualistically, there would be first a fiction of
+separation in what is really already continuous and then another fiction
+to bridge the gap thus made. This would, of course, be the falsification
+against which Bergson inveighs. But this interpretation is to
+misunderstand the nature of abstraction. Abstraction does not substitute
+an unreal for a real, but selects from reality a genuine characteristic
+of it which is adequate for a particular purpose. Thus to conceive time
+as a succession of moments is not to falsify time, but to select from
+processes going on in time a characteristic of them through which
+predictions can be made, which may be verified and turned into an
+instrument for the control of life or environment. A similar
+misunderstanding of abstraction, coupled with a fuller appreciation than
+Bergson evinces of the value of its results, has led to the
+neo-realistic insistence on turning abstractions into existent entities
+of which the real world is taken to be an organized composite aggregate.
+
+The practice of turning qualities into merely conscious entities has
+done much to obscure the status of scientific knowing, for it has left
+mere quantity as the only real character of the actual world. But once
+take a realistic standpoint, and quantity is no more real than quality.
+For primitive man, the qualitative aspect of reality is probably the
+first to which he gives heed, and it is only through efforts to get
+along with the world in its qualitative character that its quantitative
+side is forced upon the attention. Then so-called "exact" science is
+born, but it does not follow that qualities henceforth become
+insignificant. They are still the basis of all relations, even of those
+that are most directly construed as quantitative. Quality and quantity
+are only different aspects of the world which the status of our
+practical life leads us to take separately or abstractly. "Thing" is no
+less an abstraction, in which we disregard certain continuities with the
+rest of the world because we are so constituted that the demands of
+living make it expedient to do so. Things once given, further
+abstractions become possible, among which are those leading to
+mathematical thinking, in which higher abstractions are made, guided
+always by the "generating problem" (cf. Karl Schmidt, _Jour. of Phil.,
+Psy., and Sci. Meth._, Vol. X, No. 3, 1913, pp. 64-75).
+
+
+V
+
+THE FUNCTION OF THEORY IN SCIENCE
+
+The controlling factors for the progress of scientific thought are
+inventions that lead the scientist into closer contact with his data,
+and direct attention to complexities which would otherwise have escaped
+observation. This end is best fulfilled by conceiving entities that
+under some point of view are practically isolable from the context in
+which they occur. Only too often philosophic thought has confused this
+practical segregation with ontological separation, and so been obliged
+to introduce metaphysical and external relations to bring these entities
+together again in a real world, when in reality they have never been
+separated from one another and hence not from the real world.
+Furthermore, the conceptual model, built on the lines of a calculus of
+mathematics, is often considered the truth _par excellence_ after the
+analogy of a camera's portrait. Progress in science, however, shows that
+these models have to be continually rebuilt. Each seems to lead to
+further knowledge that necessitates its reconstruction, so that truth
+takes on an ideal value as an ultimate but unattained, if not
+unattainable, goal, while existing science becomes reduced to working
+hypotheses. From a positivistic point of view, however, the goal is not
+only practically unattainable, but it is irrational, for there seems to
+be every evidence that it expresses something contrary to the nature of
+the real. Yet scientific theory is not wholly arbitrary. We cannot
+construe nature as constituted of any sorts of entities that may suit
+our whim. And this is because science itself recognizes that its
+entities are not really isolated, but are endowed with all sorts of
+properties that serve to connect them with other entities. They are only
+symbols of critical points of reality which, conceived in a certain way,
+make the behavior of the whole intelligible. Indeed, the only
+significant sense in which they are true for the scientist is that they
+indicate real connections that might otherwise have been overlooked, and
+this is only possible from the fact that reality has the characteristics
+that they present and that, with their relations, they give an
+approximate presentation of what is actually presented just as a
+successful portrait painter considers the individuality of the eyes,
+nose, mouth, etc., although he does not imply that a face is compounded
+of these separate features as a house is built of boards.
+
+The atomic theory, for example, has undoubtedly been of the greatest
+service to chemistry, and atoms undoubtedly denote a significant
+resting-place in the analysis of the physical world. Yet in the light of
+electron theories, it is becoming more and more evident that atoms are
+not ultimate particles, and are not even all alike (Becker, "Isostasy
+and Radioactivity," _Sci._, Jan. 29, 1915) when they represent a single
+substance. Again, while there is as yet no evidence to suggest that the
+electron must itself be considered as divisible (unless it be the
+distinction between the positive and negative electron), there are
+suggestions that electrons may themselves arise and pass away (cf.
+Moore, _Origin, and Nature of Life_, p. 39). "A wisely positivistic
+mind," writes Enriques (_Problems of Science_, p. 34), "can see in the
+atomic hypothesis only a subjective representation,"[34] and, we might
+add, "in any other hypothesis." He continues (pp. 34-36): "robbing the
+atom of the concrete attributes inherent in its image, we find ourselves
+regarding it as a mere symbol. The logical value of the atomic theory
+depends, then, upon the establishment of a proper correspondence between
+the symbols which it contains and the reality which we are trying to
+represent.
+
+"Now, if we go back to the time when the atomic theory was accepted by
+modern chemistry, we see that the plain atomic formulae contain only the
+representation of the invariable relations in the combination of simple
+bodies, in weight and volume; these last being taken in relation to a
+well-defined gaseous state.
+
+"But, once introduced into science, the atomic phraseology suggested the
+extension of the meaning of the symbols, and the search in reality for
+facts in correspondence with its more extended conception.
+
+"The theory advances, urged on, as it were, by its metaphysical
+nature, or, if you wish, by the association of ideas which the concrete
+image of the atom carries with it.
+
+"Thus for the plain formulae we have substituted, in the chemistry of
+carbon compounds, structural formulae, which come to represent, thanks to
+the disposition or grouping of atoms in a molecule, structural relations
+of the second degree, that is to say, relations inherent in certain
+chemical transformations with respect to which some groups of elements
+have in some way an invariant character. And here, because the image of
+a simple molecule upon a plane does not suffice to explain, for example,
+the facts of isomerism, we must resort to the stereo-chemical
+representation of Van't Hoff.
+
+"Must we further recall the kinetic theory of gases, the facts explained
+by the breaking up of molecules into ions, the hypothesis suggested, for
+example, by Van der Waals by the view that an atom has an actual bulk?
+Must we point to a physical phenomenon of quite a different class, for
+example, to the coloring of the thin film forming the soap-bubbles which
+W. Thomson has taken as the measure of the size of a molecule?
+
+"Such a resume of results shows plainly that we cannot help the progress
+of science by blocking the path of theory and looking only at its
+positive aspects, that is to say, at the collection of facts that it
+explains. The value of a theory lies rather in the hypothesis which it
+can suggest, by means of the psychological representation of the
+symbols.
+
+"We shall not draw from all this the conclusion that the atomic
+hypothesis ought to correspond to the extremely subtle sensations of a
+being resembling a perfected man. We shall not even reason about the
+possibility of those imaginary sensations, in so far as they are
+conceived simply as an extension of our own. But we shall repeat, in
+regard to the atomic theory, what an illustrious master is said to have
+remarked as to the unity of matter: if on first examination a fact seems
+possible which contradicts the atomic view of things, there is a strong
+probability that such a fact will be disproved by experience.
+
+"Does not such a capacity for adaptation to facts, thus furnishing a
+model for them, perhaps denote the _positive_ reality of a theory?"
+
+And the above principles are as true of mathematical concepts as of
+chemical. Everywhere it is "capacity of adaptation to facts" that is the
+criterion of a branch of mathematics, except, of course, that in
+mathematics the facts are not always physical facts. Mathematics has
+successfully accomplished a generalization whereby its own methods
+furnish the material for higher generalizations. The imaginary number
+and the hyper-dimensional or non-Euclidian geometries may be absurd if
+measured by the standard of physical reality, but they nevertheless have
+something real about them in relation to certain mathematical processes
+on a lower level. There is no philosophic paradox about modern
+arithmetic or geometry, once it is recognized that they are merely
+abstractions of genuine features of simpler and more obviously practical
+manipulations that are clearly derived from the dealing of a human
+being with genuine realities.
+
+In the light of these considerations, I cannot help feeling that the
+frequent attempts of mathematicians with a philosophical turn of mind,
+and philosophers who are dipping into mathematics, to derive geometrical
+entities from psychological considerations are quite mistaken, and are
+but another example of those traditional presuppositions of psychology
+which, Professor Dewey has pointed out (_Jour. of Phil., Psy., and Sci.
+Meth._, XI, No. 19, p. 508), were "bequeathed by seventeenth-century
+philosophy to psychology, instead of originating within psychology" ...
+that "were wished upon it by philosophy when it was as yet too immature
+to defend itself."
+
+Henri Poincare (_Science and Hypothesis_, Ch. IV, _The Value of
+Science_, Ch. IV) and Enriques (_Problems of Science_, Ch. IV, esp.
+B--_The Psychological Acquisition of Geometrical Concepts_) furnish two
+of the most familiar examples of this sort of philosophizing. Each
+isolates special senses, sight, touch, or motion, and tries to show how
+a being merely equipped with one or the other of these senses might
+arrive at geometrical conceptions which differ, of course, from space as
+represented by our familiar Euclidian geometry. Then comes the question
+of fusing these different sorts of experience into a single experience
+of which geometry may be an intelligible transcription. Enriques finds a
+parallel between the historical development and the psycho-genetic
+development of the postulates of geometry (_loc. cit._, p. 214 _seq._).
+"The three groups of ideas that are connected with the concepts that
+serve as the basis for the theory of continuum (_Analysis situs_), of
+metrical, and of projective geometry, may be connected, as to their
+psychological origin, with three groups of sensations: with the general
+tactile-muscular sensations, with those of special touch, and of sight,
+respectively." Poincare even evokes ancestral experience to make good
+his case (_Sci. and Hyp._, Ch. V, end). "It has often been said that if
+individual experience could not create geometry, the same is not true of
+ancestral experience. But what does that mean? Is it meant that we could
+not experimentally demonstrate Euclid's postulate, but that our
+ancestors have been able to do it? Not in the least. It is meant that by
+natural selection our mind has _adapted_ itself to the conditions of the
+external world, that it has adopted the geometry _most advantageous_ to
+the species: or in other words, the _most convenient_."
+
+Now undoubtedly there may be a certain modicum of truth in these
+statements. As implied by the last quotation from Poincare, the modern
+scientist can hardly doubt that the fact of the adaptation of our
+thinking to the world we live in is due to the fact that it is in that
+world that we evolved. As is implied by both writers, if one could limit
+human contact with the world to a particular form of sense response,
+thought about that world would take place in different terms from what
+it now does and would presumably be less efficient. But these admissions
+do not imply that any light is thrown upon the nature of mathematical
+entities by such abstractions. Russell (_Scientific Method in
+Philosophy_) is in the curious position of raising arithmetic to a
+purely logical status, but playing with geometry and sensation after the
+manner of Poincare, to whom he gives somewhat grudging praise on this
+account.
+
+The psychological methods upon which all such investigations are based
+are open to all sorts of criticisms. Chiefly, the conceptions on which
+they are based, even if correct, are only abstractions. There is not the
+least evidence for the existence of organisms with a single
+differentiated sense organ, nor the least evidence that there ever was
+such an organism. Indeed, according to modern accounts of the evolution
+of the nervous system (cf. G. H. Parker, _Pop. Sci. Month._, Feb., 1914)
+different senses have arisen through a gradual differentiation of a more
+general form of stimulus receptor, and consequently, the possibility of
+the detachment of special senses is the latter end of the series and not
+the first. But, however this may be, the mathematical concepts that we
+are studying have only been grasped by a highly developed organism, man,
+but they had already begun to be grasped by him in an early stage of his
+career before he had analyzed his experience and connected it with
+specific sense organs. It may of course be a pleasant exercise, if one
+likes that sort of thing, to assume with most psychologists certain
+elementary sensations, and then examine the amount of information each
+can give in the light of possible mathematical interpretations, but to
+do so is not to show that a being so scantily endowed would ever have
+acquired a geometry of the type in question, or any geometry at all.
+Inferences of the sort are in the same category with those from
+hypothetical children, that used to justify all theories of the
+pedagogue and psychologist, or from the economic man, that still, I
+fear, play too great a part in the world of social science.
+
+
+VI
+
+MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE
+
+The real nature of intelligence as it appears in the development of
+mathematics is something quite other than that of sensory analysis.
+Intelligence is fundamentally skill, and although skill may be acquired
+in connection with some sort of sensory contact of an organism and
+environment, it is only determined by that contact in the sense that if
+the sensory conditions were different the needs of the organism might be
+different, and the kind and degree of skill it could attain would be
+other than under the conditions at first assumed. Whenever the
+beginnings of mathematics appear with primitive people, we find a stage
+of development that calls for the exercise of skill in dealing with
+certain practical situations. Hence we found early in our investigations
+that it was impossible to affirm a weak intelligence from limited
+achievements in counting, just as it would be absurd to assume the
+feeble intelligence of a philosopher from his inability to manipulate a
+boomerang. The instance merely suggests a kind of skill that he has
+never been led to acquire.
+
+Yet it is possible to distinguish intellectual skill, or better skills,
+from physical or athletic prowess. Primarily, it is directed at the
+formation and use of concepts, and the concept is only a symbol that can
+be substituted for experiences. A well-built concept is a part of a
+system of concepts where relations have taken the place of real
+connections in such a fashion that, forgetting the actuality, it is
+possible to present situations that have never occurred or at least are
+not immediately given at the time and place of the presentation, and to
+substitute them for actual situations in such a fashion that these may
+be expediently met, if or when such situations present themselves. An
+isolated concept, that is, one not a part of any system, is as mythical
+an entity as any savage ever dreamed. Indeed, it would add much to the
+clearness of our thinking if we could limit the use of "intelligence" to
+skill in constructing and using different systems of concepts, and speak
+concretely of mathematical intelligence, philosophical intelligence,
+economic intelligence, historic intelligence, and the like. The problem
+of creative intelligence is, after all, the problem of the acquisition
+of certain forms of skill, and while the general lines are the same for
+all knowledge (because the instruments are everywhere symbolic
+presentations, or concepts), in each field the situation studied makes
+different types of difficulties to be overcome and suggest different
+methods of attaining the object.
+
+In mathematics, the formal impulse to reduce the content of fundamental
+concepts to a minimum, and to stress merely relations has been most
+successful. We saw its results in such geometries as Hilbert's and
+Peano's, where the empty name "entity" supplants the more concrete
+"point," and the "1" of arithmetic has the same character. In the social
+sciences, however, such examples as the "political" and the "economic"
+man are signal failures, while, perhaps, the "atom" and the "electron"
+approach the ideal in physics and chemistry. In mathematics, all further
+concepts can be defined by collections of these fundamental entities
+constituted in certain specified ways. And it is worth noting that both
+factually and logically a collection of entities so defined is not a
+mere aggregate, but possesses a differentiated character of its own
+which, although the resultant of its constitution, is not a property of
+any of its elements. A whole number is thus a collection of 1s, but the
+properties of the whole number are something quite different from that
+of the elements through which it is constituted, just as an atom may be
+composed of electrons and yet, in valency, possess a property that is
+not the direct analogue of any property possessed by electrons not so
+organized.
+
+Natural science, however, considers such building up of its fundamental
+entities into new entities as a process taking place in time rather than
+as consequent upon change of form of the whole rendering new analytic
+forms expedient. Hence it points to the occurrence of genuine novelties
+in the realm of objective reality. Mathematics, on the other hand,
+has generalized its concepts beyond the facts implied in spatial and
+temporal observations, so that while significant in both fields by
+virtue of the nature of its abstractions, its novelties are the
+novelties of new conceptual formations, a distinguishing of previously
+unnoted generalizations of relations existent in the realm of facts. But
+the fact that time has thus passed beyond its empirical meaning in the
+mathematical realm is no ground for giving mathematics an elevated
+position as a science of eternal realities, of subsistent beings, or the
+like. The generalization of concepts to cover both spatial and temporal
+facts does not create new entities for which a home must be provided in
+the partition of realities. Metaphysicians should not be the "needy
+knife grinders" of M. Anatole France (cf. _Garden of Epicurus_, Ch. "The
+Language of the Metaphysicians"). Nevertheless, the success of
+abstraction for mathematical intelligence has been immense.
+
+No significant thinking is wholly the work of an individual man. Ideas
+are a product of social cooeperation in which some have wrested crude
+concepts from nature, others have refined them through usage, and still
+others have built them into an effective system. The first steps were
+undoubtedly taken in an effort to communicate, and progress has been in
+part the progress of language. The original nature of man may have as a
+part those reactions which we call curiosity, but, as Auguste Comte long
+ago pointed out (Levy-Bruhl, _A. Comte_, p. 67), these reactions are
+among the feeblest of our nature and without the pressure of practical
+affairs could hardly have advanced the race beyond barbarism. Science
+was the plaything of the Greek, the consolation of the Middle Ages, and
+only for the modern has it become an instrument in such fashion as to
+mark an epoch in the still dawning discovery of mind.
+
+Man is, after all, rational only because through his nervous system he
+can hold his immediate responses in check and finally react as a being
+that has had experiences and profited by them. Concepts are the medium
+through which these experiences are in effect preserved; they express
+not merely a fact recorded but also the significance of a fact, not
+merely a contact with the world but also an attitude toward the future.
+It may be that the mere judgment of fact, a citation of resemblances
+and differences, is the basis of scientific knowledge, but before
+knowledge is worthy of the name, these facts have undergone an ideal
+transformation controlled by the needs of successful prediction and
+motivated by that self-conscious realization of the value of control
+which has raised man above the beasts of the field.
+
+The realm of mathematics, which we have been examining, is but one
+aspect of the growth of intelligence. But in theory, at least, it is
+among the most interesting, since in it are reached the highest
+abstractions of science, while its empirical beginnings are not lost.
+But its processes and their significance are in no way different in
+essence from those of the other sciences. It marks one road of
+specialization in the discovery of mind. And in these terms we may read
+all history. To quote Professor Woodbridge (_Columbia University
+Quarterly_, Dec., 1912, p. 10): "We may see man rising from the ground,
+startled by the first dim intimation that the things and forces about
+him are convertible and controllable. Curiosity excites him, but he is
+subdued by an untrained imagination. The things that frighten him, he
+tries to frighten in return. The things that bless him, he blesses. He
+would scare the earth's shadow from the moon and sacrifice his dearest
+to a propitious sky. It avails not. But the little things teach him and
+discipline his imagination. He has kicked the stone that bruised him
+only to be bruised again. So he converts the stone into a weapon and
+begins the subjugation of the world, singing a song of triumph by the
+way. Such is his history in epitome--a blunder, a conversion, a
+conquest, and a song. That sequence he will repeat in greater things. He
+will repeat it yet and rejoice where he now despairs, converting the
+chaos of his social, political, industrial, and emotional life into
+wholesome force. He will sing again. But the discovery of mind comes
+first, and then, the song."
+
+
+
+
+SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND INDIVIDUAL THINKER
+
+GEORGE H. MEAD
+
+
+The scientist in the ancient world found his test of reality in the
+evidence of the presence of the essence of the object. This evidence
+came by way of observation, even to the Platonist. Plato could treat
+this evidence as the awaking of memories of the ideal essence of the
+object seen in a world beyond the heavens during a former stage of the
+existence of the soul. In the language of Theatetus it was the agreement
+of fluctuating sensual content with the thought-content imprinted in or
+viewed by the soul. In Aristotle it is again the agreement of the
+organized sensuous experience with the vision which the mind gets of the
+essence of the object through the perceptual experience of a number of
+instances. That which gives the stamp of reality is the coincidence of
+the percept with a rational content which must in some sense be in the
+mind to insure knowledge, as it must be in the cosmos to insure
+existence, of the object. The relation of this test of reality to an
+analytical method is evident. Our perceptual world is always more
+crowded and confused than the ideal contents by which the reality of its
+meaning is to be tested. The aim of the analysis varies with the
+character of the science. In the case of Aristotle's theoretical
+sciences, such as mathematics and metaphysics, where one proceeds by
+demonstration from the given existences, analysis isolates such elements
+as numbers, points, lines, surfaces, and solids, essences and essential
+accidents. Aristotle approaches nature, however, as he approaches the
+works of human art. Indeed, he speaks of nature as the artificer par
+excellence. In the study of nature, then, as in the study of the
+practical and productive arts, it is of the first importance that the
+observer should have the idea--the final cause--as the means of
+deciphering the nature of living forms. Here analysis proceeds to
+isolate characters which are already present in forms whose functions
+are assumed to be known. By analogy such identities as that of fish fins
+with limbs of other vertebrates are assumed, and some very striking
+anticipations of modern biological conceptions and discoveries are
+reached. Aristotle recognizes that the theory of the nature of the form
+or essence must be supported by observation of the actual individual.
+What is lacking is any body of observation which has value apart from
+some theory. He tests his theory by the observed individual which is
+already an embodied theory, rather than by what we are wont to call the
+facts. He refers to other observers to disagree with them. He does not
+present their observations apart from their theories as material which
+has existential value, independent for the time being of any hypothesis.
+And it is consistent with this attitude that he never presents the
+observations of others in support of his own doctrine. His analysis
+within this field of biological observation does not bring him back to
+what, in modern science, are the data, but to general characters which
+make up the definition of the form. His induction involves a gathering
+of individuals rather than of data. Thus analysis in the theoretical,
+the natural, the practical, and the productive sciences, leads back to
+universals. This is quite consistent with Aristotle's metaphysical
+position that since the matter of natural objects has reality through
+its realization in the form, whatever appears without such meaning can
+be accounted for only as the expression of the resistance which matter
+offers to this realization. This is the field of a blind necessity, not
+that of a constructive science.
+
+Continuous advance in science has been possible only when analysis of
+the object of knowledge has supplied not elements of meanings as the
+objects have been conceived but elements abstracted from those meanings.
+That is, scientific advance implies a willingness to remain on terms of
+tolerant acceptance of the reality of what cannot be stated in the
+accepted doctrine of the time, but what must be stated in the form of
+contradiction with these accepted doctrines. The domain of what is
+usually connoted by the term facts or data belongs to the field lying
+between the old doctrine and the new. This field is not inhabited by the
+Aristotelian individual, for the individual is but the realization of
+the form or universal essence. When the new theory has displaced the
+old, the new individual appears in the place of its predecessor, but
+during the period within which the old theory is being dislodged and the
+new is arising, a consciously growing science finds itself occupied with
+what is on the one hand the debris of the old and on the other the
+building material of the new. Obviously, this must find its immediate
+_raison d'etre_ in something other than the meaning that is gone or the
+meaning that is not yet here. It is true that the barest facts do not
+lack meaning, though a meaning which has been theirs in the past is
+lost. The meaning, however, that is still theirs is confessedly
+inadequate, otherwise there would be no scientific problem to be solved.
+Thus, when older theories of the spread of infectious diseases lost
+their validity because of instances where these explanations could not
+be applied, the diagnoses and accounts which could still be given of the
+cases of the sickness themselves were no explanation of the spread of
+the infection. The facts of the spread of the infection could be brought
+neither under a doctrine of contagion which was shattered by actual
+events nor under a doctrine of the germ theory of disease, which was as
+yet unborn. The logical import of the dependence of these facts upon
+observation, and hence upon the individual experience of the scientist,
+I shall have occasion to discuss later; what I am referring to here is
+that the conscious growth of science is accompanied by the appearance of
+this sort of material.
+
+There were two fields of ancient science, those of mathematics and of
+astronomy, within which very considerable advance was achieved, a fact
+which would seem therefore to offer exception to the statement just
+made. The theory of the growth of mathematics is a disputed territory,
+but whether mathematical discovery and invention take place by steps
+which can be identified with those which mark the advance in the
+experimental sciences or not, the individual processes in which the
+discoveries and inventions have arisen are almost uniformly lost to view
+in the demonstration which presents the results. It would be improper to
+state that no new data have arisen in the development of mathematics, in
+the face of such innovations as the minus quantity, the irrational, the
+imaginary, the infinitesimal, or the transfinite number, and yet the
+innovations appear as the recasting of the mathematical theories rather
+than as new facts. It is of course true that these advances have
+depended upon problems such as those which in the researches of Kepler
+and Galileo led to the early concepts of the infinitesimal procedure,
+and upon such undertakings as bringing the combined theories of geometry
+and algebra to bear upon the experiences of continuous change. For a
+century after the formulation of the infinitesimal method men were
+occupied in carrying the new tool of analysis into every field where its
+use promised advance. The conceptions of the method were uncritical. Its
+applications were the center of attention. The next century undertook to
+bring order into the concepts, consistency into the doctrine, and rigor
+into the reasoning. The dominating trend of this movement was logical
+rather than methodological. The development was in the interest of the
+foundations of mathematics rather than in the use of mathematics as a
+method for solving scientific problems. Of course this has in no way
+interfered with the freedom of application of mathematical technique to
+the problems of physical science. On the contrary, it was on account of
+the richness and variety of the contents which the use of mathematical
+methods in the physical sciences imported into the doctrine that this
+logical housecleaning became necessary in mathematics. The movement has
+been not only logical as distinguished from methodological but logical
+as distinguished from metaphysical as well. It has abandoned a Euclidean
+space with its axioms as a metaphysical presupposition, and it has
+abandoned an Aristotelian subsumptive logic for which definition is a
+necessary presupposition. It recognizes that everything cannot be
+proved, but it does not undertake to state what the axiomata shall be;
+and it also recognizes that not everything can be defined, and does not
+undertake to determine what shall be defined implicitly and what
+explicitly. Its constants are logical constants, as the proposition, the
+class and the relation. With these and their like and with relatively
+few primitive ideas, which are represented by symbols, and used
+according to certain given postulates, it becomes possible to bring the
+whole body of mathematics within a single treatment. The development of
+this pure mathematics, which comes to be a logic of the mathematical
+sciences, has been made possible by such a generalization of number
+theory and theories of the elements of space and time that the rigor of
+mathematical reasoning is secured, while the physical scientist is left
+the widest freedom in the choice and construction of concepts and
+imagery for his hypotheses. The only compulsion is a logical compulsion.
+The metaphysical compulsion has disappeared from mathematics and the
+sciences whose techniques it provides.
+
+It was just this compulsion which confined ancient science. Euclidian
+geometry defined the limits of mathematics. Even mechanics was
+cultivated largely as a geometrical field. The metaphysical doctrine
+according to which physical objects had their own places and their own
+motions determined the limits within which astronomical speculations
+could be carried on. Within these limits Greek mathematical genius
+achieved marvelous results. The achievements of any period will be
+limited by two variables: the type of problem against which science
+formulates its methods, and the materials which analysis puts at the
+scientist's disposal in attacking the problems. The technical problems
+of the trisection of an angle and the duplication of a cube are
+illustrations of the problems which characterize a geometrical doctrine
+that was finding its technique. There appears also the method of
+analysis of the problem into simpler problems, the assumption of the
+truth of the conclusion to be proved and the process of arguing from
+this to a known truth. The more fundamental problem which appears first
+as the squaring of the circle, which becomes that of the determination
+of the relation of the circle to its diameter and development of the
+method of exhaustion, leads up to the sphere, the regular polyhedra, to
+conic sections and the beginnings of trigonometry. Number was not freed
+from the relations of geometrical magnitudes, though Archimedes could
+conceive of a number greater or smaller than any assignable magnitude.
+With the method of exhaustion, with the conceptions of number found in
+writings of Archimedes and others, with the beginnings of spherical
+geometry and trigonometry, and with the slow growth of algebra finding
+its highest expression in that last flaring up of Greek mathematical
+creation, the work of Diophantes; there were present all the conceptions
+which were necessary for attack upon the problems of velocities and
+changing velocities, and the development of the method of analysis which
+has been the revolutionary tool of Europe since the Renaissance. But the
+problems of a relation between the time and space of a motion that
+should change just as a motion, without reference to the essence of the
+object in motion, were problems which did not, perhaps could not, arise
+to confront the Greek mind. In any case its mathematics was firmly
+embedded in a Euclidian space. Though there are indications of some
+distrust, even in Greek times, of the parallel axiom, the suggestion
+that mathematical reasoning could be made rigorous and comprehensive
+independently of the specific content of axiom and definition was an
+impossible one for the Greek, because such a suggestion could be made
+only on the presupposition of a number theory and an algebra capable of
+stating a continuum in terms which are independent of the sensuous
+intuition of space and time and of the motion that takes place within
+space and time. In the same fashion mechanics came back to fundamental
+generalizations of experience with reference to motions which served as
+axioms of mechanics, both celestial and terrestrial: the assumptions of
+the natural motion of earthly substances to their own places in
+straight lines, and of celestial bodies in circles and uniform
+velocities, of an equilibrium where equal weights operate at equal
+distances from the fulcrum.
+
+The incommensurable of Pythagoras and the paradoxes of Zeno present the
+"no thoroughfares" of ancient mathematical thought. Neither the
+continuum of space nor of motion could be broken up into ultimate units,
+when incommensurable ratios existed which could not be expressed, and
+when motion refused to be divided into positions of space or time since
+these are functions of motion. It was not until an algebraic theory of
+number led mathematicians to the use of expressions for the irrational,
+the minus, and the imaginary numbers through the logical development of
+generalized expressions, that problems could be formulated in which
+these irrational ratios and quantities were involved, though it is also
+true that the effort to deal with problems of this character was in no
+small degree responsible for the development of the algebra. Fixed
+metaphysical assumptions in regard to number, space, time, motion, and
+the nature of physical objects determined the limits within which
+scientific investigation could take place. Thus though the hypothesis of
+Copernicus and in all probability of Tycho Brahe were formulated by
+Greek astronomers, their physical doctrine was unable to use them
+because they were in flagrant contradiction with the definitions the
+ancient world gave to earthly and celestial bodies and their natural
+motions. The atomic doctrine with Democritus' thoroughgoing undertaking
+to substitute a quantitative for a qualitative conception of matter
+with the location of the qualitative aspects of the world in the
+experience of the soul appealed only to the Epicurean who used the
+theory as an exorcism to drive out of the universe the spirits which
+disturbed the calm of the philosopher.
+
+There was only one field in which ancient science seemed to break away
+from the fixed assumptions of its metaphysics and from the definitions
+of natural objects which were the bases for their scientific inferences,
+this was the field of astronomy in the period after Eudoxus. Up to and
+including the theories of Eudoxus, physical and mathematical astronomy
+went hand in hand. Eudoxus' nests of spheres within spheres hung on
+different axes revolving in different uniform periods was the last
+attempt of the mathematician philosopher to state the anomalies of the
+heavens, and to account for the stations, the retrogressions, and
+varying velocities of planetary bodies by a theory resolving all
+phenomena of these bodies into motions of uniform velocities in perfect
+circles, and also placing these phenomena within a physical theory
+consistent with the prevailing conceptions of the science and philosophy
+of the time. As a physicist Aristotle felt the necessity of introducing
+further spheres between the nests of spheres assigned by Eudoxus to the
+planetary bodies, spheres whose peculiar motions should correct the
+tendency of the different groups of spheres to pass their motions on to
+each other. Since the form of the orbits of heavenly bodies and their
+velocities could not be considered to be the results of their masses and
+of their relative positions with reference to one another; since it was
+not possible to calculate the velocities and orbits from the physical
+characters of the bodies, since in a word these physical characters did
+not enter into the problem of calculating the positions of the bodies
+nor offer explanations for the anomalies which the mathematical
+astronomer had to explain, it was not strange that he disinterested
+himself from the metaphysical celestial mechanics of his time and
+concentrated his attention upon the geometrical hypotheses by means of
+which he could hope to resolve into uniform revolutions in circular
+orbits the anomalous motions of the planetary bodies. The introduction
+of the epicycle with the deferent and the eccentric as working
+hypotheses to solve the anomalies of the heavens is to be comprehended
+largely in view of the isolation of the mathematical as distinguished
+from the physical problem of astronomy. In no sense were these
+conceptions working hypotheses of a celestial mechanics. They were the
+only means of an age whose mathematics was almost entirely geometrical
+for accomplishing what a later generation could accomplish by an
+algebraic theory of functions. As has been pointed out, the undertaking
+of the ancient mathematical astronomer to resolve the motions of
+planetary bodies into circular, uniform, continuous, symmetrical
+movements is comparable to the theorem of Fourier which allows the
+mathematician to replace any one periodic function by a sum of circular
+functions. In other words, the astronomy of the Alexandrian period is a
+somewhat cumbrous development of the mathematical technique of the time
+to enable the astronomer to bring the anomalies of the planetary bodies,
+as they increased under observation, within the axioms of a metaphysical
+physics. The genius exhibited in the development of the mathematical
+technique places the names of Apollonius of Perga, Hipparchus of Nicaea,
+and Ptolemy among the great mathematicians of the world, but they never
+felt themselves free to attack by their hypotheses the fundamental
+assumptions of the ancient metaphysical doctrine of the universe. Thus
+it was said of Hipparchus by Adrastus, a philosopher of the first
+century A. D., in explaining his preference for the epicycle to the
+eccentric as a means of analyzing the motions of the planetary bodies:
+"He preferred and adopted the principle of the epicycle as more probable
+to his mind, because it ordered the system of the heavens with more
+symmetry and with a more intimate dependence with reference to the
+center of the universe. Although he guarded himself from assuming the
+role of the physicist in devoting himself to the investigations of the
+real movements of the stars, and in undertaking to distinguish between
+the motions which nature has adopted from those which the appearances
+present to our eyes, he assumed that every planet revolved along an
+epicycle, the center of which describes a circumference concentric with
+the earth." Even mathematical astronomy does not offer an exception to
+the scientific method of the ancient world, that of bringing to
+consciousness the concepts involved in their world of experience,
+organizing these concepts with reference to each, analyzing and
+restating them within the limits of their essential accidents, and
+assimilating the concrete objects of experience to these typical forms
+as more or less complete realizations.
+
+At the beginning of the process of Greek self-conscious reflection and
+analysis, the mind ran riot among the concepts and their characters
+until the contradictions which arose from these unsystematized
+speculations brought the Greek mind up to the problems of criticism and
+scientific method. Criticism led to the separation of the many from the
+one, the imperfect copy from the perfect type, the sensuous and
+passionate from the rational and the intrinsically good, the impermanent
+particular from the incorruptible universal. The line of demarcation ran
+between the lasting reality that answered to critical objective thought
+and the realm of perishing imperfect instances, of partially realized
+forms full of unmeaning differences due to distortion and imperfection,
+the realm answering to a sensuous passionate unreflective experience. It
+would be a quite inexcusable mistake to put all that falls on the wrong
+side of the line into a subjective experience, for these characters
+belonged not alone to the experience, but also to the passing show, to
+the world of imperfectly developed matter which belonged to the
+perceptual passionate experience. While it may not then be classed as
+subjective, the Greeks of the Sophistic period felt that this phase of
+existence was an experience which belongs to the man in his individual
+life, that life in which he revolts from the conventions of society, in
+which he questions accepted doctrine, in which he differentiates himself
+from his fellows. Protagoras seems even to have undertaken to make this
+experience of the individual, the stuff of the known world. It is
+difficult adequately to assess Protagoras' undertaking. He seems to be
+insisting both that the man's experience as his own must be the measure
+of reality as known and on the other hand that these experiences present
+norms which offer a choice in conduct. If this is true Protagoras
+conceived of the individual's experience in its atypical and
+revolutionary form as not only real but the possible source of fuller
+realities than the world of convention. The undertaking failed both in
+philosophic doctrine and in practical politics. It failed in both fields
+because the subjectivist, both in theory and practice, did not succeed
+in finding a place for the universal character of the object, its
+meaning, in the mind of the individual and thus in finding in this
+experience the hypothesis for the reconstruction of the real world. In
+the ancient world the atypical individual, the revolutionist, the
+non-conformist was a self-seeking adventurer or an anarchist, not an
+innovator or reformer, and subjectivism in ancient philosophy remained a
+skeptical attitude which could destroy but could not build up.
+
+Hippocrates and his school came nearer consciously using the experience
+of the individual as the actual material of the object of knowledge. In
+the skeptical period in which they flourished they rejected on the one
+hand the magic of traditional medicine and on the other the empty
+theorizing that had been called out among the physicians by the
+philosophers. Their practical tasks held them to immediate experience.
+Their functions in the gymnasia gave their medicine an interest in
+health as well as in disease, and directed their attention largely
+toward diet, exercise, and climate in the treatment even of disease. In
+its study they have left the most admirable sets of observations,
+including even accounts of acknowledged errors and the results of
+different treatments of cases, which ancient science can present. It was
+the misfortune of their science that it dealt with a complicated
+subject-matter dependent for its successful treatment upon the whole
+body of physical, chemical, and biological disciplines as well as the
+discovery and invention of complicated techniques. They were forced
+after all to adopt a hopelessly inadequate physiological theory--that of
+the four humors--with the corresponding doctrine of health and disease
+as the proper and improper mixture of these fluids. Their marvelously
+fine observation of symptoms led only to the definition of types and a
+medical practice which was capable of no consistent progress outside of
+certain fields of surgery. Thus even Greek medicine was unable to
+develop a different type of scientific method except in so far as it
+kept alive an empiricism which played a not unimportant part in
+post-Aristotelian philosophy. Within the field of astronomy in
+explaining the anomalies of the heavens involved in their metaphysical
+assumptions, they built up a marvelously perfect Euclidian geometry, for
+here refined and exhaustive definition of all the elements was possible.
+The problems involved in propositions to be proved appeared in the
+individual experience of the geometrician, but this experience in space
+was uniform with that of every one else and took on a universal not an
+individual form. The test of the solution was given in a demonstration
+which holds for every one living in the same Euclidian space. When the
+mathematician found himself carried by his mathematical technique beyond
+the assumptions of a metaphysical physics he abandoned the field of
+physical astronomy and confined himself to the development of his
+mathematical expressions.
+
+In other fields Greek science analyzed with varying success and critical
+skill only the conceptions found in the experience of their time and
+world. Nor did Greek thought succeed in formulating any adequate method
+by which the ultimate concepts in any field of science were to be
+determined. It is in Aristotle's statement of induction and the process
+of definition that we appreciate most clearly the inadequacy of their
+method. This inadequacy lies fundamentally in Aristotle's conception of
+observation which, as I have already noted, implies the recognition of
+an individual, that is, an object which is an embodied form or idea. The
+function of knowledge is to bring out this essence. The mind sees
+through the individuals the universal nature. The value of the
+observation lies, then, not in the controlled perception of certain data
+as observed facts, but in the insight with which he recognizes the
+nature of the object. When this nature has been seen it is to be
+analyzed into essential characters and thus formulated into the
+definition. In Aristotle's methodology there is no procedure by which
+the mind can deliberately question the experience of the community and
+by a controlled method reconstruct its received world. Thus the natural
+sciences were as really fixed by the conceptions of the community as
+were the exact sciences by the conceptions of a Euclidian geometry and
+the mathematics which the Greeks formulated within it. The individual
+within whose peculiar experience arises a contradiction to the
+prevailing conceptions of the community and in whose creative
+intelligence appears the new hypothesis which makes possible a new
+heaven and a new earth could utilize his individual experience only in
+destructive skepticism. Subjectivism served in ancient thought to
+invalidate knowledge not to enlarge it.
+
+Zeller has sketched a parallelism between the ideal state of Plato and
+the social structure of the medieval world. The philosopher-king is
+represented by the Pope, below him answering to the warrior class in the
+Platonic state stands the warrior class of the Holy Roman Empire, who in
+theory enforce the dictates of the Roman curia, while at the bottom in
+both communities stand the mass of the people bound to obedience to the
+powers above. There is, however, one profound difference between the
+two, and that is to be found in the relative positions of the ideal
+worlds that dominate each. Plato's ideal world beyond the heavens gives
+what reality it has to this through the participation by the world of
+becoming in the ideas. Opinion dimly sensed the ideas in the evanescent
+objects about it, and though Plato's memory theory of knowledge assumed
+that the ideas had been seen in former existence and men could thus
+recognize the copies here, the ideal world was not within the mind but
+without. In a real sense the Kingdom of Heaven was within men in the
+medieval world, as was the Holy Roman Empire. They were ideal
+communities that ought to exist on earth, and it was due to the
+depravity of men that they did not exist. From time to time men
+undertook in various upheavals to realize in some part these spiritual
+and political ideals which they carried within them. And men not only
+carried within them the ideas of a New Jerusalem in which the interest
+of one was the interest of all and of an earthly state ordered by a
+divine decree to fulfil this Christian ideal, but the determining causes
+of the present condition and the future realization depended also upon
+the inner attitudes and experiences of the individuals themselves.
+
+Without carrying the analogy here too far, this relation between the
+experience of the individual and the world which may arise through the
+realization of his ideas is the basis of the most profound distinction
+between the ancient world and the modern. Before the logic of this
+attitude could appear in science a long period of intellectual and
+social growth was necessary. The most essential part of this growth was
+the slow but steady development of psychological doctrine which placed
+the objective world in the experience of the individual. It is not of
+interest here to bring out the modern epistemological problem that grew
+out of this, or to present this in the world of Leibnitzian monads that
+had no windows or in the Berkeleyan subjective idealism. What is of
+interest is to point out that this attitude established a functional
+relationship between even the subjective experience of the individual
+and the object of knowledge. A skepticism based upon subjectivism might
+thereafter question the justification of the reference of experience
+beyond itself; it could not question knowledge and its immediate object.
+
+Kant formalizes the relation of what was subjective and what was
+objective by identifying the former with the sensuous content of
+experience and the latter with the application of the forms of
+sensibility and understanding to this content. The relationship was
+formal and dead. Kant recognized no functional relationship between the
+nature of the _Mannigfaltigkeit_ of sensuous experience and the forms
+into which it was poured. The forms remained external to the content,
+but the relationship was one which existed within experience, not
+without it, and within this experience could be found the necessity and
+universality which had been located in the world independent of
+experience. The melting of these fixed Kantian categories came with the
+spring floods of the romantic idealism that followed Kant.
+
+The starting-point of this idealism was Kantian. Within experience lay
+the object of knowledge. The Idealist's principal undertaking was to
+overcome the skepticism that attached to the object of knowledge because
+of its reference to what lies outside itself. If, as Kant had undertaken
+to prove, the reality which knowledge implies must reach beyond
+experience, then, on the Kantian doctrine that knowledge lies within
+experience, knowledge itself is infected with skepticism. Kant's
+practical bridge from the world of experience to the world of
+things-in-themselves, which he walked by faith and not by sight, was
+found in the postulates of the conduct of the self as a moral being, as
+a personality. The romantic idealists advance by the same road, though
+as romanticists not critical philosophers, they fashioned the world of
+reality, that transcends experience, out of experience itself, by
+centering the self in the absolute self and conceiving the whole
+infinite universe as the experience of the absolute self. The
+interesting phase of this development is that the form which experience
+takes in becoming objective is found in the nature and thought of the
+individual, and that this process of epistemological experience becomes
+thus a process of nature, if the objective is the natural. In Kant's
+terms our minds give laws to nature. But this nature constantly exhibits
+its dependence upon underlying noumena that must therefore transcend the
+laws given by the understanding. The Romanticist insists that this other
+reality must be the same stuff as that of experience, that in experience
+arise forms which transcend those which bound the experience in its
+earlier phase. If in experience the forms of the objective world are
+themselves involved, the process of knowledge sets no limits to itself,
+which it may not, does not, by implication transcend. As further
+indication of the shift by which thought had passed into possession of
+the world of things in themselves stands the antinomy which in Kantian
+experience marks the limit of our knowledge while in post-Kantian
+idealism it becomes the antithesis that leads to the synthesis upon the
+higher plane. Contradiction marks the phase at which the spirit becomes
+creative, not simply giving an empty formal law to nature, but creating
+the concrete universe in which content and form merge in true actuality.
+The relation of the sensuous content to the conceptual form is not dead,
+as in Kant's doctrine. It is fused as perception into concept and
+carries its immediacy and concreteness of detail into the concrete
+universal as the complete organization of stimulation and response pass
+into the flexible habit. And yet in the Hegelian logic, the movement is
+always away from the perceptual experience toward the higher realm of
+the _Idee_. Thought is creative in the movement, but in its ultimate
+reality it transcends spatial and temporal experience, the experience
+with which the natural and mathematical sciences deal. Thought is not a
+means of solving the problems of this world as they arise, but a great
+process of realization in which this world is forever transcended. Its
+abstract particularities of sensuous detail belong only to the finite
+experience of the partial self. This world is, therefore, always
+incomplete in its reality and, in so far, always untrue. Truth and full
+reality belong not to the field of scientific investigation.
+
+In its metaphysics Romantic Idealism, though it finds a place for
+scientific discovery and reconstruction, leaves these disdainfully
+behind, as incomplete phases of the ultimate process of reality, as
+infected with untruth and deceptive unwarranted claims. The world is
+still too much with us. We recognize here three striking results of the
+development of reflective consciousness in the modern world:--first, it
+is assumed that the objective world of knowledge can be placed within
+the experience of the individual without losing thereby its nature as an
+object, that all characters of that object can be presented as belonging
+to that experience, whether adequately or not is another question; and
+second, it is assumed that the contradictions in its nature which are
+associated with its inclusion in individual experience, its references
+beyond itself when so included, may themselves be the starting-point of
+a reconstruction which at least carries that object beyond the
+experience within which these contradictions arose; and third, it is
+assumed that this growth takes place in a world of reality within which
+the incomplete experience of the individual is an essential part of the
+process, in which it is not a mere fiction, destroying reality by its
+representation, but is a growing-point in that reality itself.
+
+These characters of philosophic interpretation, the inclusion of the
+object of knowledge in the individual experience and the turning of the
+conflicts in that experience into the occasion for the creation of new
+objects transcending these contradictions, are the characters in the
+conscious method, of modern science, which most profoundly distinguish
+it from the method of ancient science. This, of course, is tantamount to
+saying that they are those which mark the experimental method in
+science.
+
+That phase of the method upon which I have touched already has been its
+occupation with the so-called data or facts as distinguished from
+Aristotelian individuals.
+
+Whenever we reduce the objects of scientific investigation to facts and
+undertake to record them as such, they become events, happenings, whose
+hard factual character lies in the circumstance that they have taken
+place, and this quite independently of any explanation of their taking
+place. When they are explained they have ceased to be facts and have
+become instances of a law, that is, Aristotelian individuals, embodied
+theories, and their actuality as events is lost in the necessity of
+their occurrence as expressions of the law; with this change their
+particularity as events or happenings disappears. They are but the
+specific values of the equation when constants are substituted for
+variables. Before the equation is known or the law discovered they have
+no such ground of existence. Up to this point they find their ground for
+existence in their mere occurrence, to which the law which is to explain
+them must accommodate itself.
+
+There are here suggested two points of view from which these facts may
+be regarded. Considered with reference to a uniformity or law by which
+they will be ordered and explained they are the phenomena with which the
+positivist deals; as existencies to be identified and localized before
+they are placed within such a uniformity they fall within the domain of
+the psychological philosopher who can at least place them in their
+relation to the other events in the experience of the individual who
+observes them. Considered as having a residual meaning apart from the
+law to which they have become exceptions, they can become the
+subject-matter of the rationalist. It is important that we recognize
+that neither the positivist nor the rationalist is able to identify the
+nature of the fact or datum to which they refer. I refer to such
+stubborn facts as those of the sporadic appearance of infectious
+diseases before the germ theory of the disease was discovered. Here was
+a fact which contradicted the doctrine of the spread of the infection by
+contact. It appeared not as an instance of a law, but as an exception to
+a law. As such, its nature is found in its having happened at a given
+place and time. If the case had appeared in the midst of an epidemic,
+its nature as a case of the infectious disease would have been cared for
+in the accepted doctrine, and for its acceptance as an object of
+knowledge its location in space and time as an event would not have been
+required. Its geographical and historical traits would have followed
+from the theory of the infection, as we identify by our calculations the
+happy fulfilment of Thales' prophecy. The happening of an instance of a
+law is accounted for by the law. Its happening may and in most instances
+does escape observation, while as an exception to an accepted law it
+captures attention. Its nature as an event is, then, found in its
+appearance in the experience of some individual, whose observation is
+controlled and recorded as his experience. Without its reference to this
+individual's experience it could not appear as a fact for further
+scientific consideration.
+
+Now the attitude of the positivist toward this fact is that induced by
+its relation to the law which is _subsequently_ discovered. It has then
+fallen into place in a series, and his doctrine is that all laws are but
+uniformities of such events. He treats the fact when it is an exception
+to law as an instance of the new law and assumes that the exception to
+the old law and the instance of the new are identical. And this is a
+great mistake,--the mistake made also by the neo-realist when he assumes
+that the object of knowledge is the same within and without the mind,
+that nothing happens to what is to be known when it by chance strays
+into the realm of conscious cognition. Any as yet unexplained exception
+to an old theory can happen only in the experience of an individual, and
+that which has its existence as an event in some one's biography is a
+different thing from the future instance which is not beholden to any
+one for its existence. Yet there are, as I indicated earlier, meanings
+in this exceptional event which, at least for the time, are unaffected
+by the exceptional character of the occurrence. For example, certain
+clinical symptoms by which an infectious disease is identified have
+remained unchanged in diagnosis since the days of Hippocrates. These
+characters remain as characters of the instance of the law of
+germ-origin when this law has been discovered. This may lead us to say
+that the exception which appears for the time being as a unique incident
+in a biography is identical with the instance of a germ-induced disease.
+Indeed, we are likely to go further and, in the assurance of the new
+doctrine, state that former exceptions can (or with adequate
+acquaintance with the facts could) be proved to be necessarily an
+instance of a disease carried by a germ. The positivist is therefore
+confident that the field of scientific knowledge is made up of events
+which are instances of uniform series, although under conditions of
+inadequate information some of them appear as exceptions to the
+statements of uniformities, in truth the latter being no uniformities at
+all.
+
+That this is not a true statement of the nature of the exception and of
+the instance, it is not difficult to show if we are willing to accept
+the accounts which the scientists themselves give of their own
+observation, the changing forms which the hypothesis assumes during the
+effort to reach a solution and the ultimate reconstruction which attends
+the final tested solution. Wherever we are fortunate enough, as in the
+biographies of men such as Darwin and Pasteur, to follow a number of the
+steps by which they recognized problems and worked out tenable
+hypotheses for their solution, we find that the direction which is given
+to attention in the early stage of scientific investigation is toward
+conflicts between current theories and observed phenomena, and that
+since the form which these observations take is determined by the
+opposition, it is determined by a statement which itself is later
+abandoned. We find that the scope and character of the observations
+change at once when the investigator sets about gathering as much of the
+material as he can secure, and changes constantly as he formulates
+tentative hypotheses for the solution of the problem, which, moreover,
+generally changes its form during the investigation. I am aware that
+this change in the form of the data will be brushed aside by many as
+belonging only to the attitude of mind of the investigator, while it is
+assumed that the "facts" themselves, however selected and organized in
+his observation and thought, remain identical in their nature
+throughout. Indeed, the scientist himself carries with him in the whole
+procedure the confidence that the fact-structure of reality is
+unchanged, however varied are the forms of the observations which refer
+to the same entities.[35]
+
+The analysis of the fact-structure of reality shows in the first place
+that the scientist undertakes to form such an hypothesis that all the
+data of observation will find their place in the objective world, and in
+the second place to bring them into such a structure that future
+experience will lead to anticipated results. He does not undertake to
+preserve facts in the form in which they existed in experience before
+the problem arose nor to construct a world independent of experience or
+that will not be subject itself to future reconstructions in experience.
+He merely insists that future reconstructions will take into account
+the old in re-adjusting it to the new. In such a process it is evident
+that the change of the form in the data is not due to a subjective
+attitude of the investigator which can be abstracted from the facts.
+When Darwin, for instance, found that the marl dressings which farmers
+spread over their soil did not sink through the soil by the force of
+gravity as was supposed, but that the earthworm castings were thrown up
+above these dressings at nearly the same rate at which they disappeared,
+he did not correct a subjective attitude of mind. He created in
+experience a humus which took the place of a former soil, and justified
+itself by fitting it into the whole process of disintegration of the
+earth's surface. It would be impossible to separate in the earlier
+experiences certain facts and certain attitudes of mind entertained
+by men with reference to these facts. Certain objects have replaced
+other objects. It is only after the process of analysis, which arose
+out of the conflicting observations, has broken up the old object
+that what was a part of the object, heavier-things-pushing-their
+way-through-soil-of-lighter-texture, can become a mere idea. Earlier it
+was an object. Until it could be tested the earthworm as the cause of
+the disappearance of the dressings was also Darwin's idea. It became
+fact. For science at least it is quite impossible to distinguish between
+what in an object must be fact and what may be idea. The distinction
+when it is made is dependent upon the form of the problem and is
+functional to its solution, not metaphysical. So little can a consistent
+line of cleavage between facts and ideas be indicated, that we can
+never tell where in our world of observation the problem of science will
+arise, or what will be regarded as structure of reality or what
+erroneous idea.
+
+There is a strong temptation to lodge these supposititious
+fact-structures in a world of conceptual objects, molecules, atoms,
+electrons, and the like. For these at least lie beyond the range of
+perception by their very definition. They seem to be in a realm of
+things-in-themselves. Yet they also are found now in the field of
+fact and now in that of ideas. Furthermore, a study of their structure
+as they exist in the world of constructive science shows that
+their infra-sensible character is due simply to the nature of our
+sense-processes, not to a different metaphysical nature. They occupy
+space, have measurable dimensions, mass, and are subject to the same
+laws of motion as are sensible objects. We even bring them indirectly
+into the field of vision and photograph their paths of motion.
+
+The ultimate elements referred to above provide a consistent symbolism
+for the finding and formulating of applied mathematical sciences, within
+which lies the whole field of physics, including Euclidian geometry as
+well. However, they have succeeded in providing nothing more than a
+language and logic pruned of the obstinate contradictions, inaccuracies,
+and unanalyzed sensuous stuff of earlier mathematical science. Such a
+rationalistic doctrine can never present in an unchanged form the
+objects with which natural science deals in any of the stages of its
+investigation. It can deal only with ultimate elements and forms of
+propositions. It is compelled to fall back on a theory of analysis
+which reaches ultimate elements and an assumption of inference as an
+indefinable. Such an analysis is actually impossible either in the field
+of the conceptual objects into which physical science reduces physical
+objects, or in the field of sensuous experience. Atoms can be reduced
+into positive and negative electrical elements and these may, perhaps
+do, imply a structure of ether that again invites further analysis and
+so on ad infinitum. None of the hypothetical constructs carry with
+themselves the character of being ultimate elements unless they are
+purely metaphysical. If they are fashioned to meet the actual problems
+of scientific research they will admit of possible further analysis,
+because they must be located and defined in the continuity of space and
+time. They cannot _be_ the points and instants of modern mathematical
+theory. Nor can we reach ultimate elements in sensuous experience, for
+this lies also within a continuum. Furthermore, our scientific analyses
+are dependent upon the form that our objects assume. There is no general
+analysis which research in science has ever used. The assumption that
+psychology provides us with an analysis of experience which can be
+carried to ultimate elements or facts, and which thereby provides the
+elements out of which the objects of our physical world must be
+constructed, denies to psychology its rights as a natural science of
+which it is so jealous, turning it into a Berkeleyan metaphysics.
+
+This most modern form of rationalism being unable to find ultimate
+elements in the field of actual science is compelled to take what it
+can find there. Now the results of the analysis of the classical English
+psychological school give the impression of being what Mr. Russell calls
+"hard facts," i.e., facts which cannot be broken up into others. They
+seem to be the data of experience. Moreover, the term hard is not so
+uncompromising as is the term element. A fact can be more or less hard,
+while an ultimate element cannot be more or less ultimate. Furthermore,
+the entirely formal character of the logic enables it to deal with equal
+facility with any content. One can operate with the more or less hard
+sense-data, putting them in to satisfy the seeming variables of the
+propositions, and reach conclusions which are formally correct. There is
+no necessity for scrutinizing the data under these circumstances, if one
+can only assume that the data are those which science is actually using.
+The difficulty is that no scientist ever analyzed his objects into such
+sense-data. They exist only in philosophical text-books. Even the
+psychologists recognize that these sensations are abstractions which are
+not the elements out of which objects of sense are constructed. They are
+abstractions made from those objects whose ground for isolation is found
+in the peculiar problems of experimental psychology, such as those of
+color or tone perception. It would be impossible to make anything in
+terms of Berkeleyan sense-data and of symbolic logic out of any
+scientific discovery. Research defines its problem by isolating certain
+facts which appear for the time being not as the sense-data of a
+solipsistic mind, but as experiences of an individual in a highly
+organized society, facts which, because they are in conflict with
+accepted doctrines, must be described so that they can be experienced by
+others under like conditions. The ground for the analysis which leads to
+such facts is found in the conflict between the accepted theory and the
+experience of the individual scientist. The analysis is strictly _ad
+hoc_. As far as possible the exception is stated in terms of accepted
+meanings. Only where the meaning is in contradiction with the experience
+does the fact appear as the happening to an individual and become a
+paragraph out of his biography. But as such an event, whose existence
+for science depends upon the acceptance of the description of him to
+whom it has happened, it must have all the setting of circumstantial
+evidence. Part of this circumstantial evidence is found in so-called
+scientific control, that is, the evidence that conditions were such that
+similar experiences could happen to others and could be described as
+they are described in the account given. Other parts of this evidence
+which we call corroborative are found in the statements of others which
+bear out details of this peculiar event, though it is important to note
+that these details have to be wrenched from their settings to give this
+corroborative value. To be most conclusive they must have no intentional
+connection with the experience of the scientist. In other words, those
+individuals who corroborate the facts are made, in spite of themselves,
+experiencers of the same facts. The perfection of this evidence is
+attained when the fact can happen to others and the observer simply
+details the conditions under which he made the observation, which can
+be then so perfectly reproduced that others may repeat the exceptional
+experience.
+
+This process is not an analysis of a known world into ultimate elements
+and their relations. Such an analysis never isolates this particular
+exception which constitutes the scientific problems as an individual
+experience. The extent to which the analysis is carried depends upon the
+exigencies of the problem. It is the indefinite variety of the problems
+which accounts for the indefinite variety of the facts. What constitutes
+them facts in the sense in which we are using the term is their
+_exceptional_ nature; formally they appear as particular judgments,
+being denials of universal judgments, whether positive or negative. This
+exceptional nature robs the events of a reality which would have
+belonged to them as instances of a universal law. It leaves them,
+however, with the rest of their meaning. But the value which they have
+lost is just that which was essential to give them their place in the
+world as it has existed for thought. Banished from that universally
+valid structure, their ground for existence is found in the experience
+of the puzzled observer. Such an observation was that of the moons of
+Jupiter made possible by the primitive telescope of Galileo. For those
+who lived in a Ptolemaic cosmos, these could have existence only as
+observations of individuals. As moons they had distinct meaning,
+circling Jupiter as our moon circles the earth, but being in
+contradiction with the Ptolemaic order they could depend for their
+existence only on the evidence of the senses, until a Copernican order
+could give them a local habitation and a name. Then they were observed
+not as the experiences of individuals but as instances of planetary
+order in a heliocentric system. It would be palpably absurd to refer to
+them as mere sense-data, mere sensations. They are for the time being
+inexplicable experiences of certain individuals. They are inexplicable
+because they have a meaning which is at variance with the structure of
+the whole world to which they belong. They are the phenomena termed
+accidental by Aristotle and rejected as full realities by him, but which
+have become, in the habitat of individual experience, the headstone of
+the structure of modern research of science.
+
+A rationalism which relegates implication to the indefinables cannot
+present the process of modern science. Implication is exactly that
+process by which these events pass from their individual existence into
+that of universal reality, and the scientist is at pains to define it as
+the experimental method. It is true that a proposition implies
+implication. But the proposition is the statement of the result of the
+process by which an object has arisen for knowledge and merely indicates
+the structure of the object. In discovery, invention, and research the
+escape from the exceptional, from the data of early stages of
+observation, is by way of an hypothesis; and every hypothesis so far as
+it is tenable and workable in its form is universal. No one would waste
+his time with a hypothesis which confessedly was not applicable to all
+instances of the problem. An hypothesis may be again and again
+abandoned, it may prove to be faulty and contradictory, but in so far as
+it is an instrument of research it is assumed to be universal and to
+perfect a system which has broken down at the point indicated by the
+problem. Implication and more elaborated instances flow from the
+structure of this hypothesis. The classical illustration which stands at
+the door of modern experimental science is the hypothesis which Galileo
+formed of the rate of the velocity of a falling body. He conceived that
+this was in proportion to the time elapsed during the fall and then
+elaborated the consequences of this hypothesis by working it into the
+accepted mathematical doctrines of the physical world, until it led to
+an anticipated result which would be actually secured and which would be
+so characteristic an instance of a falling body that it would answer to
+every other instance as he had defined them. In this fashion he defined
+his inference as the anticipation of a result because this result was a
+part of the world as he presented it amended by his hypothesis. It is
+true that back of the specific implication of this result lay a mass of
+other implications, many not even presented specifically in thought and
+many others presented by symbols which generalized innumerable
+instances. These implications are for the scientist more or less
+implicit meanings, but they are meanings each of which may be brought
+into question and tested in the same fashion if it should become an
+actual problem. Many of them which would not have occurred to Galileo as
+possible problems have been questioned since his day. What has remained
+after this period of determined questioning of the foundations of
+mathematics and the structure of the world of physical science is a
+method of agreement with oneself and others, in (a) the identification
+of the object of thought, in (b) the accepted values of assent and
+denial called truth and falsehood, and in (c) referring to meaning, in
+its relation to what is meant. In any case the achievement of symbolic
+logic, with its indefinables and axioms has been to reduce this logic to
+a statement of the most generalized form of possible consistent thought
+intercourse, with entire abstraction from the content of the object to
+which it refers. If, however, we abstract from its value in giving a
+consistent theory of number, continuity, and infinity, this complete
+abstraction from the content has carried the conditions of thinking in
+agreement with self and others so far away from the actual problem of
+science that symbolic logic has never been used as a research method. It
+has indeed emphasized the fact that thinking deals with problems which
+have reference to uses to which it can be put, not to a metaphysical
+world lying beyond experience. Symbolic logic has to do with the world
+of discourse, not with the world of things.
+
+What Russell pushes to one side as a happy guess is the actual process
+of implication by which, for example, the minute form in the diseased
+human system is identified with unicellular life and the history of the
+disease with the life history of this form. This identification implies
+reclassification of these forms and a treatment of the disease that
+answers to their life history. Having made this identification we
+anticipate the result of this treatment, calling it an inference.
+
+Implication belongs to the reconstruction of the object. As long as no
+question has arisen, the object is what it means or means what it is. It
+does not imply any feature of itself. When through conflict with the
+experience of the individual some feature of the object is divorced from
+some meaning the relationship between these becomes a false implication.
+When a hypothetically reconstructed object finds us anticipating a
+result which accords with the nature of such objects we assert an
+implication of this meaning. To carry this relation of implication back
+into objects which are subject to no criticism or question would of
+course resolve the world into elements connected by external relations,
+with the added consequence that these elements can have no content,
+since every content in the face of such an analysis must be subject to
+further analysis. We reach inevitably symbols such as X, Y, and Z, which
+can symbolize nothing. Theoretically we can assume an implication
+between any elements of an object, but in this abstract assumption the
+symbolic logician overlooks the fact that he is also assuming some
+content which is not analyzed and which is the ground of the
+implication. In other words this logician confuses the scientific
+attitude of being ready to question anything with an attitude of being
+willing to question everything at once. It is only in an unquestioned
+objective world that the exceptional instance appears and it is only in
+such a world that an experimental science tests the implications of the
+hypothetically reconstructed object.
+
+The guess is happy because it carries with it the consequences which
+follow from its fitting into the world, and the guess, in other words
+the hypothesis, takes on this happy form solely because of the material
+reconstruction which by its nature removes the unhappy contradiction and
+promises the successful carrying out of the conflicting attitudes in the
+new objective world. There is no such thing as formal implication.
+
+Where no reconstruction of the world is involved in our identification
+of objects that belong to it and where, therefore, no readjustment of
+conduct is demanded, such a logic symbolizes what takes place in our
+direct recognition of objects and our response to them. Then "X is a man
+implies X is mortal for all values of X" exactly symbolizes the attitude
+toward a man subject to a disease supposedly mortal. But it fails to
+symbolize the biological research which starting with inexplicable
+sporadic cases of an infectious disease carries over from the study of
+the life history of infusoria a hypothetical reconstruction of the
+history of disease and then acts upon the result of this assumption.
+Research-science presents a world whose form is always universal, but
+this universal form is neither a metaphysical assumption nor a fixed
+form of the understanding. While the scientist may as a metaphysician
+assume the existence of realities which lie beyond a possible
+experience, or be a Kantian or Neo-Kantian, neither of these attitudes
+is necessary for his research. He may be a positivist--a disciple of
+Hume or of John Stuart Mill. He may be a pluralist who conceives, with
+William James, that the order which we detect in parts of the universe
+is possibly one that is rising out of the chaos and which may never be
+as universal as our hypothesis demands. None of these attitudes has any
+bearing upon his scientific method. This simplifies his thinking,
+enables him to identify the object in which he is interested wherever he
+finds it, and to abstract in the world as he conceives it those features
+which carry with them the occurrence he is endeavoring to place.
+Especially it enables him to make his thought a part of the socially
+accepted and socially organized science to which his thought belongs. He
+is far too modest to demand that the world be as his inference demands.
+
+He asks that his view of the world be cogent and convincing to all those
+whose thinking has made his own possible, and be an acceptable premise
+for the conduct of that society to which he belongs. The hypothesis has
+no universal and necessary characters except those that belong to the
+thought which preserves the same meanings to the same objects, the same
+relations between the same relata, the same attributes of assent and
+dissent under the same conditions, the same results of the same
+combinations of the same things. For scientific research the meanings,
+the relations with the relata, the assent and dissent, the combinations
+and the things combined are all in the world of experience. Thinking in
+its abstractions and identifications and reconstructions undertakes to
+preserve the values that it finds, and the necessity of its thinking
+lies in its ability to so identify, preserve, and combine what it has
+isolated that the thought structure will have an identical import under
+like conditions for the thinker with all other thinkers to whom these
+instruments of research conduct are addressed. Whatever conclusions the
+scientist draws as necessary and universal results from his hypothesis
+for a world independent of his thought are due, not to the cogency of
+his logic, but to other considerations. For he knows if he reflects that
+another problem may arise which will in its solution change the face of
+the world built upon the present hypothesis. He will defend the
+inexorableness of his reasoning, but the premises may change. Even the
+contents of tridimensional space and sensuous time are not essential to
+the cogency of that reasoning nor can the unbroken web of the argument
+assure the content of the world as invariable. His universals, when
+applied to nature, are all hypothetical universals; hence the import of
+experiment as the test of an hypothesis. Experience does not rule out
+the possible cropping up of a new problem which may shift the values
+attained. Experience simply reveals that the new hypothesis fits into
+the meanings of the world which are not shaken; it shows that, with the
+reconstruction which the hypothesis offers, it is possible for
+scientific conduct to proceed.
+
+But if the universal character of the hypothesis and the tested theory
+belong to the instrumental character of thought in so reconstructing a
+world that has proved to be imperfect, and inadequate to conduct, the
+stuff of the world and of the new hypothesis are the same. At least this
+is true for the scientist who has no interest in an epistemological
+problem that does not affect his scientific undertakings in one way nor
+another. I have already pointed out that from the standpoint of logical
+and psychological analysis the things with which science deals can be
+neither ultimate elements nor sense-data; but that they must be phases
+and characters and parts of things in some whole, parts which can only
+be isolated because of the conflict between an accepted meaning and some
+experience. I have pointed out that an analysis is guided by the
+practical demands of a solution of this conflict; that even that which
+is individual in its most unique sense in the conflict and in attempts
+at its solution does not enter into the field of psychology--which has
+its own problems peculiar to its science. Certain psychological problems
+belong to the problems of other sciences, as, for example, that of the
+personal equation belongs to astronomy or that of color vision to the
+theory of light. But they bulk small in these sciences. It cannot be
+successfully maintained that a scientific observation of the most unique
+sort, one which is accepted for the time being simply as a happening in
+this or that scientist's experience, is as such a psychological datum,
+for the data in psychological text-books have reference to
+_psychological_ problems. Psychology deals with the consciousness of the
+individual in its dependence upon the physiological organism and upon
+those contents which detach themselves from the objects outside the
+individual and which are identified with his inner experience. It deals
+with the laws and processes and structures of this consciousness in all
+its experiences, not with _exceptional_ experiences. It is necessary to
+emphasize again that for science these particular experiences arise
+within a world which is in its logical structure organized and
+universal. They arise only through the conflict of the individual's
+experience with such an accepted structure. For science individual
+experience _presupposes_ the organized structure; hence it cannot
+provide the material out of which the structure is built up. This is the
+error of both the positivist and of the psychological philosopher, if
+scientific procedure gives us in any sense a picture of the situation.
+
+A sharp contrast appears between the accepted hypothesis with its
+universal form and the experiences which invalidate the earlier theory.
+The reality of these experiences lies in their happening. They were
+unpredictable. They are not instances of a law. The later theory, the
+one which explains these occurrences, changes their character and
+status, making them necessary results of the world as that is conceived
+under this new doctrine. This new standpoint carries with it a backward
+view, which explains the erroneous doctrine, and accounts for the
+observations which invalidated it. Every new theory must take up into
+itself earlier doctrines and rationalize the earlier exceptions. A
+generalization of this attitude places the scientist in the position of
+anticipating later reconstructions. He then must conceive of his world
+as subject to continuous reconstructions. A familiar interpretation of
+his attitude is that the hypothesis is thus approaching nearer and
+nearer toward a reality which would never change if it could be
+attained, or, from the standpoint of the Hegelian toward a goal at
+infinity. The Hegelian also undertakes to make this continuous process
+of reconstruction an organic phase in reality and to identify with
+nature the process of finding exceptions and of correcting them. The
+fundamental difference between this position and that of the scientist
+who looks before and after is that the Hegelian undertakes to make the
+exception in its exceptional character a part of the reality which
+transcends it, while the scientist usually relegates the exception to
+the experience of individuals who were simply caught in an error which
+later investigation removes.
+
+The error remains as an historical incident explicable perhaps as a
+result of the conditions under which it occurred, but in so far as it
+was an error, not a part of reality. It is customary to speak of it as
+subjective, though this implies that we are putting the man who was
+unwittingly in error into the position of the one who has corrected it.
+To entertain that error in the face of its correction would be
+subjective. A result of this interpretation is that the theories are
+abstracted from the world and regarded as something outside it. It is
+assumed that the theories are mental or subjective and change while the
+facts remain unchanged. Even when it is assumed that theories and facts
+agree, men speak of a correspondence or parallelism between idea and the
+reality to which it refers. While this attitude seems to be that of
+science toward the disproved theories which lie behind it, it is not its
+attitude to the theories which it accepts. These are not regarded as
+merely parallel to realities, as abstracted from the structure of
+things. These meanings go into the makeup of the world. It is true that
+the scientist who looks before and after realizes that any specific
+meaning which is now accepted may be questioned and discarded. If he
+carries his refection far enough he sees that a complete elimination of
+all the meanings which might conceivably be so discredited would leave
+nothing but logical constants, a world with no facts in any sense. In
+this position he may of course take an agnostic attitude and be
+satisfied with the attitude of Hume or Mill or Russell. But if he does
+so, he will pass into the camp of the psychological philosophers and
+will have left the position of the scientist. The scientist always deals
+with an _actual_ problem, and even when he looks before and after he
+does so in so far as he is facing in inquiry some actual problem. No
+actual problem could conceivably take on the form of a conflict
+involving the whole world of meaning. The conflict always arises between
+an individual experience and certain laws, certain meanings while others
+are unaffected. These others form the necessary field without which no
+conflict can arise. They give the man of research his ([Greek: pou sto])
+upon which he can formulate his problem and undertake its solution. The
+possible calling in question of any content, whatever it may be, means
+always that there is left a field of unquestioned reality. The attitude
+of the scientist never contemplates or could contemplate the possibility
+of a world in which there would be no reality by which to test his
+hypothetical solution of the problem that arises. Nor does this attitude
+when applied to past discarded theories necessarily carry with it the
+implication that these older theories were subjective ideas in men's
+minds, while the reality lay beside and beyond them unmingled with
+ideas. It always finds a standpoint from which these ideas in the
+earlier situation are still recognized as reliable, for there are no
+scientific data without meanings. There could be no history of science
+on any other basis. No history of science goes back to ultimate elements
+or sense-data, or to any combination of bare data on one hand and
+logical elements on the other. The world of the scientist is always
+there as one in which reconstruction is taking place with continual
+shifting of problems, but as a real world within which the problems
+arise. The errors of the past and present appear as untenable hypotheses
+which could not bear the test of experiment if the experience were
+sufficiently enlarged and interpreted. But they are not mere errors to
+be thrown into the scrap heap. They become a part of a different phase
+of reality which a fuller history of the past records or a fuller
+account of the present interprets, giving them thereby their proper
+place in a real world.[36]
+
+The completion of this program, however, awaits the solution of the
+scientific problem of the relation of the psychical and the physical
+with the attendant problem of the meaning of the so-called origin of
+consciousness in the history of the world. My own feeling is that these
+problems must be attacked from the standpoint of the social nature of
+so-called consciousness. The clear indications of this I find in the
+reference of our logical constants to the structure of thought as a
+means of communication, in the explanation of errors in the history of
+science by their social determination, and in the interpretation of the
+inner field of experience as the importation of social intercourse into
+the conscious conduct of the individual. But whatever may be the
+solution of these problems, it must carry with it such a treatment of
+the experience of the individual that the latter will never be regarded
+merely as a subjective state, however inadequate it may have proved
+itself as a scientific hypothesis. This seems to me to be involved in
+the conception of psychology as a natural science and in any legitimate
+carrying out of the Hegelian program of giving reality and creative
+import to individual experience. The experience of the individual in its
+exceptional character is the growing-point of science, first of all in
+the recognition of data upon which the older theories break, and second
+in the hypothesis which arises in the individual and is tested by the
+experiment which reconstructs the world. A scientific history and a
+scientific psychology from which epistemology has been banished must
+place these observations and hypotheses together with erroneous
+conceptions and mistaken observations _within_ the real world in such a
+fashion that their reference to the experience of the individual and to
+the world to which he belongs will be comprehensible. As I have
+indicated, the scientific theory of the physical and conscious
+individual in the world implied in this problem has still to be
+adequately developed. But there is implied in the conception of such a
+theory such a location of the process of thought in the process of
+reality as will give it an import both in the meaning of things and in
+the individual's thinking. We have the beginning of such a doctrine in
+the conception of a functional value of consciousness in the conduct of
+living forms, and the development of reflective thought out of such a
+consciousness which puts it within the act and gives it the function of
+preparation where adjustment is necessary. Such a process creates the
+situation with reference to which the form acts. In all adjustment or
+adaptation the result is that the form which is adjusted finds that by
+its adjustment it has created an environment. The ancients by their
+formulation of the Ptolemaic theory committed themselves to the world in
+which the fixed values of the heavenly over against the earthly
+obtained. Such a world was the interpretation of the experience involved
+in their physical and social attitudes. They could not accept the
+hypothesis of Aristarchus because it conflicted with the world which
+they had created, with the values which were determining values for
+them. The same was true of the hypothesis of Democritus. They could not,
+as they conceived the physical world, accept its purely quantitative
+character. The conception of a disinterested truth which we have
+cherished since the Middle Ages is itself a value that has a social
+basis as really as had the dogma of the church. The earliest statement
+of it was perhaps that of Francis Bacon. Freeing investigation from the
+church dogma and its attendant logic meant to him the freedom to find in
+nature what men needed and could use for the amelioration of their
+social and physical condition. The full implication of the doctrine has
+been recognized as that of freedom, freedom to effect not only values
+already recognized, but freedom to attain as well such complete
+acquaintance with nature that new and unrecognized uses would be at our
+disposal; that is, that progress should be one toward any possible use
+to which increased knowledge might lead. The cult of increasing
+knowledge, of continually reconstructing the world, took the place both
+of the ancient conception of adequately organizing the world as
+presented in thought, and of the medieval conception of a systematic
+formulation on the basis of the statement in church dogma of social
+values. This modern conception proceeds from the standpoint not of
+formulating values, but giving society at the moment the largest
+possible number of alternatives of conduct, i.e., undertaking to fix
+from moment to moment the widest possible field of conduct. The purposes
+of conduct are to be determined in the presence of a field of
+alternative possibilities of action. The ends of conduct are not to be
+determined in advance, but in view of the interests that fuller
+knowledge of conditions awaken. So there appears a conception of
+determining the field that shall be quite independent of given values. A
+real world which consists not of an unchanged universe, but of a
+universe which may be continually readjusted according to the problems
+arising in the consciousness of the individuals within society. The
+seemingly fixed character of such a world is found in the generally
+fixed conditions which underlie the type of problems which we find. We
+determine the important conditions incident to the working out of the
+great problems which face us. Our conception of a given universe is
+formed in the effort to mobilize all the material about us in relation
+to these problems--the structure of the self, the structure of matter,
+the physical process of life, the laws of change and the interrelation
+of changes. With reference to these problems certain conditions appear
+fixed and become the statement of the world by which we must determine
+by experimental test the viability of our hypotheses. There arises then
+the conception of a world which is unquestioned over against any
+particular problem. While our science continually changes that world, at
+least it must be always realized as there. On the other hand, these
+conceptions are after all relative to the ends of social conduct which
+may be formulated in the presence of any freedom of action.
+
+We postulate freedom of action as the condition of formulating the ends
+toward which our conduct shall be directed. Ancient thought assured
+itself of its ends of conduct and allowed these to determine the world
+which tested its hypothesis. We insist such ends may not be formulated
+until we know the field of possible action. The formulation of the ends
+is essentially a social undertaking and seems to follow the statement of
+the field of possible conduct, while in fact the statement of the
+possible field of conduct is actually dependent on the push toward
+action. A moving end which is continually reconstructing itself follows
+upon the continually enlarging field of opportunities of conduct.
+
+The conception of a world of existence, then, is the result of the
+determination at the moment of the conditions of the solution of the
+given problems. These problems constitute the conditions of conduct, and
+the ends of conduct can only be determined as we realize the
+possibilities which changing conditions carry with them. Our world of
+reality thus becomes independent of any special ends or purposes and we
+reach an entirely disinterested knowledge. And yet the value and import
+of this knowledge is found in our conduct and in our continually
+changing conditions. Knowledge for its own sake is the slogan of
+freedom, for it alone makes possible the continual reconstruction and
+enlargement of the ends of conduct.
+
+The individual in his experiences is continually creating a world which
+becomes real through his discovery. In so far as new conduct arises
+under the conditions made possible by his experience and his hypothesis
+the world, which may be made the test of reality, has been modified and
+enlarged.
+
+I have endeavored to present the world which is an implication of the
+scientific method of discovery with entire abstraction from any
+epistemological or metaphysical presuppositions or complications.
+Scientific method is indifferent to a world of things-in-themselves, or
+to the previous condition of philosophic servitude of those to whom its
+teachings are addressed. It is a method not of knowing the unchangeable
+but of determining the form of the world within which we live as it
+changes from moment to moment. It undertakes to tell us what we may
+expect to happen when we act in such or such a fashion. It has become a
+matter of serious consideration for a philosophy which is interested in
+a world of things-in-themselves, and the epistemological problem. For
+the cherished structures of the metaphysical world, having ceased to
+house the values of mankind, provide good working materials in the
+hypothetical structures of science, on condition of surrendering their
+metaphysical reality; and the epistemological problem, having seemingly
+died of inanition, has been found to be at bottom a problem of method or
+logic. My attempt has been to present what seems to me to be two capital
+instances of these transformations. Science always has a world of
+reality by which to test its hypotheses, but this world is not a world
+independent of scientific experience, but the immediate world
+surrounding us within which we must act. Our next action may find these
+conditions seriously changed, and then science will formulate this world
+so that in view of this problem we may logically construct our next plan
+of action. The plan of action should be made self-consistent and
+universal in its form, not that we may thus approach nearer to a
+self-consistent and universal reality which is independent of our
+conduct, but because our plan of action needs to be intelligent and
+generally applicable. Again science advances by the experiences of
+individuals, experiences which are different from the world in which
+they have arisen and which refer to a world which is not yet in
+existence, so far as scientific experience is concerned. But this
+relation to the old and new is not that of a subjective world to an
+objective universe, but is a process of logical reconstruction by which
+out of exceptions the new law arises to replace a structure that has
+become inadequate.
+
+In both of these processes, that of determining the structure of
+experience which will test by experiment the legitimacy of the new
+hypothesis, and that of formulating the problem and the hypothesis for
+its solution, the individual functions in his full particularity, and
+yet in organic relationship with the society that is responsible for
+him. It is the import for scientific method of this relationship that
+promises most for the interpretation of the philosophic problems
+involved.
+
+
+
+
+CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY
+
+BOYD H. BODE
+
+
+If it is true that misery loves company, those persons who feel
+despondent over the present situation in philosophy may console
+themselves with the reflection that things are not so bad as they might
+be. Our friends, the psychologists, are afflicted even as we are. The
+disagreements of experts as to both the subject-matter and the method of
+psychology are as fundamental as anything that philosophy can show. A
+spirit of revolt is abroad in the land, and psychology is once more on
+trial. The compact which provided that psychology should be admitted to
+the rank of a natural science, on condition that it surrender its
+pretension to be the science of the soul and confine itself to the study
+of consciousness, is no longer considered binding. The suspicion is
+growing that consciousness is nothing more nor less than an attenuated
+form of the soul that it pretends to displace. Consequently the
+psychology without a soul to which we have just become accustomed is now
+attacked on behalf of a psychology without a consciousness, on the
+ground that this latter standpoint alone can give assurance against
+entangling alliances between psychology and metaphysics.
+
+From the side of philosophy this situation is interesting, not only to
+such as may crave the comfort that springs from the spectacle of
+distress, but also to those who take a more hopeful view of present-day
+tendencies. The question that is at issue is fundamentally the question
+of the nature of consciousness, which is quite as important to
+philosophy as to psychology. On the one hand it is maintained that
+psychology has to do with consciousness and that its distinctive method
+is the method of introspection. On the other hand it is urged that
+psychology is nothing more nor less than a study of behavior, that it is
+not a science at all, unless the existence of consciousness is denied or
+at least ignored, and that the method of introspection is a delusion and
+a snare. The two standpoints are not always clearly formulated, nor can
+we say that every system of psychology is true to type. It is, in fact,
+the lack of clearness in the fundamental concepts that makes the status
+of psychology a matter of so much uncertainty.
+
+The situation presents an apparent anomaly. Both parties profess to deal
+with facts of observation, yet the claim of the introspectionist that he
+observes facts of consciousness is met by the assertion of his rival
+that there is no consciousness to be observed. How can this be, unless
+we assume that introspection presupposes an esoteric principle, like the
+principle of grace in religion? It seems evident that we have to do here
+with some deep-seated misconception regarding the facts that are
+supposed to constitute the subject-matter for observation and
+description.
+
+A common procedure on the part of introspectionism is to assert the
+existence of consciousness as something which is indeed indefinable, but
+which admits of observation and description. But this procedure is no
+longer justified. In the first place, the assertion that consciousness
+exists is not the statement of a fact but the designation of a problem.
+What is the nature of the fact that we call consciousness? If the
+common-sense individual, who assents so readily to the proposition that
+we all know consciousness, be asked to differentiate between
+consciousness and the objects of consciousness, he is dazed and
+helpless. And, secondly, the assertion of indefinability involves us in
+a difficulty. The indefinability of consciousness has sometimes been
+likened to that of space, but in this latter case we find no such
+confusion between space and the objects in space. It is clear, however,
+that if consciousness is not something distinguishable from objects,
+there is no need to discuss consciousness, and if it is distinguishable,
+it must be distinguished before we are entitled to proceed with
+observation and description. Definition is indispensable, at least to
+the extent of circumscribing the facts that are to be investigated.
+Moreover, if consciousness cannot be defined, neither can it be
+described. What is definition, after all, but a form of description? To
+assert, in effect, that consciousness is indefinable because it is
+indescribable, and that for this reason we must be content with
+description, is both a flagrant disregard of consistency and an
+unwarranted abuse of our good nature.
+
+This difficulty leads on to another, for doubts, like lies, have a
+singular propensity to breed more of their kind. If consciousness is
+something that everybody knows, why should it be necessary to look to
+the psychologist for a description of it? if the study of consciousness
+brings to light any new fact, that fact by definition is not a conscious
+fact at all, and consequently is not the kind of thing that we set out
+to describe. Consciousness, in short, cannot be analyzed; it cannot be
+resolved into elements or constituents. It is precisely what it is and
+not some product of our after-thought that we are pleased to substitute
+for it.
+
+These familiar considerations do not, indeed, decide the issue between
+the rival theories of psychology, but they serve to suggest that our
+introspective psychology has been too easily satisfied in the conception
+of its specific problem or subject-matter. As a matter of fact, the work
+that has been done in the name of psychology has been peculiarly barren
+of results, so far as a consciousness _an sich_ is concerned, although
+it has led to a wealth of material pertaining to adaptive behavior. Its
+solid achievements lie in the domain, not of consciousness, but of
+instinctive, habitual, and intelligent adaptation. It teaches us little
+that has to do unequivocally with consciousness as distinct from things,
+but it teaches us much concerning stimulus and response, attention and
+habit, conflict and adjustment. The doctrine that psychology is a
+science of behavior is justified at least to the extent that it
+emphasizes a factor, the importance of which introspectionism has
+consistently refused to recognize. Whatever conclusion we may ultimately
+reach regarding the nature of consciousness, the whole drift of
+psychological and biological investigation seems to indicate that an
+adequate conception of consciousness and of the distinctive problem of
+psychology can be attained only on the basis of a painstaking reflection
+on the facts of behavior.
+
+
+I
+
+It is evident that the attempt to ascertain the nature of consciousness
+and of psychology from the standpoint of behavior is committed to the
+assumption that the behavior in question is of a distinctive kind. The
+justification of this assumption will enable us to formulate the
+definitions which we seek. Discussions of conscious behavior ordinarily
+emphasize the similarity between conscious and reflex behavior rather
+than the difference. An attitude of expectancy, for example, is usually
+conceived as a sort of temporary reflex. Certain nervous connections are
+organized for the occasion, so that, when a given stimulus arrives, it
+will induce its appropriate response. This situation is best
+exemplified, perhaps, in simple reaction-experiments, in which the
+subject makes a certain predetermined response upon presentation of the
+stimulus. The process is supposed to be of the reflex type throughout,
+the only difference being that ordinary reflexes are relatively
+permanent and unvarying, whereas a prearranged response to a stimulus
+has to do with a reflex that is made to order so as to meet the
+exigencies of the moment.
+
+For certain purposes such a description of conscious behavior is no
+doubt sufficiently accurate. Our present concern, however, is with the
+differences between these temporary organizations and ordinary
+reflexes. In order to bring out these differences, let us introduce a
+slight complication into our reaction-experiment and suppose that the
+subject is to make one of two alternative responses, according to the
+nature of the stimulus. His state of expectancy is accompanied by a
+certain bodily "set" or preparedness for the coming event, although the
+precise nature of the event is a matter of uncertainty. His nervous
+system is in readiness to respond this way or that, or rather, it has
+already started to act in both of the alternative ways. If the subject
+is to respond with the right hand to one stimulus and with the left hand
+to the other, both hands are in a state of activity before the stimulus
+appears. The organization of the temporary reflex through the agency of
+the cerebral cortex could not be achieved were it not for the fact that
+all the movements entering into the organization are nascently aroused
+before the spring is touched which permits the act to unroll itself in
+orderly sequence.
+
+The various successive movements, then, which make up our temporary
+reflex achieve their relationship to one another from the fact that they
+are started simultaneously, and this peculiarity constitutes a
+distinctive feature. Apparently this feature is absent from true
+reflexes. An act of swallowing, performed unconsciously, may start the
+complicated processes of digestion, but it is merely the first act of a
+series. There is no evidence that the movements of the stomach and of
+the other organs concerned in digestion must be presupposed before the
+act of swallowing can take place. The swallowing may start the other
+processes, but we cannot say that these other processes react back upon
+the first act and make it one of swallowing rather than something else.
+Yet this "back stroke" is precisely what is necessary in our
+reaction-experiment, for it is by virtue of this fact that the
+organization of the temporary reflex becomes a possibility. The first
+response cannot take place until the last is provided for. Thus the
+immediate act of looking has embodied in it the activity that is to
+follow later. The looking is not simply with the eye, but with the hands
+that are to complete the response. The optical response is a response
+which, in the language of Bergson, prefigures or sketches out the act of
+a later moment. The nervous system is enabled to act as a unit, because
+the movements that are to occur at a later time are represented in the
+first stage of the complete act. The first stage, accordingly, does not
+occur independently, but _as_ a preliminary to the second. With an
+imperfect organization of the entire response, it may happen that the
+subsequent movements are not suppressed until their proper moment
+arrives, but appear in advance of their scheduled time. In writing, for
+example, we frequently omit words or add to a word the final letter of
+some word that belongs to a subsequent part of the sentence. An error of
+this sort could hardly occur so readily in the course of an act that
+belongs to the type of the true reflex.
+
+Lest the reader suspect that this is _a priori_ physiology, I may quote
+the following from a prominent neurologist: "No simple sensory impulse
+can, under ordinary circumstances, reach the cerebral cortex without
+first being influenced by subcortical association centers, within which
+complex reflex combinations may be effected and various automatisms set
+off in accordance with their preformed structure. These subcortical
+systems are to some extent modifiable by racial and individual
+experience, but their reactions are chiefly of the determinate or
+stereotyped character, with a relatively limited range of possible
+reaction types for any given stimulus complex.
+
+"It is shown by the lower vertebrates, which lack the cerebral cortex,
+that these subcortical mechanisms are adequate for all of the ordinary
+simple processes of life, including some degree of associative memory.
+But here, when emergencies arise which involve situations too complex to
+be resolved by these mechanisms, the animal will pay the inevitable
+penalty of failure--perhaps the loss of his dinner, or even of his life.
+
+"In the higher mammals with well-developed cortex the automatisms and
+simple associations are likewise performed mainly by the subcortical
+apparatus, but the inadequacy of this apparatus in any particular
+situation presents not the certainty of failure, but rather a dilemma.
+The rapid preformed automatisms fail to give relief, or perhaps the
+situation presents so many complex sensory excitations as to cause
+mutual interference and inhibition of all reaction. There is a stasis in
+the subcortical centers. Meanwhile the higher neural resistance of the
+cortical pathways has been overcome by summation of stimuli and the
+cortex is excited to function. Here is a mechanism adapted, not for a
+limited number of predetermined and immediate responses, but for a much
+greater range of combination of the afferent impressions with each other
+and with memory vestiges of previous reactions and a much larger range
+of possible modes of response to any given set of afferent impressions.
+By a process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements necessary to
+effect the adaptive response may be assembled and the problem solved.
+
+"It is evident here that the physiological factors in the dilemma or
+problem as this is presented to the cortex are by no means simple
+sensory impressions, but definitely organized systems of neural
+discharge, each of which is a physiological resultant of the reflexes,
+automatisms, impulses, and inhibitions characteristic of its appropriate
+subcortical centers. The precise form which these subcortical
+combinations will assume in response to any particular excitation is in
+large measure determined by the structural connections _inter se_....
+
+"From the standpoint of the cerebral cortex considered as an essential
+part of the mechanism of higher conscious acts, every afferent stimulus,
+as we have seen, is to some extent affected by its passage through
+various subcortical association centers (i.e., it carries a quale of
+central origin). But this same afferent impulse in its passage through
+the spinal cord and brain stem may, before reaching the cortex,
+discharge collateral impulses into the lower centers of reflex
+cooerdination, from which incipient (or even actually consummated) motor
+responses are discharged previous to the cortical reaction. These motor
+discharges may, through the 'back stroke' action, in turn exert an
+influence upon the slower cortical reaction. Thus the lower reflex
+response may in a literal physiological sense act _into_ the cortical
+stimulus complex and become an integral part of it."[37]
+
+It seems clear, then, that conscious behavior involves a certain
+_process_ of organization which constitutes a differential. The units
+entering into this process are "definitely organized systems of neural
+discharge," the antecedent organization of these several systems being
+due either to the inherited or to the acquired structure of the nervous
+system. Given a certain amount of plasticity, the nervous system builds
+up specific forms of response for certain objects or situations, and
+these forms of response subsequently become the material from which new
+organizations or new modes of response are constructed. The achievements
+of the past, accordingly, become stepping-stones to new achievement. The
+new organization, moreover, is not determined by a mechanism
+antecedently provided, but has a peculiar flexibility, so as to meet the
+demands of a new situation. That is, a new mode of procedure is adopted.
+Instead of being a purely mechanical reaction, the response that results
+from the situation is tentative or experimental in character, and "by a
+process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements necessary to effect
+the adaptive response may be assembled and the problem solved."
+
+We may add at once that the reorganization which is required to
+constitute conscious behavior varies a great deal in extent. In an act
+that is more or less habitual, a comparatively slight modification of
+the corresponding organized system of neural discharge will suffice to
+harmonize the conflicting elements, whereas on other occasions a more
+extensive modification is required. But in any case it appears that
+there is a certain impropriety in describing conscious behavior in terms
+of a temporary reflex, since the study of this behavior is concerned
+with the organization of the discordant elements, not as a result, but
+primarily as a process. In a reflex act we may suppose that the stimulus
+which evokes the first stage in the response is like the first in a row
+of upstanding bricks, which in falling knocks down another. That is, the
+reflex arc is built up by agencies that are quite independent of the
+subsequent act. The arc is all set up and ready for use by the time the
+reflex act appears upon the scene. In the case of conscious activity, on
+the other hand, we find a very different state of affairs. The arc is
+not first constructed and then used, but is constructed as the act
+proceeds; and this progressive organization is, in the end, what is
+meant by conscious behavior. If the course of a reflex act may be
+compared with traveling in a railroad train, the progress of a conscious
+act is more like that of a band of explorers, who hew their path and
+build their bridges as they go along. The direction of the act is not
+determined from without but from within; the end is internal to the
+process.
+
+This process of organization and purposive direction is exemplified in
+every act of attention. Is that noise, for example, a horse in the
+street, or is it the rain on the roof? What we find in such a situation
+is not a paralysis of activity, but a redirection. The incompatibility
+of responses is purely relative. There is indeed a mutual inhibition of
+the responses for hoof-beats and rain respectively, in the sense that
+neither has undisputed possession of the field; but this very inhibition
+sets free the process of attention, in which the various responses
+participate and cooeperate. There is no static balancing of forces, but
+rather a process in which the conflict is simply a condition for an
+activity of a different kind. If I am near a window facing the street,
+my eye turns thither for a clue; if the appeal to vision be eliminated,
+the eye becomes unseeing and cooeperates with the ear by excluding all
+that is irrelevant to the matter in hand. In this process the nervous
+system functions as a unit, with reference to the task of determining
+the source and character of the sound. This task or problem dominates
+the situation. A voice in an adjoining room may break in, but only as
+something to be ignored and shut out; whereas a voice in the street may
+become all-absorbing as possibly indicating the driver of the
+hypothetical horse. That is, the reason why the conflict of responses
+does not end in a deadlock, but in a redirection, is that a certain
+selectiveness of response comes into play. Out of the mass of more or
+less inchoate activities a certain response is selected as a
+rallying-point for the rest, and this selection is of a purposive
+character. The selection is determined by reference to the task in hand,
+which is to restore a certain harmony of response. Accordingly, that
+response is selected which gives promise of forwarding the business of
+the moment. By virtue of this selective character, one of the
+constituents of the total activity becomes exalted among its fellows and
+is entrusted with the function of determining further behavior.
+
+The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, is to put forward this
+selective or teleological character as the fundamental and
+differentiating trait of conscious behavior; and our task, accordingly,
+is to give an account of the nature and _modus operandi_ of this
+purposive control. This control, it is evident, consists in giving
+direction to behavior with reference to results that are still in the
+future. The basis for this anticipation of the future is furnished by
+the nascent responses which foreshadow further activity, even while they
+are still under the thraldom of the inhibitions which hold them back.
+These suppressed activities furnish a sort of diagram or sketch of
+further possible behavior, and the problem of consciousness is the
+problem of making the result or outcome of these incipient responses
+effective in the control of behavior. Future results or consequences
+must be converted into present stimuli; and the accomplishment of this
+conversion is the miracle of consciousness. To be conscious is to
+have a future possible result of present behavior embodied as a present
+existence functioning as a stimulus to further behavior. Thus the
+qualities of a perceptual experience may be interpreted, without
+exception, as anticipations of the results of activities which are
+as yet in an embryonic stage. The results of the activity that is
+as yet partly suppressed are already expressed or anticipated in the
+perception. The present experience may, as James says, "shoot its
+perspective far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in
+which lie the thoughts as yet unborn."[38] A baseball player, for
+example, who is all "set" to field a ball as a preliminary to a further
+play, sees the ball, not simply as an approaching object, but as
+ball-to-be-caught-and-then-thrown-to-first-base. Moreover, the ball,
+while still on the way, is a ball-that-may-bound-to-the-right-or-
+to-the-left. The corresponding movements of the player to the right or
+left, and the act of throwing, although present only as inhibited or
+incipient acts, are nevertheless embodied in the visual experience.
+Similarly my couch looks soft and inviting, because the optical
+stimulation suggests or prompts, not only the act of lying down, but
+also the kind of relaxation that is made possible by a comfortable bed.
+So likewise the tiger's jaws and claws look cruel and horrible, because
+in that perception are reflected the incipient movements of defense and
+recoil which are going on in the body of the observer. Perception, like
+our air-castles, or like dreams in the Freudian theory, presents what is
+at best but a suggestion or program in the guise of accomplished fact.
+
+This projection, however, of our submerged activities into our
+perceptions requires a more precise statement. According to the
+foregoing contention, the appearance, for example, of a razor's edge as
+sharp is the sensory correlate of an incipient response which, if it
+were to attain full-blown perfection, would be the reaction to a cut.
+By hypothesis, however, the response is inhibited, and it is this
+inhibition which calls forth the perception of the object. If the
+response encountered no obstruction, adaptation would be complete and
+perception would not occur. Since there is a blocking of the response,
+nature resorts to a special device in order to overcome the difficulty,
+and this device consists in furnishing the organism with a new type of
+stimulus. The razor as perceived does not actually cut just now, but it
+bodies forth the quality 'will cut,' i.e., the perceived attribute
+derives its character from what the object will, or may, do at a future
+time. That is, a perceived object is a stimulus which controls or
+directs the organism by results which have not yet occurred, but which
+will, or may, occur in the future. The uniqueness of such a stimulus
+lies in the fact that a contingent result somehow becomes operative as a
+present fact; the future is transferred into the present so as to become
+effective in the guidance of behavior.
+
+This control by a future that is made present is what constitutes
+consciousness. A living body may respond to an actual cut by a knife on
+purely mechanical or reflex principles; but to respond to a cut by
+anticipation, i.e., to behave with reference to a merely possible or
+future injury, is manifestly an exhibition of intelligence. Not that
+there need be any conscious reference to the future as future in the
+act. Merely to see the object as "sharp" is sufficient to give
+direction to conduct. But "sharp" is equivalent to "will cut"; the
+quality of sharpness is a translation of future possibility into terms
+of present fact, and as thus translated the future possibility becomes a
+factor in the control of behavior. Perception, therefore, is a point
+where present and future coincide. What the object _will_ do is, in
+itself, just a contingency, an abstract possibility, but in perception
+this possibility clothes itself in the garments of present, concrete
+fact and thus provides the organism with a different environment. The
+environment provides a new stimulus by undergoing a certain kind of
+change, i.e., by exercising a peculiar function of control. This control
+is seeing, and the whole mystery of consciousness is just this rendering
+of future stimulations or results into terms of present existence.
+Consciousness, accordingly, is a name for a certain change that takes
+place in the stimulus; or, more specifically, it is a name for the
+control of conduct by future results or consequences.
+
+To acquire such a stimulus and to become conscious are one and the same
+thing. As was indicated previously, the conscious stimulus is correlated
+with the various inherited and acquired motor tendencies which have been
+set off and which are struggling for expression, and the uniqueness of
+the stimulus lies in the fact that the adaptive value of these nascent
+motor tendencies becomes operative as the determining principle in the
+organization of the response. The response, for example, to "sharp" or
+"will cut" is reminiscent of an earlier reaction in which the organism
+engaged in certain defensive movements as the result of an actual
+injury. That is, the response to "sharp" is a nascent or incipient form
+of a response which at the time of its first occurrence was the
+expression of a maladaptation. The response that is induced when an
+object is seen as sharp would be biologically bad, if it were completed,
+and the fact that the object is seen as sharp means that this result is
+foreshadowed and operates as a stimulus to prevent such maladaptation.
+Similarly the couch which meets my weary eye becomes a stimulus to
+repose because the nascent activity which is aroused would be
+biologically good if completed. In any case the character of the
+stimulus is determined by the adaptive value which the incipient
+activity would have if it were carried out. Consciousness, accordingly,
+is just a future adaptation that has been set to work so as to bring
+about its own realization. The future thus becomes operative in the
+present, in much the same way as the prospects for next year's crop may
+be converted by the farmer into ready money with which to secure the
+tools for its production.
+
+To justify this conclusion by a detailed and extensive application of
+this interpretation to every form of quality and relation would carry us
+beyond the limits of the present undertaking. It is a view, however,
+which offers possibilities that have not as yet been properly
+recognized. Certain considerations, besides those already discussed, may
+be mentioned as giving it an antecedent plausibility. As regards simple
+sense-qualities, there is abundant reason for believing that Locke's
+doctrine of "simple ideas" is a violent perversion of the facts. To
+assume that the last results of analysis are the first things in
+experience is to give a fatal twist to psychology and to commit us to
+the fruitless agonies of epistemology. The original "blooming, buzzing
+confusion" with which experience starts becomes differentiated into
+specific qualities only to the extent that certain typical and organized
+forms of response are built up within the body. Sense-qualities, in
+other words, are functionally not simple but extremely complex; they owe
+their distinctiveness or individuality to the fact that each of them
+embodies a specific set of cues or anticipations, with reference to
+further experiences. The difference between a quality like "sharpness"
+and a quality like "red" lies in the fact that the former is a
+translation of a relatively simple possibility, viz., "will cut,"
+whereas the latter embodies a greater variety of anticipations. The
+perception of red, being the outcome of many comparisons and
+associations, presupposes a complex physical response which contains
+multitudinous tendencies to reinstate former responses; and the combined
+effect of these suppressed tendencies is the perception of a color which
+offers possibilities of control over behavior in such directions as
+reminiscences, idle associations, or perhaps scrutiny and investigation.
+A similar explanation evidently applies to abstract ideas, which neither
+admit of reduction to "revived sensations" nor compel the adoption of a
+peculiarly "spiritual" or "psychic" existence in the form of
+unanalyzable meanings. Here again a complex mode of response must be
+assumed, having as its correlate an experience describable only in
+terms of its functioning, which is such as to enable the organism to act
+intelligently, i.e., with reference to future results, which are
+sufficiently embodied in the experience to secure appropriate behavior.
+Again, this point of view offers a satisfactory solution for the
+time-worn puzzle of relativity. If perception is just the translation of
+future possible stimulations into present fact, there is assuredly no
+justification for the notion that perception distorts the facts or that
+discrepancies among different perceptions prove their "subjectivity."
+There remains but one test by which the correctness or validity of
+perception may be judged, viz., whether the perceived object proves to
+be the kind of stimulus which is reported or anticipated in the present
+experience.
+
+So far our discussion has emphasized the anticipatory character of the
+conscious stimulus. Future consequences come into the present as
+_conditions_ for further behavior. These anticipations are based,
+indeed, upon previous happenings, but they enter into the present
+situation as conditions that must be taken into account. But to take
+them into account means that the conscious situation is essentially
+incomplete and in process of transformation or reconstruction. This
+peculiar incompleteness or contingency stands out prominently when the
+situation rises to the level of uncertainty and perplexity. To borrow
+the classical illustration of the child and the candle, the child is in
+a state of uncertainty because the neural activity of the moment
+comprises two incompatible systems of discharge, the one being a
+grasping and holding, the other a withdrawal and such further movements
+as may be induced by contact with fire. Hence the candle has the
+seductiveness of a prize, but at the same time carries the suggestion of
+burning the fingers. That is, the perceived object has a unique
+character of uncertainty, which inheres in it as a present positive
+quality. We are here confronted with genuine contingency, such as is
+encountered nowhere else. Other modes of behavior may be uncertain in
+the sense that the incoming stimulation finds no fixed line of discharge
+laid down for itself within the organism. In seeking to convert itself
+into response it may either sweep away the obstructions in its path or
+work itself out along lines of less resistance, in ways that no man can
+foretell. There may be moments of equilibrium, moments when it remains
+to be seen where the dam will break and the current rush through. Such
+uncertainty, however, is the uncertainty of the bystander who attempts
+to forecast what will happen next. It is not the uncertainty that
+figures as an integral part of conscious behavior.
+
+This inherent uncertainty means that conscious behavior, as contrasted
+with the mechanical character of the reflexes, is essentially
+experimental. The uncertainty exists precisely because an effort is
+under way to clear up the uncertainty. The resort to eye or ear or to
+reflective thinking is suggested by the corresponding nascent responses
+and is an endeavor to secure something which is still to seek, but
+which, when found, will meet the requirements of the situation.
+Translating this process into terms of stimulus and response, we may
+say that the conscious stimulus of the moment induces the investigation
+or scrutiny which presently results in the arrival of a stimulus that is
+adequate to the situation. The stimulus, in other words, provides for
+its own successor; or we may say that the process as a whole is a
+self-directing, self-determining activity. Stimulus and response are not
+successive stages or moments, but rather simultaneous functions or
+phases of the total process. Within this process the given situation is
+the stimulus because it is that aspect or function which guides the
+subsequent course of the activity, while the bodily movements are the
+response because they already embody the activity that is to follow. The
+significant circumstance here is that stimulus and response resist the
+temporal separation that we find in a purely reflex act; stimulus and
+response are bound together as correlated functions in a unitary,
+self-directing process, so that these twain are one flesh.
+
+Situations of uncertainty and expectancy, as exemplified by the familiar
+child-candle incident, are of interest, because they emphasize both the
+anticipatory character of experience and the peculiar reconstruction of
+the stimulus. These situations, however, differ merely in degree, not in
+kind, from other experiences; their merit is that in them the
+distinctive character of conscious life is writ large. To say that they
+are conscious situations is to say that they are so constituted that the
+possibilities of a subsequent moment are embodied in them as a positive
+quality. In them the present moment embodies a future that is
+contingent. And similarly the response has neither the predetermined
+organization of the reflex nor the aimless character of a response that
+issues in a set of random movements. It is, so to speak, of a
+generalized character, like the paleontological specimens that
+foreshadow in their structure the advent of both fish and reptile. This
+form of organization, however, while exemplified most strikingly in
+situations of uncertainty, pertains to all conscious behavior. In
+uttering a sentence, for example, we know in advance what we are going
+to say, yet the sentence shapes itself into definite form only as we
+proceed; or perhaps we get "stuck," and by hemming and hawing bear
+witness that a struggle for a certain kind of organization is going on.
+The same word in different contexts is a different word in each
+instance, by virtue of the coloring that it takes on from what is to
+follow after. And this is equally true of our most casual experiences.
+The auditory or visual object that we happen to notice and immediately
+afterwards ignore is apprehended with reference to the possibility of
+warranting further attention, or else it presents itself as an intruder
+that is to be excluded in order that we may go on with the concern of
+the moment. All experience is a kind of intelligence, a control of
+present behavior with reference to future adjustment. To be in
+experience at all is to have the future operate in the present.
+
+This reference to the future may be in the nature of an end or goal that
+controls a series of activities or it may be of a momentary and casual
+kind. In any case the character of the stimulus changes with the
+progress of the act. The book on the table must become successively
+book-to-be-reached-for, book-to-be-picked-up, and book-to-be-opened,
+unless the process is to drop back to the type of reflex. This
+development of the stimulus gives genuine continuity, since every moment
+in the process comes as a fulfilment of its predecessor and as a
+transition-point to its successor. In a purely mechanical act response
+follows stimulus like the successive strokes of a clock. It is a
+touch-and-go affair; the stimulus presses the button and then subsides,
+while the neural organization does the rest. In conscious behavior, on
+the other hand, stimulus and response keep step with each other. A mere
+succession of stimuli would reduce conscious behavior to a series of
+explosive jerks, on the principle of the gasoline engine. To be
+conscious at all is to duplicate in principle the agility of the
+tight-rope performer, who continuously establishes new co-ordinations
+according to the exigencies of the moment and with constant reference to
+the controlling consideration of keeping right side up. The sensory
+stimulus provides continuously for its own rehabilitation or appropriate
+transformation, and in a similar way the neural organization is never a
+finished thing, but is in constant process of readjustment to meet the
+demands of an adaptation that still lies in the future.
+
+It is this relationship of present response to the response of the next
+moment that constitutes the distinctive trait of conscious behavior. The
+relatively unorganized responses of the present moment, in becoming
+reflected in the experienced object, reveal their outcome or meaning
+before they have become overt, and thus provide the conditions of
+intelligent action. In other words, future consequences become
+transformed into a stimulus for further behavior. We are confronted here
+with a distinctive mode of operation, which must be properly recognized,
+if we are to give a consistent and intelligent account of conscious
+behavior. On the other hand, if we refuse to recognize the advent here
+of a new category, intelligence becomes an anomaly and mystery deepens
+into contradiction. Since intelligence or consciousness must be provided
+for somehow, we are forced back upon either interactionism or else
+epiphenomenalism, more or less disguised under a euphonious name, such
+as psycho-physical parallelism or the double-aspect theory. That is, the
+relation of stimulus and response is either reduced to plain cause and
+effect or else is rejected altogether and supplanted by a bare
+concomitance of the physical and mental series. In either case conscious
+behavior is reduced to the type of reflex action, the only issue between
+the two doctrines being the question whether or not it is necessary or
+permissible to interpolate mental links in the causal chain.
+
+According to the doctrine of parallelism, conscious behavior is nothing
+more than a complicated form of reflex, which goes on without any
+interference on the part of mind or intelligence. Intelligence adds
+nothing to the situation except itself; it carries no implications or
+new significance with regard to conduct. The psychic correlate is
+permitted to tag along, but the explanations of response remain the same
+in kind as they were before they reached the level of consciousness.
+"Mere complexity should not becloud the issue. Every brain process, like
+every reflex activity, is presumably the result of physico-chemical
+processes. The assumption of a mysterious intuition or 'psychic force'
+adds nothing to the mechanistic explanation, even when the latter is
+most fragmentary. The interactionists go out of their way unnecessarily
+in assuming a special activity of consciousness to account for the
+dislocation of reactions from sensations. The nervous organization
+suffices to explain it. Distant-stimuli and central stimuli co-operate
+to bring about anticipatory reactions; foresight is but the conscious
+side of this process. The phenomenon is _both_ physical and mental."[39]
+
+The passage just quoted is fairly typical. Since the mental is an aspect
+or concomitant of the physical it is clearly entitled to an occasional
+honorable mention, but the fact remains that the explanation of behavior
+is to be given wholly in terms of neural organization. The mental is
+quite literally an "also ran." To say that a physico-chemical process is
+also mental is of no particular significance as long as it is implied
+that the end or goal of the process plays no part in shaping the course
+of events. The mental simply gives dignity to the occasion, like the
+sedan chair with no bottom, in which the Irishman's admirers, according
+to James's story, ran him along to the place of banquet and which
+prompted the hero to remark: "Faith, if it wasn't for the honor of the
+thing, I might as well have come on foot."
+
+It is this empty show of respect which the interactionists seek to
+avoid when they make the mental a distinct link in the causal sequence.
+The physical first causes the mental, and the mental in turn brings
+about a change in the physical. In this way a certain importance is
+indeed secured to mental facts, but it appears that, so far as purposive
+action is concerned, we are no better off than we were before. The
+mental is simply another kind of cause; it has as little option
+regarding its physical effect as the physical cause has with regard to
+its mental effect. Non-mechanical behavior is again ruled out, or else a
+vain attempt is made to secure a place for it through the introduction
+of an independent psychic agency.
+
+It is true, indeed, that we are under no antecedent obligation to
+maintain the existence of an activity that is not entirely reducible to
+the type of everyday cause and effect. But neither does scientific zeal
+and incorruptibility require us to do violence to the facts in order to
+secure this uniformity of type. Not to speak at all of the difficulties
+inherent in this dualism, it seems undeniable that some facts
+persistently refuse to conform to the type of mechanism, unless they are
+previously clubbed into submission. Foresight and the sense of
+obligation, for example, must learn to regard themselves as nothing more
+than an interesting indication of the way in which the neural machinery
+is operating before they will fit into the scheme. And similarly the
+progress of an argument is no way controlled or directed by the end in
+view, or by considerations of logical coherence, but by the impact of
+causation. Ideas lose their power to guide conduct by prevision of the
+future, and truth and error consequently lose their significance, save
+perhaps as manifestations of cerebral operations. Since reasoning
+involves association, it must be reducible to bare association; the
+sequence of the process is just sequence and nothing more. A description
+of this kind is on a par with the celebrated opinion that violin music
+is just a case of scraping horse-hair on catgut. Everything that is
+distinctive in the facts is left out of account, and we are forced to
+the conclusion that no conclusion has any logical significance or value.
+
+In the end these difficulties, and in fact most of our philosophic ills,
+may be traced back to the prejudice that experience or knowing is a
+process in which the objects concerned do not participate and have no
+share. This assumption commits us at once to various corollaries and
+thus breeds a set of abstractions that pass themselves off as entities
+and add themselves to the world of our experience as demonstrable facts.
+In philosophy, as in the financial world, there is a constant temptation
+to do business on a basis of fictitious capitalization. Our abstract
+physico-chemical processes, with their correlates, such as passive,
+independent objects, souls, minds, or absolutes, do not represent actual
+working capital, but watered stock, and their inevitable tendency is to
+convert the legitimate business of philosophy into a campaign of
+exploitation, which is none the less exploitation because it is
+frequently done in the interests of what are supposed to be the
+spiritual values of man. A careful inventory of our assets brings to
+light no such entities as those which have been placed to our credit.
+We do not find body and object _and_ consciousness, but only body and
+object. We do not find objects that remain indifferent to the
+experiential process, but rather objects that exhibit a flexibility and
+mobility which defy all description. We do not find a self-sufficient
+environment or absolute _to_ which intelligence must needs adjust
+itself, but an environment that is at odds with itself and struggling in
+the throes of a reconstruction. The process of intelligence is something
+that goes on, not in our minds, but in things; it is not photographic,
+but creative. From the simplest perception to the most ideal aspiration
+or the wildest hallucination, our human experience is reality engaged in
+the guidance or control of behavior. Things undergo a change in becoming
+experienced, but the change consists in a doing, in the assumption of a
+certain task or duty. The experiential object hence varies with the
+response; the situation and the motor activity fit together like the
+sections of a broken bowl.
+
+The bearing of this standpoint on the interpretation of psychology is
+readily apparent. If it be granted that consciousness is just a name for
+behavior that is guided by the results of acts not yet performed but
+reflected beforehand in the objects of experience, it follows that this
+behavior is the peculiar subject-matter of psychology. It is only by
+reference to behavior that a distinctive field can be marked off for
+psychological enterprise. When we say that the flame is hot, the stone
+hard, and the ice cold and slippery, we are describing objects and
+nothing more. These qualities are, indeed, anticipations of future
+possibilities, but this means simply that the objects are described in
+terms of their properties or capacities as stimuli of the organism. Such
+an account leaves out of consideration certain changes which things
+undergo when they exercise the function of controlling or directing
+changes in the adjustment of the body. A quality, such as "sharp" or
+"hot," is not mental or constituted by consciousness, but the function
+of the quality in giving direction to behavior through certain changes
+which it undergoes is consciousness. The changes that take place in
+things as a result of association, attention, or memory, are changes
+that have no significance, save with regard to their function as stimuli
+to new adjustments. Psychology, therefore, is properly a study of the
+conditions which determine the change or development of stimuli; more
+specifically it is a study of the conditions which govern such processes
+as those by which problems are solved, lessons are memorized, habits and
+attitudes are built up, and decisions are reached. To call such study
+"applied" psychology is to misunderstand the proper scope and purpose of
+the subject. Psychology frequently has occasion to draw extensively upon
+physics and physiology, but it has its own problem and its own method of
+procedure.
+
+That this view of conscious behavior should involve an extensive
+reinterpretation of familiar facts is altogether natural and inevitable.
+If consciousness is a form of control, the question, for example, what
+is "in" consciousness and what is not must be interpreted with reference
+to this function of control. In a sense we perceive many things to
+which we are not paying attention, such as the light in the room or the
+familiar chairs and bookcases. These are perceived "marginally," as we
+say, in the sense that the presence of these objects affects the total
+adjustment of the moment in such a way that the experience _would_
+become a clue to these objects if they were withdrawn. And similarly we
+may speak of marginal sensations of strain or movement, to indicate
+possible clues to certain bodily activities which are factors in the
+process. These marginal perceptions or images are not actual existences,
+but are symbols and nothing more. The significance of these symbols is
+that they point to certain conditions by which the experiences in
+question are determined. Thus the question whether a given experience
+involves certain "sensations" is just a question whether certain bodily
+or extra-bodily conditions are involved in the experience. If this
+reference to conditions is ignored and experience is explained in terms
+of sensory material that blends and fuses and otherwise disposes itself,
+the explanation is no longer science but sleight-of-hand. Psychology has
+no proper concern with such mythical constituents of consciousness; its
+business is with things as related to conduct, which is to say that
+psychology is a science of behavior.
+
+
+II
+
+According to the standpoint set forth in the preceding discussion, the
+key to a consistent and fruitful interpretation of consciousness and
+psychology lies in behavior. If we turn now to the psychology of
+introspection, which has been dominant so many years, we find a
+standpoint and mode of procedure which, on the surface at least, is of a
+radically different kind. It behooves us, therefore, to consider this
+standpoint in some detail in order to justify the attempt to reinterpret
+and "evaluate" it in the light of our own doctrine.
+
+The point of departure for introspective psychology is to be found, so
+it seems, not in the facts of behavior, but in the distinction between
+focal and marginal experience. It is on this distinction that the
+introspective psychologist bases the attempt to give a psychological
+analysis and description of the contents of experience. To analyze and
+describe the facts of consciousness is to bring the marginal
+constituents of experience into the white light of attention. Analysis
+and description are possible just because experience is so largely a
+welter of elements that disguise their identity and character. In some
+way these unrecognized and unidentified elements are constituents of the
+total experience. To borrow the language of a writer quoted by James,
+"However deeply we may suppose the attention to be engaged by any
+thought, any considerable alteration of the surrounding phenomena would
+still be perceived; the most abstruse demonstration in this room would
+not prevent a listener, however absorbed, from noticing the sudden
+extinction of the lights."[40] Or, as James remarks: "It is just like
+the overtones in music. Different instruments give the 'same note,'
+namely, various upper harmonics of it which differ from one instrument
+to another. They are not separately heard by the ear; they blend with
+the fundamental note and suffuse it, and alter it."[41] Let the
+attention be directed to these overtones, however, and they at once
+detach themselves from their surroundings and step forth into the light
+of day. Even so the ticking of the clock may pass unnoticed in the sense
+that it is an undiscriminated element in the background of our
+consciousness; but if the ticking comes to a sudden stop, the feeling of
+a void in our consciousness proclaims the fact that something has gone
+out from it.
+
+The observation and description of the facts of consciousness, then, is
+based directly on the fact that experience, as the psychologist deals
+with it, possesses a focus and margin. Nature as conceived by the
+physical sciences presents no such distinction. The facts are what they
+are, and their character as focal or marginal, as clear or obscure,
+depends altogether upon their relation to an intelligence. Or we may say
+that if the facts of experience were always focal and never marginal, it
+would never occur to us to speak of consciousness as we do at present.
+As long as we confine ourselves to a given color, shape or temperature,
+as experienced focally, we are not dealing with consciousness, but with
+objects. An analysis of such facts that does not bring in the marginal
+is not an analysis of consciousness, but an analysis of physical
+reality. Even if we consider non-physical objects, such as mathematical
+or economic concepts, we find that our analysis is not psychological
+as long as the marginal is left out. The consideration of the margin,
+however, brings us into the presence of facts which are of a distinctive
+kind and which warrant a new science. Let the margin be eliminated and
+psychology disappears at the same time.
+
+The psychological doctrine of focus and margin, then, is a matter of
+fundamental importance. On the interpretation of this doctrine depend
+our systems of psychology and of philosophy. What, then, is meant by
+focus and margin? If we turn to our psychologies, we seem to be
+confronted once more with something that everybody knows and nobody can
+define. But since we have to do with a distinction, the obligation to
+differentiate cannot be wholly ignored. Consciousness is sometimes
+likened to a visual field and sometimes to the waves of the sea. Like
+the visual field it has a foreground and a background, a near and a
+remote, a center and a margin or periphery. The contents of
+consciousness are vivid or clear in the center of this field and fade
+away into vagueness or obscureness in proportion to their approach to
+the periphery. Or, to take the other comparison, the focus may be
+represented by the crest of a wave and the margin by what we may call
+its base. This illustration has the advantage that it indicates the
+difference between higher and lower degrees of concentration. As
+concentration increases, the crest of the wave rises higher and its
+width decreases, while the reverse is true where the concentration of
+attention is less intense. All consciousness possesses the distinction
+of focus and margin in some degree; however much we may be absorbed in
+an object or topic, there is always an indirect mental vision that
+informs us of other facts, which for the time being are in the
+background of our consciousness.
+
+For purposes of description a metaphor is at best a clumsy device. It
+has a tendency to substitute itself for the thing to be described and
+thus to conceal its limitations and inaccuracies. The present case is no
+exception. I am forced to think that the visual field in particular is a
+thoroughly vicious metaphor when employed to body forth the distinction
+of focus and margin. Whatever this distinction may in the end turn out
+to be, it is not such as this comparison would lead one to suppose.
+Objects seen in indirect vision appear obscure and blurred precisely
+because they are in the focus of consciousness. We get pretty much the
+same sort of obscureness or blur on a printed page when we look at it in
+indirect vision as we do when we look at it from a distance that is just
+too great to make out the words or characters. What the illustration
+shows is that things look different according as the circumstances under
+which we see them are different, but what bearing this has on marginal
+consciousness is not at all obvious to an unsophisticated intelligence.
+
+When we speak of a focus and margin in consciousness, we are presumably
+dealing with conscious fact. Now this illustration of the visual field
+does not represent conscious fact. Ordinary perception carries with it
+no sense of obscureness at all, and when it does we have exactly the
+same kind of situation as when an object is too distant or in some other
+way inaccessible to satisfactory perception. That is, the object
+perceived is in the 'focus' and not in the margin. The obscureness of
+objects when seen with the margin of the retina has no more to do with
+the margin of consciousness than the obscureness caused by an attack of
+dizziness or by a morning fog.
+
+It will be said, perhaps, that consciousness may be unclear even though
+there be no sense of unclearness, that there is such a thing as
+intrinsic clearness, quite apart from obstacles and problems. In other
+words, the same sensation is capable of realizing various degrees of
+clearness. It is not at all obvious, however, why the different
+experiences that are concerned in such a comparison should be called the
+same sensation. As long as we abstract from objective reference, each
+sensation is just what it is and there is no opportunity to make
+comparisons on the basis of clearness. A sensation as such--if we are
+bound to speak of sensations--can by no possibility be an obscure
+sensation, for the trait that we call obscureness or vagueness
+constitutes the intrinsic being of that sensation. If we permit
+ourselves to speak of clearness at all, we should rather say that it
+possesses a maximum of clearness, since it has managed to express or
+present its whole nature with not one trait or feature lacking. What
+more could be demanded, in the way of clearness, of any conscious fact
+than that it should body forth every detail that it possesses?
+
+If sensations or states of consciousness possess degrees of clearness,
+it seems to follow that we may scrutinize them for the purpose of
+discovering characteristics that were present though scarcely
+perceived, in much the same way that the polishing of old furniture
+brings out the grain in the wood. But such a parallel, I submit, is
+plain nonsense. The supposition that consciousness is something that in
+due time and with good fortune may attain consciousness is too absurd
+for discussion, even though it is a supposition that plays a
+considerable role in present-day psychology.
+
+The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, has not been to deny
+the validity of the distinction between focus and margin, but to insist
+upon the necessity of reconsidering the meaning of this distinction, if
+we are to attain to a workable definition of consciousness and a
+fruitful or even intelligible conception of the problem of psychology. I
+have endeavored to show, in the first place, that the doctrine of focus
+and margin involves the _raison d'etre_ of psychology. Apart from this
+doctrine we have no task or problem that psychology can claim as its
+distinctive possession. The analysis of what is in the focus of
+consciousness is adequately provided for in the other sciences; it is
+only with the introduction of what is called the margin that an
+enterprise of a different kind becomes necessary. But, secondly, this
+distinction of focus and margin cannot be drawn on the basis of the
+experienced contrast between clearness and obscureness. The very fact
+that anything is experienced as obscure means that it is an object of
+attention, or, in other words, that it is in the focus of consciousness
+and not in the margin. The comparison of focus and margin with direct
+and indirect vision is misleading, because it suggests that experiences
+are marginal in proportion as they are felt as obscure. And, thirdly, if
+we undertake to distinguish between focus and margin on the basis of a
+difference in clearness or vividness of which no note is taken at the
+time, we encounter the difficulty that experience or consciousness,
+taken abstractly, does not admit of such variations in degree, and so
+this criterion likewise goes by the board.
+
+The situation is indeed peculiar. That there is a realm of psychological
+fact is universally conceded. As a consequence of this conviction a
+great body of fact and of doctrine has been built up. It would be folly
+to deny either the distinctiveness or the significance of this
+achievement. And yet James's description of psychology as "a string of
+raw facts; a little gossip and wrangle about opinions; a little
+classification and generalization on the mere descriptive level; a
+strong prejudice that we _have_ states of mind and that our brain
+conditions them,"[42] is not wholly untrue even today. It is even
+possible for a present-day critic to outdo James and maintain that the
+legitimacy of psychology as a separate inquiry is a matter of faith
+rather than of sight. The 'raw facts' of which James speaks resolve
+themselves into physical and physiological material on the one hand and
+metaphysical dogmas on the other; the gossip and wrangle are largely
+over fictitious problems; the classifications and generalizations as a
+rule involve trespassing on other fields; the prejudice that we have
+states of mind has less standing-ground today than it had twenty years
+ago. In other words, there is still plausible ground for James's
+pessimistic comment: "This is no science, it is only the hope of a
+science." A situation such as this carries with it the insistent
+suggestion that the trouble lies, not primarily in the nature of the
+subject-matter, but in our conception of the problem. "The matter of a
+science," as James says, "is with us." And if the distinction of focus
+and margin constitutes the starting-point and justification for a
+science of psychology, a better understanding of this distinction will
+mean a more adequate appreciation of the problem with which psychology
+has to deal.
+
+As a starting-point for a reconsideration of focus and margin, we may
+take those experiences in which the distinction of clearness and
+obscureness is presented as an experienced fact. Let us then turn once
+more to the familiar illustration of the visual field. "When we look at
+a printed page, there is always some one portion of it, perhaps a word,
+which we see more clearly than we do the rest; and out beyond the margin
+of the page we are still conscious of objects which we see only in a
+very imperfect way."[43] That is, we appreciate the distinction between
+what lies in the center of our visual field and what is more remote,
+just because in this experiment we are trying to see what lies beyond
+the center without turning our eyes in that direction. We set ourselves
+the task of seeing what is on the page, and at the same time we
+interpose an artificial obstacle. Hence the sense of effort, and the
+contrast between what is clear and what is obscure. The present
+experience is obscure, not inherently, but only with reference to a
+certain problem or question. It is inadequate as an anticipation of
+further experience. The contrast between clear and obscure is created by
+our attempt to overcome the difficulty, and is therefore absent from
+ordinary, unobstructed visual perception.
+
+The situation described in the following familiar quotation from James
+is an illustration of the same thing: "Suppose we try to recall a
+forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a
+gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A
+sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction,
+making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then
+letting us sink back without the longed-for term."[44]
+
+'I met this man on the train, and later at the reception; but what is
+his name?' The struggle rends our consciousness in twain. The occasions
+of our meeting, his appearance, his conversation, are solid fact, yet
+all suffused with the pervasive, evanscent "wraith" that tantalizes us
+with glimpses which half reveal and half conceal the name we seek to
+grasp.
+
+To account for such experiences simply in terms of half-submerged
+"sensations" and "images" is to do violence to all the requirements for
+clear thinking. If we rule out explanations of this kind, we are
+evidently forced to the conclusion that these experiences are obscure,
+not in themselves or in the abstract, but with reference to the function
+of putting us in possession of the name to which they are inadequate
+clues. It is the subsequent, satisfactory experience of the name which
+furnishes our standard for clearness; in other words, the implications
+of obscureness are of a functional, and not of a static or structural,
+kind. The marginal character of an experience is simply a reference to
+its function as a clue or cue to some further experience, i.e., a
+reference to its character as a changing stimulus. Or we may say that
+the distinction between focus and margin is just another aspect of the
+distinction between the conditions for further activity and the
+incompleteness which leads to further adjustment. The transfer of the
+future into the present gives us a fact, here and now, and in this
+respect the experience is entirely focal in character, and as such it is
+subject-matter for the various sciences. Whatever the nature of the
+experience, it is just what it is, and not something else. With respect
+to the further experience, however, which it conditions or for which it
+prepares the way, the present experience is entirely marginal, i.e., in
+its character as a changing stimulus it is subject-matter for
+psychology. The distinction of focus and margin, then, is based
+ultimately upon the function of experience in the control of behavior.
+The given situation is a present fact and is in functional change; or,
+in terms of our present discussion, it has both a focus and a margin. As
+present fact it is a reality which requires recognition in the form of
+adjustment; as in functional change it provides opportunity for bringing
+the adjustment to fruition. That is, the experience both sets a task or
+makes a demand and it points the way. The distinction is a distinction
+of function, not of static existence, and it is this distinction which
+is represented by the contrast of focus and margin.
+
+If we compare this interpretation of focus and margin with that of
+traditional psychology, we find that the latter construes the relation
+of the present to the future experience wholly in static terms, the
+functional relation being left out of account. The later experience is
+read back into its predecessor in the form of dim or marginal images,
+which need but show themselves more completely to make the two
+identical. If these sensations were intended only as symbols of a
+functional relationship, it would perhaps be scarcely worth while to
+enter a protest against them. But when the functional relationship is
+quite overlooked, the explanation that is given becomes exceedingly
+dubious. The ticking of the clock, for example, that is present, though
+unnoticed, the overtones of the note that suffuse the whole without
+diverting attention to their individual qualities,--in what precise way
+are facts of this kind concerned in the description of the experience
+which they modify? A study of the clock or of the overtones can hardly
+pass as an analysis of consciousness; it is too obviously an affair of
+physics. Such a study becomes merely an excuse for repeating the
+analyses of physics and reading them off in terms of sensations and
+images. Moreover, the transfer of all this material to consciousness
+looks suspiciously like a transaction in mental chemistry. Where, then,
+is psychology to gain a foothold? What is the meaning of these uncanny
+sensations and images, which nobody experiences, unless it be their
+character as symbols of adjustment? They have no legitimate status, and
+psychology, by consequence, has no legitimate problem, except in so far
+as they represent those possible acts of adaptation which are the sole
+and proper concern of psychology.
+
+It remains to point out briefly the bearing of these results on what is
+called "the method of introspection." We are sometimes assured that
+introspection has discarded the belief in a separate mental stuff or
+subject-matter, but there is ground for the suspicion that such
+protestations are made in the same spirit that we affirm our belief in
+the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule, with no thought of being taken
+seriously. At all events, without a literal "looking within" it seems to
+become exceedingly difficult to differentiate introspection from
+ordinary observation as practised in the other sciences. The reason for
+this difficulty is that there is nothing left in introspection by which
+it can be differentiated. The term introspection properly designates,
+not a method but a problem; the problem, namely, of interpreting given
+facts with reference to their function in the control of behavior. If
+psychology is to justify its claim to the status of a science, it is in
+duty bound to secure for itself both an objective criterion for the
+adjudication of disputes which otherwise are of necessity interminable,
+and a subject-matter that is not simply a heritage of metaphysical
+prejudice, but a realm of fact that is attested by everyday observation
+and experience.
+
+
+III
+
+Within recent years the doctrine that psychology is a science of
+behavior has acquired a certain prominence. It is presupposed, of
+course, that the behavior with which psychology is concerned is of a
+distinctive sort; but the differentia is unfortunately the very thing
+that the "behaviorist" has hitherto left out of account. In his revolt
+against introspectionism, which has been accustomed to give to its
+subject-matter a subjectivistic and "psychic" interpretation, he goes to
+the other extreme and relies on behavior pure and simple. Being without
+a serviceable differentia, he is unable to mark off the field of
+psychology from contiguous territory. The selection of certain problems
+within the general range of behavior, with no recognition of any
+distinctive trait to guide and justify the selection, is hardly enough
+to warrant a new science. Even an arbitrary principle of selection is
+better than none, and it would, therefore, be quite as reasonable to
+subdivide the field of botany in the interests of a new science, and
+group together for separate botanical study those flowers which have
+enabled poets to give symbolic expression to the beauty of women.
+
+That the principle of selection is, in the end, the ability to modify
+behavior through the anticipation of possible consequences, appears from
+the fact that the category of stimulus and response is otherwise found
+to be unworkable. It is true that in the simpler forms of behavior
+stimulus and response may be correlated without practical difficulty.
+But when we deal with what has been called "delayed overt response,"
+the matter becomes more complicated and the theoretical difficulty
+becomes more prominent. The behaviorist would not seriously undertake to
+record everything that happens between stimulus and response. He
+proceeds selectively, taking the relation of stimulus and response as
+his clue. He is properly interested in the movements which result from
+the application of the stimulus only in so far as they constitute
+response. Otherwise his study is not a study of behavior, but a study of
+movements. But when does a movement constitute a response? Do we label
+as stimulus the spoken word which results in overt action a week later,
+or the visual perception which sets a complicated and long-drawn-out
+problem, for no other reason than that it appears somewhere as an
+antecedent in the causal chain of events? If so, there is no obvious
+reason why the event which occurred just before or immediately after the
+_soi-disant_ stimulus should not be regarded as the true stimulus.
+Unless a satisfactory reason is forthcoming, it would seem better to
+substitute cause and effect for stimulus and response and to drop the
+term behavior from our vocabulary. Psychology then becomes a study of
+certain causal relationships, but is still without a principle for the
+selection of those causal events which are supposed to constitute its
+peculiar subject-matter.
+
+Even if we manage to become reconciled to this situation, however, our
+troubles are not yet at an end. There still remains the difficulty in
+certain cases of showing that the event which is selected as stimulus or
+cause bears any significant relationship to the event which figures in
+our scheme as the response. The stimulus is supposed to have a causal
+connection with the response, but how are we to know that this is the
+fact? How are we to know that the engineer who solves a problem for me
+at my request might not have done so anyway? No behaviorist can possibly
+show that the air waves set in motion by my vocalization were an
+indispensable stimulus. We doubtless believe that the spoken word was in
+fact the spark which lit the fuse and finally exploded the mine, but
+this belief involves a complication of causes which it is wholly beyond
+our power to control or to verify.
+
+It is true, of course, that we are able, as a matter of fact, to
+correlate stimulus and response. I know that it was the spoken word
+which caused the commission to be executed, for the expert reminds me of
+the fact and presents a bill. But neither of us makes any pretense that
+his belief is derived from a scrutiny of the causal sequence. Memory
+furnishes us with a shortcut to the result. While our present acts are
+doubtless connected with the past through causation, we do not regard
+them as simply the effects of antecedent causes. They are rather
+responses to present stimuli. The expert presents his bill, being moved
+thereto by a stimulus which may be indicated by saying that it is the
+spoken-word-constituting-a-commission-now-completed-and-entitling-me-
+to-compensation. That is, the stimulus cannot be pushed back and
+anchored at a fixed point in the past, but is a present factor at the
+moment of response and is operative by virtue of its anticipation of
+future events.
+
+If, then, psychology is to be regarded as a study of behavior, it is
+plainly necessary to reinterpret the category of behavior. For example,
+a purely mechanical response to a light-stimulus may properly be viewed
+as response to the ether-vibration or wave-length upon which it follows
+in temporal sequence. But if this stimulation results in what is
+commonly called consciousness, a different kind of response ensues. The
+light-stimulus becomes a cause or occasion for the act of looking. But
+why look, unless it be to secure a new stimulus for further response? We
+stop to look, precisely because the first stimulus does not run smoothly
+off the reel. The response will not go forward, but is halted and
+expends itself in the effort to secure a further stimulus. This is the
+moment of attention, in which the stimulus undergoes a process of
+transformation, concomitantly with the process of reorganization in the
+motor responses, and in the direction of ends or results that are
+foreshadowed in it. This change in the stimulus takes place under
+certain specifiable conditions, and the study of these conditions is a
+study of such processes as perceiving, attending, remembering, and
+deliberating, which are distinctively psychological in their nature.
+Processes of this kind, if taken as changes in stimuli, find an
+objective criterion in the adaptive behavior for the sake of which they
+occur, and they provide psychology with a distinctive task and
+subject-matter.
+
+As against the introspectionist, then, the behaviorist is justified in
+his contention that psychological procedure must be objective and
+experimental in character. The danger to which he has exposed himself
+is the failure to differentiate his problem from that of physiology and
+physics. It is only by a proper recognition of both the objective and
+the distinctive character of conscious behavior that psychology can free
+itself of the reproach which is heaped upon it by members of its own
+household and take the place that rightfully belongs to it in the
+community of the sciences.
+
+
+IV
+
+According to the preceding exposition, the current psychological
+doctrine of focus and margin is an attempt to reduce the changes in the
+stimulus to terms of static entities denominated sensations and images.
+By abstracting from change we convert the new stimulus that is already
+on the way into inert sensory material, which lends itself to purely
+analytic treatment. In this way the suggested hardness of the rock
+becomes a "centrally aroused sensation" of a stubbed toe, the heat of
+the candle becomes an image of a burn, etc. As was said before, the
+sensations are not existences, but representatives or symbols of our
+nascent activities; they are the static equivalents of this
+foreshadowing or reference to the future. The explanation of experience
+that we find in James and Bergson approximates this view so closely in
+one respect and departs from it so widely in another as to warrant a
+brief discussion.
+
+A prominent characteristic of the doctrine advocated by James and
+Bergson is the emphasis given to the foreshadowings or anticipations of
+the future. Experiences of conflict, such as the struggle to recall a
+name, take on their peculiar coloring, so these writers contend, from
+their relationship to a beyond, to something which is yet to be. If we
+are to understand experience as it really is, we must guard against the
+besetting temptation to translate everything into spatial equivalents.
+This forward reference is usually read off as a distinction and contrast
+between simultaneously existing components. Some constituent is first
+set apart as the nucleus or focus and is then enveloped with an elusive,
+intangible wraith of meaning, which is called the margin. We have been
+taught to think of the focus as made up of sensory material of some sort
+and silhouetted against a background lit up by the fitful,
+inconsequential heat-lightning of meaning. But this is a perversion of
+the facts. When we are engaged in a problem it is precisely these
+unformed meanings that are of interest and importance. They are in the
+focus of consciousness, in so far as we can speak of a focus at all.
+They absorb our attention and direct our energies. They inform us of a
+margin, not by refusing to compete for our attention with more important
+or more interesting facts, but by bodying forth the _unfinished_
+character of the situation. Hence this beckoning, this tingling with the
+sense of closeness, this sinking back when our efforts meet with defeat.
+Focus and margin, in short, have to do with movement, with transition,
+and not with a static field. These situations are felt as inherently
+unstable and in process of reconstruction. There is a peculiar sense of
+activity, of "something doing," of a future knocking on the door of the
+present. What is thus on its way to the present we can designate only in
+terms of the object as it is after it has arrived. To call it marginal
+is to immerse the object in this temporal flux, which embodies perfectly
+the characteristics of Bergsonian duration.
+
+But this is only a first step. If we turn now to those experiences from
+which this inner diremption of fact and meaning is absent, we find a
+process that is essentially the same in kind. They likewise constitute a
+temporal flow, even though there be no sense of duration or of change as
+such. The different moments of these experiences are not mechanically
+juxtaposed, but blend together in much the same way as when the process
+is experienced as a process. In principle we have the same transition,
+the same becoming, the same growth from less to more, the same activity
+of continuous reconstruction. Conscious life, we find, is a continuous
+adjustment; each of its moments is a "transitive state." The more evenly
+flowing experiences are likewise endowed with a focus and margin, not in
+the form of static elements, but as a dynamic relationship of what is
+with what is to be.
+
+Such an interpretation of experience, moreover, opens the way for a
+proper valuation of the psychologist's procedure. The concept of
+sensation is methodology pure and simple. Granted that focus and margin
+are such as was indicated a moment ago, how are they to be described,
+unless we resort to some _Hilfsbegriff_ such as sensations? James's
+description of the effort to recall a forgotten name is not description
+at all in a scientific sense, since the "wraith of the name" that we are
+trying to recover is of too unearthly a fabric to be weighed and
+measured by accepted scientific standards. It makes us "tingle," it lets
+us "sink back," but such portrayal is literature rather than science.
+Our first step must be to resolve our material into components. These
+components we identify with genuine elements if we can, with pious
+fictions if we must; but until this is done there can be no exact
+description. There can be no precision in our statement of the facts and
+no formulation of the laws that govern their changes.
+
+This view undeniably has a certain plausibility. As long as the results
+are attained which the psychologist sets out to reach, we need not be
+hypersensitive on the score of methods. In the field of natural science,
+at all events, this Jesuitical principle is not incompatible with
+respectability. If it be true, however, that sensation is but a tool or
+artifact, a means to an end, what is the end that is to be attained by
+this device? It is at this point that we come to the parting of the
+ways. According to the view previously elaborated, the anticipations of
+the future have to do with the results of our possible acts, and
+sensations are simply symbols for the various elements in our complex
+motor responses. In the case of Bergson and James, however, the clue
+that is furnished by response is discarded. The reference to the future,
+being dissociated from behavior, is taken as evidence of an abstract or
+metaphysical duration, so that experience is somehow other than it
+seems; and sensation is regarded as the translation of duration into
+the language of space. Associationism is justified in its belief that
+reality is different from its appearance in our experience, but is
+criticized for attempting to interpret the real in terms of space rather
+than time. In both cases the lead of the subject-matter is abandoned in
+favor of an explanation that is derived from a fourth-dimensional plane
+of existence.
+
+The suspicion that these two positions have a deep-seated affinity is
+strengthened if we call to mind that the concept of sensation was
+originated, not in the interests of methodology, but as the expression
+of a historic preconception that mistook fiction for fact. The
+fundamental error back of it was the preposterous notion that
+consciousness consists of subconscious or unconscious constituents,
+which by their mechanical or chemical combinations make our experience
+what it is. The question which it raises and which has afflicted us even
+to the present day is not primarily the question of fact, but the
+question of intelligibility, as the controversy over mindstuff
+abundantly attests. Whether we regard experience as made up of sensory
+material, however, or as constituted in a Bergsonian fashion, is a
+matter of detail; the primary question is whether a distinction between
+consciousness as it appears and as it "really" is has any meaning. In so
+far as this distinction is maintained, we are beating the thin air of
+mythology, despite our reinterpretations and justifications. True
+conversion does not consist in a renaming of old gods, but demands a
+humble and a contrite heart. To call sensation an artifact, a
+methodological device, without a surrender of the metaphysical
+assumption that lies back of Associationism is not to correct the evil,
+but is more likely to be treated as an indulgence for sins that are yet
+to be committed.
+
+This fundamental identity is presumably the reason for certain other
+similarities, which would perhaps not be readily anticipated. Both
+doctrines undertake to tell us what is going on behind the scenes, what
+consciousness or experience "really" is. The descriptions present an
+astonishing difference of vocabulary, but if we take care not to be
+misled by superficial differences, we find an equally astonishing
+agreement as to content. From the one side consciousness is explained as
+a juxtaposition of elements; from the other as an interpenetration of
+elements so complete that the parts can be neither isolated nor
+distinguished from the whole. On the one hand we find a multiplicity
+without unity, on the other a unity without multiplicity. In the one
+account the temporal unit is a sensation devoid of internal temporal
+diversity; in the other duration as such is a unity in which past,
+present, and future blend into an undifferentiated whole. The one
+position gathers its facts by a mystifying process called introspection;
+the other obtains its results from a mystical faculty of intuition. The
+difference in language remains, but both accounts lead us away into a
+twilight region where words substitute themselves for facts.
+
+As was suggested a moment ago, the contrast between ordinary experience
+and something else of which it is the appearance is the result of the
+failure to give proper recognition to the facts of behavior. If we
+connect the forward reference of experience with the operations of our
+nascent activities, we have no need of a pure duration or of bridging
+the gulf between reality and its appearances. In the same way, if we
+construe sensations as just symbols of our responses, we rid ourselves
+of problems that are insoluble because they are unintelligible. Such
+problems constitute metaphysics in the bad sense of the word, whether
+they show themselves in the domain of science or of philosophy. To
+describe experience by reference to such a real is to explain what we
+know in terms of what we do not know. The question what is real is
+absolutely sterile. Our descriptions and explanations must remain on the
+same plane as the experiences with which they deal, and not seek after a
+real of a different order. If we are to have an explanation of
+consciousness at all, the explanation must not take us back to
+hypothetical sensations that are almost but not quite experienced, nor
+to a duration in which all distinctions are swallowed up, but must be
+rendered in terms of other facts that dwell in the light of common day.
+
+By way of conclusion I venture to urge once more that a proper
+consideration of the facts of behavior will furnish us with a key that
+will unlock many a door. The conception of stimulus and response gives
+us a differentia for experience and also enables us to distinguish
+within experience between consciousness and object. If, however, we
+disregard behavior, we are bound to lose our way. The distinction
+between the experienced and the unexperienced is either wiped out or
+else is permitted to convert itself into a distinction between
+appearance and reality that leads nowhere and explains nothing. The
+significance of truth as the successful guidance of behavior, in
+accordance with the program laid down in the organization of stimulus
+and response, is lost to sight and recourse is had to a
+fourth-dimensional truth or reality for the miracle of breathing life
+into the dead bones of our philosophic abstractions. The study of
+behavior constitutes a mode of approach that holds out the hope of
+deliverance from questions that should never have been asked. We are on
+a different and, let us hope, a higher level when we cease to ask how
+consciousness can lay hold of passive objects, or how knowledge
+_ueberhaupt_ is possible, and concern ourselves rather with the wondrous
+activity whereby this plastic dance of circumstance that we call the
+universe transcends the domain of mechanism and embodies itself in the
+values of conscious life.
+
+
+
+
+THE PHASES OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST
+
+HENRY WALDGRAVE STUART
+
+
+Sec. 1. In the logic of Instrumentalism, truth has been identified with
+usefulness and the good with the satisfactory. Classifying critics have
+seen in this the damaging mark of Utilitarianism, certain of them
+deeming "Amerikanismus" an even shrewder and more specific diagnosis.
+The association of these terms together and the aptness of either to
+express what the critics have in mind are matters of small interest. It
+is of more importance to discover, behind the reproach implied, the
+assumptions which may have made the reproach seem pertinent. One cannot,
+of course, suppose it to express a sheer general aversion to the useful
+or an ascetic abhorrence of all satisfaction on principle. Puritanism,
+aestheticism, and pedantry should be last resorts in any search for an
+interpretative clue.
+
+The distrust of Utilitarianism need be ascribed to none of these. It
+comes instead from a conception of the true Utilitarian as a dull and
+dogmatic being with no interests beyond the range of his own uninquiring
+vision, no aspiration beyond the complacent survey of his own
+perfections and no standards beyond the inventory of his own _bourgeois_
+tastes and prejudices. The type is indeed not yet extinct in our day:
+but is it plausible to charge a "new" philosophy with conspiring to
+perpetuate it? Is Instrumentalism only philistinism called by a more
+descriptive name? It professes at least to be a logic of hypothesis and
+experiment, whereas for the perfect philistine there are no ultimate
+problems and hence no logic but the logic of self-evidence. When
+Instrumentalism speaks of needs and interests in its analysis of truth
+and goodness does it then mean the needs and interests that define the
+individual in what is sometimes invidiously termed a "biological"
+sense--interests that control him before his conduct becomes in any way
+a problem for himself? Quite as a matter of course, just this has been
+the assumption. The satisfactoriness of prompt and cogent classification
+has had a hand in the vindication of truth's supremacy over
+satisfaction. In the view of instrumentalism this ready interpretation
+of its meaning is nothing less than the thinking of the unthinkable and
+the bodying-forth of what is not. The man who has solved a problem
+simply _is_ not the man he was before--if his problem was a genuine one
+and it was he who solved it. He cannot measure and judge the outcome by
+his earlier demands for the very good reason that the outcome of real
+deliberation empties these earlier demands of their interest and
+authority for him.
+
+Can the conception thus suggested of personal growth through exercise of
+creative or constructive intelligence be in any measure verified by a
+general survey of the economic side of life? Has it any important
+bearings upon any parts of economic theory? These are the questions to
+which this essay is addressed.
+
+
+I
+
+Sec. 2. How have the real or fancied needs of the average person of today
+come to be what they are? For all sorts and conditions of men, the ways
+and means of living have, during the past century or two--even during
+the past decade or two--undergone revolutionary changes. It is true that
+many of these changes have been relatively superficial, touching only
+certain externalities and entering in no important way into life's
+underlying and dominant motives. Others, no doubt, may fairly be held to
+confuse and disperse the energies of men, instead of making for
+wholeness, sanity and development of human interest and power. And
+critics of industrial and social progress who have felt the need for
+reservations of this sort fall easily into a certain mood of historic
+homesickness for the supposed "simplicity" of an earlier age. But our
+interest, in this discussion, is in the genesis, the actual process of
+becoming, of our present "standards of living," not their value as rated
+by any critical (or uncritical) standard. And accordingly we shall take
+it for a fact that on the whole the average person of today is
+reasonably, perhaps unreasonably, well satisfied with his telephone, his
+typewriter, and his motor-car; with his swift and easy journeyings over
+land and sea; with his increasingly scientific medical attendance and
+public sanitation; with his virtually free supplies of literature and
+information, new and old, and with his electric light or his midnight
+oil (triple distilled) to aid in the perusal. More than this, he is so
+well satisfied with all these modern inventions that, historical or
+aesthetical or other "holidays" apart, he would never for a moment
+dispense with any one of them as a matter of free choice. Grossly
+material and humbly instrumental though they are, these things and their
+like constitute the framework sustaining the whole system of spiritual
+functions that make up the life we live today, as a society and as
+individuals. And our present problem simply is the way in which they
+were first received by those who were to use them, and passed into their
+present common acceptance. To put the matter in general terms, how is it
+that novel means of action or enjoyment, despite their novelty, are able
+to command fair scrutiny and hearing and can contrive to make their way,
+often very speedily, into a position of importance for industry and
+life?
+
+There is an easy and not unnatural way of thinking of this process as we
+see it going on about us that may keep us long unmindful of even the
+possibility of such a question. In every field of action, we habitually
+look back upon accomplished changes from some present well-secured
+vantage-point, and as we trace the steps by which they have come to pass
+it is almost inevitable that we should first see the sequence as an
+approach, direct or devious but always sure, to the stage on which we
+happen to have taken our stand. It seems clear to us that what we have
+attained is better than aught that has gone before--if it were not
+distinctly satisfactory on its own merits we should not now be taking it
+as the standpoint for a survey. But once it is so taken, our recognition
+of its appreciable and satisfying superiority passes over insensibly
+into metaphysics. What we now find good we find ourselves perceiving to
+have been all the while predestined in the eternal scheme of things! We
+pause in retrospect like the wayfarer who has reached the turning of a
+mountain road or the man of middle age who for the first time feels that
+his professional position is assured. This, we say, justifies the effort
+it has cost, _this_ at last is really living! And the next step in
+retrospective reconstruction follows easily; this was my true goal from
+the first, the dim and inexpressible hope of which would not let me
+pause and kept me until now dissatisfied. The end was present in the
+beginning, provoking the first groping efforts and affording
+progressively the test and measure by which their results were found
+ever wanting.
+
+This retrospective logic may explain the presence and perennial charm of
+those panoramic pages in our encyclopaedias purporting to show forth the
+gradual perfecting of great instrumentalities upon which our modern life
+depends. We survey the "evolution" of printing, for example, from the
+wooden blocks of the Chinese or of Laurens Coster down to the Hoe press,
+the stereotype plate, and the linotype machine. Or we see the forms of
+written record from pictured papyrus, cuneiform brick, and manuscript
+scroll down to the printed book and the typewritten page; the means of
+carriage by land from the ox-cart of the patriarchs to the stage-coach,
+the Cannonball Limited, the motor-truck, and the twelve-cylinder
+touring-car. And as one contemplates these cheerfully colored exhibits
+there is in each case an almost irresistible suggestion of a constant
+and compelling need of "universal man" seeking in more and more
+marvellously ingenious ways an adequate expression and satisfaction.
+This need seems never to have lapsed or changed its nature. All along
+both driving power and direction, it has been the one fixed factor in a
+long process in which all else has been fluctuating, contingent, and
+imperfect--all else except the nature of the materials and the
+principles of mechanics, which, too, are seen in the end to have been
+mutely conspiring toward the result. Essential human nature, it seems
+clear, does not and happily cannot change. Spiritual progress, in this
+ultimate optimism, means simply clearer vision, completer knowledge, and
+a less petulant and self-assertive habit of insistence upon the details
+of particular purposes as individual "impulse" and "idiosyncrasy" define
+them. We fortunate beings of today have available, in the various
+departments of our life, certain instrumentalities, and to these our
+interests attach. These interests of ours in their proportional strength
+(so the argument runs) express our native and generic constitution in so
+far as this constitution has been able as yet to achieve outward
+expression and embodiment. And accordingly, in interpreting the long
+history of technological evolution, we take what we conceive ourselves
+now to be as normative and essential. We project back into the lives of
+primitive man, of our own racial ancestors, or of our grandfathers, the
+habits and requirements which we acknowledge in ourselves today and we
+conceive the men of the past to have been driven forward on the ways of
+progress by the identical discontent that would presumably beset
+ourselves if we were to be suddenly carried back to their scale and
+manner of existence.
+
+Sec. 3. Whatever else may be thought of it, there is at least this to be
+said for the cult of historic homesickness to which reference has just
+been made: it happens to be at one with modern ethnology and history in
+suggesting that earlier cultures were on the whole not less content and
+self-satisfied in their condition than our own. It is primitive man, not
+the modern, who is slow to move and is satisfied, as a matter of course,
+with the manner of life in which he fancies his people to have lived
+from time immemorial. Change in early social groups is tragic when it is
+not insensible. It comes through conquest and enslavement by outsiders
+or through stress of the dread of these, or by gradual adaptation of
+custom to failing environmental resources or to increasing wealth.
+Assent to change is in general grudging or tacit at best and is commonly
+veiled by some more or less transparent fiction.
+
+And our suspicion of fallacy lurking somewhere in the type of
+retrospective Idealism we have been considering is strengthened when we
+come to look a little closely to details. To take a commonplace
+example--can it be held that the difference between using a typewriter
+and "writing by hand" is purely and simply a matter of degree--that the
+machine serves the same purpose and accomplishes the same _kind_ of
+result as the pen, but simply does the work more easily, rapidly, and
+neatly? Undoubtedly some such impression may easily be gathered from an
+external survey of the ways that men have used at different times for
+putting their ideas on record. But it ignores important aspects of the
+case. For one thing, the modern invention effects a saving of the
+writer's time which can be used in further investigation or in more
+careful revision or in some way wholly unrelated to literary work, and
+if the machine makes any part of the writer's task less irksome, or the
+task as a whole less engrossing, the whole matter of literary effort
+becomes less forbidding and its place and influence as a social or a
+personal function may for better or for worse be altered. The difference
+brought to pass transcends mere technical facility--it ramifies into a
+manifold of differences affecting the entire qualitative character and
+meaning of the literary function. And only by an arbitrary
+sophistication of the facts can this complexity of new outcome be
+thought of as implicit and dynamic in the earlier stage.
+
+In the same way precisely, the motor-car, as every one knows, has
+"vanquished distance" and has "revolutionized suburban life." In England
+it is said to have made acute the issue of plural voting. In America it
+is hailed by the optimistic as the solution of the vexed problem of
+urban concentration and the decline of agriculture. Even as a means of
+recreation it is said by the initiated to transform the whole meaning of
+one's physical environment, exploiting new values in sky and air and the
+green earth, which pass the utmost possibilities of family "carry-all"
+or coach and four. Or consider the ocean steamship and its influence:
+today we travel freely over the world, for all manner of reasons,
+sufficient or otherwise. A hundred years ago distant journeyings by sea
+or land were arduous and full of peril, undertaken only by the most
+adventurous or the most curious or for urgent need. Now commodities of
+every sort can be transported to virtually every quarter of the
+globe--rails and locomotives, cement and structural steel, machinery of
+all kinds from the motor and the dynamo to the printing press and the
+cinematograph, in a word whatever is necessary to recreate the waste
+places of the earth and to make life in these regions humanly liveable.
+The sheer scale and magnitude of such operations lifts them above the
+level of the international trade of five hundred or even a hundred years
+ago. And their far-reaching results of every sort in the lives of
+nations and of individuals the world over can in no intelligible sense
+be understood as mere homogeneous multiples of what trade meant before
+our age of steam, iron, and electricity. Finally, we may think of modern
+developments in printing as compared, for example, with the state of the
+craft in the days when the New England Primer served to induct juvenile
+America into the pleasant paths of "art and literature." And it is clear
+that the mechanical art that makes books and reading both widely
+inviting and easily possible of enjoyment today is not merely a more
+perfect substitute for the quill and ink-horn of the mediaeval scribe or
+even for the printing press of Caxton or of Benjamin Franklin. The
+enormously and variously heightened "efficiency" of the mechanical
+instrumentalities nowadays available has for good and for evil carried
+forward the whole function of printing and publication into relations
+and effects which are qualitatively new and beyond the possible
+conception of the earlier inventors and readers.
+
+Sec. 4. The real evolution in such cases of the coming of a new commodity
+or a new instrument into common and established use is an evolution of a
+more radical, more distinctly epigenetic type than the pictured stories
+of the encyclopaedia-maker serve to suggest. At each forward step the
+novelty makes possible not merely satisfactions more adequate as
+measured by existing requirements or more economical in terms of cost,
+but new satisfactions also for which no demand or desire before existed
+or could possibly exist--satisfactions which, once become habitual, make
+the contentment of former times in the lack of them hard to understand
+or credit. And indeed the story is perhaps never quite one-sided; the
+gain we reckon is perhaps never absolutely unmixed. There may be,
+perhaps must in principle be, not only gain but loss. The books we read
+have lost something of the charm of the illuminated manuscript; our
+compositors and linotypers, it may be, have forgotten something of the
+piety and devotion of the mediaeval scribe and copyist. So everywhere in
+industry the machine depreciates and pushes out the skilled artisan and
+craftsman, summoning into his place the hired operative whose business
+is to feed and serve instead of to conceive and execute. For cheapness
+and abundance, for convenience of repair and replacement we everywhere
+sacrifice something of artistic quality in the instrumentalities of life
+and action and something of freedom and self-expression in the
+processes of manufacture. Thus again, to change the venue, there are
+those who miss in democratic government or in an ethical type of
+religion the poignant and exalting spiritual quality of devotion to a
+personal sovereign or a personal God. Whatever one's judgment may be in
+particular cases, there can be no reason for disputing that in
+epigenetic or creative evolution there is, in a sense, loss as well as
+gain. There is no more reason for supposing that all that was wholesome
+or ennobling or beautiful in an earlier function _must_ somehow have its
+specific compensation in kind infallibly present in the new than for
+supposing that all that is desirable in the new must surely have been
+present discernibly or indiscernibly in the old.
+
+If we are on the whole satisfied with the new on its intrinsic merits as
+a present complex fact, we have therein sufficient ground for saying
+that it marks a stage in progress. This, in fact, is what such a
+proposition means. And the old then appears more or less widely
+discontinuous with the new--not merely that it shows, in units of
+measure, less of the acceptable quality or qualities which the _new_
+fact or situation is found to possess, but that it belongs for us to a
+qualitatively different level and order of existence. How, we wonder,
+could our ancestors have found life tolerable in their undrained and
+imperfectly heated dwellings, without the telephone, the morning's news
+of the world by cable, and the phonograph? How, again, could feudal
+homage and fealty have ever been the foundation of social order in
+countries where today every elector is wont to think and to act in his
+public relations no longer as a subject but as a citizen. And how, in
+still a different sphere, could the father or the mother of a happy
+family of children ever have found the freedom and irresponsibility of
+bachelorhood endurable? Shall we say that in changes like these we have
+to do simply with the quantitative increase of some quality, present in
+small measure in the earlier stages and in larger measure in the later?
+Or shall we evade the issue with the general admission that _of course_,
+as every schoolboy knows, there are in this world many differences of
+degree that somehow "amount to differences of kind"? As a matter of fact
+what has happened in every case like these is an actual change of
+standard, a new construction in the growing system of one's norms of
+value and behavior. Provisionally, though hopefully, a step has been
+taken--a real event in personal and in social history has been given
+place and date. From some source beyond the scope and nature of the
+earlier function a suggestion or an impulsion has come by which the
+agent has endeavored to move forward. The change wrought is a
+transcendence of the earlier level of experience and valuation, not a
+widening and clarification of vision on that level. And the standards
+which govern on the new level serve not so much to condemn the old as to
+seal its consignment to disuse and oblivion. Least of all can a judgment
+or appraisal of the old from the standpoint of the new be taken for a
+transcript of the motives which led to the transition.
+
+We must confine ourselves more closely, however, to the sphere of
+material goods and their uses. And in this sphere objection to the view
+proposed will run in some such terms as the following: Take our
+ancestors, for example, and their household arrangements to which
+invidious reference has been made: why should we suppose that their
+seeming contentment was anything more (or less) than a dignified
+composure in which we might well imitate them--an attitude in no way
+precluding a definite sense of specific discomforts and embarrassments
+and a distinct determination to be rid of them as soon as might be? And,
+in fact, if they were satisfied with what they had why did they receive
+the new when it was offered? If, on the other hand, they were not
+satisfied, how is the fact intelligible except upon the assumption that
+they had distinct and definite wants not yet supplied, and were wishing
+(but patiently) for conveniences and comforts of a sort not yet
+existent. And this latter hypothesis, it will be urged, is precisely
+what the foregoing argument has sought to discredit as an account of the
+moving springs in the evolution of consumption.
+
+Sec. 5. Any adequate discussion of the central issue thus presented would
+fall into two parts. In the first place, before a consumption good can
+come into general acceptance and currency it must have been in some way
+discovered, suggested or invented, and the psychology of invention is
+undoubtedly a matter of very great complexity and difficulty. But for
+the purposes of the present inquiry all this may be passed over. The
+other branch of a full discussion of our problem has to do with the
+reception of the newly invented commodity or process into wider and
+wider use--and this again is a social phenomenon not less complex than
+the other. It is this phenomenon of increasing extension and vogue, of
+widening propagation from person to person, that is directly of present
+concern for us--and in particular the individual person's attitude
+toward the new thing and the nature of the interest he takes in it.
+
+It has recently been argued by a learned and acute investigator of
+economic origins that "invention is the mother of necessity," and not
+the child.[45] Such a complete reversal of all our ordinary thought
+about the matter seems at first sheer paradox. What, one may ask, can
+ever suggest an invention and what can give it welcome and currency but
+an existing need--which, if it happens to be for the time being latent
+and unconscious, needs only the presentation of its appropriate means of
+satisfaction to "arouse" and "awaken" it fully into action? But this
+paradox as to invention is at all events not more paradoxical than the
+view as to the reception of new commodities and the rise of new desires
+that has been above suggested. What it appears to imply is in principle
+identical with what has seemed, from our consideration of the other
+aspect of the general situation, to be the simple empirical fact;
+neither the existence of the new commodity nor our interest in it when
+it is presented admits of explanation as an effect on each particular
+occasion of a preexisting unsatisfied desire for it. What both sides of
+the problem bring to view is a certain original bent or constitutive
+character of human nature--a predisposition, an _elan vital_ perhaps,
+which we must recognize as nothing less than perfectly general and
+comprehensive--finding expression in inventive effort and likewise in
+the readiness with which the individual meets a new commodity halfway
+and gives it opportunity to become for him, if it can, a new necessity
+and the source of a new type of satisfaction.
+
+From the point of view of "logic," as William James might have said,
+such a version of psychological fact may seem essentially
+self-contradictory. Unless, it may be argued, a novelty when presented
+excites some manner of desire for itself in the beholder, the beholder
+will make no effort towards it and thus take no step away from his
+existing system of life to a new system in which a new desire and a new
+commodity shall have a place. So much would seem clear enough but the
+question immediately follows: How can a thing that is new arouse desire?
+In so far as it is new it must _ex vi termini_ be unknown and wanting
+definition in terms of remembered past experiences; and how can a thing
+unknown make that connection with the present character of the
+individual which must be deemed necessary to the arousal of desire in
+him? A new thing would seem, then, from this point of view, to be able
+to arouse desire only in so far as it is able to conceal or subordinate
+its aspects of novelty and appear as known and well-accredited--either
+this or there must be in the individual some definite instinctive
+mechanism ready to be set in action by the thing's presentment. And on
+neither of these suppositions can having to do with the new thing
+effect any fundamental or radical difference in the individual--it can
+serve at most only to "bring out" what was already "there" in him in a
+"latent" or "implicit" status. Whatever new developments of power or
+desire may be attained and organized into the individual's character
+through his commerce with the novelty must be new in only a superficial
+sense--they will be new only as occurrences, only as the striking of the
+hour by the clock and the resulting abrasion of the bell and hammer are
+new events. But the clock was made to strike; it is the nature of metal
+to wear away and likewise these changes in the individual are in deeper
+truth not new at all but only a disclosure of the agent's character, a
+further fulfilment along preestablished and unalterable lines which all
+along was making headway in the agent's earlier quests and efforts and
+attainments.
+
+There is a sense, no doubt, in which some such version of the facts as
+this is unanswerable, but controversial advantage is paid for, here as
+elsewhere in the logic of absolute idealism, at the cost of tangible
+meaning and practical importance. Just what does the contention come to?
+Let us say, for example, that one has learned to use a typewriter. What
+has happened is like an illiterate person's learning to read and write.
+Correspondence with one's friends begins to take on new meaning and to
+acquire new value; one begins to find a new pleasure and stimulation
+taking the place of the ineffectual drivings of an uneasy conscience.
+All this, let us say, has come from the moderate outlay for a superior
+mechanical instrument. And now let it be granted that it would not have
+come if the fortunate individual had not been "what he was." If it has
+come it is because the individual and the rest of the world were "of
+such a sort" that the revival and new growth of interest _could_ take
+its rise with the provision of the new instrumentality. But what,
+precisely, does such a statement mean? What sort of verification does it
+admit of? What fruitful insight into the concrete facts of the case does
+it convey? Of _what_ sort, prior to the event, does it show the
+individual to have been?
+
+The truth is, of course, that he was of _no_ sort, then and there and
+with reference to the purchase--he was of no sort decisively. He was
+neither purchaser nor rejector. He was neither a convinced "typist" nor
+piously confirmed in his predilection for writing "by hand." He was
+neither wholly weary of his correspondence nor fully cognizant of the
+importance of intercourse with his friends for his soul's good. He may
+have been dissatisfied and rebellious or he may have been comfortably
+persuaded that letter-writing, though an irksome labor, was even at that
+sufficiently worth while. The most that can be said is simply that he
+must have been willing and desirous to try the experiment for the sake
+of any good, imaginable or beyond present imagination, that might come
+of it. But being of "such a sort" as this could not prejudge the
+issue--although, undoubtedly, in willingness to raise an issue there
+lies always the possibility of change. All the plausibility of the dogma
+we are here considering comes from its hasty inclusion of this general
+attitude of constructively experimental inquiry and effort, this
+essential character of creative intelligence, as _one among_ the
+concrete interests which constitute and define our particular problems
+in their inception. To say _ex post facto_ that the individual must have
+been "of such a sort" as to do what he has in fact done is a purely
+verbal comment which, whatever may be its uses, can assuredly be of no
+use whatever in suggesting either solution or method for the next
+situation to arise. It may be comfortably reassuring afterwards, but it
+is an empty oracle beforehand.
+
+Sec. 6. If then "logic" is unable to express the nature of our forward
+looking interest in the unexperienced and unpredictable, perhaps the
+empirical fact will speak for itself. We call things new; we recognize
+their novelty and their novelty excites our interest. But just as we are
+sometimes told that we can only _know_ the new in terms of its
+resemblances to what we have known before, so it may be held that in the
+end we can _desire_ it only on the like condition. Are we, then, to
+conclude that the seeming novelty of things new is an illusion, or shall
+we hold, on the contrary, that novelty need not be explained away and
+that a spontaneous constructive interest stands more or less constantly
+ready in us to go out to meet it and possess it?
+
+Unquestionably, let us say the latter. Any new commodity will, of
+course, resemble in part or in a general way some old one. It is said
+that bath-tubs are sometimes used in "model tenements" as coal-bins. Old
+uses persist unchanged in the presence of new possibilities. But in
+general new possibilities invite interest and effort because our
+experimental and constructive bent contrives on the whole to make head
+against habituation and routine. We recognize the new as new. And if it
+be contended that novelty in its own right cannot be a ground of
+interest, that novelty must first get restatement as the old with
+certain "accidents" externally adhering, the answer is that the
+"accidents" interest us nevertheless. They may prove their right to
+stand as the very essence of some new "kind" that one may wish to let
+take form and character for him. Instead of the chips and shavings, they
+are in fact the raw material of the logical process. For if we can know
+the new _as new_, if we can know the "accident" _as accidental_ in a
+commodity before us, the fact betrays an incipient interest in the
+quality or aspect that its novelty or contingency at least does not
+thwart. And is this quite all? Will it be disputed that a _relation_ of
+a quality or feature to ourselves which we can know, name, and
+recognize--like "novelty"--must be known, as anything else is known,
+through an interest of which it is the appropriate terminus?[46]
+
+And there is no difficulty in pointing to instances in which the
+character of novelty seems fundamental. Consider, for example, the
+interest one feels in spending a day with a friend or in making a new
+acquaintance or, say, in entering on the cares of parenthood. Or again,
+take the impulse toward research, artistic creation, or artistic study
+and appreciation. Or again, take the interest in topography and
+exploration. That there is in such phenomena as these a certain
+essentially and irreducibly forward look, a certain residual freedom of
+our interest and effort from dependence on the detail of prior
+experience down to date, probably few persons without ulterior
+philosophical prepossessions will dispute. If we call these phenomena
+instinctive we are using the term in a far more loose and general sense
+than it seems to have in the best usage of animal psychology. If we call
+them attitudes or dispositions, such a term has at least the negative
+merit of setting them apart from the class of instinctive acts, but it
+may carry with it a connotation of fixity and unconsciousness that
+after all surrenders the essential distinction. It will suffice to look
+at a single one of these instances.
+
+In friendship, for example, there is undoubtedly strongly operative a
+desire for the mere recurrence, in our further friendly intercourse, of
+certain values that have become habitual and familiar. We may have long
+known and become attached to a friend's tones of voice, peculiarities of
+manner and external appearance, turns of speech and thought and the
+like, which we miss in absence and which give us pleasure when we meet
+the friend again. But if the friendship is not one of "pleasure" or
+"utility" simply, but of "virtue"[47] as well, there is also present on
+both sides a constructive or progressive or creative interest. And this
+interest, stated on its self-regarding and introspective side, is more
+than a desire for the mere grateful recurrence of the old looks and
+words "recoined at the old mint." It is an interest looking into the
+"undone vast," an interest in an indefinite prolongation, an infinite
+series, of joint experiences the end of which cannot and need not be
+foreseen and the nature of which neither can nor need be forecasted. And
+there is the same characteristic in all the other instances mentioned in
+this connection. It is not a desire for recurrent satisfactions of a
+determinate type, but an interest in the active development of
+unexperienced and indeterminate possibilities. If finally the question
+be pressed, how there can be an interest of this seemingly
+self-contradictory type in human nature, the answer can only be that we
+must take the facts as we find them. Is such a conception inherently
+more difficult than the view that all ramifications and developments of
+human interest are concretely predetermined and implicit _a priori_? To
+ignore or deny palpable fact because it eludes the reach of a current
+type of conceptual analysis is to part company with both science and
+philosophy. We are in fact here dealing with the essential mark and
+trait of what is called self-conscious process. If there are ultimates
+and indefinables in this world of ours, self-consciousness may as fairly
+claim the dignity or avow the discredit as any other of the list.
+
+Sec. 7. Does our interest in economic goods on occasion exhibit the trait
+of which we are here speaking? Precisely this is our present contention.
+And yet it seems not too much to say that virtually all economic theory,
+whether the classical or the present dominant type that has drawn its
+terminology and working concepts from the ostensible psychology of the
+Austrian School, is founded upon the contradictory assumption. The
+economic interest, our desire and esteem for solid and matter-of-fact
+things like market commodities and standardized market services, has
+been conceived as nothing visionary and speculative, as no peering into
+the infinite or outreaching of an inexpressible discontent, but an
+intelligent, clear-eyed grasping and holding of known satisfactions for
+measured and acknowledged desires. Art and religion, friendship and
+love, sport and adventure, morality and legislation, these all may be
+fields for the free play and constructive experimentation of human
+faculty, but in our economic efforts and relations we are supposed to
+tread the solid ground of fact. Business is business. Waste not, want
+not. First a living, then (perhaps) a "good life."[48] And we are
+assured one need not recoil from the hard logic of such maxims, for they
+do not dispute the existence of spacious (and well-shaded) suburban
+regions fringing the busy areas of industry and commerce.
+
+Such is the assumption. We have said that it precludes the admission of
+speculation as an economic factor. Speculation for economic theory is a
+purely commercial phenomenon, a hazarding of capital on the supposition
+that desires will be found ready and waiting for the commodity
+produced--with a sufficient offering of purchasing power to afford a
+profit. And the "creation of demand," where this is part of the program
+of speculative enterprise, means the arousal of a "dormant" or implicit
+desire, in the sense above discussed--there is nothing, at all events,
+in other parts of current theory to indicate a different conception. The
+economist will probably contend that what the process of the creation of
+demand may _be_ is not his but the psychologist's affair; that his
+professional concern is only whether or not the economic demand, as an
+objective market fact, be actually forthcoming. But what we here contend
+for as a fact of economic experience is a speculation that is in the
+nature of personal adventure and not simply an "adventuring of stock."
+
+Sec. 8. For what is the nature of the economic "experience" or situation,
+considered as a certain type of juncture in the life of an individual?
+It may be shortly described as the process of determining how much of
+one's time, strength, or external resources of any sort shall be
+expended for whatever one is thinking of doing or acquiring. Two general
+motives enter here to govern the estimate and each may show the routine
+or the innovative phase. In any work there is possible, first, more or
+less of the workman's interest--an interest not merely in a conventional
+standard of excellence in the finished result but also in betterment of
+the standard and in a corresponding heightened excellence of technique
+and spirit in the execution.[49] These interests, without reference to
+the useful result and "for their own sake" (i.e., for the workman's
+sake, in ways not specifiable in advance), may command a share of one's
+available time, strength, and resources. In the second place, any work
+or effort or offer to give in exchange has a nameable result of some
+kind in view--a crop of wheat, a coat, a musical rendition, or the
+education of a child. Why are such things "produced" or sought for?
+Verbally and platitudinously one may answer: For the sake of the
+"satisfactions" they are expected to afford. But such an answer ignores
+the contrast of attitudes that both workmanship and productive or
+acquisitive effort in the ordinary sense display. As the workman may
+conform to his standard or may be ambitious to surpass it, so the
+intending consumer may be counting on known satisfactions or hoping for
+satisfactions of a kind that he has never known before. Both sorts of
+effort may be of either the routine or the innovative type. In neither
+workmanship nor acquisition can one fix upon routine as the "normal"
+type, hoping to derive or to explain away the inevitable residue of
+"outstanding cases." For as a matter of fact the outstanding cases prove
+to be our only clue to a knowledge of how routine is made.[50]
+
+The above formula will apply, with the appropriate changes of emphasis,
+to buyers and sellers in an organized market, as well as to the parties
+to a simple transaction of barter. Two main empirical characteristics of
+the economic situation are suggested in putting the statement in just
+these terms. In the first place, the primary problem in such a situation
+is that of "exchange valuation," the fixation of a "subjective" (or
+better, a "personal") price ratio between what the agent wishes to
+acquire and whatever it is that he offers in exchange. The agent thus is
+engaged in determining what shall be the relative importance for himself
+of _two_ commodities or exchangeable goods. And in the second place
+these goods get their values determined together and in relation to each
+other, never singly and with a view to _subsequent_ comparison. These
+values when they have been determined will be measured in terms of
+marginal utility in accordance with familiar principles, but the
+marginal utilities that are to express the attained and accepted ratio
+at which exchange eventually takes place are not known quantities at all
+in the inception of the process of comparison. If these dogmatic
+statements seem to issue in hopeless paradox or worse, then let us not
+fear to face the paradox and fix its lines with all possible
+distinctness. Can a man decide to offer so much of one commodity for so
+much of another unless he _first_ has settled what each is worth to him
+in some intelligible terms or other? And is not this latter in point of
+fact the real decision--at all events clearly more than half the battle?
+Does not the exchange ratio to which one can agree "leap to the eyes,"
+in fact, as soon as the absolute values in the case have been once
+isolated and given numerical expression?
+
+In a single word we here join issue. For the comparison in such a case
+is _constructive comparison_, not a mechanical measuring of fixed
+magnitudes, as the above objection tacitly assumes. And constructive
+comparison is essentially a transitive or inductive operation whereby
+the agent moves from one level to another, altering his standard of
+living in some more or less important way, embarking upon a new
+interest, entering upon the formation of a new habit or upon a new
+accession of power or effectiveness--making or seeking to make, in
+short, some transformation in his environment and in himself that shall
+give his life as an entire system a changed tenor and perspective. The
+term "constructive comparison" is thus intended, among other things, to
+suggest that the process is in the nature of adventure, not calculation,
+and, on the other hand, that though adventurous it is not sheer hazard
+uncontrolled. And the motive dominant throughout the process--the
+economic motive in its constructive phase--is neither more nor less than
+a supposition, on the agent's part, that there may be forthcoming for
+him in the given case in hand just such an "epigenetic" development of
+new significance and value as we have found actual history to disclose
+as a normal result of economic innovation. It is the gist of hedonism,
+in economic theory as in its other expressions, that inevitably the
+agent's interests and motives are restricted in every case to the
+precise range and scope of his existing tendencies and desires; he can
+be provoked to act only by the hope of just those particular future
+pleasures or means of pleasure which the present constitution of his
+nature enables him to enjoy. Idealism assumes that the emergent new
+interest of the present was wrapped up or "implied," in some sense, in
+the interests of the remote and immediate past--interests of which the
+agent at the time could of course be but "imperfectly" aware. Such
+differences as one can discern between the two interpretations seem
+small indeed--like many others to which idealism has been wont to point
+in disparagement of the hedonistic world view. For in both philosophies
+the agent is without initiative and effect; he is in principle but the
+convergence of impersonal motive powers which it is, in the one view,
+absurdly futile, in the other misguidedly presumptuous, to try to alter
+or control.
+
+Sec. 9. A commodity sought or encountered may then be of interest to us for
+reasons of the following three general sorts. In the first place it may
+simply be the normal and appropriate object of some established desire
+of ours. We may be seeking the commodity because this desire has first
+become active, or encountering the commodity in the market may have
+suddenly awakened the desire. Illustration seems superfluous; tobacco
+for the habitual smoker, clothing of most sorts for the ordinary person,
+regular supplies of the household staples--these will suffice. This is
+the province within which a hedonistic account of the economic motive
+holds good with a cogency that anti-hedonistic criticism has not been
+able to dissolve. Our outlays for such things as these may as a rule be
+held in their due and proper relation to each other--at all events in
+their established or "normal" relation--simply by recalling at critical
+times our relative marginal likes and dislikes for them. That these
+likes and dislikes are not self-explanatory, that they are concrete
+expectations and not abstract affective elements, does not seem greatly
+to matter where the issue lies between maintaining or renouncing an
+existing schedule of consumption. And in this same classification belong
+also industrial and commercial expenditures of a similarly routine sort.
+Even where the scale of operations is being enlarged, expenditures for
+machines, fuel, raw materials, and labor may have been so carefully
+planned in advance with reference to the desired increase of output or
+pecuniary profit that no special problem of motivation attaches
+directly to them. And these outlays are so important in industry and
+commerce that the impression comes easily to prevail that all business
+undertaking, and then all consumption of finished goods, fall under the
+simple hedonistic type.
+
+But if we keep to the plane of final consumption, there appears a second
+sort of situation. Our interest in the commodity before us may be due to
+a suggestion of some sort that prompts us to take a step beyond the
+limits that our present formed desires mark out. The suggestion may be
+given by adroit advertising, by fashion, by the habits of another class
+to which one may aspire or by a person to whom one may look as guide,
+philosopher, and friend. An authority of one sort or another invites or
+constrains us to take the merits of the article on trust. Actual trial
+and use may show, not so much that it can minister to a latent desire as
+that we have been able through its use to form a habit that constitutes
+a settled need.
+
+And, finally, in the third place, there is a more spontaneous and
+intrinsically personal type of interest which is very largely
+independent of suggestion or authority. A thing of beauty, a new author,
+a new acquaintance, a new sport or game, a new convenience or mechanical
+device may challenge one's curiosity and powers of appreciation, may
+seem to offer a new facility in action or some unimagined release from
+labor or restriction. The adventure of marriage and parenthood, the
+intimate attraction of great music, the mystery of an unknown language
+or a forbidden country, the disdainful aloofness of a mountain peak
+dominating a landscape are conspicuous instances inviting a more
+spontaneous type of constructive interest that finds abundant expression
+also in the more commonplace situations and emergencies of everyday
+life. It is sheer play upon words to speak in such cases of a pleasure
+of adventurousness, a pleasure of discovery, a pleasure of conquest and
+mastery, assigning this as the motive in order to bring these interests
+to the type that fits addiction to one's particular old coat or
+easy-chair. The specific "pleasure" alleged could not exist were the
+tendency not active beforehand. While the same is true in a sense for
+habitual concrete pleasures in relation to their corresponding habits,
+the irreducible difference in constructive interest as a type lies in
+the _transition_ which this type of interest purposes and effects from
+one level of concrete or substantive desire and pleasure to another.
+Here one consciously looks to a result that he cannot foresee or
+foretell; in the other type his interest as interest goes straight to
+its mark, sustained by a confident forecast.[51]
+
+Sec. 10. But constructive interests, whether provoked by suggestion or of
+the more freely imaginative type, may, as has been said, be held to lie
+outside the scope of economic theory. How a desire for a certain thing
+has come to get expression may seem quite immaterial--economically
+speaking. Economics has no concern with human folly as such or human
+imitativeness, or human aspiration high or low or any other of the
+multitude of motives that have to do with secular changes in the
+"standard of living" and in the ideals of life at large. It has no
+concern with anything that lies behind the fact that I am in the market
+with my mind made up to buy or sell a thing at a certain price. And the
+answer to this contention must be that it first reverses and then
+distorts the true perspective of our economic experience. Let it be
+admitted freely--indeed, let it be insisted on--that the definition of a
+science must be determined by the pragmatic test. If an economist elects
+to concern himself with the problems of what has been called the "loose
+mechanics of trade" there can be no question of his right to do so or of
+the importance of the services he may render thereby, both to theory and
+to practice. But on the other hand economic theory cannot be therefore,
+once and for all, made a matter of accounting--to the effacement of all
+problems and aspects of problems of which the accountant has no
+professional cognizance. Just this, apparently, is what it means to
+level down all types of interest to the hedonistic, leaving aside as
+"extra-economic" those that too palpably resist the operation. It is
+acknowledged that freshly suggested modes of consumption and ends of
+effort require expenditure and sacrifice no less than the habitual, that
+the exploration of Tibet or of the Polar Seas affects the market for
+supplies not less certainly than the scheduled voyages of oceanic
+liners. Moreover, behind these scheduled voyages there are all the
+varied motives that induce people to travel and the desires that lead to
+the shipment of goods. Shall it be said that all of these motives and
+desires must be traceable back to settled habits of behavior and
+consumption? And if this cannot be maintained is it not hazardous to
+assume that such general problems of economic theory as the
+determination of market values or of the shares in distribution require
+no recognition of the other empirical types of interest? These types, if
+they are genuine, are surely important; they may well prove to be, in
+many ways, fundamentally important. For a commodity that has become
+habitual must once have been new and untried.
+
+Sec. 11. The economic demands which make up the budget of a particular
+person at a particular time are clearly interdependent. A man's income
+or the greater part of it is usually distributed among various channels
+of expenditure in a certain fairly constant way. In proportion to the
+definiteness of this distribution and the resoluteness with which it is
+maintained does the impression gain strength that the man is carrying
+out a consistent plan of some sort. Such a regular plan of expenditure
+may be drawn out into a schedule, setting forth the amounts required at
+a certain price for the unit of each kind. And such a schedule is an
+expression in detail, in terms of ways and means, of the type of life
+one has elected to lead. For virtually any income above the level of
+bare physical subsistence, there will be an indefinite number of
+alternative budgets possible. A little less may be spent for household
+conveniences and adornments and a little more for food. Some recreations
+may be sacrificed for an occasional book or magazine. One may build a
+house or purchase a motor-car instead of going abroad. And whichever
+choice is made, related expenditures must be made in consequence for
+which, on the assumption of a definite amount of income, compensation
+must be made by curtailment of outlay at other points. What seems clear
+in general is that one's total budget is relative to the general plan
+and manner of life one deems for him the best possible and that this
+plan, more or less definitely formulated, more or less steadily
+operative, is what really determines how far expenditure shall go in
+this direction and in that. The budget as a whole will define for the
+individual an equilibrium among his various recognized wants; if the
+work of calculating it has been carefully done there will be for the
+time being no tendency to change in any item.
+
+If, then, we choose to say in such a case that the individual carries
+his expenditure along each line to the precise point at which the last
+or marginal utility enjoyed is precisely equal to the marginal utility
+on every other line, it seems not difficult to grasp what such a
+statement means. Quite harmlessly, all that it can mean is that the
+individual has planned precisely what he has planned and is not sorry
+for it, and for the time being does not think he can improve upon it. As
+there is one earth drawing toward its center each billiard ball of the
+dozen in equilibrium in a bowl, so there is behind the budget of the
+individual one complex personal conception of a way of life that fixes
+more or less certainly and clearly the kinds and intensities of his
+wants and assigns to each its share of purchasing power. That the units
+or elements in equilibrium hold their positions with reference to each
+other for reasons capable of separate statement for each unit seems a
+supposition no less impossible in the one case than in the other. To
+think of each kind of want in the individual's nature as holding
+separately in fee simple and clamoring for full and separate
+"satisfaction" in its separate kind, is the characteristic illusion of a
+purely formal type of analysis. The permanence of a budget and its
+carrying out no doubt require the due and precise realization of each
+plotted marginal utility--to go further than this along any one line
+would inevitably mean getting not so far along certain others, and thus
+a distorted and disappointing total attainment in the end. But to say
+that one actually plans and controls his expenditures along various
+lines by the ultimate aim of attaining equivalent terminal utilities on
+each is quite another story. It is much like saying that the square
+inches of canvas assigned in a picture to sky and sea and crannied wall
+are arranged upon the principle of identical and equal effects for
+artist or beholder from the last inches painted of each kind. The
+formula of the equality of marginal effects is no constructive
+principle; it is only a concise if indeed somewhat grotesque way of
+phrasing the essential fact that no change of the qualitative whole is
+going to be made, because no imperfection in it as a whole is felt.[52]
+
+Sec. 12. We come, then, to the problem of the individual's encounter with a
+new commodity. In general, a purchase in such a case must amount to more
+or less of a departure from the scheme of life in force and a transition
+over to a different one. And a new commodity (in the sense in which the
+term has been used above) is apt to be initially more tempting than an
+addition along some line of expenditure already represented in the
+budget. The latter, supposing there has been no change of price and no
+increase of income, is usually a mere irregularity, an insurgent
+departure from some one specification of a total plan without
+preliminary compensating adjustment or appropriate change at other
+points. The erratic outlay, if considerable, will result in sheer
+disorder and extravagance--indefensible and self-condemned on the
+principles of the individual's own economy. But with a new commodity the
+case stands differently. It is more interesting to consider a really new
+proposal than to reopen a case once closed when no evidence distinctly
+new is offered. A sheer "temptation" or an isolated impulse toward new
+outlay along a line already measured in one's scheme has the force of
+habit and a presumption of un-wisdom to overcome. If the case is one not
+of temptation but of "being urged" one is apt to answer, "No, I can make
+no use of any more of _that_." But a new commodity has the charm of its
+novelty, a charm consisting in the promise, in positive fashion, of new
+qualitative values about which a new entire schedule will have to be
+organized. Partly its strength of appeal lies in its radicalism; it
+gains ready attention not only by its promise but by its boldness.
+"Preparedness" gains a more ready acclaim than better schools or the
+extirpation of disease. The automobile and the "moving picture" probably
+have a vogue today far surpassing any use of earlier "equivalents" that
+a mere general augmentation of incomes could have brought about. Indeed,
+the economic danger of the middle classes in present-day society lies
+not in mere occasional excess at certain points but in heedless
+commitment to a showy and thinned-out scheme of life in which the
+elements are ill-chosen and ill-proportioned and from which, as a whole,
+abiding satisfaction cannot be drawn. It is where real and thoroughgoing
+change in the manner of life is hopeless that irregular intemperance of
+various sorts appears to bulk relatively largest as an economic evil.
+
+Shall we not say, however, that the superior attraction of the new in
+competition with established lines of expenditure only indicates the
+greater "satiation" of the wants the latter represent and the
+comparative freshness of the wants the novelty will satisfy? On the
+contrary the latter wants are in the full sense not yet existent, the
+new satisfactions are untried and unmeasured; the older wants have the
+advantage of position, and if satiated today, will reassert themselves
+with a predictable strength tomorrow. The new wants, it is true, if they
+are acquired, will be part of a new system, but the present fact remains
+that their full meaning cannot be known in advance of trial and the
+further outlines of the new scheme of uses and values cannot be drawn up
+until this meaning has been learned. If, then, the new commodity is
+taken, it is not because the promised satisfaction and the sum of known
+utilities to be sacrificed are found equal, nor again because the new
+commodity will fit neatly into a place in the existing schedule that can
+be vacated for it. This latter is the case of substitution. Such an
+interpretation of the facts is retrospective only; it is a formal
+declaration that the exchange has been deemed on the whole worth while,
+but the reasons for this outcome such a formula is powerless to suggest.
+
+In general the new commodity and the habits it engenders could not
+remain without effect upon a system into which they might be
+mechanically introduced. Certain items in the schedule, associated in
+use with those dispensed with for the new, must be rendered obsolete by
+the change. The new interests called into play will draw to themselves
+and to their further development attention which may be in large measure
+diverted from the interests of older standing. And in the new system all
+interests remaining over from the old will accordingly stand in a new
+light and their objects will be valued, will be held important, for
+reasons that will need fresh statement.[53]
+
+In similar fashion it might be argued that the commodities or uses which
+one sacrifices for the sake of a new venture are inevitably more than a
+simple deduction that curtails one's schedule in a certain kind and
+amount. Such a deduction or excision must leave the remaining lines of
+the original complex hanging at loose ends. The catching-up of these
+and their cooerdination with the new interest must in any event amount,
+as has been contended, to a thoroughgoing reorganization. What must
+really happen then, in the event of action, is in principle nothing less
+than the disappearance of the whole from which the sacrificed uses are
+dissevered. These latter, therefore, stand in the process of decision as
+a symbol for the existing personal economy as a whole. The old order and
+the new confront each other as an accepted view of fact and a plausible
+hypothesis everywhere confront each other and the issue for the
+individual is the practical issue of making the transition to a new
+working level. To declare that the salient elements of the confronting
+complexes are quantitatively equivalent is only to announce in symbolic
+terms that the transition has been effected, the die cast.[54]
+
+Sec. 13. The statement thus given has been purposely made, for many
+transactions of the sort referred to, something of an over-statement. If
+I contemplate purchasing a typewriter or a book on an unfamiliar but
+inviting subject it may well seem somewhat extravagant to describe the
+situation as an opposition between two schemes of life. Is the issue so
+momentous; is the act so revolutionary? But the purpose of our
+over-statement was simply to make clear the type of situation without
+regard to the magnitudes involved. No novelty that carries one in any
+respect beyond the range of existing habits can be wholly without its
+collateral effects nor can its proximate and proper significance be
+measured in advance. This is in principle as true of a relatively slight
+innovation as of a considerable one. And our present conscious
+exaggeration departs less widely from the truth than the alternative
+usual preoccupation of economic theory with the logic of routine desire
+and demand. For the phenomena of routine and habit are thereby made a
+standard by which all others, if indeed recognized as real at all, must
+be judged "exceptional." And, as we shall see, to do this introduces
+difficulty into certain parts of substantive economic theory.
+
+Again, objection may attach to the view that equivalence of the "salient
+members" of the opposing systems is only another name for the
+comprehensive fact of the novelty's acceptance. For if we hesitate in
+such a case, is this not because we judge the price too high? What can
+this signify but that the service or satisfaction we expect from the
+novelty falls short of sufficing to convince us? And unless we are
+dealing with measured quantities, how can we come to this conclusion?
+Moreover, if the novel commodity is divided into units we may take a
+smaller quantity when the price demanded is "high" than if the price
+were lower. And does this not suggest predetermined value-magnitudes as
+data? But if one takes thus a smaller amount, as the argument contends,
+it is because there is a presumption of being able to make some
+important total use of it and there is no general reason apparent for
+supposing that this will be merely a fractional part of a larger but
+like significance that might be hoped for from a larger quantity. And on
+the other hand, the prospect simply may not tempt at all; the smaller
+quantity may be deemed an improbable support for a really promising
+total program and the present program will hold its ground, not
+seriously shaken. The total demand of a market for a given commodity is
+no doubt in some sort a mathematical function of the price. The lower
+the price the greater in some ratio will be the number of persons who
+will buy and in general the greater the number of units taken by those
+who are already buyers. But that such a proposition admits of
+statistical proof from the observation of a series of price changes in a
+market affords no presumption concerning the nature of the reasons that
+move any individual person to his action. The theoretical temptation is
+strong, here as elsewhere, in passing from the study of markets to the
+personal economy of the individual forthwith to find this also a
+trafficking in unit-quantities and marginal satisfactions to which the
+concepts and notation of market analysis will readily apply.
+
+It remains to consider certain implications of this view of economic
+desire and demand.
+
+
+II
+
+Sec. 14. It is evident that the issue finally at stake in any economic
+problem of constructive comparison, is an ethical issue. Two immediate
+alternatives are before one--to expend a sum of money in some new and
+interesting way, or to keep it devoted to the uses of one's established
+plan. Upon the choice, one recognizes, hinge consequences of larger and
+more comprehensive importance than the mere present enjoyment or
+non-enjoyment of the new commodity.[55] And these "more important"
+consequences _are_ important because there appears to lie in them the
+possibility of a type of personal character divergent from the present
+type and from any present point of view incommensurable with it.[56] The
+ethical urgency of such a problem will impress one in the measure in
+which one can see that such an issue really does depend upon his present
+action and irretrievably depends. And we are able now to see what that
+economic quality is that attaches to ethical problems at a certain stage
+of their development and calls for a supplementary type of treatment.
+
+Let us first consider certain types of juncture in conduct that will be
+recognized at once as ethical and in which any economic aspect is
+relatively inconspicuous. Temperance or intemperance, truth or
+falsehood, idleness or industry, honesty or fraud, social justice or
+class-interest--these will serve. What makes such problems as these
+ethical is their demand for creative intelligence. In each, alternative
+types of character or manners of life stand initially opposed. If the
+concrete issue is really problematical, if there is no rule that one can
+follow in the case with full assurance, constructive comparison, whether
+covertly or openly, must come into play. How long, then, will a problem
+of temperance or intemperance, idleness or industry, preserve its
+obviously ethical character without admixture? Just so long, apparently,
+as the modes of conduct that come into view as possible solutions are
+considered and valued with regard to their _directly physiological and
+psychological_ consequences alone. Any given sort of conduct, that is
+to say, makes inevitably for the formation of certain habits of mind or
+muscle, weakening, or precluding the formation of, certain others.
+Attention is engrossed that is thereby not available elsewhere, time and
+strength are expended, discriminations are dulled and sharpened,
+sympathies and sensitivities are narrowed and broadened, every trait and
+bent of character is directly or indirectly affected in some way by
+every resolve concluded and every action embarked upon. If one moves a
+certain way along a certain line he can never return to the
+starting-point and set out unchanged along any other. If one does one
+thing one cannot do another. And when the sufficient reasons for this
+mutual exclusion lie in the structure and organization of the human mind
+and body our deliberation as between the two alternatives, our
+constructive comparison of them remains upon the ethical plane.
+
+If one does one thing one cannot do another. If we substitute the
+well-worn saying "one cannot eat his cake and have it" we indicate the
+economic plane of constructive comparison with all needful clearness.
+
+This is in fact the situation that has been already under discussion at
+such length above and the economic quality of which we are just now in
+quest arises from neither more nor less than the fact of our dependence
+in the working out of our personal problems upon limited external
+resources. The eventual solution sought under these circumstances
+remains ethical as before. But to reach it, it is necessary to bring
+into consideration not only such other interests and ends as the
+psycho-physical structure of human nature and the laws of
+character-development show to be involved, but a still wider range of
+interests less intimately or "internally" related to the focal interest
+of the occasion but imperatively requiring to be heard. If my
+acquisition of a phonograph turns upon the direct psychological bearing
+of the new interest upon my other interests, its probable effects
+whether good or bad upon my musical tastes and the diplomatic
+complications with my neighbors in which the possession of the
+instrument may involve me, the problem of its purchase remains clearly
+in the ethical phase. But when I count the cost in terms of sacrifices
+which the purchase price makes necessary, from literature down to food
+and fuel, and must draw this whole range of fact also into the
+adjustment if I can, the economic phase is reached. In principle two
+entire and very concrete schemes of life now stand opposed. Just _what_
+concrete sacrifices I shall make I do not know--this, in fact, is one
+way of stating my problem. Nor, conversely, do I know just what I shall
+be able to make the phonograph worth to me. It is my task to come to a
+conclusion in the case that shall be explicit and clear enough to enable
+me to judge in _the event_ whether my expectation has been realized and
+I have acted wisely or unwisely. Thus a problem is economic when the
+fact of the limitation of my external resources must be eventually and
+frankly faced. The characteristic quality of a problem grown economic is
+a certain vexatiousness and seeming irrationality in the ill-assorted
+array of nevertheless indisputable interests, prosaic and ideal, that
+have to be reduced to order.
+
+It is perhaps this characteristic emotional quality of economic problems
+that has insensibly inclined economists to favor a simpler and more
+clear-cut analysis. As for ethical problems--they have been left to
+"conscience" or to the jurisdiction of a "greatest happiness" principle
+in which the ordinary individual or legislator has somehow come to take
+an interest. That they arise and become urgent in us of course does
+human nature unimpeachable credit and economics must by all means wait
+respectfully upon their settlement. So much is conceded. But economics
+is economics, when all is said and done. What we mean by the economic
+interest is an interest in the direct and several satisfactions that a
+man can get from the several things he shrewdly finds it worth his while
+to pay for. And shrewdness means nicety of calculation, accuracy of
+measurement in the determination of tangible loss and gain. Here, then,
+is no field for ethics but a field of fact. Thus ethics on her side must
+also wait until the case is fully ready for her praise or blame. Such is
+the _modus vivendi_. But its simplicity is oversimple and unreal. It
+pictures the "economic man" as bound in the chains of a perfunctory
+deference that he would throw off if he could. For the theory of
+constructive comparison or creative intelligence, on the other hand,
+instead of a seeker and recipient of "psychic income" and a calculator
+of gain and loss, he is a personal agent maintaining continuity of
+action in a life of discontinuously changing levels of interest and
+experience. His measure of attainment lies not in an accelerating rate
+of "psychic income," but in an increasing sense of personal
+effectiveness and an increasing readiness and confidence before new
+junctures.
+
+The possession and use of commodities are, then, not in themselves and
+directly economic facts at all. As material things commodities serve
+certain purposes and effect certain results. They are means to ends and
+their serving so is a matter of technology. But do I seriously want
+their services? This is a matter of my ethical point of view. Do I want
+them at the price demanded or at what price and how many? This is the
+economic question and it obviously is a question wholly ethical in
+import--more broadly and inclusively ethical, in fact, than the ethical
+question in its earlier and more humanly inviting form. And what we have
+now to see is the fact that no consideration that has a bearing upon the
+problem in its ethical phase can lose its importance and relevance in
+the subsequent phase.
+
+There can be no restriction of the economic interest, for example, to
+egoism. If on general principles I would really rather use goods
+produced in safe and cleanly factories or produced by "union labor,"
+there is no possible reason why this should not incline me to pay the
+higher prices that such goods may cost and make the needful readjustment
+in my budget. Is there reason why my valuation of these goods should
+_not_ thus be the decisive act that takes me out of one relation to
+industrial workers and sets me in another--can anything else, indeed,
+quite so distinctly do this? For economic valuation is only the fixation
+of a purchase price, or an exchange relation in terms of price and
+quantity, upon which two schemes of life, two differing perspectives of
+social contact and relationship converge--the scheme of life from which
+I am departing and the one upon which I have resolved to make my hazard.
+It is this election, this transition, that the purchase price
+expresses--drawing all the strands of interest and action into a knot so
+that a single grasp may seize them. The only essential egoism in the
+case lies in the "subjectivism" of the fact that inevitably the
+emergency and the act are mine and not another's. This is the
+"egocentric predicament" in its ethical aspect. And the egocentric
+predicament proves Hobbes and La Rochefoucauld as little as it proves
+Berkeley or Karl Pearson. No social interest, no objective interest of
+any sort, is shown ungenuine by my remembering in season that if I
+cannot fill my coal-bin I shall freeze.[57]
+
+Sec. 15. This logical and psychological continuity of the ethical and
+economic problems suggests certain general considerations of some
+practical interest. In the first place as to "egoism." I am, let us say,
+an employer. If I am interested in procuring just "labor," in the sense
+of foot-pounds of energy, then undoubtedly labor performed under safe
+and healthful conditions is worth no more to me than other labor
+(provided it does not prove more efficient). But is this attitude of
+interest in just foot-pounds of energy the attitude _par excellence_ or
+solely entitled to be called economic? And just this may be asserted for
+the reason that an exclusive interest in just _labor_ is the only
+interest in the case that men of business, or at least many of them, can
+entertain without going speedily to the wall. If, then, I do _in fact_
+pay more than I must in wages or if I expend more than a bare minimum
+for conveniences and safety-guards this is not because of the valuation
+I put upon _labor_, but only because I take pleasure in the contentment
+and well-being of others. And this is not "business" but "uplift"--or
+else a subtle form of emotional self-indulgence. Suppose, however, that
+by legislation similar working conditions have been made mandatory for
+the entire industry and suppose that the community approves the law,
+even to the extent of cheerfully paying so much of the additional cost
+thereby imposed as may be shifted upon them.
+
+Shall we say that this is an ethical intrusion into the sphere of
+economics or shall we say that the former economic demand for labor "as
+such" has given place to an economic demand for labor better
+circumstanced or better paid? The community at all events is paying the
+increase of price or a part of the increase. It seems arbitrary to
+insist that the old price is still the _economic_ price of the commodity
+and the increase only the price of a quiet conscience. The notion of a
+strictly economic demand for labor pure and simple seems in fact a
+concept of accounting. To meet the community's demand for the commodity
+a number of producers were required. The least capable of these could
+make both ends meet at the prevailing price only by ignoring all but the
+severely impersonal aspects of the process. Taking these costs as a
+base, other more capable or more fortunate producers may have been able
+to make additional expenditures of the sort in question, charging these
+perhaps to "welfare" account. The law then intervenes, making labor in
+effect more expensive for all by requiring the superior conveniences or
+by compelling employers' insurance against accidents to workmen or by
+enforcing outright a higher minimum wage. The old basic labor cost
+becomes thus obsolete. And without prejudging as to the expediency of
+such legislation in particular industrial or business situations may we
+not protest against _a priori_ and wholesale condemnation of such
+legislation as merely irresponsibly "ethical" and "unscientific"? Is it
+not, rather, economically experimental and constructive, amounting in
+substance to a simple insistence that henceforth the hiring and paying
+of labor shall express a wider range of social interests--shall
+signalize a more clearly self-validating level of comprehension, on the
+part of employers and consumers, of the social significance of industry
+than the old? And may we not protest also, as a matter of sheer logic,
+against carrying over a _producer's_ distinction of accounting between
+"labor" cost and "welfare" cost into the _consumer's_ valuation of the
+article? How and to what end shall a distinction be drawn between _his_
+"esteem" for the trimmed and isolated article and _his_ esteem for the
+men who made it--which, taken together, dispose him to pay a certain
+undivided price for it?
+
+For the egoism of men is no fixed and unalterable fact. Taking it as a
+postulate, a mathematical theory of market phenomena may be erected upon
+it, but such a postulate is purely formal, taking no note of the reasons
+which at any given time lie behind the individuals' "demand" or "supply
+schedules." It amounts simply to an assumption that these schedules will
+not change during the lapse of time contemplated in the problem in hand.
+And it therefore cannot serve as the basis for a social science. As an
+actual social phenomenon egoism is merely a disclosure of a certain
+present narrowness and inertness in the nature of the individual which
+may or may not be definitive for him. It is precisely on a par with
+anemia, dyspepsia or fatigue, or any other like unhappy fact of personal
+biography.
+
+Sec. 16. There is another suggestion of ethical and economic continuity
+that may be briefly indicated. If our view of this relation is correct,
+a problem, by becoming economic, may lose something in dramatic interest
+and grandiosity but gains in precision and complexity. In the economic
+phase an issue becomes sensibly crucial. It is in this phase that are
+chiefly developed those qualities of clear-headedness, temperateness of
+thought and action, and well-founded self-reliance that are the
+foundation of all genuine personal morality and social effectiveness.
+And one may question therefore the ethical consequences of such measures
+as old age, sickness, and industrial accident insurance or insurance
+against unemployment. In proportion as these measures are effective they
+amount to a constant virtual addition to the individual's income from
+year to year without corresponding effort and forethought on his part.
+They may accordingly be condemned as systematic pauperization--the
+"endowment of the unfit." There is evidently a fundamental problem here
+at issue, apart from all administrative difficulties. Clearly this type
+of criticism assumes a permanent incapacity in "human nature" or in most
+actual beings therewith endowed, to recognize as seriously important
+other interests than those upon which hinge physical life and death. The
+ordinary man, it is believed, is held back from moral Quixotism as from
+material extravagance by the fear of starvation alone; and it is assumed
+that there are no other interests in the "normal" man that can or ever
+will be so wholesomely effective to these ends. And two remarks in
+answer appear not without a measure of pertinence. First, if what is
+alleged be true (and there is evidence in Malthus' _Essay_ and elsewhere
+to support it) it seems less a proof of original sin and
+"inperfectibility" than a reproach to a social order whose collective
+tenor and institutions leave the mass untouched and unawakened above the
+level of animal reproduction and whose inequalities of opportunity
+prevent awakened life from growing strong. And second, the democratic
+society of the future, if it exempts the individual in part or wholly
+from the dread of premature physical extinction must leave him on higher
+levels of interest similarly dependent for success or failure upon his
+ultimate personal discretion. And is it inconceivable that on higher
+levels there should ever genuinely be such a persisting type of issue
+for the multitude of men?[58]
+
+Sec. 17. We have held constructive comparison in its economic phase to be a
+reciprocal evaluating of the "salient members" of two budgets. The
+respective budgets in such a case express in the outcome (1) the plane
+of life to which one is to move and (2) the plane one is forsaking. It
+was the salient member of the former that presented the problem at the
+outset. In the course of the process its associates were _gathered
+about_ it in their due proportions and perspective. The salient member
+of the latter (i.e., whatever the purchase is to oblige one to do
+without), it was the business of constructive comparison to _single out_
+from among its associates and designate for sacrifice. In any case at
+all departing from the type of substitution pure and simple, the
+commodities sacrificed will come to have a certain "value in exchange"
+that clearly is a new fact, a new judgment, in experience. This value in
+exchange, this "subjective" or "personal" exchange value, may fittingly
+be termed a "value for transition." The transition once made, the
+exchange once concluded, I shall deem the motor-car, for example, that I
+have _not_ bought to replace one used-up, to be worth less than the
+piano I _have_ bought instead. This indeed (in no disparaging sense) is
+a tautology. But does this lesser relative value equal or exceed or fall
+short of the value the car would have had if no question of a piano had
+been raised at all and I had bought it in replacement of the old one as
+a matter of course? How can one say? The question seems unmeaning, for
+the levels of value referred to are different and discontinuous and the
+magnitudes belong to different orders. In a word, because a "value for
+transition" marks a resolve and succinctly describes an act, it cannot
+be broken in two and expressed as an equating of two magnitudes
+independently definable apart from the relation. The motor-car _had_ its
+value as a member of the old system--the piano _has_ its value as a
+member of the new. "The piano is worth more than the car"; "the car is
+worth less than the piano"--these are the prospective and retrospective
+views across a gulf that separates two "specious presents," not
+judgments of static inequality in terms of a common measure.
+
+Is value, then, absolute or relative? Is value or price the prior
+notion? Was the classical English economics superficial in its
+predilection for the relative conception of value? Or is the reigning
+Austrian economics profound in its reliance upon marginal utility? By
+way of answer let us ask--What in our world can be more absolute a fact
+than a man's transition from one level of experience and action to
+another? Can the flight of time be stayed or turned backward? And if not
+can the acts by whose intrinsic uniqueness and successiveness time
+becomes filled for me and by which I feel time's sensible passage as
+swift or slow, lose their individuality? But it is not by a mere empiric
+temporalism alone that the sufficient absoluteness of the present act is
+attested. My transition from phase to phase of "finitude" is a thing so
+absolute that Idealism itself has deemed an Absolute indispensable to
+assure its safe and sane achievement. And with all Idealism's distrust
+of immediate experience for every evidential use, the Idealist does not
+scruple to cite the "higher obviousness" of personal effort, attainment,
+and fruition as the best of evidence for his most momentous truth of
+all.[59] And accordingly (in sharp descent) we need not hesitate to
+regard value in exchange as a primary fact in its own right, standing in
+no need of resolution into marginal pseudo-absolutes. A price agreed to
+and paid marks a real transition to another level. There are both
+marginal valuation and _Werthaltung_ on this level, but they are
+subordinate incidents to this level's mapping and the conservation of
+its resources. On this level every marginal utility is relative, as we
+have seen, to every other through their common relation to the complex
+plan of organization as a whole.[60]
+
+Sec. 18. In conclusion one more question closely related to the foregoing
+may be briefly touched upon. We have held that the individual's attitude
+toward a commodity is in the first instance one of putting a
+price-estimate upon it and only secondarily that of holding it in a
+provisionally settled marginal esteem. If this principle of the
+priority of price-estimation or exchange value is true, it seems evident
+that there can be no line of demarcation drawn (except for doubtfully
+expedient pedagogical purposes) between (1) "Subjective valuations" with
+which individuals are conceived to come to a market and (2) a mechanical
+equilibration of demand and supply which it is the distinctive and sole
+function of market concourse to effect. In such a view the market
+process in strict logic must be timeless as it is spaceless; a
+superposition of the two curves is effected and they are seen to cross
+in a common point which their shapes geometrically predetermine.
+Discussion, in any proper sense, can be no inherent part of a market
+process thus conceived. Once in the market, buyers and sellers can only
+declare their "subjective exchange valuations" of the commodity and
+await the outcome with a dispassionate certainty that whoever may gain
+by exchanging at the price to be determined, those who cannot exchange
+will at all events not lose. But considered as a typical likeness of men
+who have seen a thing they want and are seeking to possess it, this
+picture of mingled hope and resignation is not convincing. Most actual
+offering of goods for sale that one observes suggests less the
+dispassionate manner of the physiologist or psychologist taking the
+measure of his subject's reactions, sensibilities, and preferences than
+the more masterful procedure of the physician or the hypnotist who seeks
+to uproot or modify or reconstruct them. This is the process known in
+economic writing since Adam Smith as "the higgling and bargaining of the
+market."
+
+In fact, the individual's ante-market valuation, when there temporarily
+is one, is an exchange valuation of the constructive or experimental and
+therefore (in any significant sense of the word) perfectly objective
+type, and the market process into which this enters is only a perfectly
+homogeneous temporal continuation of it that carries the individual
+forward to decisive action. There is no more reason for a separation
+here than for sundering the ante-experimental sketching out of an
+hypothesis in any branch of research from the work of putting the
+hypothesis to experimental test. The results of experiment may serve in
+a marked way in both sorts of process to elucidate or reconstruct the
+hypothesis.
+
+The "higgling and bargaining of the market" has been accorded but scant
+attention by economists. It has apparently been regarded as a kind of
+irrelevance--a comedy part, at best, in the serious drama of industry
+and trade, never for a moment hindering the significant movement and
+outcome of the major action. As if to excuse the incompetence of this
+treatment (or as another phase of it) theory has tended to lay stress
+upon, and mildly to deplore, certain of the less amiable and engaging
+aspects of the process. The very term indeed as used by Adam Smith,
+imported a certain aesthetic disesteem, albeit tempered with indulgent
+approbation on other grounds. In Boehm-Bawerk's more modern account this
+approbation has given place to a neutral tolerance. A certain buyer, he
+says (in his discussion of simple "isolated" exchange), will give as
+much as thirty pounds for a horse; the horse's owner will take as
+little as ten pounds--these are predetermined and fixed valuations
+brought to the exchange negotiations and nothing that happens in the
+game of wits is conceived to modify them. The price will then be fixed
+somewhere between these limits. But how? "Here ..." we read, "is room
+for any amount of 'higgling.' According as in the conduct of the
+transaction the buyer or the seller shows the greater dexterity,
+cunning, obstinacy, power-of-persuasion, or such like, will the price be
+forced either to its lower or to its upper limit."[61] But the higgling
+cannot touch the underlying attitudes. Even "power of persuasion" is
+only one part of "skill in bargaining," with all the rest and like all
+the rest; if it were more than this there would be for Boehm-Bawerk no
+theoretically grounded price limits to define the range of accidental
+settlement and the whole explanation, as a theory of price, would reduce
+to nullity.[62]
+
+With this, then, appears to fall away all ground for a one-sided, or
+even a sharply two-sided, conception of the process of fixation of
+market-values. A "marginal utility" theory and a "cost of production"
+theory of market price alike assume that the factor chosen as the
+ultimate determinant is a fixed fact defined by conditions which the
+actual spatial and temporal meeting-together of buyers and sellers in
+the market cannot affect. In this logical sense, the chosen determinant
+is in each case an ante-market or extra-market fact and the same is true
+of the blades of Marshall's famous pair of scissors.
+
+The price of a certain article let us say is $5. According to the
+current type of analysis this is the price because, intending buyers'
+and sellers' valuations of the article being just what they are, it is
+at this figure that the largest number of exchanges can occur. Were the
+price higher there would be more persons willing to sell than to buy;
+were it lower there would be more persons willing to buy than to sell.
+At $5 no buyer or seller who means what he says about his valuation when
+he enters the market goes away disappointed or dissatisfied. With this
+price established all sellers whose costs of production prevent their
+conforming to it must drop out of the market; so must all buyers whose
+desire for the article does not warrant their paying so much. More
+fundamentally then, Why is $5 the price? Is it because intending buyers
+and the marginal buyer in particular do not desire the article more
+strongly? Or is it because conditions of production, all things
+considered, do not permit a lower marginal unit cost? The argument might
+seem hopeless. But the advantage is claimed for the principle of demand.
+Without demand arising out of desires expressive of wants there would
+simply _be_ no value, no production, and no price. Demand evokes
+production and sanctions cost. But cost expended can give no value to a
+product that no one wants.
+
+Does it follow, however, that the cost of a commodity in which on its
+general merits I have come to take a hypothetical interest can in no
+wise affect my actual price-offer for it? Can it contribute nothing to
+the preciser definition of my interest which is eventually to be
+expressed in a price offer? If the answer is "No, for how can this
+external fact affect the strength of your desire for the object?"--then
+the reason given begs the question at issue. _Is_ my interest in the
+object an interest in the object alone? And _is_ the cost of the object
+a fact for me external and indifferent? It is, at all events, not
+uncommon to be assured that an article "cannot be produced for less,"
+that one or another of its elements of cost is higher than would be
+natural to suppose. Not always scientifically accurate, such assurances
+express an evident confidence that they will not be without effect upon
+a hesitant but fair-minded purchaser. And in other ways as well, the
+position of sellers in the market is not so defenseless as a strict
+utility theory of price conceives--apart from the standpoint of an
+abstract "normality" that can never contrive to get itself realized in
+empirical fact.[63] It is true that, in general, one tends to purchase
+an article of a given familiar kind where its price, all things
+considered, is lowest. In consequence the less "capable" producers or
+sellers must go to the wall. But the fact seems mainly "regulative" and
+of subordinate importance. Is it equally certain that as between
+branches of expenditure, such as clothing, food, and shelter, children,
+books, and "social" intercourse, the shares of income we expend upon
+them or the marginal prices we are content to pay express the original
+strength of separate and unmodified extra-market interests? On the
+contrary we have paid in the past what we have had to pay, what we have
+deemed just and reasonable, what we have been willing experimentally to
+hazard upon the possibility of the outlay's proving to have been worth
+while. In these twilight-zones of indetermination, cost as well as
+other factors of supply have had their opportunity. Shall we
+nevertheless insist that our "demands" are _ideally_ fixed, even though
+in fallible human fact they are more or less indistinct, yielding and
+modifiable? On the contrary they are "in principle and for the most
+part" indeterminate and expectant of suggested experimental shaping from
+the supply side of the market. It is less in theory than in fact that
+they have a salutary tendency (none too dependable) toward rigidity.
+
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+Sec. 19. The argument may now be summarily reviewed.
+
+I. How are we to understand the acquisition, by an individual, of what
+are called new economic needs and interests? Except by a fairly obvious
+fallacy of retrospection we cannot regard this phenomenon as a mere
+arousal of so-called latent or implicit desires. New products and new
+means of production afford "satisfactions" and bring about objective
+results which are unimaginable and therefore unpredictable, in any
+descriptive fashion, in advance. In a realistic or empirical view of the
+matter, these constitute genuinely new developments of personality and
+of social function, not mere unfoldings of a preformed logical or vital
+system. "Human nature" is modifiable and economic choice and action are
+factors in this indivisible process (Sec.Sec. 2-4). Now "logically" it would
+seem clear that unless a new commodity is an object of desire it will
+not be made or paid for. On the other hand, with equal "logic," a _new_
+commodity, it would seem, _cannot_ be an object of desire because all
+desire must be for what we already know. We seem confronted with a
+complete _impasse_ (Sec. 5). But the _impasse_ is conceptual only. We have
+simply to acknowledge the patent fact of our recognition of the new as
+novel and our interest in the new in its outstanding character of
+novelty. We need only express and interpret this fact, instead of
+fancying ourselves bound to explain it away. It is an interest not less
+genuine and significant in economic experience than elsewhere (Sec.Sec. 6, 7).
+Its importance lies in the fact that it obliges us to regard what is
+called economic choice not as a balancing of utilities, marginal or
+otherwise, but as a process of "constructive comparison." The new
+commodity and its purchase price are in reality symbols for
+alternatively possible systems of life and action. Can the old be
+relinquished for the new? Before this question is answered each system
+may be criticized and interpreted from the standpoint of the other, each
+may be supplemented by suggestion, by dictate of tradition and by
+impulsive prompting, by inference, and by conjecture. Finally in
+experimental fashion an election must be made. The system as accepted
+may or may not be, in terms, identical with one of the initial
+alternatives; it can never be identical in full meaning and perspective
+with either one. And in the end we have not chosen the new because its
+value, as seen beforehand, measured more than the value of the old, but
+we now declare the old, seen in retrospect, to have been worth less (Sec.Sec.
+8-12). There are apparently no valid objections to this view to be
+drawn from the current logical type of marginal-utility analysis (Sec. 13).
+
+II. Because so-called economic "choice" is in reality "constructive
+comparison" it must be regarded as essentially ethical in import. Ethics
+and economic theory, instead of dealing with separate problems of
+conduct, deal with distinguishable but inseparable stages belonging to
+the complete analysis of most, if not all, problems (Sec. 14). This view
+suggests, (_a_) that no reasons in experience or in logic exist for
+identifying the economic interest with an attitude of exclusive or
+particularistic egoism (Sec. 15), and (_b_) that social reformers are
+justified in their assumption of a certain "perfectibility" in human
+nature--a constructive responsiveness instead of an insensate and
+stubborn inertia (Sec. 16). Again, in the process of constructive
+comparison in its economic phase, Price or Exchange Value is, in
+apparent accord with the English classical tradition, the fundamental
+working conception. Value as "absolute" is essentially a subordinate and
+"conservative" conception, belonging to a status of system and routine,
+and is "absolute" in a purely functional sense (Sec. 17). And finally
+constructive comparison, with price or exchange value as its dominant
+conception, is clearly nothing if not a market process. In the nature of
+the case, then, there can be no such ante-market definiteness and
+rigidity of demand schedules as a strictly marginal-utility theory of
+market prices logically must require (Sec. 18).
+
+Sec. 20. In at least two respects the argument falls short of what might be
+desired. No account is given of the actual procedure of constructive
+comparison and nothing like a complete survey of the leading ideas and
+problems of economic theory is undertaken by way of verification. But to
+have supplied the former in any satisfactory way would have required an
+unduly extended discussion of the more general, or ethical, phases of
+constructive comparison. The other deficiency is less regrettable, since
+the task in question is one that could only be hopefully undertaken and
+convincingly carried through by a professional economist.
+
+For the present purpose, it is perhaps enough to have found in our
+economic experience and behavior the same interest in novelty that is so
+manifest in other departments of life, and the same attainment of new
+self-validating levels of power and interest, through the acquisition
+and exploitation of the novel. In our economic experience, no more than
+elsewhere, is satisfaction an ultimate and self-explanatory term.
+Satisfaction carries with it always a reference to the level of power
+and interest that makes it possible and on which it must be measured. To
+seek satisfaction for its own sake or to hinge one's interest in science
+or art upon their ability to serve the palpable needs of the present
+moment--these, together, make up the meaning of what is called
+Utilitarianism. And Utilitarianism in this sense (which is far less what
+Mill meant by the term than a tradition he could never, with all his
+striving, quite get free of), this type of Utilitarianism spells
+routine. It is the surrender of initiative and control, in the quest for
+ends in life, for a philistine pleased acceptance of the ends that
+Nature, assisted by the advertisement-writers, sets before us. But this
+type of Utilitarianism is less frequent in actual occurrence than its
+vogue in popular literature and elsewhere may appear to indicate. As a
+matter of fact, we more often look to satisfaction, not as an end of
+effort or a condition to be preserved, but as the evidence that an
+experimental venture has been justified in its event. And this is a
+widely different matter, for in this there is no inherent implication of
+a habit-bound or egoistic narrowness of interest in the conceiving or
+the launching of the venture.
+
+The economic interest, as a function of intelligence, finds its proper
+expression in a valuation set upon one thing in terms of another--a
+valuation that is either a step in a settled plan of spending and
+consumption or marks the passing of an old plan and our embarkation on a
+new. From such a view it must follow that the economic betterment of an
+individual or a society can consist neither in the accumulation of
+material wealth alone nor in a more diversified technical knowledge and
+skill. For the individual or for a collectivist state there must be
+added to these things alertness and imagination in the personal quest
+and discovery of values and a broad and critical intelligence in making
+the actual trial of them. Without a commensurate gain in these qualities
+it will avail little to make technical training and industrial
+opportunity more free or even to make the rewards of effort more
+equitable and secure. But it has been one of the purposes of this
+discussion to suggest that just this growth in outlook and intelligence
+may in the long run be counted on--not indeed as a direct and simple
+consequence of increasing material abundance but as an expression of an
+inherent creativeness in man that responds to discipline and education
+and will not fail to recognize the opportunity it seeks.
+
+Real economic progress is ethical in aim and outcome. We cannot think of
+the economic interest as restricted in its exercise to a certain sphere
+or level of effort--such as "the ordinary business of life" or the
+gaining of a "livelihood" or the satisfaction of our so-called
+"material" wants, or the pursuit of an enlightened, or an unenlightened,
+self-regard. Economics has no special relation to "material" or even to
+commonplace ends. Its materialism lies not in its aim and tendency but
+in its problem and method. It has no bias toward a lower order of
+mundane values. It only takes note of the ways and degrees of dependence
+upon mundane resources and conditions that values of every order must
+acknowledge. It reminds us that morality and culture, if they are
+genuine, must know not only what they intend but what they cost. They
+must understand not only the direct but the indirect and accidental
+bearing of their purposes upon all of our interests, private and social,
+that they are likely to affect. The detachment of the economic interest
+from any particular level or class of values is only the obverse aspect
+of the special kind of concern it has with values of every sort. The
+very generality of the economic interest, and the abstractness of the
+ideas by which it maintains routine or safeguards change in our
+experience, are what make it unmistakably ethical. Without specific ends
+of its own, it affords no ground for dogmatism or apologetics. And this
+indicates as the appropriate task of economic theory not the arrest and
+thwarting but the steadying and shaping of social change.
+
+
+
+
+THE MORAL LIFE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF VALUES AND STANDARDS[64]
+
+JAMES HAYDEN TUFTS
+
+
+Writing about ethics has tended to take one of two directions. On the
+one hand we have description of conduct in terms of psychology, or
+anthropology. On the other a study of the concepts right and wrong, good
+and bad, duty and freedom. If we follow the first line we may attempt to
+explain conduct psychologically by showing the simple ideas or feelings
+and the causal connections or laws of habit and association out of which
+actions arise. Or anthropologically we may show the successive stages of
+custom and taboo, or the family, religious, political, legal, and social
+institutions from which morality has emerged. But we meet at once a
+difficulty if we ask what is the bearing of this description and
+analysis. Will it aid me in the practical judgment "What shall I do?" In
+physics there is no corresponding difficulty. To analyze gravity enables
+us to compute an orbit, or aim a gun; to analyze electric action is to
+have the basis for lighting streets and carrying messages. It assumes
+the uniformity of nature and takes no responsibility as to whether we
+shall aim guns or whether our messages shall be of war or of peace.
+Whereas in ethics it is claimed that the elements are so changed by
+their combination--that the _process_ is so essential a factor--that no
+prediction is certain. And it is also claimed that the ends themselves
+are perhaps to be changed as well as the means. Stated otherwise,
+suppose that mankind has passed through various stages, can mere
+observation of these tell me what next? Perhaps I don't care to repeat
+the past; how can I plan for a better future? Or grant that I may
+discover instinct and emotion, habit and association in my thinking and
+willing, how will this guide me to direct my thinking and willing to
+right ends?
+
+The second method has tended to examine concepts. Good is an eternal,
+changeless pattern; it is to be discovered by a vision; or right and
+good are but other terms for nature's or reason's universal laws which
+are timeless and wholly unaffected by human desires or passions; moral
+nature is soul, and soul is created not built up of elements,--such were
+some of the older absolutisms. Right and good are unique concepts not to
+be resolved or explained in terms of anything else,--this is a more
+modern thesis which on the face of it may appear to discourage analysis.
+The ethical world is a world of "eternal values." Philosophy "by taking
+part in empirical questions sinks both itself and them." These doctrines
+bring high claims, but are they more valuable for human guidance than
+the empirical method?[65]
+
+"The knowledge that is superhuman only is ridiculous in man." No man can
+ever find his way home with the pure circle unless he has also the art
+of the impure. It is the conviction of this paper that in ethics, as in
+knowledge, thoughts without contents are empty; percepts without
+concepts are blind. Description of what has been--empiricism--is futile
+in itself to project and criticize. Intuitions and deductions a priori
+are empty. The "thoughts" of ethics are of course the terms right, good,
+ought, worth, and their kin. The "percepts" are the instincts and
+emotions, the desires and aspirations, the conditions of time and place,
+of nature, and institutions.
+
+Yet it is misleading to say that in studying the history of morals we
+are merely empiricists, and can hope to find no criterion. This would be
+the case if we were studying non-moral beings. But moral beings have to
+some degree guided life by judgments and not merely followed impulse or
+habit. Early judgments as to taboos, customs, and conduct may be crude
+and in need of correction; they are none the less judgments. Over and
+over we find them reshaped to meet change from hunting to agriculture,
+from want to plenty, from war to peace, from small to large groupings.
+Much more clearly when we consider civilized peoples, the interaction
+between reflection and impulse becomes patent. To study this interaction
+can be regarded as futile for the future only if we discredit all past
+moral achievement.
+
+Those writers who have based their ethics upon concepts have frequently
+expressed the conviction that the security of morality depends upon the
+question whether good and right are absolute and eternal essences
+independent of human opinion or volition. A different source of
+standards which to some offers more promise for the future is the fact
+of the moral life _as_ a constant process of forming and reshaping
+ideals and of bringing these to bear upon conditions of existence. To
+construct a right and good is at least a process tending to
+responsibility, if this construction is to be for the real world in
+which we must live and not merely for a world of fancy or caprice. It is
+not the aim of this paper to give a comprehensive outline of ethical
+method. Four factors in the moral life will be pointed out and this
+analysis will be used to emphasize especially certain social and
+constructive aspects of our concepts of right and good.
+
+
+I
+
+The four factors which it is proposed to emphasize are these:
+
+(1) Life as a biological process involving relation to nature, with all
+that this signifies in the equipment of instincts, emotions, and
+selective activity by which life maintains itself.
+
+(2) Interrelation with other human beings, including on the one hand
+associating, grouping, mating, communicating, cooeperating, commanding,
+obeying, worshiping, adjudicating, and on the psychological side the
+various instincts, emotions, susceptibilities to personal stimulation
+and appropriate responses in language and behavior which underlie or are
+evoked by the life in common.
+
+(3) Intelligence and reason, through which experience is interrelated,
+viewed as a whole, enlarged in imagination.
+
+(4) The process of judgment and choice, in which different elements are
+brought together, considered in one conscious universe, evaluated or
+measured, thereby giving rise reciprocally to a self on the one hand and
+to approved or chosen objects on the other.
+
+
+(1) Life. Life is at least the raw material of all values, even if it is
+not in itself entitled to be called good without qualification. For in
+the process of nourishing and protecting itself, the plant or animal
+selects and in the case of higher animals, manipulates; it adapts itself
+to nature and adapts nature to itself; it shows reciprocal relation of
+means to end, of whole to part. It foreshadows the conscious processes
+in so many ways that men have always been trying to read back some
+degree of consciousness. And life in the animal, at least, is regarded
+as having experiences of pleasure and pain, and emotions of fear, anger,
+shame, and sex, which are an inseparable aspect of values. If it is not
+the supreme or only good, if men freely sacrifice it for other ends, it
+is none the less an inevitable factor. Pessimistic theories indeed have
+contended that life is evil and have sought to place good in a will-less
+Nirvana. Yet such theories make limited appeal. Their protest is
+ultimately not against life as life but against life as painful. And
+their refutation is rather to be intrusted to the constructive
+possibilities of freer life than to an analysis of concepts.
+
+Another class of theories which omit life from the good is that which
+holds to abstractly ontological concepts of good as an eternal essence
+or form. It must be remembered, however, that the idea of good was not
+merely a fixed essence. It was also for Plato the self-moving and the
+cause of all motion. And further, Plato evidently believed that life,
+the very nature of the soul, was itself in the class of supreme values
+along with God and the good. The prize of immortality was [Greek: kalon]
+and the hope great. And with Aristotle and his followers the good of
+contemplation no less truly than the good of action had elements of
+value derived from the vital process. Such a mystic as Spinoza, who
+finds good in the understanding values this because in it man is
+"active," and would unite himself with the All because in God is Power
+and Freedom. The Hebrew prophet found a word capable of evoking great
+ethical values when he urged his countrymen to "choose life," and
+Christian teaching found in the conception of "eternal life" an ideal of
+profound appeal. It is not surprising that with his biological interests
+Spencer should have set up life of greatest length and breadth as a
+goal.
+
+The struggle of the present war emphasizes tremendously two aspects of
+this factor of life. National life is an ideal which gets its emotional
+backing largely from the imagery of our physical life. For any one of
+the small nations involved to give up its national life--whatever the
+possibilities of better organized industry or more comfortable material
+conditions--seems to it a desperate alternative. Self-defense is
+regarded by the various powers at war as a complete justification not
+merely for armed resistance or attack but for ruthless acts. And if we
+are tempted to say that the war involves a prodigal waste of individual
+life on a scale never known before, we are at the same time compelled to
+recognize that never before has the bare destruction of life aroused
+such horror.
+
+For never before has peace set its forces so determinedly to protect
+life. The span of human life has been lengthened: the wastefulness of
+accident and disease has been magnified. The dumb acquiescence with
+which former generations accepted the death of infants and children and
+those in the prime of life has given way to active and increasingly
+successful efforts to preserve. The enormous increase in scientific
+study of biology, including eugenics, reflects not only an advance of
+science but a trend in morality. It is scarcely conceivable that it
+should grow less in absolute importance, whatever crises may temporarily
+cause its depreciation relatively to other values.
+
+One exception to the growing appreciation calls for notice--the interest
+in immortality appears to be less rather than greater. The strong belief
+in life beyond the grave which since the days of ancient Egypt has
+prevailed in the main stream of Western culture seems not only to be
+affected by the scientific temper of the day, but also to be subject to
+a shift in interest. This may be in part a reaction from
+other-worldliness. In part it may be due to loss of fervor for a
+theological picture of a future heaven of a rather monotonous sort and
+may signify not so much loss of interest in life as desire for a more
+vital kind of continuance. It is not true that all that a man hath will
+he give for his life, yet it is true that no valuing process is
+intelligible that leaves out life with its impulses, emotions, and
+desires as the first factor to be reckoned with.
+
+(2) The second factor is the life in common, with its system of
+relations, and its corresponding instincts, emotions, and desires.
+
+So much has been written in recent years on the social nature of man
+that it seems unnecessary to elaborate the obvious. Protest has even
+been raised against the exaggeration of the social. But I believe that
+in certain points at least we have not yet penetrated to the heart of
+the social factor, and its significance for morals.
+
+So far as the moral aspect is concerned I know nothing more significant
+than the attitude of the Common Law as set forth by Professor Pound.[66]
+This has sought to base its system of duties on relations. The relation
+which was prominent in the Middle Ages was that of landlord and tenant;
+other relations are those of principal and agent, of trustee, etc. An
+older relation was that of kinship. The kin was held for the wergeld;
+the goel must avenge his next of kin; the father must provide for
+prospective parents-in-law; the child must serve the parents. Duty was
+the legal term for the relation. In all this there is no romanticism, no
+exaggeration of the social; there is a fair statement of the facts which
+men have recognized and acted upon the world over and in all times.
+Individualistic times or peoples have modified certain phases. The
+Roman law sought to ground many of its duties in the contract, the will
+of the parties. But covenants by no means exhaust duties. And according
+to Professor Pound the whole course of English and American law today is
+belying the generalization of Sir Henry Maine, that the evolution of law
+is a progress from status to contract. We are shaping law of insurance,
+of public service companies, not by contract but by the relation of
+insurer and insured, of public utility and patron.
+
+Psychologically, the correlate of the system of relations is the set of
+instincts and emotions, of capacity for stimulation and response, which
+presuppose society for their exercise and in turn make society possible.
+There can be no question as to the reality and strength of these in both
+animals and men. The bear will fight for her young more savagely than
+for her life. The human mother's thoughts center far more intensely upon
+her offspring than upon her own person. The man who is cut dead by all
+his acquaintance suffers more than he would from hunger or physical
+fear. The passion of sex frequently overmasters every instinct of
+individual prudence. The majority of men face poverty and live in want;
+relatively few prefer physical comfort to family ties. Aristotle's
+[Greek: philia] is the oftenest quoted recognition of the emotional
+basis of common life, but a statement of Kant's earlier years is
+particularly happy. "The point to which the lines of direction of our
+impulses converge is thus not only in ourselves, but there are besides
+powers moving us in the will of others outside of ourselves. Hence arise
+the moral impulses which often carry us away to the discomfiture of
+selfishness, the strong law of duty, and the weaker of benevolence. Both
+of these wring from us many a sacrifice, and although selfish
+inclinations now and then preponderate over both, these still never fail
+to assert their reality in human nature. Thus we recognize that in our
+most secret motives, we are dependent upon the rule of the general
+will."[67]
+
+The "law of duty," and I believe we may add, the conception of right, do
+arise objectively in the social relations as the common law assumes and
+subjectively in the social instincts, emotions, and the more intimate
+social consciousness which had not been worked out in the time of Kant
+as it has been by recent authors. This point will receive further
+treatment later, but I desire to point out in anticipation that if right
+and duty have their origin in this social factor there is at least a
+presumption against their being subordinate ethically to the conception
+of good as we find them in certain writers. If they have independent
+origin and are the outgrowth of a special aspect of life it is at least
+probable that they are not to be subordinated to the good unless the
+very notion of good is itself reciprocally modified by right in a way
+that is not usually recognized in teleological systems.
+
+(3) Intelligence and reason imply (_a_) considering the proposed act or
+the actually performed act as a whole and in its relations. Especially
+they mean considering consequences. In order to foresee consequences
+there is required not only empirical observation of past experience,
+not only deduction from already formulated concepts--as when we say that
+injustice will cause hard feelings and revolt--but that rarer quality
+which in the presence of a situation discerns a meaning not obvious,
+suggests an idea, "injustice," to interpret the situation. Situations
+are neither already labeled "unjust," nor are they obviously unjust to
+the ordinary mind. Analysis into elements and rearrangement of the
+elements into a new synthesis are required. This is eminently a
+synthetic or "creative" activity. Further it is evident that the
+activity of intelligence in considering consequences implies not only
+what we call reasoning in the narrower sense but imagination and
+feeling. For the consequences of an act which are of importance
+ethically are consequences which are not merely to be described but are
+to be imagined so vividly as to be felt, whether they are consequences
+that affect ourselves or affect others.
+
+(_b_) But it would be a very narrow intelligence that should attempt to
+consider only consequences of a single proposed act without considering
+also other possible acts and their consequences. The second important
+characteristic of intelligence is that it considers either other means
+of reaching a given end, or other ends, and by working out the
+consequences of these also has the basis for deliberation and choice.
+The method of "multiple working hypotheses," urged as highly important
+in scientific investigation, is no less essential in the moral field. To
+bring several ends into the field of consideration is the characteristic
+of the intelligent, or as we often say, the open-minded man. Such
+consideration as this widens the capacity of the agent and marks him
+off from the creature of habit, of prejudice, or of instinct.
+
+(_c_) Intelligence implies considering in two senses all persons
+involved, that is, it means taking into account not only how an act will
+affect others but also how others look at it. It is scarcely necessary
+to say that this activity of intelligence cannot be cut off from its
+roots in social intercourse. It is by the processes of give and take, of
+stimulus and response, in a social medium that this possibility of
+looking at things from a different angle is secured. And once more this
+different angle is not gained by what in the strict sense could be
+called a purely intellectual operation, although it has come to be so
+well recognized as the necessary equipment for dealing successfully with
+conditions that we commonly characterize the person as stupid who does
+not take account of what others think and feel and how they will react
+to a projected line of conduct. This social element in intelligence is
+to a considerable degree implied in the term "reasonable," which
+signifies not merely that a man is logical in his processes but also
+that he is ready to listen to what others say and to look at things from
+their point of view whether he finally accepts it or not.
+
+The broad grounds on which it is better to use the word intelligence
+than the word reason in the analysis with which we are concerned are
+two. (1) It is not a question-begging term which tends to commit us at
+the outset to a specific doctrine as to the source of our judgments. (2)
+The activity of intelligence which is now most significant for ethical
+progress is not suggested by the term reason, for unless we arbitrarily
+smuggle in under the term practical reason the whole activity of the
+moral consciousness without inquiry as to the propriety of the name we
+shall be likely to omit the constructive and creative efforts to promote
+morality by positive supplying of enlarged education, new sources of
+interest, and more open fields for development, by replacing haunting
+fears of misery with positive hopes, and by suggesting new imagery, new
+ambitions in the place of sodden indifference or sensuality. The term
+reason as used by the Stoics and by Kant meant control of the passions
+by some "law"--some authority cosmic or logical. It prepared for the
+inevitable; it forbade the private point of view. But as thus presenting
+a negative aspect the law was long ago characterized by a profound moral
+genius as "weak." It has its value as a schoolmaster, but it is not in
+itself capable of supplying the new life which dissolves the old
+sentiment, breaks up the settled evil habit, and supplies both larger
+ends and effective motives.
+
+If we state human progress in objective fashion we may say that although
+men today are still as in earlier times engaged in getting a living, in
+mating, in rearing of offspring, in fighting and adventure, in play, and
+in art, they are also engaged in science and invention, interested in
+the news of other human activities all over the world; they are
+adjusting differences by judicial processes, cooeperating to promote
+general welfare, enjoying refined and more permanent friendships and
+affections, and viewing life in its tragedy and comedy with enhanced
+emotion and broader sympathy. Leaving out of consideration the work of
+the religious or artistic genius as not in question here, the great
+objective agencies in bringing about these changes have been on the one
+hand the growth of invention, scientific method, and education, and on
+the other the increase in human intercourse and communication. Reason
+plays its part in both of these in freeing the mind from wasteful
+superstitious methods and in analyzing situations and testing
+hypotheses, but the term is inadequate to do justice to that creative
+element in the formation of hypotheses which finds the new, and it tends
+to leave out of account the social point of view involved in the
+widening of the area of human intercourse. More will be said upon this
+point in connection with the discussion of rationalism.
+
+(4) The process of judgment and choice. The elements are not the sum.
+The moral consciousness is not just the urge of life, plus the social
+relations, plus intelligence. The _process_ of moral deliberation,
+evaluation, judgment, and choice is itself essential. In this process
+are born the concepts and standards good and right, and likewise the
+moral self which utters the judgment. It is in this twofold respect
+synthetic, creative. It is as an interpretation of this process that the
+concept of freedom arises. Four aspects of the process may be noted.
+
+(_a_) The process involves holding possibilities of action, or objects
+for valuation, or ends for choice, in consciousness and measuring them
+one against another in a simultaneous field--or in a field of
+alternating objects, any of which can be continually recalled. One
+possibility after another may be tried out in anticipation and its
+relations successively considered, but the comparison is essential to
+the complete moral consciousness.
+
+(_b_) The process yields a universe of valued _objects_ as distinguished
+from a subjective consciousness of desires and feelings. We say, "This
+is right," "That is good." Every "is" in such judgments may be denied by
+an "is not" and we hold one alternative to be true, the other false. As
+the market or the stock exchange or board of trade fixes values by a
+meeting of buyers and sellers and settles the price of wheat accurately
+enough to enable farmers to decide how much land to seed for the next
+season, so the world of men and women who must live together and
+cooeperate, or fight and perish, forces upon consciousness the necessity
+of adjustment. The preliminary approaches are usually hesitant and
+subjective--like the offers or bids in the market--e.g., "I should like
+to go to college; I believe that is a good thing"; "My parents need my
+help; it does not seem right to leave them." The judgments finally
+emerge. "A college education is good;" "It is wrong to leave my
+parents"--both seemingly objective yet conflicting, and unless I can
+secure both I must seemingly forego actual objective good, or commit
+actual wrong.
+
+(_c_) The process may be described also as one of "universalizing" the
+judging consciousness. For it is a counterpart of the objective
+implication of a judgment that it is not an affirmation as to any
+individual's opinion. This negative characterization of the judgment is
+commonly converted into the positive doctrine that any one who is
+unprejudiced and equally well informed would make the same judgment.
+Strictly speaking the judgment itself represents in its completed form
+the elimination of the private attitude rather than the express
+inclusion of other judges. But in the making of the judgment it is
+probable that this elimination of the private is reached by a mental
+reference to other persons and their attitudes, if not by an actual
+conversation with another. It is dubious whether an individual that had
+never communicated with another would get the distinction between a
+private subjective attitude and the "general" or objective.
+
+Moreover, one form of the moral judgment: "This is right," speaks the
+language of law--of the collective judgment, or of the judge who hears
+both sides but is neither. This generalizing or universalizing is
+frequently supposed to be the characteristic activity of "reason." I
+believe that a comparison with the kindred value judgments in economics
+supports the doctrine that in judgments as to the good as well as in
+those as to right, there is no product of any simple faculty, but rather
+a synthetic process in which the social factor is prominent. A
+compelling motive toward an objective and universal judgment is found in
+the practical conditions of moral judgments. Unless men agree on such
+fundamental things as killing, stealing, and sex relations they cannot
+get on together. Not that when I say, "Killing is wrong," I mean to
+affirm "I agree with you in objecting to it"; but that the necessity (a)
+of acting as if I either do or do not approve it, and (b) of either
+making my attitude agree with yours, or yours agree with mine, or of
+fighting it out with you or with the whole force of organized society,
+compels me to put my attitude into objective terms, to meet you and
+society on a common platform. This is a _synthesis_, an achievement. To
+attribute the synthesis to any faculty of "practical reason," adds
+nothing to our information, but tends rather to obscure the facts.
+
+(_d_) The process is thus a reciprocal process of valuing objects and of
+constructing and reconstructing a self. The object as first imaged or
+anticipated undergoes enlargement and change as it is put into relations
+to other objects and as the consequences of adoption or rejection are
+tried in anticipation. The self by reflecting and by enlarging its scope
+is similarly enlarged. It is the _resulting_ self which is the final
+valuer. The values of most objects are at first fixed for us by instinct
+or they are suggested by the ethos and mores of our groups--family,
+society, national religions, and "reign under the appearance of habitual
+self-suggested tendencies." The self is constituted accordingly.
+Collisions with other selves, conflicts between group valuations and
+standards and individual impulses or desires, failure of old standards
+as applied to new situations, bring about a more conscious definition of
+purposes. The agent identifies himself with these purposes, and values
+objects with reference to them. In this process of revaluing and
+defining, of comparing and anticipation, freedom is found if anywhere.
+For if the process is a real one the elements do not remain unaffected
+by their relation to each other and to the whole. The act is not
+determined by any single antecedent or by the sum of antecedents. It is
+determined by the process. The self is not made wholly by heredity, or
+environment. _It is itself creating for each of its elements a new
+environment_, viz., the process of reflection and choice. And if man can
+change the heredity of pigeons and race horses by suitable selection, if
+every scientific experiment is a varying of conditions, it is at least
+plausible that man can guide his own acts by intelligence, and revise
+his values by criticism.
+
+The self is itself creating for each of its elements a new
+environment--this is a fact which if kept in mind will enable us to see
+the abstractness and fallacies not merely of libertarianism and
+determinism, but of subjectivism and objectivism. Subjective or "inward"
+theories have sought standards in the self; but in regarding the self as
+an entity independent of such a process as we have described they have
+exposed themselves to the criticism of providing only private, variable,
+accidental, unauthoritative sources of standards--instincts, or
+emotions, or intuitions. The self of the full moral consciousness,
+however,--the only one which can claim acceptance or authority--is born
+only in the process of considering real conditions, of weighing and
+choosing between alternatives of action in a real world of nature and
+persons. Its judgments are more than subjective. Objectivism in its
+absolutist and abstract forms assumes a standard--nature, essence,
+law--independent of process. Such a standard is easily shown to be free
+from anything individual, private, or changing. It is universal,
+consistent, and eternal, in fact it has many good mathematical
+characteristics, but unfortunately it is not moral. As mathematical,
+logical, biological, or what not, it offers no standard that appeals to
+the moral nature as authoritative or that can help us to find our way
+home.
+
+
+II
+
+If we are dissatisfied with custom and habit and seek to take philosophy
+for the guide of life we have two possibilities: (1) we may look for the
+good, and treat right and duty as subordinate concepts which indicate
+the way to the good, that is, consider them as good as a means, or (2)
+we may seek first to do right irrespective of consequences, in the
+belief that in willing to do right we are already in possession of the
+highest good. In either case we may consider our standards and values
+either as in some sense fixed or as in the making.[68] We may suppose
+that good is objective and absolute, that right is discovered by a
+rational faculty, or we may consider that in regarding good as objective
+we have not made it independent of the valuing process and that in
+treating right as a standard we have not thereby made it a fixed concept
+to be discovered by the pure intellect. The position of this paper will
+be (1) that good while objective is yet objective as a value and not as
+an essence or physical fact; (2) that a social factor in value throws
+light upon the relation between moral and other values; (3) that right
+is not merely a means to the good but has an independent place in the
+moral consciousness; (4) that right while signifying order does not
+necessarily involve a timeless, eternal order since it refers to an
+order of personal relations; (5) that the conception of right instead of
+being a matter for pure reason or even the "cognitive faculty" shows an
+intimate blending of the emotional and intellectual and that this
+appears particularly in the conception of the reasonable.
+
+
+(1) We begin with the question of the synthetic and objective character
+of the good. With G. E. Moore as with the utilitarians the good is the
+ultimate concept. Right and duty are means to the good. Moore and
+Rashdall also follow Sidgwick in regarding good as unique, that is, as
+"synthetic." Sidgwick emphasized in this especially the point that moral
+value cannot be decided by physical existence or the course of
+evolution, nor can the good be regarded as meaning the pleasant. Moore
+and Russell reinforce this. However true it may be that pleasure is one
+among other good things or that life is one among other good things,
+good does not mean either pleasure or survival. Good means just "good."
+
+A similar thought underlies Croce's division of the Practical into the
+two spheres of the Economic and the Ethical. "The economic activity is
+that which wills and effects only what corresponds to the conditions of
+fact in which a man finds himself; the ethical activity is that which,
+although it correspond to these conditions, also refers to something
+that transcends them. To the first correspond what are called
+individual ends, to the second universal ends; the one gives rise to the
+judgment concerning the greater or less coherence of the action taken in
+itself, the other to that concerning its greater or less coherence in
+respect to the universal end, which transcends the individual.[69]
+Utilitarianism is according to Croce an attempt to reduce the Ethical to
+the Economic form, although the utilitarians as men attempt in various
+ways to make a place for that distinction which as philosophers they
+would suppress. "Man is not a consumer of pleasures. He is a creator of
+life." With this claim of the distinctive, synthetic, character of the
+moral consciousness and of the impossibility of testing the worth of
+ideals by cosmic laws, or by gratification of particular wants as
+measured by pleasure, I have no issue. The analysis of the moral
+judgment made above points out just how it is that good is synthetic. It
+is synthetic in that it represents a measuring and valuing of
+ends--instinctive and imagined, individual and social--against each
+other and as part of a whole to which a growing self corresponds. It is
+synthetic in that it represents not merely a process of evaluating ends
+which match actually defined desires, but also a process in which the
+growing self, dissatisfied with any ends already in view, gropes for
+some new definition of ends that shall better respond to its living,
+creative capacity, its active synthetic character. Good is the concept
+for just this valuing process as carried on by a conscious being that is
+not content to take its desire as ready made by its present
+construction, but is reaching out for ends that shall respond to a
+growing, expanding, inclusive, social, self. It expresses value _as_
+value.
+
+Value _as value!_ not as being; nor as independent essence; nor as
+anything static and fixed. For a synthetic self, a living personality,
+could find no supreme value in the complete absence of valuing, in the
+cessation of life, in the negation of that very activity of projection,
+adventure, construction, and synthesis in which it has struck out the
+concept good. A theory of ethics which upholds the synthetic character
+of the good may be criticized as being not synthetic enough if it fails
+to see that on the basis of the mutual determination of percepts and
+concepts, of self and objects, the synthetic character of the process
+must be reflected in the ultimate meaning of the category which
+symbolizes and incorporates the process.
+
+(2) We may find some light upon the question how moral value gets its
+distinctive and unique character, and how it comes to be more
+"objective" than economic value if we consider some of the social
+factors in the moral judgment. For although the concept good is rooted
+in the life process with its selective activity and attending emotions
+it involves a subtle social element, as well as the more commonly
+recognized factors of intelligence.
+
+Within the fundamental selective process two types of behavior tend to
+differentiate in response to two general sorts of stimulation. One sort
+is simpler, more monotonous, more easily analyzable. Response to such
+stimulation, or treatment of objects which may be described under these
+terms of simple, analyzable, etc., is easily organized into a habit. It
+calls for no great shifts in attention, no sudden readjustments. There
+is nothing mysterious about it. As satisfying various wants it has a
+certain kind of value. It, however, evokes no consciousness of self.
+Toward the more variable, complex sort of stimuli, greater attention,
+constant adjustment and readjustment, are necessary.
+
+Objects of the first sort are treated as things, in the sense that they
+do not call out any respect from us or have any intrinsic value. We
+understand them through and through, manipulate them, consume them,
+throw them away. We regard them as valuable only with reference to our
+wants. On the other hand, objects of the second sort take their place in
+a bi-focal situation. Our attention shifts alternately to their behavior
+and to our response, or, conversely, from our act to their response.
+This back and forth movement of attention in the case of certain of
+these objects is reinforced by the fact that certain stimuli from them
+or from the organism, find peculiar responses already prepared in social
+instincts; gesture and language play their part. Such a bi-focal
+situation as this, when completely developed, involves persons. In its
+earlier stages it is the quasi-personal attitude which is found in
+certain savage religious attitudes, in certain aesthetic attitudes, and
+in the emotional attitudes which we all have toward many of the objects
+of daily life.
+
+Economic values arise in connection with attitudes toward things. We buy
+things, we sell them. They have value just in that they gratify our
+wants, but they do not compel any revision or change in wants or in the
+self which wants. They represent a partial interest--or if they become
+the total interest we regard them as now in the moral sphere. Values of
+personal affection arise as we find a constant rapport in thought,
+feeling, purpose, between the two members of our social consciousness.
+The attitude is that of going along with another and thereby extending
+and enriching our experiences. We enter into his ideas, range with his
+imagination, kindle at his enthusiasms, sympathize with his joys or
+sorrows. We may disagree with our friend's opinions, but we do not
+maintain a critical attitude toward _him_, that is, toward his
+fundamental convictions and attitudes. If "home is the place where, when
+you have to go there, they have to take you in," as Frost puts it, a
+friend is one who, when you go to him, has to accept you.
+
+Moral values also arise in a social or personal relation--not in
+relation to things. This is on the surface in the form of judgment; "He
+is a good man," "That is a good act." If it is less obvious in the
+practical judgment, "This is the better course of action," i.e., the
+course which leads to the greater good, or to the good, this is because
+we fail to discern that the good in these cases is a something with
+which I can identify myself, not a something which I merely possess and
+keep separate from my personality. It is something I shall be rather
+than have. Or if I speak of a share or participation it is a sharing in
+the sense of entering into a kindred life. It is an ideal, and an ideal
+for a conscious personal being can hardly be other than conscious. It
+may be objected that however personal the ideal it is not on this
+account necessarily social. It embodies what I would be, but does not
+necessarily imply response to any other personality. This, however,
+would be to overlook the analyses which recent psychology has made of
+the personal. The ideal does not develop in a vacuum. It implies for one
+thing individuality which is conceivable only as other individuals are
+distinguished. It implies the definition of purposes, and such
+definition is scarcely if ever attempted except as a possible world of
+purposes is envisaged.
+
+AEsthetic valuation is in certain respects intermediate between the
+valuation of things on the one hand and the moral evaluation of acts of
+persons or conscious states on the other. AEsthetic objects are in many
+cases seemingly things and yet even as things they are quasi-personal;
+they are viewed with a certain sympathy quite different from that which
+we feel for a purely economic object. If it is a work of art the artist
+has embodied his thought and feeling and the observer finds it there.
+The experience is that of _Einfuehlung_. Yet we do not expect the kind of
+response which we look for in friendship, nor do we take the object as
+merely a factor for the guidance or control of our own action as in the
+practical judgment of morality. The aesthetic becomes the object of
+contemplation, not of response; of embodied meaning, not of
+individuality. It is so far personal that no one of aesthetic sensibility
+likes to see a thing of beauty destroyed or mistreated. The situation
+in which we recognize in an object meaning and embodied feeling, or at
+least find sources of stimulation which appeal to our emotions, develops
+an aesthetic enhancement of conscious experience. The aesthetic value
+predicate is the outcome of this peculiar enhancement.
+
+It seems that the social nature of the judgment plays a part also in the
+varying objectivity of values. It is undoubtedly true that some values
+are treated as belonging to objects. If we cannot explain this fully we
+may get some light upon the situation by noticing the degree to which
+this is true in the cases of the kinds of values already described.
+
+Economic values are dubiously objective. We use both forms of
+expression. We say on the one hand, "I want wheat," "There is a demand
+for wheat," or, on the other, "Wheat is worth one dollar a bushel."
+Conversely, "There is no demand for the old-fashioned high-framed
+bicycle" or "It is worthless." The Middle Ages regarded economic value
+as completely objective. A thing had a _real value_. The retailer could
+not add to it. The mediaeval economist believed in the externality of
+relations; he prosecuted for the offenses of forestalling and regrating
+the man who would make a profit by merely changing things in place. He
+condemned usury. We have definitely abandoned this theory. We recognize
+that it is the want which makes the value. To make exchange possible and
+socialize to some degree the scale of prices we depend upon a public
+market or a stock exchange.
+
+In values of personal affection we may begin with a purely individual
+attitude, "I love or esteem my friend." If I put it more objectively I
+may say, "He is an honored and valued friend." Perhaps still more
+objectively, we--especially if we are feminine--may say "Is not X dear?"
+We may then go on to seek a social standard. We perhaps look for
+reinforcement in a small group of like-minded. We are a little perplexed
+and, it may be, aggrieved if other members of the circle do not love the
+one whom we love. In such a group judgment of a common friend there is
+doubtless greater objectivity than in the economic judgment. The value
+of a friend does not depend upon his adjustment to our wants. As
+Aristotle pointed out, true friendship is for its own sake. Its value is
+"disinterested." If a man does not care for an economic good it does not
+reflect upon him. He may be careless of futures, neglectful of corn,
+indifferent to steel. It lessens the demand, lowers the values of these
+goods, an infinitesimal, but does not write him down an inferior person.
+To fail to prize a possible friend is a reflection upon us. However the
+fact that in the very nature of the case one can scarcely be a personal
+friend to a large, not to say a universal group, operates to limit the
+objectivity.
+
+In the aesthetic and moral attitudes we incorporate value in the object
+decisively. We do not like to think that beauty can be changed with
+shifting fashions or to affirm that the firmament was ever anything but
+sublime. It seems to belong to the very essence of right that it is
+something to which the self can commit itself in absolute loyalty and
+finality. And, as for good, we may say with Moore in judgments of
+intrinsic value, at least, "we judge concerning a particular state of
+things that it would be worth while--would be a good thing--that that
+state of things should exist, even if nothing else were to exist
+besides."
+
+With regard to this problem of objectivity it is significant in the
+first place that the kind of situation out of which this object value is
+affirmed in aesthetic and moral judgments is a social situation. It
+contrasts in this respect with the economic situation. The economic is
+indeed social in so far as it sets exchange values, but the object
+valued is not a social object. The aesthetic and moral object is such an
+object. Not only is there no contradiction in giving to the symbolic
+form or the moral act intrinsic value: there is entire plausibility in
+doing so. For in so far as the situation is really personal, _either
+member is fundamentally equal to the other and may be treated as
+embodying all the value of the situation_. The value which rises to
+consciousness in the situation is made more complete by eliminating from
+consideration the originating factors, the plural agents of admiration
+or approval, and incorporating the whole product abstractly in the
+object. In thus calling attention to the social or personal character of
+the aesthetic or moral object it is not intended to minimize that factor
+in the judgment which we properly speak of as the universalizing
+activity of thought, much less to overlook the importance of the
+judgmental process itself. The intention is to point out some of the
+reasons why in one case the thinking process does universalize while in
+the other it does not, why in one case the judgment is completely
+objective while in the other it is not. In both aesthetic and moral
+judgments social art, social action, social judgments, through
+collective decisions prepare the way for the general non-personal,
+objective form. It is probable that man would not say, "This is right,"
+using the word as an adjective, if he had not first said, as member of a
+judicially acting group, "This is right," using the word as a noun. And
+finally whatever we may claim as to the "cognitive" nature of the
+aesthetic and moral judgment, the only test for the beauty of an object
+is that persons of taste discover it. The only test for the rightness of
+an act is that persons of good character approve it. The only test for
+goodness is that good persons on reflection approve and choose it--just
+as the test for good persons is that they choose and do the good.
+
+(3) Right is not merely a means to good but has a place of its own in
+the moral consciousness. Many of our moral choices or judgments do not
+take the form of choice between right and wrong, or between duty and its
+opposite; they appear to be choices between goods. That is, we do not
+always consider our value as crystallized into a present standard or
+feel a tension between a resisting and an authoritative self. But when
+they do emerge they signify a distinct factor. What Moore says of good
+may be said also of right. Right means just "right," nothing else. That
+is, we mean that acts so characterized correspond exactly to a self in a
+peculiar attitude, viz., one of adequate standardizing and adjustment,
+of equilibrium, in view of all relations. The concept signifies that in
+finding our way into a moral world into which we are born in the process
+of valuing and judging, we take along the imagery of social judgment in
+which through language and behavior the individual is constantly
+adjusting himself, not only to the social institutions, and group
+organization but far more subtly and unconsciously to the social
+consciousness and attitudes.
+
+This conception of an order to which the act must refer has usually been
+regarded as peculiarly a "rational" factor. It is, however, rather an
+order of social elements, of a nature of persons, than of a "nature of
+things." In savage life the position of father, wife, child, guest, or
+other members of the household, is one of the most prominent facts of
+the situation. The relationship of various totem groups and
+inter-marrying groups is the very focus of moral consciousness. Even in
+the case of such a cosmic conception of order as Dike and Themis, Rita
+and Tao, the "Way" is not impersonal cosmos. It is at least
+quasi-personal. And if we say such primitive myth has no bearing on what
+the "nature" of right or the "true" meaning of right is, it is pertinent
+to repeat that concepts without percepts are empty; that the term means
+nothing except the conceptual interpretation of a unique synthetic
+process in which an act placed in relation to a standard is thereby
+given new meaning. So long as custom or law forms the only or the
+dominant factor in the process, we have little development of the ideal
+concept right as distinct from a factual standard. But when reason and
+intelligence enter, particularly when that creative activity of
+intelligence enters which attempts a new construction of ends, a new
+ordering of possible experience, then the standardizing process is set
+free; a new self with new possibilities of relation seeks expression.
+The concept "right" reflects the standardizing, valuing process of a
+synthetic order and a synthetic self. Duty born similarly in the world
+of social relations and reflecting especially the tension between the
+individual and the larger whole is likewise given full moral
+significance when it becomes a tension within the synthetic self. And as
+thus reflecting the immediate attitudes of the self to an ideal social
+order both right and duty are not to be treated merely as means to any
+value which does not include as integrant factors just what these
+signify.
+
+This view is contrary to that of Moore, for whom "right does and can
+mean nothing but 'cause of a good result,' and is thus identical with
+useful."[70] The right act is that which has the best consequences.[71]
+Similarly duty is that action which will cause more good to exist in the
+Universe than any possible alternative. It is evident that this makes it
+impossible for any finite mind to assert confidently that any act is
+right or a duty. "Accordingly it follows that we never have any reason
+to suppose that an action is our duty: we can never be sure that any
+action will produce the greatest value possible.[72]
+
+Whatever the convenience of such a definition of right and duty for a
+simplified ethics it can hardly be claimed to accord with the moral
+consciousness, for men have notoriously supposed certain acts to be
+duty. To say that a parent has no reason to suppose that it is his duty
+to care for his child is more than paradox. And a still greater
+contradiction to the morality of common sense inheres in the doctrine
+that the right act is that which has the best consequences. Considering
+all the good to literature and free inquiry which has resulted from the
+condemnation of Socrates it is highly probable--or at least it is
+arguable--that the condemnation had better results than an acquittal
+would have yielded. But it would be contrary to our ordinary use of
+language to maintain that this made the act right. Or to take a more
+recent case: the present war may conceivably lead to a more permanent
+peace. The "severities," practised by one party, may stir the other to
+greater indignation and lead ultimately to triumph of the latter. Will
+the acts in question be termed right by the second party if they
+actually have this effect? On this hypothesis the more outrageous an act
+and the greater the reaction against it, the better the consequences are
+likely to be and hence the more reason to call the act right and a duty.
+The paradox results from omitting from right the elements of the
+immediate situation and considering only consequences. The very meaning
+of the concept right, implies focussing attention upon the present
+rather than upon the future. It suggests a cross-section of life in its
+relations. If the time process were to be arrested immediately after our
+act I think we might still speak of it as right or wrong. In trying to
+judge a proposed act we doubtless try to discover what it will mean,
+that is, we look at consequences. But these consequences are looked upon
+as giving us the meaning of the present act and we do not on this
+account subordinate the present act to these consequences. Especially we
+do not mean to eliminate the significance of this very process of
+judgment. It is significant that in considering what are the intrinsic
+goods Moore enumerates personal affection and the appreciation of
+beauty, and with less positiveness, true belief, but does not include
+any mention of the valuing or choosing or creative consciousness.
+
+(4) If we regard right as the concept which reflects the judgment of
+standardizing our acts by some ideal order, questions arise as to the
+objectivity of this order and the fixed or moving character of the
+implied standard. Rashdall lays great stress upon the importance of
+objectivity: "Assuredly there is no scientific problem upon which so
+much depends as upon the answer we give to the question whether the
+distinction which we are accustomed to draw between right and wrong
+belongs to the region of objective truth like the laws of mathematics
+and of physical science, or whether it is based upon an actual emotional
+constitution of individual human beings."[73] The appraisement of the
+various desires and impulses by myself and other men is "a piece of
+insight into the true nature of things."[74] While these statements are
+primarily intended to oppose the moral sense view of the judgment, they
+also bear upon the question whether right is something fixed. The
+phrase "insight into the true nature of things" suggests at once the
+view that the nature of things is quite independent of any attitude of
+human beings toward it. It is something which the seeker for moral truth
+may discover but nothing which he can in any way modify. It is urged
+that if we are to have any science of ethics at all what was once right
+must be conceived as always right in the same circumstances.[75]
+
+I hold no brief for the position--if any one holds the position--that in
+saying "this is right" I am making an assertion about my own feelings or
+those of any one else. As already stated the function of the judging
+process is to determine objects, with reference to which we say "is" or
+"is not." The emotional theory of the moral consciousness does not give
+adequate recognition to this. But just as little as the process of the
+moral consciousness is satisfied by an emotional theory of the judgment
+does it sanction any conception of objectivity which requires that
+values are here or there once for all; that they are fixed entities or
+"a nature of things" upon which the moral consciousness may look for its
+information but upon which it exercises no influence. The process of
+attempting to give--or discover--moral values is a process of mutual
+determination of object and agent. We have to do in morals not with a
+nature of things but with natures of persons. The very characteristic of
+a person as we have understood it is that he is synthetic, is actually
+creating something new by organizing experiences and purposes, by
+judging and choosing. Objectivity does not necessarily imply
+changelessness.
+
+Whether right is a term of fixed and changeless character depends upon
+whether the agents are fixed units, either in fact or in ideal. If, as
+we maintain, right is the correlate of a self confronting a world of
+other persons conceived as all related in an order, the vital question
+is whether this order is a fixed or a moving order. "Straight" is a term
+of fixed content just because we conceive space in timeless terms; it is
+by its very meaning a cross-section of a static order. But a world of
+living intelligent agents in social relations is in its very
+presuppositions a world of activity, of mutual understanding and
+adjustment. Rationalistic theory, led astray by geometrical conceptions,
+conceived that a universal criterion must be like a straight line, a
+fixed and timeless--or eternal--entity. But in such an order of fixed
+units there could be no selection, no adjustment to other changing
+agents, no adventure upon the new untested possibility which marks the
+advance of every great moral idea, in a word, no morality of the
+positive and constructive sort. And if it be objected that the predicate
+of a judgment must be timeless whatever the subject, that the word "is"
+as Plato insists cannot be used if all flows, we reply that if right=the
+correlate of a moving order, of living social intelligent beings, it is
+quite possible to affirm "This is according to that law." If our logic
+provides no form of judgment for the analysis of such a situation it is
+inadequate for the facts which it would interpret. But in truth
+mankind's moral judgments have never committed themselves to any such
+implication. We recognize the futility of attempting to answer simply
+any such questions as whether the Israelites did right to conquer Canaan
+or Hamlet to avenge his father.
+
+(5) The category of right has usually been closely connected, if not
+identified, with reason or "cognitive" activity as contrasted with
+emotion. Professor Dewey on the contrary has pointed out clearly[76] the
+impossibility of separating emotion and thought. "To put ourselves in
+the place of another ... is the surest way to attain universality and
+objectivity of moral knowledge." "The only truly general, the reasonable
+as distinct from the merely shrewd or clever thought, is the _generous_
+thought." But in the case of certain judgments such as those approving
+fairness and the general good Sidgwick finds a rational intuition. "The
+principle of impartiality is obtained by considering the similarity of
+the individuals that make up a Logical Whole or Genus."[77] Rashdall
+challenges any but a rationalistic ethics to explain fairness as
+contrasted with partiality of affection.
+
+There is without question a properly rational or intellectual element in
+the judgment of impartiality, namely, analysis of the situation and
+comparison of the units. But what we shall set up as our units--whether
+we shall treat the gentile or the barbarian or negro as a person, as end
+and not merely means, or not, depends on something quite other than
+reason. And this other factor is not covered by the term "practical
+reason." In fact no ethical principle shows better the subtle blending
+of the emotional and social factors with the rational. For the student
+of the history of justice is aware that only an extraordinarily
+ingenious exegesis could regard justice as having ever been governed by
+a mathematical logic. The logic of justice has been the logic of a
+we-group gradually expanding its area. Or it has been the logic of a
+Magna Charta--a document of special privileges wrested from a superior
+by a strong group, and gradually widening its benefits with the
+admission of others into the favored class. Or it has been the logic of
+class, in which those of the same level are treated alike but those of
+different levels of birth or wealth are treated proportionately. Yet it
+would seem far-fetched to maintain that the countrymen of Euclid and
+Aristotle were deficient in the ability to perform so simple a reasoning
+process as the judgment one equals one, or that men who developed the
+Roman Law, or built the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, were similarly
+lacking in elementary analysis. Inequality rather than equality has been
+the rule in the world's justice. It has not only been the practice but
+the approved principle. It still is in regard to great areas of life. In
+the United States there is no general disapproval of the great
+inequalities in opportunity for children, to say nothing of inequalities
+in distribution of wealth. In England higher education is for the
+classes rather than for the masses. In Prussia the inequality in voting
+strength of different groups and the practical immunity of the military
+class from the constraints of civil law seem to an American unfair. The
+western states of the Union think it unfair to restrict the suffrage to
+males and give women no voice in the determination of matters of such
+vital interest to them as the law of divorce, the guardianship of
+children, the regulation of women's labor, the sale of alcoholic
+liquors, the protection of milk and food supply. Are all these
+differences of practice and conviction due to the fact that some people
+use reason while others do not? Of course in every case excellent
+reasons can be given for the inequality. The gentile should not be
+treated as a Jew because he is not a Jew. The slave should not be
+treated as a free citizen because he is not a free citizen. The churl
+should not have the same wergeld as the thane because he is lowborn. The
+more able should possess more goods. The woman should not vote because
+she is not a man. The reasoning is clear and unimpeachable if you accept
+the premises, but what gives the premises? In every case cited the
+premise is determined largely if not exclusively by social or emotional
+factors. If reason can then prescribe equally well that the slave should
+be given rights because he is a man of similar traits or denied rights
+because he has different traits from his master, if the Jew may either
+be given his place of equality because he hath eyes, hands, organs,
+dimensions, senses, affections, passions, or denied equality because he
+differs in descent, if a woman is equal as regards taxpaying but unequal
+as regards voting, it is at least evident that reason is no unambiguous
+source of morality. The devil can quote Scripture and it is a very poor
+reasoner who cannot find a reason for anything that he wishes to do. A
+partiality that is more or less consistently partial to certain sets or
+classes is perhaps as near impartiality as man has yet come, whether by
+a rational faculty or any other.
+
+Is it, then, the intent of this argument merely to reiterate that reason
+is and ought to be the slave of the passions? On the contrary, the
+intent is to substitute for such blanket words as reason and passions a
+more adequate analysis. And what difference will this make? As regards
+the particular point in controversy it will make this difference: the
+rationalist having smuggled in under the cover of reason the whole moral
+consciousness then proceeds to assume that because two and two are
+always four, or the relations of a straight line are timeless, therefore
+ethics is similarly a matter of fixed standards and timeless goods. A
+legal friend told me that he once spent a year trying to decide whether
+a corporation was or was not a person and then concluded that the
+question was immaterial. But when the supreme court decided that a
+corporation was a person in the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment it
+thereby made the corporation heir to the rights established primarily
+for the negro. Can the moral consciousness by taking the name "reason"
+become heir to all the privileges of the absolute idea and to the
+timelessness of space and number?
+
+Suppose I am to divide an apple between my two children--two children,
+two pieces--this is an analysis of the situation which is obvious and
+may well be called the analytic activity of reason. But shall I give to
+each an equal share on the ground that both are equally my children or
+shall I reason that as John is older or larger or hungrier or mentally
+keener or more generous or is a male, he shall have a larger piece than
+Jane? To settle this it may be said that we ought to see whether there
+is any connection between the size of the piece and the particular
+quality of John which is considered, or that by a somewhat different use
+of reason we should look at the whole situation and see how we shall
+best promote family harmony and mutual affection. To settle the first of
+these problems, that of the connection between the size of the piece and
+the size of the hunger or the sex of the child, is seemingly again a
+question of analysis, of finding identical units, but a moment's thought
+shows that the case is not so simple; that the larger child should have
+the larger piece is by no means self-evident. This is in principle
+doubtless the logic, to him that hath shall be given. It is the logic of
+the survival of the strong, but over against that the moral
+consciousness has always set another logic which says that the smaller
+child should have the larger piece if thereby intelligent sympathy can
+contribute toward evening up the lot of the smaller. Now it is precisely
+this attitude of the moral consciousness which is not suggested by the
+term reason, for it is quite different from the analytic and identifying
+activity. This analytical and identifying activity may very well rule
+out of court the hypothesis that I should give John the larger piece
+because he has already eaten too much or because he has just found a
+penny or because he has red hair; it has undoubtedly helped in
+abolishing such practices as that of testing innocence by the ordeal.
+But before the crucial question of justice which divides modern society,
+namely, whether we shall lay emphasis upon adjustment of rewards to
+previous abilities, habits, possessions, character, or shall lay stress
+upon needs, and the possibility of bringing about a greater measure of
+equality, the doctrine which would find its standard in an _a priori_
+reason is helpless.
+
+If we look at the second test suggested, namely, that of considering the
+situation as a whole with a view to the harmony of the children and the
+mutual affection within the family, there can be even less question that
+this is no mere logical problem of the individuals in a logical genus.
+It is the social problem of individuals who have feelings and emotions
+as well as thought and will. The problem of distributing the apple
+fairly is then a complex in which at least the following processes
+enter. (1) Analysis of the situation to show all the relevant factors
+with the full bearing of each; (2) putting yourself in the place of each
+one to be considered and experiencing to the full the claims, the
+difficulties and the purposes of each person involved; (3) considering
+all of these _as_ members of the situation so that no individual is
+given rights or allowed claims except in so far as he represents a point
+of view which is comprehensive and sympathetic. This I take it is the
+force of President Wilson's utterance which has commanded such wide
+acceptance: "America asks nothing for herself except what she has a
+right to ask in the name of humanity." Kant aimed to express a high and
+democratic ideal of justice in his doctrine that we should treat every
+rational being as end. The defect in his statement is that the rational
+process as such has never treated and so far as can be foreseen never
+will treat _human_ beings as ends. To treat a human being as an end it
+is necessary to put oneself into his place in his whole nature and not
+simply in his universalizing, and legislative aspects: Kant's principle
+is profound and noble, but his label for it is misleading and leaves a
+door open for appalling disregard of other people's feelings,
+sympathies, and moral sentiments, as Professor Dewey has indicated in
+his recent lectures on "German Philosophy and Politics."
+
+The term "reasonable," which is frequently used in law and common life
+as a criterion of right, seems to imply that reason is a standard. As
+already stated, common life understands by the reasonable man one who
+not only uses his own thinking powers but is willing to listen to reason
+as presented by some one else. He makes allowance for frailties in human
+nature. To be reasonable means, very nearly, taking into account all
+factors of the case not only as I see them but as men of varying
+capacities and interests regard them. The type of the "unreasonable"
+employer is the man who refuses to talk over things with the laborers;
+to put himself in their place; or to look at matters from the point of
+view of society as a whole.
+
+Just as little does the term reasonable as used in law permit a purely
+intellectualistic view of the process or an _a priori_ standard. The
+question as to what is reasonable care or a reasonable price is often
+declared to be a matter not for the court but for the jury to decide,
+i.e., it is not to be deduced from any settled principle but is a
+question of what the average thoughtful man, who considers other people
+as well as himself, would do under the circumstances. A glance at some
+of the judicial definitions of such phrases as "reasonable care,"
+"reasonable doubt," "reasonable law," as brought together in _Words and
+Phrases Judicially Defined_, illustrates this view. We get a picture not
+of any definite standard but of such a process as we have described in
+our analysis, namely, a process into which the existing social
+tradition, the mutual adjustments of a changing society and the
+intelligent consideration of all facts, enter. The courts have variously
+defined the reasonable (1) as the customary, or ordinary, or legal, or
+(2) as according with the existing state of knowledge in some special
+field, or (3) as proceeding on due consideration of all the facts, or
+(4) as offering sufficient basis for action. For example, (1) reasonable
+care means "according to the usages, habits, and ordinary risks of the
+business," (2) "surgeons should keep up with the latest advances in
+medical science," (3) a reasonable price "is such a price as the jury
+would under all the circumstances decide to be reasonable." "If, after
+an impartial comparison and consideration the jury can say candidly they
+are not satisfied with the defendant's guilt they have a reasonable
+doubt." Under (4) falls one of various definitions of "beyond reasonable
+doubt." "The evidence must be such as to produce in the minds of prudent
+men such certainty that they would act without hesitation in their own
+most important affairs." There is evidently ground for the statement of
+one judge that "reasonable" (he was speaking the phrase "reasonable
+care," but his words would seem to apply to other cases) "cannot be
+measured by any fixed or inflexible standard." Professor Freund
+characterizes "reasonable" as "the negation of precision." In the
+development of judicial interpretation as applied to the Sherman Law the
+tendency is to hold that the "rule of reason" will regard as forbidden
+by the statute (_a_) such combinations as have historically been
+prohibited and (_b_) such as seem to work some definite injury.
+
+
+III
+
+The above view of the function of intelligence, and of the synthetic
+character of the conscious process may be further defined in certain
+aspects by comparison with the view of Professor Fite, who likewise
+develops the significance of consciousness and particularly of
+intelligence for our ethical concepts and social program.
+
+Professor Fite insists that in contrast with the "functional psychology"
+which would make consciousness merely a means to the preservation of the
+organic individual in mechanical working order, the whole value of life
+from the standpoint of the conscious agent consists in its being
+conscious. Creative moments in which there is complete conscious control
+of materials and technique represent high and unique individuality.
+Extension of range of consciousness makes the agent "a larger and more
+inclusive being," for he is living in the future and past as well as in
+the present. Consciousness means that a new and original force is
+inserted into the economy of the social and the physical world."[78] On
+the basis of the importance of consciousness Professor Fite would ground
+his justification of rights, his conception of justice, and his social
+program. The individual derives his rights simply from the fact that he
+knows what he is doing, hence as individuals differ in intelligence they
+differ in rights. The problem of justice is that of according to each a
+degree of recognition proportioned to his intelligence, that is, treat
+others as ends so far as they are intelligent; so far as they are
+ignorant treat them as means.[79] "The conscious individual when dealing
+with other conscious individuals will take account of their aims, as of
+other factors in his situation. This will involve 'adjustment,' but not
+abandonment of ends, i.e., self-sacrifice. Obligation to consider these
+ends of others is based on 'the same logic that binds me to get out of
+the way of an approaching train.'"[80]
+
+The point in which the conception of rights and justice and the implied
+social program advocated in this paper differs as I view it from that of
+Professor Fite is briefly this. I regard both the individual and his
+rights as essentially synthetic and in constant process of
+reconstruction. Therefore what is due to any individual at a moment is
+not measured by his present stage of consciousness. It is measured
+rather by his possibilities than his actualities. This does not mean
+that the actual is to be ignored, but it does mean that if we take our
+stand upon the actual we are committed to a program with little place
+for imagination, with an emphasis all on the side of giving people what
+they deserve rather than of making them capable of deserving more.
+Professor Fite's position I regard as conceiving consciousness itself
+too largely in the category of the identical and the static rather than
+in the more "conscious" categories of constant reconstruction. When by
+virtue of consciousness you conceive new ends in addition to your former
+particular ideas of present good the problem is, he says, "to secure
+perfect fulfilment of each of them." The "usefulness" or "advantage" or
+"profitableness" of entering into social relations is the central
+category for measuring their value and their obligation.
+
+Now the conception of securing perfect fulfilment of all one's aims by
+means of society rather than of putting one's own aims into the process
+for reciprocal modification and adjustment with the aims of others and
+of the new social whole involves a view of these ends as fixed, an
+essentially mechanical view. The same is the implication in considering
+society from the point of view of use and profit. As previously
+suggested these economic terms apply appropriately to things rather than
+to intrinsic values. To consider the uses of a fellow-being is to
+measure him in terms of some other end than his own intrinsic personal
+worth. To consider family life or society as profitable implies in
+ordinary language that such life is a means for securing ends already
+established rather than that it _proves_ a good to the man who invests
+in it and thereby becomes himself a new individual with a new standard
+of values. Any object to be chosen must of course have value to the
+chooser. But it is one thing to be valued because it appeals to the
+actual chooser as already constituted; it is another thing to be valued
+because it appeals to a moving self which adventures upon this new
+unproved objective. This second is the distinction of taking an interest
+instead of being interested.
+
+The second point of divergence is that Professor Fite lays greater
+stress upon the intellectual side of intelligence, whereas I should deny
+that the intellectual activity in itself is adequate to give either a
+basis for obligation or a method of dealing with the social problem. The
+primary fact, as Professor Fite well states it, is "that men are
+conscious beings and therefore know themselves and one another." It
+involves "a mutual recognition of personal ends." "That very knowledge
+which shows the individual himself shows him also that he is living in a
+world with other persons and other things whose mode of behavior and
+whose interests determine for him the conditions through which his own
+interests are to be realized."
+
+What kind of "knowledge" is it "which shows the individual himself"?
+Professor Fite has two quite different ways of referring to this. He
+uses one set of terms when he would contrast his view with the
+sentimental, or the "Oriental," or justify exploitation by those who
+know better what they are about than the exploited. He uses another set
+of terms to characterize it when he wishes to commend his view as human,
+and fraternal, and as affording the only firm basis for social reform.
+In the first case he speaks of "mere knowing"; of intelligence as
+"clear," and "far-sighted," of higher degrees of consciousness as simply
+"more in one." "Our test of intelligence would be breadth of vision (in
+a coherent view), fineness and keenness of insight."[81]
+
+In the second case it is "generous," it will show an "intelligent
+sympathy"; it seeks "fellowship," and would not "elect to live in a
+social environment in which the distinction of 'inferiors' were an
+essential part of the idea."[82] The type of intelligence is found not
+in the man seeking wealth or power, nor in the legal acumen which
+forecasts all discoverable consequences and devises means to carry out
+purposes, but in literature and art.[83]
+
+The terms which cover both these meanings are the words "consider" and
+"considerate." "Breadth of consideration" gives the basis for rights.
+The selfish man is the "inconsiderate."[84] This term plays the part of
+the _amor intellectualis_ in the system of Spinoza, which enables him at
+once to discard all emotion and yet to keep it. For "consideration" is
+used in common life, and defined in the dictionaries, as meaning both
+"examination," "careful thought," and "appreciative or sympathetic
+regard." The ambiguity in the term may well have served to disguise from
+the author himself the double role which intelligence is made to play.
+The broader use is the only one that does justice to the moral
+consciousness, but we cannot include sympathy and still maintain that
+"mere knowing" covers the whole. The insistence at times upon the "mere
+knowing" is a mechanical element which needs to be removed before the
+ethical implications can be accepted.
+
+Once more, how does one know himself and others? Is it the same process
+precisely as knowing a mechanical object? Thoughts without percepts are
+empty, and what are the "percepts" in the two cases? In the first case,
+that of knowing things, the percepts are colors, sounds, resistances; in
+the case of persons the percepts are impulses, feelings, desires,
+passions, as well as images, purposes, and the reflective process
+itself. In the former case we construct objects dehumanized; in the
+latter we keep them more or less concrete. But now, just as primitive
+man did not so thoroughly de-personalize nature, but left in it an
+element of personal aim, so science may view human beings as objects
+whose purposes and even feelings may be predicted, and hence may, as
+Professor Fite well puts it, view them mechanically. What he fails to
+note is that just this mechanical point of view is the view of "mere
+knowing"--if "mere" has any significance at all, it is meant to shut out
+"sentiment." And this mechanical view is entirely equal to the
+adjectives of "clear," "far-sighted," and even "broad" so far as this
+means "more in one." For it is not essential to a mechanical point of
+view that we consider men in masses or study them by statistics. I may
+calculate the purposes and actions, yes, and the emotions and values of
+one, or of a thousand, and be increasingly clear, and far-sighted, and
+broad, but if it is "mere" knowing--scientific information--it is still
+"mechanical," i.e., external. On the other hand, if it is to be a
+knowledge that has the qualities of humaneness, or "intelligent
+sympathy," it must have some of the stuff of feeling, even as in the
+realm of things an artist's forest will differ from that of the most
+"far-sighted," "clear," and "broad" statistician, by being rich with
+color and moving line.
+
+And this leads to a statement of the way in which my fellow-beings will
+find place in "my" self. I grant that if they are there I shall take
+some account of them. But they may be there in all sorts of ways. They
+may be there as "population" if I am a statistician, or as "consumers,"
+or as rivals, or as enemies, or as fellows, or as friends. They will
+have a "value" in each case, but it will sometimes be a positive value,
+and sometimes a negative value. Which it will be, and how great it will
+be, depends not on the mere fact of these objects being "in
+consciousness" but on the capacity in which they are there. And this
+capacity depends on the dominant interest and not on mere knowing. The
+trouble with the selfish man, says Professor Fite, is that he "fails to
+consider," "he fails to take account of me."[85] Well, then, _why_ does
+he fail? _Why_ does he not take account of me? He probably does
+"consider" me in several of the ways that are possible and in the ways
+that it suits him to consider me. I call him selfish because he does not
+consider me in the one particular way in which I wish to be considered.
+And what will get me into his consideration from this point of view? In
+some cases it may be that I can speak: "Sir, you are standing on my
+toe," and as the message encounters no obstacle in any fixed purpose or
+temperamental bent the idea has no difficulty in penetrating his mind.
+In other cases it may interfere with his desire to raise himself as high
+as possible, but I may convince him by the same logic as that of an
+"approaching railway train"--that he must regard me. In still other
+cases--and it is these that always test Individualism--I am not myself
+aware of the injury, or I am too faint to protest. How shall those who
+have no voice to speak get "consideration"? Only by "intelligent
+sympathy," and by just those emotions rooted in instinctive social
+tendencies which an intellectualistic Individualism excludes or
+distrusts.
+
+
+IV
+
+What practical conclusion, if any, follows from this interpretation of
+the moral consciousness and its categories? Moral progress involves both
+the formation of better ideals and the adoption of such ideals as actual
+standards and guides of life. If our view is correct we can construct
+better ideals neither by logical deduction nor solely by insight into
+the nature of things--if by this we mean things as they are. We must
+rather take as our starting-point the conviction that moral life is a
+process involving physical life, social intercourse, measuring and
+constructive intelligence. We shall endeavor to further each of these
+factors with the conviction that thus we are most likely to reconstruct
+our standards and find a fuller good.[86]
+
+Physical life, which has often been depreciated from the moral point of
+view, is not indeed by itself supreme, but it is certain that much evil
+charged to a bad will is due to morbid or defective conditions of the
+physical organism. One would be ashamed to write such a truism were it
+not that our juvenile courts and our prison investigations show how far
+we are from having sensed it in the past. And our present labor
+conditions show how far our organization of industry is from any decent
+provision for a healthy, sound, vigorous life of all the people. This
+war is shocking in its destruction, but it is doubtful if it can do the
+harm to Great Britain that her factory system has done. And if life is
+in one respect less than ideals, in another respect it is greater; for
+it provides the possibility not only of carrying out existing ideals but
+of the birth of new and higher ideals.
+
+Social interaction likewise has been much discussed but is still very
+inadequately realized. The great possibilities of cooeperation have long
+been utilized in war. With the factory and commercial organization of
+the past century we have hints of their economic power. Our schools,
+books, newspapers, are removing some of the barriers. But how far
+different social classes are from any knowledge, not to say
+appreciation, of each other! How far different races are apart! How easy
+to inculcate national hatred and distrust! The fourth great problem
+which baffles Wells's hero in the _Research Magnificent_ is yet far
+from solution. The great danger to morality in America lies not in any
+theory as to the subjectivity of the moral judgment, but in the conflict
+of classes and races.
+
+Intelligence and reason are in certain respects advancing. The social
+sciences are finding tools and methods. We are learning to think of much
+of our moral inertia, our waste of life, our narrowness, our muddling
+and blundering in social arrangements, as stupid--we do not like to be
+called stupid even if we scorn the imputation of claiming to be "good."
+But we do not organize peace as effectively as war. We shrink before the
+thought of expending for scientific investigation sums comparable with
+those used for military purposes. And is scholarship entitled to shift
+the blame entirely upon other interests? Perhaps if it conceived its
+tasks in greater terms and addressed itself to them more energetically
+it would find greater support.
+
+And finally the process of judgment and appraisal, of examination and
+revaluation. To judge for the sake of judging, to analyze and evaluate
+for the sake of the process hardly seems worth while. But if we supply
+the process with the new factors of increased life, physical, social,
+intelligent, we shall be compelled to new valuations. Such has been the
+course of moral development; we may expect this to be repeated. The
+great war and the changes that emerge ought to set new tasks for ethical
+students. As medievalism, the century of enlightenment, and the century
+of industrial revolution, each had its ethics, so the century that
+follows ought to have its ethics, roused by the problem of dealing
+fundamentally with economic, social, racial, and national relations, and
+using the resources of better scientific method than belonged to the
+ethical systems which served well their time.
+
+Only wilful misinterpretation will suppose that the method here set
+forth is that of taking every want or desire as itself a final
+justification, or of making morality a matter of arbitrary caprice. But
+some may in all sincerity raise the question: "Is morality then after
+all simply the shifting mores of groups stumbling forward--or backward,
+or sidewise--with no fixed standards of right and good? If this is so
+how can we have any confidence in our present judgments, to say nothing
+of calling others to an account or of reasoning with them?" What we have
+aimed to present as a moral method is essentially this: to take into our
+reckoning all the factors in the situation, to take into account the
+other persons involved, to put ourselves into their places by sympathy
+as well as conceptually, to face collisions and difficulties not merely
+in terms of fixed concepts of what is good or fair, and what the right
+of each party concerned may be, but with the conviction that we need new
+definitions of the ideal life, and of the social order, and thus
+reciprocally of personality. Thus harmonized, free, and responsible,
+life may well find new meaning also in the older intrinsic goods of
+friendship, aesthetic appreciation and true belief. And it is not likely
+to omit the satisfaction in actively constructing new ideals and working
+for their fulfilment.
+
+Frankly, if we do not accept this method what remains? Can any one by
+pure reason discover a single forward step in the treatment of the
+social situation or a single new value in the moral ideal? Can any
+analysis of the pure concept of right and good teach us anything? In the
+last analysis the moral judgment is not analytic but synthetic. The
+moral life is not natural but spiritual. And spirit is creative.
+
+
+
+
+VALUE AND EXISTENCE IN PHILOSOPHY, ART, AND RELIGION
+
+HORACE M. KALLEN
+
+
+He who assiduously compares the profound and the commonplace will find
+their difference to turn merely on the manner of their expression; a
+profundity is a commonplace formulated in strange or otherwise obscure
+and unintelligible terms. This must be my excuse for beginning with the
+trite remark that the world we live in is not one which was made for us,
+but one in which we happened and grew. I am much aware that there exists
+a large and influential class of persons who do not think so; and I
+offer this remark with all deference to devotees of idealism, and to
+other such pietists who persist in arguing that the trouble which we do
+encounter in this vale of tears springs from the inwardness of our own
+natures and not from that of the world. I wish, indeed, that I could
+agree with them, but unhappily their very arguments prevent me, since,
+if the world were actually as they think it, they could not think it as
+they do. In fact, they could not think. Thinking--worse luck!--came into
+being as response to discomfort, to pain, to uncertainty, to problems,
+such as could not exist in a world truly made for us; while from time
+immemorial _pure_ as distinct from human consciousness has been
+identified with absolute certainty, with self-absorption and
+self-sufficiency; as a god, a goal to attain, not a fact to rest in. It
+is notable that those who believe the world actually to have been made
+for us devote most of their thinking to explaining away the experiences
+which have made all men feel that the world was actually not made for
+us. Their chief business, after proving the world to be all good, is
+solving "the problem of evil." Yet, had there really been no evil, this
+evil consequence could not have ensued: existence would have emerged as
+beatitude and not as adjustment; thinking might in truth have been
+self-absorbed contemplation, blissful intuition, not painful learning by
+the method of trial and error.
+
+Alas that what "might have been" cannot come into being by force of
+discursive demonstration! If it could, goodness alone would have existed
+and been real, and evil would have been non-existence, unreality, and
+appearance--all by the force of the Word. As it is, the appearance of
+evil is in so far forth no less an evil than its reality; in truth, it
+is reality and its best witnesses are the historic attempts to explain
+it away. For even as "appearance" it has a definite and inexpugnable
+character of its own which cannot be destroyed by subsumption under the
+"standpoint of the whole," "the absolute good," the "over-individual
+values." Nor, since only sticks and stones break bones and names never
+hurt, can it be abolished by the epithet "appearance." To deny reality
+to evil is to multiply the evil. It is to make two "problems" grow where
+only one grew before, to add to the "problem of evil" the "problem of
+appearance" without serving any end toward the solution of the real
+problem how evil can be effectively abolished.
+
+I may then, in view of these reflections, hold myself safe in assuming
+that the world we live in was not made for us; that, humanly speaking,
+it is open to improvement in a great many directions. It will be
+comparatively innocuous to assume also, as a corollary, that in so far
+as the world was made for mind, it has been made so by man, that
+civilization is the adaptation of nature to human nature. And as a
+second corollary it may be safely assumed that the world does not stay
+made; civilization has brought its own problems and peculiar evils.
+
+I realize that, in the light of my title, much of what I have written
+above must seem irrelevant, since the "problem of evil" has not, within
+the philosophic tradition, been considered part of a "problem of values"
+as such. If I dwell on it, I do so to indicate that the "problem of
+evil" can perhaps be best understood in the light of another problem:
+the problem, namely, of why men have created the "problem of evil." For
+obviously, evil can be problematic only in an absolutely good world, and
+the idea that the world is absolutely good is not a generalization
+_upon_ experience, but a contradiction _of_ experience. If there exists
+a metaphysical "problem of evil," hence, it arises out of this
+generalization; it is secondary, not primary; and the primary problem
+requires solution before the secondary one can be understood. And what
+else, under the circumstances, can the primary one be than this: "Why do
+men contradict their own experience?"
+
+
+II
+
+So put, the problem suggests its own solution. It indicates, first of
+all, that nature and human nature are not completely compatible, that
+consequently, conclusions are being forced by nature on human nature
+which human nature resents and rejects, and that traits are being
+assigned to nature by human nature which nature does not possess, but
+which, if possessed, would make her congenial to human needs. All this
+is so platitudinous that I feel ashamed to write it; but then, how can
+one avoid platitudes without avoiding truth? And truth here is the
+obvious fact that since human nature is the point of existence to which
+good and evil refer, what is called value has its seat necessarily in
+human nature, and what is called existence has its seat necessarily in
+the nature of which human nature is a part and apart. Value, in so far
+forth, is a content of nature, having its roots in her conditions and
+its life in her force, while the converse is not true. All nature and
+all existence is not spontaneously and intrinsically a content of value.
+Only that portion of it which is human is such. Humanly speaking,
+non-human existences become valuable by their efficacious bearing on
+humanity, by their propitious or their disastrous relations to human
+consciousness. It is these relations which delimit the substance of our
+goods and evils, and these, at bottom, are indistinguishable from
+consciousness. They do not, need not, and cannot connect all existence
+with human life. They are inevitably implicated only with those which
+make human life possible at all. Of the environment, they pertain only
+to that portion which is fit by the implicated conditions of life
+itself. It may therefore be said that natural existence produces and
+sustains some values,--at least the minimal value which is identical
+with the bare existence of mankind--on its own account, but no more. The
+residual environment remains--irrelevant and menacing, wider than
+consciousness and independent of it. Value, hence, is a specific kind of
+natural existence among other existences. To say that it is non-existent
+in nature, is to say that value is not coincident and coexistent with
+other existences, just as when it is said that a thing is not red, the
+meaning is that red is not copresent with other qualities. Conversely,
+to say that value exists in nature is to say that nature and human
+nature, things and thoughts, are in some respect harmonious or
+identical. Hence, what human nature tries to force upon nature must be,
+by implication, non-existent in nature but actual in mind, so that the
+nature of value must be held inseparable from the nature of mind.[87]
+
+It follows that value is, in origin and character, completely
+irrational. At the foundations of our existence it is relation of their
+conditions and objects to our major instincts, our appetites, our
+feelings, our desires, our ambitions--most clearly, to the
+self-regarding instinct and the instincts of nutrition, reproduction,
+and gregariousness. Concerning those, as William James writes, "Science
+may come and consider their ways and find that most of them are useful.
+But it is not for the sake of their utility that they are followed,
+but because at the moment of following them we feel that it is the only
+appropriate and natural thing to do. Not a man in a billion when taking
+his dinner, ever thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good
+and makes him want more. If you ask him why he should want to eat more
+of what tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philosopher,
+he will probably laugh at you for a fool. The connection between
+the savory sensation and the act it awakens is for him absolute and
+_selbstverstaendlich_, an _a priori_ synthesis of the most perfect sort,
+needing no proof but its own evidence.... To the metaphysician alone can
+such questions occur as 'Why do we smile when pleased, and not scowl?
+Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why
+does a particular maiden turn our wits upside down?' The common man can
+only say '_of course_ we smile, _of course_ our heart palpitates at the
+sight of a crowd, _of course_ we love the maiden, that beautiful soul
+clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all
+eternity to be loved.' And so, probably, does each animal feel about
+the particular things it tends to do in the presence of particular
+objects.... To the broody hen the notion would probably seem
+monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom
+a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and
+never-to-be-too-much-set-upon object it is to her." In sum, fundamental
+values are relations, responses, attitudes, immediate, simple,
+subjectively obvious, and irrational. But everything else becomes
+valuable or rational only by reference to them.
+
+Study them or others empirically,[88] and they appear as types of
+specific behavior, simple or complicated, consisting of a given motor
+"set" of the organism, strong emotional tone, and aggregates of
+connected ideas, more or less systematized. In the slang of the new
+medical psychology which has done so much to uncover their method and
+mechanism, they are called "complexes"; ethics has called them
+interests, and that designation will do well enough. They are the
+primary and morally ultimate efficacious units of which human nature is
+compounded, and it is in terms of the world's bearing upon their destiny
+that we evaluate nature and judge her significance and worth.
+
+Now in interest, the important delimiting quality is emotional tone.
+Whatever else is sharable, that is not. It is the very stuff of our
+attitudes, of our acceptances and rejections of the world and its
+contents, the very essence of the relations we bear to these. That these
+relations shall be identical for any two human beings requires that the
+two shall be identical: two persons cannot hold the same relation to the
+same or different objects any more than two objects can occupy
+absolutely the same space at the same time. Hence, all our differences
+and disagreements. However socially-minded we may be, mere numerical
+diversity compels us to act as separate centers, to value things with
+reference to separate interests, to orient our worlds severally, and
+with ourselves as centers. This orienting is the relating of the
+environment to our interests, the establishment of our worlds of
+appreciation, the creation of our orders of value. However much these
+cross and interpenetrate, coincide they never can.
+
+Our interests, furthermore, are possibly as numerous as our reflex arcs.
+Each may, and most do, constitute distinct and independent valuations of
+their objects, to which they respond, and each, with these objects,
+remains an irreducible system. But reflex arcs and interests do not act
+alone. They act like armies; they compound and are integrated, and when
+so integrated their valuations fuse and constitute the more complex and
+massive feelings, pleasures and pains, the emotions of anger, of fear,
+of love; the sentiments of respect, of admiration, of sympathy. They
+remain, through all degrees of complexity, appraisements of the
+environment, reactions upon it, behavior toward it, as subject to
+empirical examination by the psychologist as the environment itself by
+the physicist.
+
+With a difference, however, a fundamental difference. When you have an
+emotion you cannot yourself examine it. Effectively as the mind may work
+in sections, it cannot with sanity be divided against itself nor long
+remain so. A feeling cannot be had and examined in the same time. And
+though the investigator who studies the nature of red does not become
+red, the investigator who studies the actual emotion of anger does tend
+to become angry. Emotion is infectious; anger begets anger; fear, fear;
+love, love; hate, hate; actions, relations, attitudes, when actual,
+integrate and fuse; as feelings, they constitute the sense of behavior,
+varying according to a changing and unstable equilibrium of factors
+_within_ the organism; they are actually underneath the skin, and
+consequently, to know them alive is to have them. On the other hand, to
+know _things_ is simply to have a relation to them. The same thing may
+be both loved and hated, desired or spurned, by different minds at the
+same time or by the same mind at different times. One, for example,
+values whiskey positively, approaches, absorbs it, aims to increase its
+quantity and sale; another apprehends it negatively, turns from it,
+strives to oust it from the world. Then, according to these direct and
+immediate valuations of whiskey, its place in the common world of the
+two minds will be determined. To save or destroy it, they may seek to
+destroy each other. Even similar positive valuations of the object might
+imply this mutual repugnance and destruction. Thus, rivals in love: they
+enhance and glorify the same woman, but as she is not otherwise
+sharable, they strive to eliminate each other. Throughout the world of
+values the numerical distinctness of the seats or centers of value,
+whatever their identity otherwise, keeps them ultimately inimical. They
+may terminate in the common object, but they originate in different
+souls and they are related to the object like two magnets of like
+polarity to the same piece of iron that lies between them. Most of what
+is orderly in society and in science is the outcome of the adjustment of
+just such oppositions: our civilization is an unstable equilibrium of
+objects, through the cooeperation, antipathy, and fusion of
+value-relations.
+
+Individuals are no better off; personality is constructed in the same
+way. If, indeed, the world had been made for us, we might have been
+spared this warfare to man upon earth. Life might have been the obvious
+irrational flow of bliss so vividly described by William James; nature
+and human nature would have been one; bridging the gulf between them
+would never have been the task of the tender-minded among philosophers.
+Unfortunately our mere numerical difference, the mere numerical
+difference of the interests which compose our egos, makes the trouble,
+so that we are compelled to devote most of our lives to converting the
+different into the same. The major part of our instincts serve this
+function recognizably, e.g., nutrition, and the "higher powers" do so no
+less, if not so obviously. Generalization is nothing more, thinking
+nothing else. It is the assimilation of many instances into one form,
+law, or purpose; the preservation of established contents of value, just
+as nutrition is the preservation of life by means of the conversion of
+foreign matter into the form and substance of the body. By bowels and by
+brain, what is necessary, what will feed the irrationally given
+interest, is preserved and consumed: the rest is cast off as waste, as
+irrelevance, as contradiction.
+
+The relation may, of course, also reverse itself. Face to face with the
+immovable and inexorable, the mind may accept it with due resignation,
+or it may challenge its tyranny and exclude it from its world. It may
+seek or create or discover a substitute that it is content to accept,
+though this will in turn alter the course and character of the interest
+which in such an instance defines the mind's action. Thus, a way out
+for one of the lovers of the same girl might be to become a depressed
+and yearning bachelor, realizing his potential sexuality in the
+vicarious reproduction of reverie and sentiment; another might be to
+divert the stream of his affections to another girl, reorganizing his
+life about a different center and acquiring a new system of practical
+values determined by this center; a third might be a complete
+redirection of his sexual energies upon objects the interest in which we
+would call, abnormal and anti-social in one case, and in another lofty
+and spiritual. In the latter case sexuality would have been
+depersonalized; it would have changed into poetic and humanitarian
+passion; it would have become love as Plato means us to take the word.
+But each of these processes would have been a conversion, through the
+need defined by an identical instinct, of the _same into the different_;
+the human nature which existed at the beginning of the change would be
+deeply other than the human nature in which the change culminated. In
+each case a condition thrust upon the spirit by its environment would
+have occasioned the creation and maintenance of an environment demanded
+by the spirit. Yet in so far as it was not truly _the same_ as that
+envisaged in the primitive demand, it would still imply the tragedy of
+the world not made for us and the "problem of evil," in which the life
+of the spirit is persistently a salvage of one of two always
+incompatible goods, a saving by surrender.
+
+And this is all that a mind is--an affair of saving and rejecting, of
+valuing with a system of objects of which a living body and its desires
+and operations, its interests, are focal and the objects marginal, for
+its standard. Mind, thus, is neither simple, nor immutable, nor stable;
+it is a thing to be "changed," "confused," "cleared," "made-up,"
+"trained." One body, I have written elsewhere,[89] "in the course of its
+lifetime, has many minds, only partially united. Men are all too often
+"of two minds." The unity of a mind depends on its consistent pursuit of
+_one_ interest, although we then call it narrow; or on the cooeperation
+and harmony of its many interests. Frequently, two or more minds may
+struggle for the possession of the same body; that is, the body may be
+divided by two elaborately systematized tendencies to act. The beginning
+of such division occurs wherever there is a difficulty in deciding
+between alternative modes of behavior; the end is to be observed in
+those cases of dual or multiple personality in which the body has
+ordered a great collection of objects and systematized so large a
+collection of interests in such typically distinct ways as to have set
+up for itself different and opposed "minds." On the other hand, two or
+fifty or a million bodies may be "of the same mind."
+
+Unhappily, difference of mind, diversity and conflict of interests is
+quite as fundamental, if not more so, as sameness of mind, cooeperation
+and unity of interests. This the philosophical tradition sufficiently
+attests. To Plato man is at once a protean beast, a lion, and an
+intellect; the last having for its proper task to rule the first and
+to regulate the second, which is always rebellious and irruptive.[90]
+According to the Christian tradition man is at once flesh and spirit,
+eternally in conflict with one another, and the former is to be
+mortified that the latter may have eternal life. Common sense divides us
+into head and heart, never quite at peace with one another. There is no
+need of piling up citations. Add to the inward disharmonies of mind its
+incompatibilities with the environment, and you perceive at once how
+completely it is, from moment to moment, a theater and its life a drama
+of which the interests that compose it are at once protagonists and
+directors. The catastrophe of this unceasing drama is always that one or
+more of the players is driven from the stage of conscious existence. It
+may be that the environment--social conditions, commercial necessity,
+intellectual urgency, allies of other interests--will drive it off; it
+may be that its own intrinsic unpleasantness will banish it, will put it
+out of mind; whatever the cause, it is put out. Putting it out does not,
+however, end the drama; putting it out serves to complicate the drama.
+For the "new psychology"[91] shows that whenever an interest or a desire
+or impulsion is put out of the mind, it is really, if not extirpated,
+put into the mind; it is driven from the conscious level of existence to
+the unconscious. It retains its force and direction, only its work now
+lies underground. Its life henceforward consists partly in a direct
+oppugnance to the inhibitions that keep it down, partly in burrowing
+beneath and around them and seeking out unwonted channels of escape.
+Since life is long, repressions accumulate, the mass of existence of
+feeling and desire tends to become composed entirely of these
+repressions, layer upon layer, with every interest in the aggregate
+striving to attain place in the daylight of consciousness.
+
+Now, empirically and metaphysically, no one interest is more excellent
+than any other. Repressed or patent, each is, whether in a completely
+favorable environment or in a completely indifferent universe, or before
+the bar of an absolute justice, or under the domination of an absolute
+and universal good, entitled to its free fulfilment and perfect
+maintenance. Each is a form of the good; the essential content of each
+is good. That any are not fulfilled, but repressed, is a fact to be
+recorded, not an appearance to be explained away. And it may turn out
+that the existence of the fact may explain the effort to explain it
+away. For where interests are in conflict with each other or with
+reality, and where the loser is not extirpated, its revenge may be just
+this self-fulfilment in unreality, in idea, which philosophies of
+absolute values offer it. Dreams, some of the arts, religion, and
+philosophy may indeed be considered as such fulfilments, worlds of
+luxuriant self-realization of all that part of our nature which the
+harsh conjunctions with the environment overthrow and suppress.
+Sometimes abortive self-expressions of frustrated desires, sometimes
+ideal compensations for the shortcomings of existence, they are always
+equally ideal reconstructions of the surrounding evil of the world into
+forms of the good. And because they are compensations in idea, they are
+substituted for existence, appraised as "true," and "good," and
+"beautiful," and "real," while the experiences which have suppressed the
+desires they realize are condemned as illusory and unreal. In them
+humanity has its freest play and amplest expression.
+
+
+III
+
+This has been, and still to a very great extent remains, most
+specifically true of philosophy. The environment with which philosophy
+concerns itself is nothing less than the whole universe; its content is,
+within the history of its dominant tradition, absolutely general and
+abstract; it is, of all great human enterprises, even religion, least
+constrained by the direction and march of events or the mandate of
+circumstance. Like music, it expresses most truly the immediate and
+intrinsic interests of the mind, its native bias and its inward goal. It
+has been constituted, for this reason, of the so-called "normative"
+sciences, envisaging the non-existent as real, forcing upon nature pure
+values, forms of the spirit incident to the total life of this world,
+unmixed with baser matter. To formulate ultimate standards, to be
+completely and utterly lyrical has been the prerogative of philosophy
+alone. Since these standards reappear in all other reconstructions of
+the environment and most clearly in art and in religion, it is pertinent
+to enumerate them, and to indicate briefly their bearing on existence.
+
+The foremost outstanding is perhaps "the unity of the world."
+Confronted by the perplexing menace of the variation of experience, the
+dichotomies and oppositions of thoughts and things, the fusion and
+diversifications of many things into one and one into many, mankind has,
+from the moment it became reflective, felt in the relation of the One
+and the Many the presence of a riddle that engendered and sustained
+uneasiness, a mystery that concealed a threat. The mind's own
+preference, given the physiological processes that condition its
+existence, constitution, and operation, could hardly come to rest in a
+more fundamental normation than Unity. A world which is _one_ is easier
+to live in and with; initial adjustment therein is final adjustment; in
+its substance there exists nothing sudden and in its character nothing
+uncontrollable. It guarantees whatever vital equilibrium the organism
+has achieved in it, ill or good. It secures life in attainment and
+possession, insuring it repose, simplicity, and spaciousness. A world
+which is many complicates existence: it demands watchful consideration
+of irreducible discrete individualities: it necessitates the integration
+and humanization in a common system of adjustment of entities which in
+the last analysis refuse all ordering and reject all subordination,
+consequently keeping the mind on an everlasting jump, compelling it to
+pay with eternal vigilance the price of being. The preference for unity,
+then, is almost inevitable, and the history of philosophy, from the
+Vedas to the Brahma Somaj and from Thales to Bergson, is significantly
+unanimous in its attempts to prove that the world is, somehow, through
+and through one. That the oneness requires _proof_ is _prima facie_
+evidence that it is a value, a desiderate, not an existence. And how
+valuable it is may be seen merely in the fact that it derealizes the
+inner conflict of interests, the incompatibilities between nature and
+man, the uncertainties of knowledge, and the certainties of evil, and
+substitutes therefore the ultimate happy unison which "the identity of
+the different" compels.
+
+Unity is the common desiderate of philosophic systems of all
+metaphysical types--neutral, materialistic, idealistic. But the dominant
+tradition has tended to think this unity in terms of _interest_, of
+_spirit_, of _mentality_. It has tended, in a word, to assimilate nature
+to human nature, to identify things with the _values_ of things, to
+envisage the world in the image of man. To it, the world is all spirit,
+ego, or idea; and if not such through and through, then entirely
+subservient, in its unhumanized parts, to the purposes and interests of
+ego, idea, or spirit. Why, is obvious. A world of which the One
+substance is such constitutes a totality of interest and purpose which
+faces no conflict and has no enemy. It is fulfilment even before it is
+need, and need, indeed, is only illusion. Even when its number is many,
+the world is a better world if the stuff of these many is the _same_
+stuff as the spirit of man. For mind is more at home with mind than with
+things; the pathetic fallacy is the most inevitable and most general.
+Although the totality of spirit is conceived as good, that is, as
+actualizing all our desiderates and ideals, it would still be felt that,
+even if the totality were evil, and not God, but the Devil ruled the
+roost, the world so constituted must be better than one utterly
+non-spiritual. We can understand and be at home with malevolence: it
+offers at least the benefits of similarity, of companionship, of
+intimateness, of consubstantiality with _will_; its behavior may be
+foreseen and its intentions influenced; but no horror can be greater
+than that of utter aliency. How much of religion turns with a persistent
+tropism to the consideration of the devil and his works, and how much it
+has fought his elimination from the cosmic scheme! Yet never because it
+loved the devil. The deep-lying reason is the fact that the humanization
+of Evil into Devil mitigates Evil and improves the world. Philosophy has
+been least free from this corrective and spiritizing bias. Though it has
+cared less for the devil, it has predominantly repudiated aliency, has
+sought to prove spirit the cause and substance of the world, and in that
+degree, to transmute the aliency of nature into sameness with human
+nature.
+
+With unity and spirituality, _eternity_ makes a third. This norm is a
+fundamental attribute of the One God himself, and interchangeable with
+his ineffable name: the Lord is Eternal, and the Eternal, even more than
+the One, receives the eulogium of exclusive realness. To the
+philosophical tradition it is the most real. Once more the reason should
+be obvious. The underlying urge which pushes the mind to think the world
+as a unity pushes it even more inexorably to think the world as
+timeless. For unity is asserted only against the perplexities of a
+manyness which may be static and unchanging, and hence comparatively
+simple. But eternity is asserted and set against mutability: it is the
+negation of change, of time, of novelty, of the suddenness and
+slaughter of the flux of life itself, which consumes what it generates,
+undermines what it builds and sweeps to destruction what it founds to
+endure. Change is the arch-enemy of a life which struggles for
+self-_preservation_, of an intellect which operates spontaneously by the
+logic of identity, of a will which seeks to convert others into sames.
+It substitutes a different self for the old, it falsifies systems of
+thought and deteriorates systems of life. It makes unity impossible and
+manyness inevitable. It upsets every actual equilibrium that life
+attains. It opens the doors and windows of every closed and comfortable
+cosmos to all transcosmic winds that blow, with whatever they carry of
+possible danger and possible ill. It is the very soul of chaos in which
+the pleasant, ordered world is such a little helpless thing. Of this
+change eternity is by primary intention the negation, as its
+philological form shows. It is _not-time_, without positive intrinsic
+content, and in its secondary significances, i.e., in those
+significances which appear in metaphysical dialectic, without meaning;
+since it is there a pure negation, intrinsically affirming nothing, of
+the same character as "not-man" or "not-donkey," standing for a nature
+altogether unspecific and indeterminable in the residual universe. By a
+sort of obverse implication it does, however, possess, in the
+philosophic tradition, a positive content which accrues to it by virtue
+of what it denies. This content makes it a designation for the
+persistence and perdurability of desiderated quality--from metaphysical
+unity and spirituality to the happy hunting-grounds or a woman's
+affection. At bottom it means the assurance that the contents of value
+cannot and will not be altered or destroyed, that their natures and
+their relations to man do not undergo change. There is no recorded
+attempt to prove that evil is eternal: eternity is _eternity of the good
+alone_.
+
+Unity, spirituality, and eternity, then, are the forms which contents of
+value receive under the shaping hands of the philosophic tradition, to
+which they owe their metaphysical designation and of which the business
+has so largely and uniquely been to _prove_ them the foundations and
+ontological roots of universal nature. But "the problem of evil" does
+not come to complete solution with these. Even in a single,
+metaphysically spiritual and unchanging world, man himself may still be
+less than a metaphysical absolute and his proper individuality doomed to
+absorption, his wishes to obstruction and frustration. Of man,
+therefore, the tradition posits _immortality_ and _freedom_, and even
+the materialistic systems have sought to keep somehow room for some form
+of these goods.
+
+To turn first to immortality. Its source and matrix is less the love of
+life than the fear of death--that fear which Lucretius, dour poet of
+disillusion, so nobly deplored. That he had ever himself been possessed
+of it is not clear, but it is perfectly clear that his altogether sound
+arguments against it have not abolished its operation, nor its effect
+upon human character, society, and imagination. Fear which made the
+gods, made also the immortality of man, the denial of death. What the
+fear's unmistakable traits may be has never been articulately said,
+perhaps never can be said. Most of us never may undergo the fear of
+death; we undergo comfort and discomfort, joy and sorrow, intoxication
+and reaction, love and disgust; we aim to preserve the one and to
+abolish the other, but we do not knowingly undergo the fear of death.
+Indeed, it is logically impossible that we should, since to do so would
+be to acquire an experience of death such that we should be conscious of
+being unconscious, sensible of being insensible, aware of being unaware.
+We should be required to be and not to be at the same instant, in view
+of which Lucretius both logically and wisely advises us to remember that
+when death is, we are not; and when we are, death is not.
+
+Experience and feeling are, however, neither logical nor wise, and to
+these death is far from the mere non-being which the poet would have us
+think it. To these it has a positive reality which makes the fear of it
+a genuine cause of conduct in individuals and in groups, with a basis in
+knowledge such as is realized in the diminishing of consciousness under
+anaesthetic, in dreams of certain types, and most generally in the
+nascent imitation of the _rigor mortis_ which makes looking upon the
+dead such a horror to most of us. Even then, however, something is
+lacking toward the complete realization of death, and children and
+primitive peoples never realize it at all. Its full meaning comes out as
+_an unsatisfied hunger in the living_ rather than as a condition of the
+dead, who, alive, would have satisfied this hunger. And the realization
+of this meaning requires sophistication, requires a lengthy corporate
+memory and the disillusions which civilization engenders. Primitive
+peoples ask for no proof of immortality because they have no notion of
+mortality; civilized thinking has largely concerned itself about the
+proof of immortality because its assurance of life has been shaken by
+the realization of death through the gnawing of desire which only the
+dead could still. The _proof_ which in the history of thought is offered
+again and again, be it noted, is not of the reality of life, but of the
+unreality and inefficacy of death. Immortality is like eternity, a
+negative term; it is _im_mortality. The experienced fact is mortality;
+and the fear of it is only an inversion of the desire which it
+frustrates, just as frustrated love becomes hatred. The doctrine of
+immortality, hence, springs from the fear of death, not from the love of
+life, and immortality is a value-form, not an existence. Now, although
+fear of death and love of life are in constant play in character and
+conduct, neither constitutes the original, innocent urge of life within
+us. "Will to live," "will to power," "struggle for existence," and other
+Germanic hypostases of experienced events which the great civil war in
+Europe is just now giving such an airing, hardly deserve, as natural
+data, the high metaphysical status that Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and
+company have given them. They follow in fact upon a more primary type of
+living, acting form, a type to which the "pathetic fallacy" or any other
+manner of psychologizing may not apply. The most that can be said about
+this type is that its earlier stages are related to its later ones as
+potential is to kinetic energy. If, since we are discussing a
+metaphysical issue, we must mythologize, we might call it the "will to
+self-expression." Had this "will" chanced to happen in a world which was
+made for it, or had it itself been the substance of the world, "struggle
+for existence," "will to live," and "will to power," never could have
+supervened. All three of these expressions designate data which require
+an opposite, a counter-will, to give them meaning. There can be a
+struggle for existence only when there are obstacles thereto, a will to
+live only when there are obstructions to life, a will to power only when
+there is a resistance against which power may be exercised. Expression
+alone is self-implying and self-sufficient, and in an altogether
+favorable environment we might have realized our instincts, impulses,
+interests, appetites and desires, expressed and actualized our
+potentialities, and when our day is done, have ceased, as unconcerned
+about going on as about starting.
+
+Metchnikoff speaks somewhere of an instinct toward death and the
+euphoria which accompanies its realization. He cites, I think, no more
+than two or three cases. To most of us the mere notion of the existence
+and operation of such an instinct seems fanciful and uncanny. Yet from
+the standpoint of biology nothing should be more natural. Each living
+thing has its span, which consists of a cycle from birth through
+maturation and senescence to dissolution, and the latter half of the
+process is as "fateful" and "inevitable" as the former! Dying is itself
+the inexpugnable conclusion of that setting free of organic
+potentialities which we call life, and if dying seems horrid and
+unnatural, it seems so because for most of us death is violent, because
+its occasion is a shock from without, not the realization of a tendency
+from within. In a completely favorable environment we should not
+struggle to exist, we should simply exist; we should not will to live,
+we should simply live, i.e., we should actualize our potentialities and
+die.
+
+But, once more alas, our environment is not completely favorable, and
+there's the rub. That disorderly constellation of instincts and
+appetites and interests which constitutes the personality of the best of
+us does not work itself out evenly. At the most favorable, our
+self-realizations are lopsided and distorted. For every capacity of ours
+in full play, there are a score at least mutilated, sometimes
+extirpated, always repressed. They never attain the free fullness of
+expression which is consciousness, or when they do, they find themselves
+confronted with an opponent which neutralizes their maturation at every
+point. Hence, as I have already indicated, they remain in, or revert to,
+the subterranean regions of our lives, and govern the making of our
+biographies from their seats below. What they fail to attain in fact
+they succeed in generating in imagination to compensate for the failure;
+they realize themselves vicariously. The doctrine of immortality is the
+generic form of such vicarious self-realization, as frequently by means
+of dead friends and relatives to whose absolute non-being the mind will
+not assent, as by means of the everlasting heaven in which the mind may
+forever disport itself amid those delights it had to forego on earth.
+Much of the underlying motive of the doctrine is a _sehnsucht_ and
+nostalgia after the absent dead; little a concern for the continuity of
+the visible living. And often this passion is so intense that system
+after system in the philosophic tradition is constructed to satisfy it,
+and even the most disillusioned of systems--for example, Spinoza's--will
+preserve its form if not its substance.
+
+That the "freedom of the will" shall be a particularized compensatory
+desiderate like the immortality of the soul, the unity, the
+spirituality, and the eternity of the world is a perversion worked upon
+this ideal by the historic accident we call Christianity. The
+assumptions of that theory concerning the nature of the universe and the
+destiny of man, being through and through compensatory, changed freedom
+from the possible fact and actual hope of Hellenic systems into the
+"problem" of the Christian ones. The consequent controversy over
+"free-will," the casuistic entanglement of this ideal with the notion of
+responsibility, its theological development in the problem of the
+relation of an omnipotent God to a recalcitrant creature, have
+completely obscured its primal significance. For the ancients, the free
+man and the "wise man" were identical, and the wise man was one who all
+in all had so mastered the secrets of the universe that there was no
+desire of his that was not actually realized, no wish the satisfaction
+of which was obstructed. His way in the world was a way without let or
+hindrance. Now freedom and wisdom in this sense is never a fact and ever
+a value. Its attainment ensues upon created distinctions between
+appearance and reality, upon the postulation of the metaphysical
+existence of the value-forms of the unity, spirituality, and the
+eternity of the world, in the realization of which the wise man founded
+his wisdom and gained his freedom. Freedom, then, is an ideal that could
+have arisen only in the face of _obstruction to action directed toward
+the fulfilling and satisfying of interests_. It is the assurance of the
+smooth and uninterrupted flow of behavior; the flow of desire into
+fulfilment, of thought into deed, of act into fact. It is perhaps the
+most pervasive and fundamental of all desiderates, and in a definite way
+the others may be said to derive from it and to realize it. For the
+soul's immortality, the world's unity and spirituality and eternity, are
+but conditions which facilitate and assure the flow of life without
+obstruction. They define a world in which danger, evil, and frustration
+are non-existent; they so reconstitute our actual environment that the
+obstructions it offers to the course of life are abolished. They make
+the world "rational," and in the great philosophic tradition the freedom
+of man is held to be a function of the rationality of the world. Thus,
+even deterministic solutions of the "problem of freedom" are at bottom
+no more than the rationalization of natural existence by the dialectical
+removal of obstructions to human existence. Once more, Spinoza's
+solution is typical, and its form is that of all idealisms as well. It
+ensues by way of identification of the obstruction's interest with those
+of the obstructee: the world becomes ego or the ego the world, with
+nothing outside to hinder or to interfere. In the absolute, existence is
+declared to be value _de facto_; in fact, _de jure_. And by virtue of
+this compensating reciprocity the course of life runs free.
+
+Is any proof necessary that these value-forms are not the contents of
+the daily life? If there be, why this unvarying succession of attempts
+to _prove_ that they are the contents of daily life that goes by the
+name of history of philosophy? In fact, experience as it comes from
+moment to moment is not one, harmonious and orderly, but multifold,
+discordant, and chaotic. Its stuff is not spirit, but stones and railway
+wrecks and volcanoes and Mexico and submarines, and trenches, and
+frightfulness, and Germany, and disease, and waters, and trees, and
+stars, and mud. It is not eternal, but changes from instant to instant
+and from season to season. Actually, men do not live forever; death is a
+fact, and immortality is literally as well as in philosophic discourse
+not so much an aspiration for the continuity of life as an aspiration
+for the elimination of death, purely _im_mortality. Actually the will is
+not free, each interest encounters obstruction, no interest is
+completely satisfied, all are ultimately cut off by death.
+
+Such are the general features of all human experience, by age
+unwithered, and with infinite variety forever unstaled. The traditional
+philosophic treatment of them is to deny their reality, and to call them
+appearance, and to satisfy the generic human interest which they oppose
+and repress by means of the historical reconstruction in imaginative
+dialectic of a world constituted by these most generalized value-forms
+and then to eulogize the reconstruction with the epithet "reality."
+When, in the course of human events, such reconstruction becomes limited
+to the biography of particular individuals, is an expression of their
+concrete and unique interest, is lived and acted on, it is called
+paranoia. The difference is not one of kind, but of concreteness,
+application, and individuality. Such a philosophy applied universally in
+the daily life is a madness, like Christian Science: kept in its proper
+sphere, it is a fine art, the finest and most human of the arts, a
+reconstruction in discourse of the whole universe, in the image of the
+free human spirit. Philosophy has been reasonable because it is so
+unpersonal, abstract, and general, like music; because, in spite of its
+labels, its reconstructions remain pure desiderates and value-forms,
+never to be confused with and substituted for existence. But
+philosophers even to this day often have the delusion that the
+substitutions are actually made.[92]
+
+
+IV
+
+It is the purity of the value-forms imagined in philosophy that makes
+philosophy "normative." The arts, which it judges, have an identical
+origin and an indistinguishable intent, but they are properly its
+subordinates because they have not its purity. They, too, aim at
+remodeling discordant nature into harmony with human nature. They, too,
+are dominated by value-forms which shall satisfy as nearly as possible
+all interests, shall liberate and fulfil all repressions, and shall
+supply to our lives that unity, eternity, spirituality, and freedom
+which are the exfoliations of our central desire--the desire to live.
+But where philosophy has merely negated the concrete stuff of experience
+and defined its reality in terms of desire alone, the arts acknowledge
+the reality of immediate experience, accept it as it comes, eliminating,
+adding, molding, until the values desiderated become existent in the
+concrete immediacies of experience as such. Art does not substitute
+values for existence by changing their roles and calling one appearance
+and the other reality: art converts values into existences, it realizes
+values, injecting them into nature as far as may be. It creates truth
+and beauty and goodness. But it does not claim for its results greater
+reality than nature's. It claims for its results greater immediate
+harmony with human interests than nature. The propitious reality of the
+philosopher is the unseen: the harmonious reality of the artist must be
+sensible. Philosophy says that apparent actual evil is merely apparent:
+art compels potential apparent good actually to appear. Philosophy
+realizes fundamental values transcendentally beyond experience: art
+realizes them within experience. Thus, men cherish no illusions
+concerning the contents of a novel, a picture, a play, a musical
+composition. They are taken for what they are, and are enjoyed for what
+they are. The shopgirl, organizing her life on the basis of eight
+dollars a week, wears flimsy for broadcloth and the tail feather of a
+rooster for an ostrich plume. She is as capable of wearing and enjoying
+broadcloth and ostrich plume as My Lady, whose income is eight dollars
+a minute. But she has not them, and in all likelihood, without a social
+revolution she never will have them. In the novels of Mr. Robert
+Chambers, however, or of Miss Jean Libbey, which she religiously reads
+in the street-car on her way to the shop; in the motion picture theater
+which she visits for ten cents after her supper of corned beef, cabbage,
+and cream puffs, she comes into possession of them forthwith,
+vicariously, and of all My Lady's proper perquisites--the Prince
+Charming, the motor-car, the Chinese pug, the flowers, and the costly
+bonbons. For the time being her life is liberated, new avenues of
+experience are actually opened to her, all sorts of unsatisfied desires
+are satisfied, all sorts of potentialities realized. All that she might
+have been and is not, she becomes through art, here and now, and
+_continuously with_ the drab workaday life which is her lot, and she
+becomes this without any compensatory derealization of that life,
+without any transcendentalism, without any loss of grip on the
+necessities of her experience: strengthened, on the contrary, and
+emboldened, to meet them as they are.
+
+I might multiply examples: for every object of fine art has the same
+intention, and if adequate, accomplishes the same end--from the
+sculptures of Phidias and the dramas of Euripides, to the sky-scrapers
+of Sullivan and the dances of Pavlowa. But there is need only to
+consider the multitude of abstract descriptions of the aesthetic
+encounter. The artist's business is to create the other object in the
+encounter, and this object, in Miss Puffer's words, which are completely
+representative and typical, is such that "the organism is in a
+condition of repose and of the highest possible tone, functional
+efficiency, enhanced life. The personality is brought into a state of
+unity and self-completeness." The object, when apprehended, awakens the
+active functioning of the whole organism directly and harmoniously with
+itself, cuts it off from the surrounding world, shuts that world out for
+the time being, and forms a complete, harmonious, and self-sufficient
+system, peculiar and unique in the fact that there is no passing from
+this deed into further adaptation with the object. Struggle and aliency
+are at end, and whatever activity now goes on feels self-conserving,
+spontaneous, free. The need of readjustment has disappeared, and with it
+the feeling of strain, obstruction, and resistance, which is its sign.
+There is nothing but the object, and that is possessed completely,
+satisfying, and as if forever. Art, in a word, supplies an environment
+from which strife, foreignness, obstruction, and death are eliminated.
+It actualizes unity, spirituality, and eternity in the environment; it
+frees and enhances the life of the self. To the environment which art
+successfully creates, the mind finds itself completely and harmoniously
+adapted by the initial act of perception.
+
+In the world of art, value and existence are one.
+
+
+V
+
+If art may be said to create values, religion has been said to conserve
+them. But the values conserved are not those created: they are the
+values postulated by philosophy as metaphysical reality. Whereas,
+however, philosophy substitutes these values for the world of
+experience, religion makes them continuous with the world of experience.
+For religion value and existence are on the same level, but value is
+more potent and environs existence, directing it for its own ends. The
+unique content of religion, hence, is a specific imaginative extension
+of the environment with value-forms: the visible world is extended at
+either end by heaven and hell; the world of minds, by God, Satan,
+angels, demons, saints, and so on. But where philosophy imaginatively
+abolishes existence in behalf of value, where art realizes value in
+existence, religion tends to control and to escape the environment which
+exists by means of the environment which is postulated. The aim of
+religion is salvation from sin. Salvation is the escape from experience
+to heaven and the bosom of God; while hell is the compensatory
+readjustment of inner quality to outer condition for the alien and the
+enemy, without the knowledge of whose existence life in heaven could not
+be complete.
+
+In religion, hence, the conversion of the repressed array of interests
+into ideal value-forms is less radical and abstract than in philosophy,
+and less checked by fusion with existence than in art. Religion is,
+therefore, at one and the same time more carnal and less reasonable than
+philosophy and art. Its history and protagonists exhibit a closer
+kinship to what is called insanity[93]--that being, in essence, the
+substitution in actual life of the creatures of the imagination which
+satisfy repressed needs for those of reality which repress them. It is
+a somnambulism which intensifies rather than abolishes the contrast
+between what is desired and what must be accepted. It offers itself
+ultimately rather as a refuge from reality than a control of it, and its
+development as an institution has turned on the creation and use of
+devices to make this escape feasible. For religion, therefore, the
+perception that the actual world, whatever its history, is now _not_
+adapted to human nature, is the true point of departure. Thus religion
+takes more account of experience than compensatory philosophy; it does
+not de-realize existent evil. The outer conflict between human nature
+and nature, primitively articulated in consciousness and conduct by the
+distress engendered through the fact that the food supply depends upon
+the march of the seasons,[94] becomes later assimilated to the inner
+conflict between opposing interests, wishes, and desires. Finally, the
+whole so constituted gets expressed in the idea of sin. That idea makes
+outward prosperity dependent upon inward purity, although it often
+transfers the locus of the prosperity to another world. Through its
+operation fortune becomes a function of conscience and the one desire of
+religious thinking and religious practice becomes to bring the two to a
+happy outcome, to abolish the conflicts. This desiderated abolition is
+salvation. It is expressed in the ideas of a fall, or a separation from
+heaven and reunion therewith. The machinery of this reunion of the
+divided, the reconversion of the differentiated into the same, consists
+of the furniture of religious symbols and ceremonials--myths, baptisms,
+sacraments, prayers, and sacrifices: and all these are at the same time
+instruments and expressions of desires. God is literally "the
+conservation of values."[95] "God's life in eternity," writes Aristotle,
+who here dominates the earlier tradition, "is that which we enjoy in our
+best moments, but are unable to possess permanently: its very being is
+delight. And as actual being is delight, so the various functions of
+waking, perceiving, thinking, are to us the pleasantest parts of our
+life. Perfect and absolute thought is just this absolute vision of
+perfection."[96]
+
+Even the least somnambulistic of the transcendental philosophies has
+repeated, not improved upon Aristotle. "The highest conceptions that I
+get from experience of what goodness and beauty are," Royce declares,
+"the noblest life that I can imagine, the completest blessedness that I
+can think, all these are but faint suggestions of a truth that is
+infinitely realized in the Divine, that knows all truth. Whatever
+perfection there is suggested in these things, that he must fully know
+and experience."
+
+But this aesthetic excellence, this maximum of ideality is in and by
+itself inadequate. God, to be God, must _work_. He is first of all the
+invisible socius, the ever-living witness, in whose eyes the
+disharmonies and injustices of this life are enregistered, and who in
+the life everlasting redresses the balances and adjusts the account.
+Even his grace is not unconditional; it requires a return, in deed or
+faith; a payment by which the fact of his salvation is made visible. But
+this payment is made identical by the great religions of disillusion
+with nothing other than the concrete condition from which the faithful
+are to be saved. If the self is not impoverished, unkempt, and hungry,
+in fact, it is made so. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but
+self-defilement is godliness; sainthood, if we are to trust the lives of
+saints, whether in Asia or in Europe, is coincident with insanitation;
+saintly virtues are depressed virtues,--humility, hope, meekness, pity;
+and such conditions of life which define the holy ones are
+unwholesome--poverty, asceticism, squalor, filth. Hence, by an ironic
+inversion, religions of disillusion, being other-worldly, identify
+escape from an actual unpropitious environment with submergence in it;
+that being the visible and indispensable sign of an operative grace. So
+the beatitudes: the blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek.
+Beginning as a correction of the evils of existence, religion ends by
+offering an infallible avenue of escape from them through postulating a
+desiderated type of existence which operates to gather the spirit to
+itself. For this reason the value-forms of the spirituality or spiritual
+control of the universe and of the immortality of the soul have been
+very largely the practical concern of religion alone, since these are
+the instruments indispensable to the attainment of salvation. In so far
+forth religion has been an art and its institutional association with
+the arts has been made one of its conspicuous justifications. So far,
+however, as it has declared values to be operative without making them
+actually existent it has been only a black art, a magic. It has ignored
+the actual causes in the nature and history of things, and has
+substituted for them non-existent desirable causes, ultimately reducible
+to a single, eternal, beneficent spirit, omnipotent and free. To convert
+these into existence, an operation which is the obvious intent of much
+contemporary thinking in religion,[97] it must, however, give up the
+assumption that they already exist _qua_ spirit. But when religion gives
+up this assumption, religion gives up the ghost.
+
+What it demands of the ghost, and of all hypostatized or
+anthropomorphized ultimate value-forms, is that they shall work, and its
+life as an institution depends upon making them work. Christian Science
+becomes a refuge from the failure of science, magic from mechanism, and
+by means of them and their kind, blissful immortality, complete
+self-fulfilment is to be attained--after death. There is a "beautiful
+land of somewhere," a happy life beyond, but it is beyond life. In fact,
+although religion confuses value and existence, it localizes the great
+value-forms outside of existence. Its history has been an epic of the
+retreat and decimation of the gods from the world, a movement from
+animism and pluralism to transcendentalism and monism; and
+concomitantly, of an elaboration and extension of institutional devices
+by which the saving value-forms are to be made and kept operative in the
+world.
+
+
+VI
+
+Let us consider this history a little.
+
+Consciousness of feeling, psychologists are agreed, is prior to
+consciousness of the objects of feeling. The will's inward strain,
+intense throbs of sensation, pangs and pulses of pleasure and pain make
+up the bulk of the undifferentiated primal sum of sentience. The soul is
+aware of herself before she is aware of her world. A childish or
+primeval mind, face to face with an environment actual, dreamt, or
+remembered, does not distinguish from its privacy the objective or the
+common. All is shot through with the pathos and triumph which come
+unaccountably as desired good or evaded evil; all has the same tensions
+and effects ends in the same manner as the laboring, straining,
+volitional life within. These feelings, residuary qualities, the last
+floating, unattached sediment of a world organized by association and
+classified by activity, these subtlest of all its beings, finally termed
+mind and self, at first suffuse and dominate the whole. Even when
+objects are distinguished and their places determined these are not
+absent; and the so-called pre-animistic faiths are not the less suffused
+with spirit because the spiritual has not yet received a local
+habitation and name. They differ from animism in this only, not in that
+their objects are characterized by lack of animation and vital tonality.
+And this is necessary. For religion must be anthropopathic before it
+becomes anthropomorphic; since feeling, eloquent of good and evil, is
+the first and deepest essence of consciousness, and only by its
+wandering from home are forms distinguished and man's nature separated
+from that of things and beasts.
+
+When practice has cooerdinated activity, and reflection distinguished
+places, animism proper arises. First the environment is felt as the
+soul's kindred; then its operations are fancied in terms dramatic and
+personal. The world becomes almost instinctively defined as a hegemony
+of spirits similar to man, with powers and passions like his, and
+directed for his destruction or conservation, but chiefly for their own
+glory and self-maintenance. The vast "pathetic fallacy" makes religion
+of the whole of life. It is at this point indistinguishable from science
+or ethics. It is, in fact, the pregnant matrix of all subsequent
+discourse about the universe. Its character is such that it becomes the
+determinating factor of human adaptations to the conditions imposed by
+the environment, by envisaging the enduring and efficacious elements
+among these conditions as persons. The satisfaction of felt needs is
+rendered thereby inevitably social; and in a like manner fear of their
+frustration cannot be unsocial. Life is conceived and acted out as a
+miraculous traffic with the universe; and the universe as a band of
+spirits who monopolize the good and make free gifts of evil, who can be
+feared, threatened, worshiped, scolded, wheedled, coaxed, bribed,
+deceived, enslaved, held in awe, and above all, used for the prosecution
+of desiderated ends and the fulfilment of instinctive desires. The first
+recorded cognized order is a moral order in which fragmentary feelings,
+instinctive impulsions, and spontaneous imaginings are hypostatized,
+ideas are identified with their causes, all the contents of the
+immature, sudden, primitive, blundering consciousness receive a vital
+figure and a proper name. So man makes himself more at home in the world
+without,--that world which enslaves the spirit so fearfully and with
+such strangeness, and which just as miraculously yields such ecstasy,
+such power, such unaccountable good! In this immediate sense the soul
+controls the world by becoming symbolic of it; it is the world's first
+language. It is, however, an inarticulate, blundering, incoherent thing
+and the cues which it furnishes to the nature of the environment are as
+often as not dangerous and misleading. When bows and arrows, crystals
+and caves, clouds and waters, dung and dew, mountains and trees, beasts
+and visions, are treated as chiefs and men must be treated, then the
+moral regimen initiated, taking little account of the barest real
+qualities manifested by these things, and attributing the maximum
+importance to the characters postulated and foreign, is successful
+neither in allaying evil nor in extending good. Its benefits are
+adventitious and its malfeasance constant. Food buried with the dead was
+food lost; blood smeared upon the bow to make it shoot better served
+only to make the hands unskilful by impeding their activity. Initiation,
+ceremony, sacrificial ritual, fasting, and isolation involved
+privations for which no adequate return was recovered, even by the
+medicine-man whose absolute and ephemeral power needed only the betrayal
+of circumstances for its own destruction, taking him along with it,
+oftener than not, to disgrace or death.
+
+As the cumulus of experience on experience grew greater, chance
+violations of tradition, or custom, or ritual, or formula achieving for
+the violator a mastery or stability which performance and obedience
+failed to achieve, the new heresy became the later orthodoxy, for in
+religion, as in all other matters human, nothing succeeds like success.
+An impotent god has no divinity; a disused potency means a dying life
+among the immortals as on the earth. And as the gods themselves seemed
+often to give their worshipers the lie, the futility of the personal and
+dramatic definitions of the immediate environment became slowly
+recognized, the recognition varying in extent, and clearer in practice
+than in discourse.
+
+Accordingly the most primitive of the animisms underwent a necessary
+modification. The plasticity of objects under destructive treatment, the
+impotence of _taboo_ before elementary needs, the adequate satisfactions
+which violations of the divine law brought,--these killed many gods and
+drove others from their homes in the hearts of things. The objects so
+purged became matters of accurate knowledge. Where animation is denied
+the _whole_ environment, wisdom begins to distinguish between
+spirit-haunted matter and the purely material; knowledge of person and
+knowledge of things differentiate, and science, the impersonal and more
+potent knowledge of the environment, properly begins. Familiarity leads
+to control, control to contempt, and for the unreflective mind,
+personality is not, as for the sophisticated, an attribute of the
+contemptible. The incalculable appearance of thunder, the magic greed of
+fire, the malice, the spontaneity, the thresh and pulse as of life which
+seems to characterize whatever is capricious or impenetrable or
+uncontrollable are too much like the felt throbs of consciousness to
+become dehumanized. To the variable alone, therefore, is transcendent
+animation attributed. Not the seasonal variation of the sun's heat, but
+the joy and the sorrow of which his heat is the occasion made him
+divine. When the gods appear, to take the place of the immanent spirits
+immediately present in things, they appear, therefore, as already
+transcendent, with habitations just beyond the well-known: on high
+mountains, in the skies, in dark forests, in caves, in all regions
+feared or unexplored. But chiefly the gods inhabit those spaces whence
+issue the power of darkness and destruction, particularly the heaven, a
+word whose meaning is now, as it was primitively, identical with
+divinity. The savage becomes a pagan by giving concrete personality to
+the dreadful unknown. Thence it is that the ancient poet assigns the
+gods a lineage of fear; and fear may truly be said to have made the
+gods, in so far as the gods personify the fear which made them.
+
+The moral level of these figments alters with the level of their
+habitation; their power varies with their remoteness; Zeus lives in the
+highest heaven and is arbiter of the destiny of both gods and man. To
+him and to his like there cannot be the relation of equality which is
+sustained between men and spirits of the lower order. His very love is
+blasting; interchange of commodities, good for good and evil for evil is
+not possible where he is concerned. Gods of the higher order he
+exemplifies, even all the gods of Olympus, of the Himalayas, of
+Valhalla, are literally beings invoked and implored, as well as dwellers
+in heaven. To them man pays a toll on all excellence he gains or finds;
+libations and burnt-offerings, the fat and the first fruits: he exists
+by their sufferance and serves their caprice. He is their toy, born for
+their pleasure, and living by their need.
+
+But just because men conceive themselves to be play-things of the gods,
+they define in the gods the ideals of mankind. For the divine power is
+power to live forever, and the sum of human desire is just the desire to
+maintain its humanity in freedom and happiness endlessly. And exactly
+those capacities and instruments of self-maintenance,--all that is
+beauty, or truth, or goodness, the very essence of value in any of its
+forms,--the gods are conceived to possess and to control: these they may
+grant, withhold, destroy. They are as eternal as their habitations, the
+mountains; as ruthless as their element, the sea; as omnipresent as the
+heavens, their home. To become like the gods, therefore, the masters and
+fathers of men, is to remain eternally and absolutely human: so that who
+is most like them on earth takes his place beside them in heaven.
+Hercules and Elias and Krishna, Caka-Muni and Ishvara, Jesus and Baha
+Ullah. Nay, they are the very gods themselves, manifest as men! The
+history of the gods thus presents a double aspect: it is first a
+characterization of the important objects and processes of nature and
+their survival-values,--the sun, thunder, rain, and earthquakes;
+dissolution, rebirth, and love; and again it is the narration of
+activities native and delightful to mankind. Zeus is a promiscuous lover
+as well as a wielder of thunderbolts; Apollo not only drives the chariot
+of the sun; he plays and dances, discourses melody and herds sheep.
+
+But while the portrait of the heart's desire in fictitious adventures of
+divinity endears the gods to the spirit, the exploration of the elements
+in the environment whose natures they dramatically express, destroys
+their force, reduces their number, and drives them still further into
+the unknown. Olympus is surrendered for the planets and the fixed stars.
+With remoteness of location comes transmutation of character. The forces
+of the environment which were the divinity are now conceived as
+instrumental to its uses. Its power is more subtly described; its nature
+becomes a more purely ideal expression of human aspiration. Physical
+remoteness and metaphysical ultimacy are akin. God among the stars is
+better than God on Olympus. If, as with the Parsees, the unfavorable
+character of the environment is expressed in another and equal
+being,--the devil, then the god of good must, in the symbolic struggle,
+become the ultimate victor and remain the more potent director of man's
+destiny. In religion, therefore, when the mind grows at all by
+experience, monism develops spontaneously. For the character of the god
+becomes increasingly more relevant to hope than to the conditions of
+hope's satisfaction. And what man first of all and beyond all aspires
+to, is that single, undivided good,--the free flow of his unitary life,
+stable, complete, eternal. There is hence always to be found a chief and
+father among the gods who, as mankind gain in wisdom and in material
+power, consumes his mates and his children like Kronos or Jahweh,
+inherits their attributes and performs their functions. The chief
+divinity becomes the only divinity; a god becomes God. But divinity, in
+becoming one and unique, becomes also transcendent. Monotheism pushes
+God altogether beyond the sensible environment. Personality, instead of
+being the nature of the world, has become its ground and cause, and all
+that mankind loves is conserved, in order that man, whom God loves, may
+have his desire and live forever. Life is eternal and happiness
+necessary, beyond nature,--in heaven. Finally, in transcendental
+idealism, the poles meet; what has been put eternally apart is eternally
+united; the immaterial, impalpable, transcendent heaven is made one and
+continuous with the gross and unhappy natural world. One _is_ the other;
+the other the one. God _is_ the world and transcends it; _is_ the evil
+and the good which conquers and consumes that evil. The environment
+becomes thus described as a single, eternal, conscious unity, in which
+all the actual but transitory values of the actual but transitory life
+are conserved and eternalized. In a description of God such as Royce's
+or Aristotle's the environment is the eternity of all its constituents
+that are dearest to man. Religion, which began as a definition of the
+environment as it moved and controlled mankind, ends by describing it
+as mankind desires it to be. The environment is now the aforementioned
+ideal socius or self which satisfies perfectly all human requirements.
+Pluralistic and quarrelsome animism has become monistic and harmonious
+spiritism. Forces have turned to excellences and needs to satisfactions.
+Necessity has been transmuted to Providence, sin has been identified
+with salvation, value with existence, and existence with impotence and
+illusion before Providence, salvation, and value.
+
+
+VII
+
+With this is completed the reply to the question: Why do men contradict
+their own experience? Experience is, as Spinoza says, passion and
+action, both inextricably mingled and coincident, with the good and evil
+of them as interwoven as they. That piecemeal conquest of the evil which
+we call civilization has not even the promise of finality. It is a
+Penelope's web, always needing to be woven anew. Now, in experience
+desire anticipates and outleaps action and fact rebuffs desire. Desire
+realizes itself, consequently, in ideas objectified by the power of
+speech into independent and autonomous subjects of discourse, whereby
+experience is One, Eternal, a Spirit or Spiritually Controlled, wherein
+man has Freedom and Immortality. These, the constantly desiderated
+traits of a perfect universe, are in fact the limits of what adequacy
+environmental satisfactions can attain, ideas hypostatized, normative of
+existence, but not constituting it. With them, in philosophy and
+religion, the mind confronts the experiences of death and obstruction,
+of manifoldness, change and materiality, and denies them, as Peter
+denied Jesus. The visible world, being not as we want it, we imagine an
+unseen one that satisfies our want, declaring the visible one an
+illusion by its side. So we work a radical substitution of desiderates
+for actualities, of ideals for facts, of values for existences. Art
+alone acknowledges the actual relations between these contrasting pairs.
+Art alone so operates as in fact to convert their oppugnance into
+identity. Intrinsically, its whole purpose and technique consists of
+transmutation of values into existences, in the incarnation the
+realization of values. The philosophy and religion of tradition, on the
+contrary, consists intrinsically in the flat denial of reality, or at
+least, co-reality, to existence, and the transfer of that eulogium to
+value-forms as such.
+
+Metaphysics, theology, ethics, logic, aesthetics, dialectic developments
+as they are of "norms" or "realities" which themselves can have no
+meaning without the "apparent," changing world they measure and belie,
+assume consequently a detachment and self-sufficiency they do not
+actually possess. Their historians have treated them as if they had no
+context, as if the elaboration of the ideal tendencies of the successive
+systems explained their origin, character, and significance. But in fact
+they are unendowed with this pure intrinsicality, and their development
+is not to be accounted for as exteriorization of innate motive or an
+unfoldment of inward implications. They have a context; they are crossed
+and interpenetrated by outer interests and extraneous considerations.
+Their meaning, in so far as it is not merely aesthetic, is _nil_ apart
+from these interests and considerations of which they are sometimes
+expressions, sometimes reconstructions, and from which they are
+persistently refuges.
+
+Philosophy and religion are, in a word, no less than art, social facts.
+They are responses to group situations without which they cannot be
+understood. Although analysis has shown them to be rooted in certain
+persistent motives and conditions of human nature by whose virtue they
+issue in definite contours and significances, they acquire individuality
+and specific importance only through interaction with the constantly
+varying social situations in which they arise, on which they operate,
+and by which they are in turn operated on. Philosophy has perhaps
+suffered most of all from nescience of those and from devoting itself,
+at a minimum, to the satisfaction of that passion for oneness, for
+"logical consistency" without which philosophic "systems" would never
+arise, nor the metaphysical distinction between "appearance" and
+"reality"; and with which the same systems have made up a historic
+aggregate of strikingly repugnant and quarrelsome units. It is this
+pursuit of consistency as against correctness which has resulted in the
+irrelevance of philosophy that the philosopher, unconscious of his
+motives and roots, or naively identifying, through the instrumentality
+of an elaborate dialectic, his instinctive and responsive valuations of
+existence with its categoric essences, confuses with inward autonomy and
+the vision of the "real." Consequently, the systems of tradition begin
+as attempts to transvalue social situations whose existence is
+troublesome and end as utterances of which the specific bearing, save to
+the system of an opponent, is undiscoverable. The attempt to correct the
+environment in fact concludes as an abolition of it in words. The
+philosophic system becomes a solipsism, a pure lyric expression of the
+appetites of human nature.
+
+For this perversity of the philosophic tradition Plato is perhaps, more
+than any one else, answerable. He is the first explicitly to have
+reduplicated the world, to have set existences over against values, to
+have made them dependent upon values, to have assigned absolute reality
+to the compensatory ideals, and to have identified philosophy with
+preoccupation with these ideals. Behind his theory of life lay far from
+agreeable personal experience of the attitude of political power toward
+philosophic ideas. Its ripening was coincident with the most distressing
+period of the history of his country. The Peloponnesian War was the
+confrontation of two social systems, radically opposed in form, method,
+and outlook. Democracy, in Athens, had become synonymous with
+demagoguery, corruption, inefficiency, injustice and unscrupulousness in
+every aspect of public affairs. The government had no consistent policy
+and no centralized responsibility; divided counsel led to continual
+disaster without, and party politics rotted the strength within. Beside
+Athens, Sparta, a communistic oligarchy, was a tower of strength and
+effectiveness. The Spartans made mistakes; they were slow, inept, rude,
+and tyrannical, but they were a unit on the war, their policy was
+consistent, responsibilities were adequately centered, good order and
+loyalty designated the aims and habits of life.[98] The Republic is the
+response to the confrontation of Spartan and Athenian; the attempt to
+find an adequate solution of the great social problem this confrontation
+expressed. The successful state becomes in it the model for the
+metaphysical one, and the difference between fact and ideal is amended
+by dialectically forcing the implications of existence in the direction
+of desire. Neither Athens nor Sparta presented a completely satisfactory
+social organization. There must therefore exist a type of social
+organization which is so satisfying. It must have existed from eternity,
+and must be in essence identical with eternal good, identical with that
+oneness and spirituality, lacking which, nothing is important. This
+archetypal social organization whose essence is excellence, it is the
+congenital vocation of the philosopher to contemplate and to realize.
+Philosophers are hence the paragons among animals, lovers of truth,
+haters of falsehood and of multiplicity, spectators of all time and all
+existence. In them the power to govern should be vested. Their nature is
+of the same stuff as the Highest Good with which it concerns itself, but
+being such, it appears, merely "appears" alas! irrelevant to the actual
+situations of the daily life. The philosopher is hence opposed and
+expelled by that arch-sophist, Public Opinion: the man on the street,
+failing to understand him, dubs him prater, star-gazer,
+good-for-nothing.[99] He becomes an ineffectual stranger, an outlaw, in
+a world in which he should be master.
+
+Plato's description of the philosopher and philosophy is, it will be
+seen, at once an apology and a program. But it is a program which has
+been petrified into a compensatory ideal. The confession of impotence,
+the abandonment of the programmatic intent is due to identification of
+the ideal with metaphysical fact, to the hypostasis of the ideal. With
+Christianism, that being a philosophy operating as a religion,
+world-weariness made the apology unnecessary and converted the
+hypostasis into the basis of that program of complete surrender of the
+attempt to master the problems of existence upon which ensued the arrest
+of science and civilization for a thousand years. The Greeks were not
+world-weary, and consequently, their joy in life and existence
+contributed a minimum of relevance to their other-worldly dreams. Need it
+be reasserted that the whole Platonic system, at its richest and best in
+the Republic, is both an expression of and a compensation for a concrete
+social situation? Once it was formulated it became a part of that
+situation, altered it, served as another among the actual causes which
+determined the subsequent history of philosophy. Its historic and
+efficacious significance is defined by that situation, but philosophers
+ignore the situation and accept the system as painters accept a
+landscape--as the thing in itself.
+
+Now, the aesthetic aspect of the philosophic system, its autonomy, and
+consequent irrelevancy, are undeniable. Once it comes to be, its
+intrinsic excellence may constitute its infallible justification for
+existence, with no more to be said; and if its defenders or proponents
+claimed nothing more for it than this immediate satisfactoriness, there
+would be no quarrel with them. There is, however, present in their minds
+a sense of the other bearings of their systems. They claim them, in any
+event, to be _true_, that is, to be relevant to a situation regarded as
+more important because more lastingly determinative of conduct, more
+"real" than the situation of which they are born. Their systems are
+offered, hence, as maps of life, as guides to the everlasting. That they
+intend to define some method for the conservation of life eternally, is
+clear enough from their initial motivation and formal issue: all the
+Socratics, with their minds fixed on happiness or salvation according to
+the prevalence of disillusionment among them; the Christian systems,
+still Socratic, but as resolutely other-worldly as disillusioned
+Buddhists; the systems of Spinoza, of Kant, the whole subsequent horde
+of idealisms, up to the contemporary Germanoid and German idealistic
+soliloquies,--they all declare that the vanity and multiplicity of life
+as it is leads them to seek for the permanent and the meaningful, and
+they each find it according to the idiosyncrasies of the particular
+impulses and terms they start with. That their Snark turns out in every
+case to be a Boojum is another story.
+
+Yet this story is what gives philosophy, like religion, its social
+significance. If its roots, as its actual biography shows, did not reach
+deep in the soil of events, if its issues had no fruitage in events made
+over by its being, it would never have been so closely identified with
+intelligence and its systematic hypostasis would never have ensued. The
+fact is that philosophy, like all forms of creative intelligence, is a
+tool before it is a perfection. Its autonomy supervenes on its
+efficaciousness; it does not precede its efficaciousness. Men
+philosophize in order to live before they live in order to philosophize.
+Aristotle's description of the self-sufficiency of theory is possible
+only for a life wherein theory had already earned this self-sufficiency
+as practice, in a life, that is, which is itself an art, organized by
+the application of value-forms to its existent psycho-physical processes
+in such a way that its existence incarnates the values it desiderates
+and the values perfect the existence that embodies them.
+
+The biography of philosophy, hence, reveals it to have the same
+possibilities and the same fate that all other ideas have. Today ideas
+are the patent of our humanity, the stuff and form of intelligence, the
+differentiae between us and the beasts. In so far forth, they express the
+surplusage of vitality over need, the creative freedom of life at play.
+This is the thing we see in the imaginings and fantasies of childhood,
+whose environment is by social intent formed to favor and sustain its
+being. The capacity for spontaneity of idea appears to decrease with
+maturity, and the few favored healthy mortals with whom it remains are
+called men of genius. William James was such a man, and there are a few
+still among the philosophers. But in the mass and in the long run, ideas
+are not a primary confirmation of our humanity; in the mass and long
+they are warnings of menace to it, a sign of its disintegration. Even so
+radical an intellectualist as Mr. Santayana cherishes this observation
+to the degree of almost suggesting it as the dogma that all ideas have
+their origin in inner or outer maladjustment.[100] However this may be,
+that the dominant philosophic ideas arise out of radical disharmonies
+between nature and human nature need not be here reiterated, while the
+provocative character of minor maladjustments is to be inferred from the
+fertility of ideas in unstable minds, of whatever type, from the
+neurasthenic to the mad. Ideas represent in these cases the limits of
+vital elasticity, the attempt of the organism to maintain its organic
+balance; it is as if a balloon, compressed on one side, bulged on the
+other.
+
+Ideas, then, bear three types of relations to organic life, relations
+socially incarnated in traditional art, religion, and philosophy. First
+of all they may be an expression of innate capacities, the very essence
+of the freedom of life. In certain arts, such as music, they are just
+this. In the opposite case they may be the effect of the compression of
+innate capacities, an outcome of obstruction to the free low of life.
+They are then compensatory. Where expressive ideas are confluent with
+existence, compensatory ideas diverge from existence; they become pure
+value-forms whose paramount realization is traditional philosophy. Their
+rise and motivation in both these forms is unconscious. They are ideas,
+but not yet intelligence. The third instance falls between these
+original two. The idea is neither merely a free expression of innate
+capacities, nor a compensation for their obstruction or compression.
+Arising as the effect of a disharmony, it develops as an enchannelment
+of organic powers directed to the conversion of the disharmony into an
+adjustment. It does not _use up_ vital energies like the expressive
+idea, it is not an abortion of them, like the compensatory idea. It uses
+them, and is aware that it uses them--that is, it is a program of action
+upon the environment, of conversion of values into existences. Such an
+idea has the differentia of intelligence. It is creative; it actually
+converts nature into forms appropriate to human nature. It abolishes the
+Otherworld of the compensatory tradition in philosophy by incarnating it
+in this world; it abolishes the Otherworld of the religionist, rendered
+important by belittling the actual one, by restoring the working
+relationships between thoughts and things. This restoration develops as
+reconstruction of the world in fact. It consists specifically of the art
+and science which compose the efficacious enterprises of history and of
+which the actual web of our civilization is spun.
+
+Manifest in its purity in art, it attends unconsciously both religion
+and philosophy, for the strands of life keep interweaving, and whatever
+is, in our collective being, changes and is changed by whatever else may
+be, that is in reach. The life of reason is initially unconscious
+because it can learn only by living to seek a reason for life. Once it
+discovers that it can become self-maintaining alone through relevance to
+its ground and conditions, the control which this relevance yields makes
+it so infectious that it tends to permeate every human institution, even
+religion and philosophy. Philosophy, it is true, has lagged behind even
+religion in relevancy, but the lagging has been due not to the
+intention of the philosopher but to the inherent character of the task
+he assumed. Both art and religion, we have seen, possess an immediacy
+and concreteness which philosophy lacks. Art reconstructs correlative
+portions of the environment for the eye, the ear, the hopes and fears of
+the daily life. Religion extends this reconstruction beyond the actual
+environment, but applies its saving technique at the critical points in
+the career of the group or the individual; to control the food-supply,
+to protect in birth, pubescence, marriage, and death. All its motives
+are grounded in specific instincts and needs, all its reconstructions
+and compensations culminate with reference to these. Philosophy, on the
+other hand, deals with the _whole_ nature of man and his _whole_
+environment. It seeks primaries and ultimates. Its traditional task is
+so to define the universe as to articulate thereby a theory of life and
+eternal salvation. It establishes contact with reality at no individual,
+specific point: its reals are "real in general." It aims, in a word, to
+be relevant to all nature, and to express the whole soul of man. The
+consequence is inevitable: it forfeits relevance to everything natural;
+touching nothing actual, it reconstructs nothing actual. Its concretest
+incarnation is a dialectic design woven of words. The systems of
+tradition, hence, are works of art, to be contemplated, enjoyed, and
+believed in, but not to be acted on. For, since action is always
+concrete and specific, always determined to time, place, and occasion,
+we cannot in fact adapt ourselves to the aggregate infinitude of the
+environment, or that to ourselves. Something always stands out,
+recalcitrant, invincible, defiant. But it is just such an adaptation
+that philosophy intends, and the futility of the intention is evinced by
+the fact that the systems of tradition continue side by side with the
+realities they deny, and live unmixed in one and the same mind, as a
+picture of the ocean on the wall of a dining room in an inland town. Our
+operative relations to them tend always to be essentially aesthetic. We
+may and do believe in them in spite of life and experience, because
+belief in them, involving no action, involves no practical risk. Where
+action is a consequence of a philosophic system, the system seems to
+dichotomize into art and religion. It becomes particularized into a
+technique of living or the dogma of a sect, and so particularized it
+becomes radically self-conscious and an aspect of creative intelligence.
+
+So particularized, it is, however, no longer philosophy, and philosophy
+has (I hope I may say this without professional bias) an inalienable
+place in the life of reason. This place is rationally defined for it by
+the discovery of its ground and function in the making of civilization;
+and by the perfection of its possibilities through the definition of its
+natural relationships. Thus, it is, in its essential historic character
+at least, as fine an art as music, the most inward and human of all
+arts. It may be, and human nature being what it is, undoubtedly will
+continue to be, an added item to the creations wherewith man makes his
+world a better place to live in, precious in that it envisages and
+projects the excellences and perfections his heart desires and his
+imagination therefore defines. So taken, it is not a substitution for
+the world, but an addition to it, a refraction of it through the medium
+of human nature, as a landscape painting by Whistler or Turner is not a
+substitution for the actual landscape, but an interpretation and
+imaginative perfection of it, more suitable to the eye of man. A system
+like Bergson's is such a work, and its aesthetic adequacy, its beauty,
+may be measured by the acknowledgment it receives and the influence it
+exercises. Choosing one of the items of experience as its medium, and
+this item the most precious in the mind's eye which the history of
+philosophy reveals, it proceeds to fabricate a dialectical image of
+experience in which all the compensatory desiderates are expressed and
+realized. It entices minds of all orders, and they are happy to dwell in
+it, for the nonce realizing in the perception of the system the values
+it utters. By abandoning all pretense to be true, philosophic systems of
+the traditional sort may attain the simple but supreme excellence of
+beauty, and rest content therewith.
+
+The philosophic ideal, however, is traditionally not beauty but truth:
+the function of a philosophic system is not presentative, but
+_re_presentative and causal, and that the systems of tradition have had
+and still have consequences as well as character, is obvious enough. It
+is, however, to be noted that these consequences have issued out of the
+fact that the systems have been specific items of existence among other
+equally and even more specific items, thought by particular men, at
+particular times and in particular places. As such they have been
+programs for meeting events and incarnating values; operative ideals
+aiming to recreate the world according to determined standards. They
+have looked forward rather than backward, have tacitly acknowledged the
+reality of change, the irreducible pluralism of nature, and the
+genuineness of the activities, oppugnant or harmonizing, between the
+items of the Cosmic. Many they ostensibly negate. The truth, in a word,
+has been experimental and prospective; the desiderates they uttered
+operated actually as such and not as already existing. Historians of
+philosophy, treating it as if it had no context, have denied or ignored
+this role of philosophy in human events, but historians of the events
+themselves could not avoid observing and enregistering it.
+
+Only within very recent years, as an effect of the concept of evolution
+in the field of the sciences, have philosophers as such envisaged this
+non-aesthetic aspect of philosophy's ground and function in the making of
+civilization and have made it the basis for a sober vision which may or
+may not have beauty, but which cannot have finality. Such a vision is
+again nothing more than traditional philosophy become conscious of its
+character and limitations and shorn of its pretense. It is a program to
+execute rather than a metaphysic to rest in. Its procedure is the
+procedure of all the arts and sciences. It frankly acknowledges the
+realities of immediate experience, the turbulence and complexity of the
+flux, the interpenetrative confusion of orders, the inward
+self-diversification of even the simplest thing, which "change" means,
+and the continual emergence of novel entities, unforeseen and
+unprevisible, from the reciprocal action of the older aggregate. This
+perceptual reality it aims to remould according to the heart's desire.
+Accordingly it drops the pretense of envisaging the universe and devotes
+itself to its more modest task of applying its standards to a particular
+item that needs to be remade. It is believed in, but no longer without
+risk, for, without becoming a dogma, it still subjects itself to the
+tests of action. So it acknowledges that it must and will itself undergo
+constant modification through the process of action, in which it uses
+events, in their meanings rather than in their natures, to map out the
+future and to make it amenable to human nature. Philosophy so used is,
+as John Dewey somewhere says, a mode and organ of experience among many
+others. In a world the very core of which is change, it is directed upon
+that which is not yet, to previse and to form its character and to map
+out the way of life within it. Its aim is the liberation and enlargement
+of human capacities, the enfranchisement of man by the actual
+realization of values. In its integrate character therefore, it
+envisages the life of reason and realizes it as the art of life. Where
+it is successful, beauty and use are confluent and identical in it. It
+converts sight into insight. It infuses existence with value, making
+them one. It is the concrete incarnation of Creative Intelligence.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] The word relation suffers from ambiguity. I am speaking here of
+_connexion_, dynamic and functional interaction. "Relation" is a term
+used also to express logical reference. I suspect that much of the
+controversy about internal and external relations is due to this
+ambiguity. One passes at will from existential connexions of things to
+logical relationship of terms. Such an identification of existences with
+_terms_ is congenial to idealism, but is paradoxical in a professed
+realism.
+
+[2] There is some gain in substituting a doctrine of flux and
+interpenetration of psychical states, _a la_ Bergson, for that of rigid
+discontinuity. But the substitution leaves untouched the fundamental
+misstatement of experience, the conception of experience as directly and
+primarily "inner" and psychical.
+
+[3] Mathematical science in its formal aspects, or as a branch of formal
+logic, has been the empirical stronghold of rationalism. But an
+empirical empiricism, in contrast with orthodox deductive empiricism,
+has no difficulty in establishing its jurisdiction as to deductive
+functions.
+
+[4] It is a shame to devote the word idealism, with its latent moral,
+practical connotations, to a doctrine whose tenets are the denial of the
+existence of a physical world, and the psychical character of all
+objects--at least as far as they are knowable. But I am following usage,
+not attempting to make it.
+
+[5] See Dr. Kallen's essay, below.
+
+[6] The "they" means the "some" of the prior sentence--those whose
+realism is epistemological, instead of being a plea for taking the facts
+of experience as we find them without refraction through epistemological
+apparatus.
+
+[7] It is interesting to note that some of the realists who have
+assimilated the cognitive relation to other existential relations in the
+world (instead of treating it as an unique or epistemological relation)
+have been forced in support of their conception of knowledge as a
+"presentative" or spectatorial affair to extend the defining features of
+the latter to all relations among things, and hence to make all the
+"real" things in the world pure "simples," wholly independent of one
+another. So conceived the doctrine of external relations appears to be
+rather the doctrine of complete externality of _things_. Aside from this
+point, the doctrine is interesting for its dialectical ingenuity and for
+the elegant development of assumed premises, rather than convincing on
+account of empirical evidence supporting it.
+
+[8] In other words, there is a general "problem of error" only because
+there is a general problem of evil, concerning which see Dr. Kallen's
+essay, below.
+
+[9] Compare the paper by Professor Bode.
+
+[10] As the attempt to retain the epistemological problem and yet to
+reject idealistic and relativistic solutions has forced some
+Neo-realists into the doctrine of isolated and independent simples, so
+it has also led to a doctrine of Eleatic pluralism. In order to maintain
+the doctrine the subject makes no difference to anything else, it is
+held that _no_ ultimate real makes any difference to anything else--all
+this rather than surrender once for all the genuineness of the problem
+and to follow the lead of empirical subject-matter.
+
+[11] There is almost no end to the various dialectic developments of the
+epistemological situation. When it is held that all the relations of the
+type in question are cognitive, and yet it is recognized (as it must be)
+that many such "transformations" go unremarked, the theory is
+supplemented by introducing "unconscious" psychical modifications.
+
+[12] Conception-presentation has, of course, been made by many in the
+history of speculation an exception to this statement; "pure" memory is
+also made an exception by Bergson. To take cognizance of this matter
+would, of course, accentuate, not relieve, the difficulty remarked upon
+in the text.
+
+[13] Cf. _Studies in Logical Theory_, Chs. I and II, by Dewey; also
+"Epistemology and Mental States," Tufts, _Phil. Rev._, Vol. VI, which
+deserves to rank as one of the early documents of the "experimental"
+movement.
+
+[14] Cf. "The Definition of the Psychical," G. H. Mead, _Decennial
+Publications of the University of Chicago_.
+
+[15] Cf. _The Logic of Hegel-Wallace_, p. 117.
+
+[16] _Bosanquet's Logic_, 2nd Ed., p. 171. The identification of
+induction and procedure by hypothesis occurs on p. 156.
+
+[17] _Ibid._, p. 14 (italics mine).
+
+[18] Perhaps the most complete exhibition of the breakdown of formal
+logic considered as an account of the operation of thought apart from
+its subject-matter is to be found in Schiller's _Formal Logic_.
+
+[19] Cf. Stuart on "Valuation as a Logical Process" in _Studies in
+Logical Theory_.
+
+[20] _The New Realism_, pp. 40-41.
+
+[21] Cf. Montague, pp. 256-57; also Russell, _The Problems of_
+_Philosophy_, pp. 27-65-66, _et passim_; and Holt's _Concept of
+Consciousness_, pp. 14ff., discussed below.
+
+[22] Cf. Angell, "Relations of Psychology to Philosophy," _Decennial
+Publications of University of Chicago_, Vol. III; also Castro, "The
+Respective Standpoints of Psychology and Logic," _Philosophic Studies,
+University of Chicago_, No. 4.
+
+[23] I am here following, in the main, Professor Holt because he alone
+appears to have had the courage to develop the full consequences of the
+premises of analytic logic.
+
+[24] _The Concept of Consciousness_, pp. 14-15.
+
+[25] It is interesting to compare this onlooking act with the account of
+consciousness further on. As "psychological" this act of onlooking must
+be an act of consciousness. But consciousness is a cross-section or a
+projection of things made by their interaction with a nervous system.
+Here consciousness is a function of all the interacting factors. It is
+in the play. It _is_ the play. It is not in a spectator's box. How can
+consciousness be a function of all the things put into the cross-section
+and yet be a mere beholder of the process? Moreover, what is it that
+makes any particular, spectacle, or cross-section "logical"? If it be
+said all are "logical" what significance has the term?
+
+[26] Cf. Russell's _Scientific Methods in Philosophy_, p. 59.
+
+[27] Holt, _op. cit._, pp. 128-30.
+
+[28] In fact, Newton, in all probability, had the Cartesian pure notions
+in mind.
+
+[29] Holt, _op. cit._, p. 118 (italics mine). Cf. also Perry's _Present
+Philosophical Tendencies_, pp. 108 and 311.
+
+[30] The character of elements and the nature of simplicity have been
+discussed in the preceding section.
+
+[31] _Ibid._, p. 275.
+
+[32] _Ibid._, p. 275.
+
+[33] This lack of continuity between the cognitive function of the
+nervous system and its other functions accounts for the strange paradox
+in the logic of neo-realism of an act of knowing which is "subjective"
+and yet is the act of so palpably an objective affair as a nervous
+system. The explanation is that the essence of all deprecated
+subjectivity is, as before pointed out, functional isolation. That this
+sort of subjectivity should be identified with the "psychical" is not
+strange, since a living organism is very difficult to isolate, while the
+term "psychical," in its metaphysical sense, seems to stand for little
+else than just this complete isolation. Having once appealed to the
+nervous system it seems incredible that the physiological continuity of
+its functions with each other and with its environment should not have
+suggested the logical corollary. Only the force of the prepossession of
+mathematical atomism in analytic logic can account for its failure to do
+so.
+
+[34] But it would be better to use the term "logically-practical"
+instead of "subjective" with the psychical implications of that term.
+
+[35] An analysis which has been many times carried out has made it clear
+that scientific data never do more than approximate the laws and
+entities upon which our science rests. It is equally evident that the
+forms of these laws and entities themselves shift in the reconstructions
+of incessant research, or where they seem most secure could consistently
+be changed, or at least could be fundamentally different were our
+psychological structure or even our conventions of thought different. I
+need only refer to the _Science et Hypothese_ of Poincare and the
+_Problems of Science_ of Enriques. The positivist who undertakes to
+carry the structure of the world back to the data of observation, and
+the uniformities appearing in the accepted hypotheses of growing
+sciences cannot maintain that we ever succeed in isolating data which
+must remain the same in the kaleidoscope of our research science; nor
+are we better served if we retreat to the ultimate elements of points
+and instants which our pure mathematics assumes and implicitly defines,
+and in connection with which it has worked out the modern theory of the
+number and continuous series, its statements of continuity and infinity.
+
+[36] In other words, science assumes that every error is _ex post facto_
+explicable as a function of the real conditions under which it really
+arose. Hence, "consciousness," set over against Reality, was not its
+condition.
+
+[37] C. Judson Herrick, "Some Reflections on the Origin and Significance
+of the Cerebral Cortex," _Journal of Animal Behavior_, Vol. III, pp.
+228-233.
+
+[38] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 256.
+
+[39] H. C. Warren, _Psychological Review_, Vol. XXI, Page 93.
+
+[40] _Principles of Psychology_, I, p. 241, note.
+
+[41] _Ibid._, p. 258.
+
+[42] _Psychology. Briefer Course._ P. 468.
+
+[43] Angell, _Psychology_, p. 65.
+
+[44] _Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 251.
+
+[45] Thorstein Veblen: _The Instinct of Workmanship_, p. 316.
+
+[46] It may still be argued that we must depend upon analogy in our
+acceptance or rejection of a new commodity. For any element of novelty
+must surely suggest something to us, must _mean_ something to us, if it
+is to attract or repel. Thus, the motor-car will whirl us rapidly over
+the country, the motor-boat will dart over the water without effort on
+our part. And in such measure as we have had them hitherto, we have
+always enjoyed experiences of rapid motion. These new instruments simply
+promise a perfectly well-known _sort_ of experience in fuller measure.
+So the argument may run. And our mental process in such a case may
+accordingly be held to be nothing more mysterious than a passing by
+analogy from the _old_ ways in which we got rapid motion in the past to
+the _new_ way which now promises more of the same. And more of the same
+is what we want.
+
+"More of the same" means here intensive magnitude and in this connection
+at all events it begs the question. Bergson's polemic seems perfectly
+valid against such a use of the notion. But kept in logical terms the
+case seems clearer. It is said that we reason in such a case by
+"analogy." We do, indeed; but what is analogy? The term explains nothing
+until the real process behind the term is clearly and realistically
+conceived. What I shall here suggest holds true, I think, as an account
+of analogical inference generally and not simply for the economic type
+of case we have here to do with. Reasoning is too often thought of as
+proceeding from given independent premises--as here (1) the fact that
+hitherto the driving we have most enjoyed and the sailing we have most
+enjoyed have been _fast_ and (2) the fact that the motor-car is _fast_.
+But do we accept the conclusion because the premises suggest it in a way
+we cannot resist? On the contrary, stated thus, the premises clearly do
+_not_ warrant the conclusion that the motor-car will be enjoyable. Such
+a statement of the premises is wholly formal and _ex post facto_. What,
+then, is our actual mental process in the case? The truth is, I think,
+that we simply--yes, "psychologically"--wish to try _that promised
+unheard-of rate of speed_! That comes first and foremost. But we mean to
+be reasonably prudent on the whole, although we are avowedly adventurous
+just now in this particular direction! We, therefore, ransack our memory
+for _other fast things_ we have known, to see whether they have
+encouragement to give us. We try to supply ourselves with a major
+premise because the new proposal in its own right interests us--instead
+of having the major premise already there to coerce us by a purely
+"logical" compulsion as soon as we invade its sphere of influence. And
+confessedly, in point of "logic," there is no such compulsion in the
+second figure: there is only a timid and vexatious neutrality, a mere
+"not proven."
+
+Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive leap," in
+seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our eyes to logic,
+turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were not and had never
+been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the sort. The "inductive leap"
+is no leap away from logic, but the impulsion of logic's mainspring seen
+only in its legitimate event. Because we have not taken care to see the
+impulse coming, it surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about
+for an illusive assurance in some "law of thought," or some
+question-begging "universal premise" of Nature's "uniformity." We do not
+see that we were already conditionally committed to the "leap" by our
+initial interest. Getting our premises together is no hurried forging of
+a chain to save us from our own madness in the nick of time. We are only
+hoping to rid ourselves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason
+by analogy is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the
+radically novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to
+that interest.
+
+[47] Aristotle's _Nicomachaean Ethics_ (Welldon's transl.), Book VIII.
+
+[48] Cf. Aristotle's _Politics_ (Jowett's trans.) III. 9. Sec.6 ff. and
+elsewhere; _Nicom. Ethics_, I, Chap. III (end).
+
+[49] Cf. Veblen: _op. cit._
+
+[50] W. McDougall in his _Social Psychology_ (Ed. 1912, pp. 358 ff.)
+recognizes "incomplete anticipation of the end of action" as a genuine
+type of preliminary situation in human behavior, but appears to regard
+this as in so far a levelling-down of man to the blindness of the
+"brutes." But "incompleteness" is a highly ambiguous term and seems here
+to beg the question. "Incompleteness" may be given an emphasis in which
+it imports conjecture and hypothesis--almost anything, in fact, but
+blindness. Rather do the brutes get levelled up to man by such facts as
+those McDougall cites.
+
+[51] take _routine_ to be the essence and meaning of hedonism. There are
+two fundamental types of conduct--routine and constructiveness.
+Reference may be made here to Boehm-Bawerk's pronouncement on hedonism in
+_Kapital und Kapitalzins_, 1912 (II-2, pp. 310 ff.): "What people love
+and hate, strive towards or fight off--whether only pleasure and pain or
+other 'lovable' and 'hatable' things as well,--is a matter of entire
+indifference to the economist. The only thing important is that they do
+love and hate certain things.... The deductions of marginal utility
+theory lose no whit of their cogency even if certain ends (dependent for
+their realization upon a supply of goods inadequate to the fulfillment
+of all ends without limit) are held to have the character not of
+pleasure but of something else. The marginal utility may be a least
+pleasure or a competing least utility of some other sort...." (p. 317).
+This is a not uncommon view. As W. C. Mitchell has suggested, it is too
+obvious to be wholly convincing. (_Journ. Pol. Ec._, Vol. XVIII. "The
+Rationality of Economic Activity.") Veblen has made it perfectly clear
+that particular matters of theory are affected by the presupposition of
+hedonism. (_Journ. Pol. Ec._, Vol. XVII, _Quart. Journ. Econ._, Vol.
+XXII, p. 147 ff.) The matter is too complex for a footnote, but I think
+it of little consequence whether "pleasure" be in any case regarded as
+substantively the end of desire or not. This is largely a matter of
+words. What is important is the practical question whether a thing is
+_so habitual with me that when the issue arises I cannot or will not
+give it up and take an interest in something new_ the "utility" of which
+I cannot as yet be cognizant of because it partly rests with me to
+create it. If this is the fact it will surely look as if pleasure or the
+avoidance of pain were my end in the case. Hedonism and egoism are in
+the end convertible terms. There is conduct wearing the outward aspect
+of altruism that is egotistic in fact--not because it was from the first
+insincere or self-delusive, but because it has become habitual and may
+in a crisis be held to for the sake of the satisfaction it affords.
+Genuine altruism, on the other hand, is a form of constructiveness.
+
+[52] Until after this essay was finished I had not seen John A. Hobson's
+book entitled _Work and Wealth, A Human Valuation_ (London, 1914). My
+attention was first definitely called to this work by a friend among the
+economists who read my finished MS. late in 1915, and referred me in
+particular to the concluding chapter on "Social Science and Social Art."
+On now tardily reading this chapter I find that, as any reader will
+readily perceive, it distinctly anticipates, almost _verbatim_ in parts,
+what I have tried, with far less success, to say in the foregoing two
+paragraphs above. Hobson argues, with characteristic clearness and
+effect, for the qualitative uniqueness and the integral character of
+personal budgets, holding that the logic of marginality is "an entirely
+illusory account of the psychical process by which a man lays out his
+money, or his time, or his energy" (p. 331). "So far as it is true that
+the last sovereign of my expenditure in bread equals in utility the last
+sovereign of my expenditure in books, that fact proceeds not from a
+comparison, conscious, or unconscious, of these separate items at this
+margin, but from the parts assigned respectively to bread and books in
+the organic plan of my life. Quantitative analysis, inherently incapable
+of comprehending qualitative unity or qualitative differences, can only
+pretend to reduce the latter to quantitative differences. What it
+actually does is to ignore alike the unity of the whole and the
+qualitativeness of the parts" (p. 334). Hobson not only uses the analogy
+of the artist and the picture (p. 330) precisely as I have done, but
+offers still other illustrations of the principle that seem to me even
+more apt and telling. Though not indebted to him for what I have put
+into the above paragraphs, I am glad to be able to cite the authority of
+so distinguished an economist and sociologist for conclusions to which I
+found my own way. Other parts as well _of Work and Wealth_ (e.g.,
+Chapter IV, on "The Creative Factor in Production") seem to have a close
+relation to the main theme of the present discussion.
+
+[53] It may be worth while to glance here for the sake of illustration
+at an ethical view of preference parallel with the economic logic above
+contested. "The act which is right in that it promotes one interest, is,
+by the same principle," writes R. B. Perry, "wrong in that it injures
+another interest. There is no contradiction in this fact ... simply
+because it is possible for the same thing to possess several relations,
+the question of their compatibility or incompatibility being in each
+case a question of empirical fact. Now ... an act ... may be doubly
+right in that it conduces to the fulfillment of two interests. Hence
+arises the conception of comparative goodness. If the fulfillment of one
+interest is good, the fulfillment of two is better; and the fulfillment
+of all interests is best.... Morality, then, is _such performance as
+under the circumstances, and in view of all the interests affected,
+conduces to most goodness_. In other words, that act is morally right
+which is most right." (_Present Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 334. Cf.
+also _The Moral Economy_). It is evident that constructive change in the
+underlying system (or aggregate?) of the agent's interests gets no
+recognition here as a matter of moral concern or as a fact of the
+agent's moral experience. Thus Perry understands the meaning of freedom
+to lie in the fact that "_interests operate_," i.e., that interests
+exist as a certain class of operative factors in the universe along with
+factors of _other_ sorts. "I can and do, within limits, _act as I will_.
+Action, in other words, is governed by desires and intentions." (pp. 342
+ff.). The cosmical heroics of Bertrand Russell are thus not quite the
+last word in Ethics (p. 346). Nevertheless, the "free man," in Perry's
+view, apparently must get on with the interests that once for all
+initially defined him as a "moral constant" (p. 343).
+
+[54] In a recent interesting discussion of "Self-interest" (T. N.
+Carver, _Essays in Social Justice_, 1915, Chap. III) occurs the
+following: "We may conclude ... that even after we eliminate from our
+consideration all other beings than self, there is yet a possible
+distinction between one's present and one's future self. It is always,
+of course, the present self which esteems or appreciates all interests
+whether they be present or future. And the present self estimates or
+appreciates present interests somewhat more highly than it does future
+interests. In this respect the present self appreciates the interests of
+the future self according to a law quite analogous to, if indeed it be
+not the same law as that according to which it appreciates the interests
+of others" (p. 71). This bit of "subjective analysis" (p. 60), a
+procedure rather scornfully condemned as "subjective quibbling" on the
+following page, must be counted a fortunate lapse. It could be bettered,
+I think, in only one point. Must the future self "of course" and
+"always" get license to live by meeting the standards of the present
+self? Has the present self no modesty, no curiosity, no "sense of
+humor"? If it is so stupidly hard and fast, how can a self new and
+qualitatively different ever get upon its feet in a man? In some men no
+such thing can happen--but must it be in all men impossible and
+impossible "of course"? And what of the other self? Carver has not
+applied the "methods of subjective analysis" to _change_ from self _to_
+self or from interest in self _to_ interest in others. The present tense
+of formal logic governs fundamentally throughout the whole account.
+
+If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the point of
+view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of interest as due to
+the undervaluation of future goods.
+
+[55] Fite, _Introductory Study of Ethics_, pp. 3-8.
+
+[56] Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, pp. 205-11.
+
+[57] The term "egocentric predicament" (cf. R. B. Perry: _Present
+Philosophical Tendencies_, p. 129 ff.) has had, for a philosophic term,
+a remarkable literary success. But at best it conveys a partial view of
+the situation it purports to describe. The "egocentricity" of our
+experience, viewed in its relation to action, seems, rightly considered,
+less a "predicament" than an opportunity, a responsibility and an
+immunity. For in relation to _action_, it means (1) that an objective
+complex situation has become, in various of its aspects, a matter of my
+cognizance in terms significant to me. That so many of its aspects have
+come into relations of conflict or reenforcement significant _for me_ is
+_my_ opportunity for reconstructive effort if I choose to avail myself
+of it. Because, again, I am thus "on hand myself" (_op. cit._, p. 129)
+and am thus able to "report" upon the situation, I am (2) responsible,
+in the measure of my advantages, for the adequacy of my performance. And
+finally (3) I cannot be held to account for failure to reckon with such
+aspects of the situation as I cannot get hold of in the guise of "ideas,
+objects of knowledge or experiences" (_Ibid._). Our egocentricity is,
+then, a predicament only so long as one stubbornly insists, to no
+obvious positive purpose, on thinking of knowledge as a self-sufficing
+entitative complex, like a vision suddenly appearing full-blown out of
+the blue, and as inviting judgment in that isolated character on the
+representative adequacy which it is supposed to claim (cf. A. W. Moore,
+"Isolated Knowledge," _Journ. of Philos., etc._, Vol. XI). The way out
+of the predicament for Perry and his colleagues is to attack the
+traditional subjective and representative aspects of knowledge. But,
+this carried out, what remains of knowledge is a "cross-section of
+neutral entities" which _still_ retains all the original
+unaccountability, genetically speaking, and the original intrinsic and
+isolated self-sufficiency traditionally supposed to belong to knowledge.
+The ostensible gain achieved for knowledge is an alleged proof of its
+ultimate self-validation or the meaninglessness of any suspicion of its
+validity (because there is no uncontrolled and distorting intermediation
+of "consciousness" in the case). But to wage strenuous war on
+subjectivism and representationism and still to have on hand a problem
+calling for the invention _ad hoc_ of an entire new theory of mind and
+knowledge seems a waste of good ammunition on rather unimportant
+outworks. They might have been circumvented.
+
+But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The egocentric
+predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admission by the
+"altruist" that since whatever he chooses to do must be his act and is
+obviously done because he wishes, for good and sufficient reasons of his
+own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist after all--perhaps in spite of
+himself and then again perhaps not. The ethical realism of G. E. Moore
+(_Principia Ethica_, 1903) breaks out of the predicament by declaring
+Good independent of all desire, wish or human interest and
+_indefinable_, and by supplying a partial list of things thus
+independently good. What I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in
+possession of objective _Good_, not because it accords with some habit
+or whim of mine (although my own pleasure is undoubtedly _one_ of the
+good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow Moore in
+this (_op. cit._, p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objectivism can give
+no account of the motivation, or the process, of the individual's
+efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a "more adequate"
+apprehension of what things are good than he may already possess, just
+as the objectivist theory of consciousness ( = knowledge) can supply no
+clue as to how or whether a _more_ or a _less_ comprehensive or a
+qualitatively _different_ "cross-section of entities" can or should be
+got into one's "mind" as warrant or guidance ("stimulus") for a
+contemplated response that is to meet a present emergency (cf. John
+Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," _Psychol. Rev._, Vol.
+IV). Thus neither sort of deliverance out of the alleged predicament of
+egocentricity abates in the least the only serious inconvenience or
+danger threatened by subjectivism.
+
+[58] Cf. W. Jethro Brown, _The Underlying Principles of Modern
+Legislation_ (3d ed., London, 1914), pp. 165-68.
+
+[59] Bosanquet: _Principle of Individuality and Value_, pp. 13, 15, 20,
+24, 27, 30.
+
+[60] The case against the Austrian explanation of market-price in terms
+of marginal utility has been well summed up and re-enforced by B. M.
+Anderson in his monograph, _Social Value_ (Boston, 1911). Anderson finds
+the fatal flaw in the Austrian account to consist in the psychological
+particularism of the marginal utility theory. The only way, he holds, to
+provide an adequate foundation for a non-circular theory of price is to
+understand the marginal estimates people put upon goods as resultants of
+the entire moral, legal, institutional, scientific, aesthetical, and
+religious state of society at the time. This total and therefore
+absolute state of affairs, if I understand the argument, is to be
+regarded as focussed to a unique point in the estimate each man puts
+upon a commodity. Thus, presumably, the values which come together,
+summed up in the total demand and supply schedules for a commodity in
+the market, are "social values" and the resultant market-price is a
+"social price." This cross-sectional social totality of conditions is
+strongly suggestive of an idealistic Absolute. The individual is a mere
+focussing of impersonal strains and stresses in the Absolute. But the
+real society is a radically temporal process. The real centers of
+initiation in it are creatively intelligent individuals whose economic
+character as such expresses itself not in "absolute" marginal
+registrations but in price estimates.
+
+On the priority of price to value I venture to claim the support of A.
+A. Young, "Some Limitations of the Value Concept," _Quart. Journ.
+Econ._, Vol. XXV, p. 409 (esp. pp. 417-19). Incidentally, I suspect the
+attempt to reconstruct ethical theory as a branch of what is called
+_Werttheorie_ to be a mistake and likely to result only in useless and
+misleading terminology.
+
+[61] _Positive Theory of Capital_ (Eng. trans.). Bk. IV, Ch. II. The
+passage is unchanged in the author's latest edition (1912).
+
+[62] It is pointed out (e.g., by Davenport in his _Economics of
+Enterprise_, pp. 53-54) that, mathematically, in a market where large
+numbers of buyers and sellers confront each other with their respective
+maximum and minimum valuations on the commodity this interval within
+which price must fall becomes indefinitely small to the point of
+vanishing. This is doubtless in accord with the law of probability, but
+it would be an obvious fallacy to see in this any manner of proof or
+presumption that therefore the assumptions as to the nature of the
+individual valuations upon which such analysis proceeds _are true_. In a
+large market where this interval is supposed to be a vanishing quantity
+is there more or less higgling and bargaining than in a small market
+where the interval is admittedly perceptible? And if there _is_ higgling
+and bargaining (_op. cit._, pp. 96-97), what is it doing that is of
+price-fixing importance unless there be supposed to be a critical
+interval for it to work in? Such a use of probability-theory is a good
+example of the way in which mathematics may be used to cover the false
+assumptions which have to be made in order to make a mathematical
+treatment of certain sorts of subject-matter initially plausible as
+description of concrete fact.
+
+[63] As I have elsewhere argued ("Subjective and Exchange Value,"
+_Journ. Pol. Econ._, Vol. IV, pp. 227-30). By the same token, I confess
+skepticism of the classical English doctrine that cost can affect price
+only through its effect upon quantity produced. "If all the commodities
+used by man," wrote Senior (quoted by Davenport, _op. cit._, p. 58),
+"were supplied by nature without any interference whatever of human
+labor, but were supplied in precisely the same amounts that they now
+are, there is no reason to suppose either that they would cease to be
+valuable or would exchange at any other than the present proportions."
+But is this inductive evidence or illustrative rhetoric? One wonders,
+indeed, whether private property would ever have developed or how long
+modern society would tolerate it if all wealth were the gift of nature
+instead of only some of it (that part, of course, which requires no use
+of produced capital goods for its appropriation).
+
+[64] Certain points in this discussion have been raised in two papers,
+entitled, "The Present Task of Ethical Theory," _Int. Jour. of Ethics_,
+XX, and "Ethical Value," _Jour. of Phil., Psy., and Scientific Methods_,
+V, p. 517.
+
+[65] Cf. also John Dewey, _Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy_, and
+Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, Ch. XVI.
+
+[66] _International Journal of Ethics_, XXV, 1914, pp. 1-24.
+
+[67]_ Dreams of a Spirit Seer._
+
+[68] Cf. A. W. Moore, _Pragmatism and Its Critics_, 257-78.
+
+[69] Croce, _Philosophy of the Practical_, pp. 312 f.
+
+[70] G. E. Moore, _Principia Ethica_, p. 147.
+
+[71] _Ethics_, ch. V.
+
+[72] G. E. Moore, _Principia Ethica_, p. 149.
+
+[73] Rashdall, _Is Conscience an Emotion?_ pp. 199 f.
+
+[74] _Ibid._, 177.
+
+[75] G.E. Moore, _Ethics_, Ch. III.
+
+[76] Dewey and Tufts, _Ethics_, pp. 334 f.
+
+[77] _Methods of Ethics_, p. 380.
+
+[78] _Individualism_, 55, 61, 62.
+
+[79] Lectures III and IV, especially 175, 176, 235-39.
+
+[80] Pp. 111 ff., 172-75, 329 ff.
+
+[81] Pp. 73, 186, 236, 261 f., 267, 269.
+
+[82] 124, 182, 301.
+
+[83] 263 ff., 123.
+
+[84] Pp. 180, 241.
+
+[85] P. 180.
+
+[86] Art and religion have doubtless their important parts in embodying
+values, or in adding the consciousness of membership in a larger union
+of spirits, or of relation to a cosmic order conceived as ethical, but
+the limits of our discussion do not permit treatment of these factors.
+
+[87] Cf. my paper, "Goodness, Cognition, and Beauty," _Journal of
+Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. IX, p. 253.
+
+[88] Cf. Thorndike, _The Original Nature of Man_; S. Freud, _Die
+Traumdeutung_, _Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben_, etc.; McDougall,
+_Social Psychology_.
+
+[89] _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_,
+Vol. IX, p. 256.
+
+[90] Cf. Plato, _Republic_, IX, 571, 572, for an explicit anticipation
+of Freud.
+
+[91] This "new psychology" is not so very new.
+
+[92] Cf. Hocking, _The Meaning of God in Human Experience_, for the most
+recent of these somnambulisms. But any idealistic system will do, from
+Plato to Bradley.
+
+[93] Cf. James, _The Varieties of Religious Experience_.
+
+[94] Cf. Jane Harrison, _Ancient Art and Ritual_.
+
+[95] Cf. my paper, "Is Belief Essential in Religion?", _International
+Journal of Ethics_, October, 1910.
+
+[96] "Metaphysics," _Book Lambda_.
+
+[97] This is accomplished usually by ignoring the differentia of the
+term of religion, and using it simply as an adjective of eulogy, as in
+the common practice the term "Christian" is made coextensive with the
+denotation of "good," or "social." For example, a "Christian gentleman"
+can differ in no discernible way from a gentleman not so qualified save
+by believing in certain theological propositions. But in usage, the
+adjective is simply tautologous. Compare R. B. Perry, _The Moral
+Economy_; E. S. Ames, _The Psychology of Religious Experience_; J. H.
+Leuba, _A Psychological Study of Religion_; H. M. Kallen, _Is Belief
+Essential in Religion?_
+
+[98] The condition of England and Germany in the present civil war in
+Europe echoes this situation.
+
+[99] Cf. _Republic_, Books V and VI.
+
+[100] Cf. _Winds of Doctrine_ and _Reason in Common Sense_.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. Punctuation has been normalized. As well as obvious misprints have
+been corrected.
+
+3. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
+these letters have been replaced with transliterations.
+
+4. The word "Phoenicians" uses an "oe" ligature in the original.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Creative Intelligence, by
+John Dewey, Addison W. Moore, Harold Chapman Brown, George H. Mead, Boyd H. Bode, Henry Waldgrave, Stuart James, Hayden Tufts, Horace M. Kallen
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